Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
Camellia
Camellia kept her apprehension to herself, because this was such an important moment for Wolf.
They’d lingered all day in the place where he’d spent the first four years of his life, talking to someone who’d witnessed a small part of it, recovering memories long since tucked away, reading snippets of his past in his mother’s diaries.
Now the sun was setting, and Camellia’s feeling of dread had still not faded.
As they started hiking back, she held it inside.
She’d started to relax when they’d left Hobbsville to drive from the top of Texas to the bottom—right up until she’d seen that black Blazer on the highway, so much like Earl’s.
And then that shape in the darkness last night, walking up the trail.
And the footsteps she was sure she’d heard behind them today.
She was nervous and half-convinced it was just the old PTSD, reactivated by Earl’s phone call. And so there was no point distracting herself, or Wolf, from his quest for his family. Especially not when it was going so well.
“Are you worried that we don’t have another clue yet?” he asked as they walked.
“A sheriff from upriver? You think that’s not a clue? There are only so many counties between here and there.”
“He might not even be alive by now.”
“But he might.” She walked a little closer beside him, then reminded herself he didn’t feel the way she did and allowed a bit more space between them.
“It gives us a next step. That’s all investigative work is, you know, just finding the next step, and then the next.
You never see the whole path. It’s like driving at night.
You see only as far as your headlights reach. ”
“That sounds like a wise outlook.”
“That’s a direct quote from my instructor in that accelerated licensing course I took.”
“The one where you met your nemesis.”
“Right. We’ll start talking to men who were sheriffs in counties upriver the year you washed up.”
“You said there was a flash flood that year,” he said.
“There was. Still, for a baby to survive something like that…it’s unlikely.”
“But not impossible,” he said.
It was getting dark, and she was hearing twigs snap and footsteps every time the wind shifted.
The frequency of the sounds convinced her it was just her overly stressed mind and reactivated PTSD, and maybe a little bit of sexual frustration, playing tricks on her perceptions.
She glanced at Wolf, and he looked back at her, then frowned.
“You’re not okay. What’s wrong?”
She shook her head, but he put his hand on her shoulder, urging her to look at him again.
“You can tell me.”
“I know I can. But it’s stupid and unprofessional, and a distraction from our case.”
He blinked. “I was thinking we were more than that. More than PI and client.”
She watched his eyes but didn’t hold them. Her gaze shifted like a criminal’s. “You made it clear you’re not interested in that, and I respect your boundaries, Wolf.”
He blinked down at her, standing there on the path where it twisted between rock formations and freestanding boulders in striated brown and tan. Beyond them, the sun was setting, striping the sky in gold and orange.
“When did I do that?” he asked. His voice was very soft, barely more than a whisper.
Her darting gaze came back and held on this time. “Well, last night. Obviously.”
“Last night I was trying to respect your boundaries, Camellia. No means no.” He blinked. “Wait, do you mean you’ve changed your mind about, you know, the old maid thing?”
“What, my draping myself across your chest last night wasn’t a big enough clue?”
“Holy… ” He peeled his backpack off, dropped it, and caught her face in his hands. Then he tipped it up and kissed her.
She wrapped around him like she was on fire, kissing him back with all the pent-up anguish she’d been keeping inside. They had no tent, no shelter.
He slid his hands down over her backside, her thighs, and lifted them around him, then he carried her off the path while she fed on his jawline, on his ear, on his neck. He dropped to his knees, and when he laid her back on the ground, she shimmied out of her jeans.
He put a hand to her chest, all gentle, slowing her down, his brown eyes asking if she was sure.
She peeled her blouse over her head inside out and threw it aside in answer.
He did likewise, and then she was done waiting.
She pulled him down onto her and into her, closed her eyes, and touched heaven
Ranger Dan, Big Bend National Park
Ranger Dan was down at the Log-Jam, the watering hole where all the clientele were employees of the park.
They kept its existence quiet. Campers looking for a drink and a place to unwind, were directed to a saloon out past the east entrance that was glad to have ’em.
This place was their own, only a mile from the north gate.
Dan was starting to feel less than welcome, though. It had become the consensus among his colleagues that he was too old to cut the mustard and ought to retire gracefully. And he supposed they were right, but he didn’t have a lot else going on in his life.
He sidled onto a barstool and held up a finger to the bartender, who drew him a glass of his favorite on tap and slid it over without need of instruction, smooth as you please, like they’d rehearsed it.
You had to appreciate the small things like that.
The group of pups, as all the older park staff referred to the youngsters, descended on a table way too close to him, and he decided to seek a spot far from their boisterous, youthful racket.
He needed five beers to ease his aching joints enough to sleep, and he’d prefer to enjoy them without the giggling of a bunch of fresh-out-of-braces, empty-headed—he glanced their way, noting the patches on their uniforms—river guides.
It figured. Young, fit, cocky, arrogant brats, in his opinion.
River rats, they’d called them back in the day, him and Zach and Billy.
Damn, he missed those guys.
He picked up his beer, having spotted an empty table on the far end of the place, and started past the river rats to get there.
“I’m telling you, it was creepy,” said one of them, a girl of twenty-something, dark of hair, eyes, and complexion. The laughter of the others died down. “The way that woman was talking about whether a baby swept into the river could survive to wash up on shore somewhere.”
“Jeeze-iz,” said another one.
Dan turned around and headed back to his barstool—no, two to the left, nearer the conversation. He didn’t want to miss anything.
“Then another one jumps in and says it’s for a movie script. They’re researching to see if the idea is even viable. But you could tell they came up with that on the spot, you know?”
“Well, what are you saying, Lupe? You think they’re gonna dump a real baby into the Rio Grande just to see where it ends up?”
“I think maybe they already did. They were down there by the dumping ground, where the river spews her refuse, doing some kind of ceremony.”
Dan spun his barstool around, cleared his throat, and said, “Excuse me.”
The girl who’d done most of the talking looked at him, startled, then said, “I’m sorry if we’re being too loud.”
Huh. Manners from a river rat? Would wonders never cease?
“Not at all,” he lied. They were being entirely too loud. It just happened he was glad of it this time. “You don’t happen to recall the name of the person asking about a baby in the river, do you?”
“Well, we’re not s’posed to share customer info—”
“You’re not. I’m a park employee, too.”
“Still.”
The others with her looked at him as if his age offended them somehow. As if it wasn’t going to happen to them, too. Freaking river rats, anyway.
Dan shrugged it off. He could look into yesterday's logbooks as easily as they could. “Never mind, then,” he said. “Have a nice evening.” And then he headed for the quiet table in the back.
Wolf
He and Camellia didn’t really separate the rest of the way back to camp.
They walked with every part possible pressed together.
Wolf didn’t want to let go of her, despite that his brain was trying to break in with logic and warnings.
She was clinging close as they walked back, arm in arm.
By the time they got to their little campsite, it was late, and his practical mind was getting louder.
This was too much, too soon. She hadn’t recovered from her stalker ex, and he’d just lost his mother and his entire identity. This was no time to start a relationship.
But it was kind of late for all that.
He let go of her to crouch and unzip the tent.
It felt cold without her in his arms. The sun had set and taken its heat with it.
He held the flap open, and she ducked past him inside.
He went in behind her, turning around to zip the thing back up, taking his time while she moved around behind him.
He had to slow this down, cool it off, use common sense.
They’d fallen into each other up there on the trail, and it was time to put their feet back onto the ground.
He finished the zip, rose and turned, and was instantly paralyzed.
She was standing there naked in the orange glow of the portable heater she’d turned on. “I found a fully charged battery in my backpack,” she said. She smiled at him in the darkness, then crawled in between the still-zipped-together bags, and crooked her finger at him.
His paralysis fled. He was naked and in there beside her in 3.5 seconds. Once her body slid against his, his irritating common sense shut down for the rest of the night.
Damn, this might be wrong for both of them, but it sure as hell felt right.
Camellia
Camellia had been floating so high in a pink cloud of pheromones and post-coitus endorphins that she’d never even felt her feet touch the ground as they’d walked back to the tent. And then when he took his arm from around her and knelt to unzip it, she'd felt abandoned.