Chapter 14 Luke
LUKE
Despite his reservations, Luke could see why Inga trusted Nita. She was a sweet, down-to-earth person who reminded him of Inga somewhat in her friendly openness, although she was a bit darker (brown hair, brown eyes) compared to Inga’s sunny coloring.
But the baby, Jo-Jo, was the real icebreaker.
Luke had never been around a small child before.
He wasn’t sure how old Jo-Jo was (under a year, definitely) but she was a happy, babbling chatterbox who, once she warmed up to her new company, talked constantly in a language of her own making with an occasional somewhat-recognizable word mixed in.
Nita seemed to understand her better than the others, answering back in kind.
Luke wondered at first if it was a shifter thing, then decided it was a mom thing.
Nita seemed a little unsure about him at first, too, though she asked him few questions about himself.
This, he thought, might actually be a shifter thing.
They were all a little wary about prying into each other’s lives—which worked out pretty well in his case.
He volunteered that he was a polar bear, since Nita didn’t seem to know, and Nita rather shyly said that she and her daughter turned into seals.
“In fact, you’ll probably see it soon, because she figured out how to shift about a month ago, and now she absolutely loves being a seal.
There’s nothing she likes better in the world.
I’m probably the only mom alive who could just put her daughter in a wading pool and leave her there for hours without worrying anything bad is going to happen.
Not that I wouldn’t worry anyway,” she added.
Inga seemed happier than Luke had seen her so far.
She bounced around between the stove and the pile of new supplies as she prepared pancakes and scrambled eggs from the food Nita had brought with her, waving off all offers of help.
Luke wondered if she’d been a little lonely with just him and Rogue.
As if on cue, the dog nudged up against Luke’s hand. Inga turned around from the stove, spatula in hand. “Luke, did you let him in? He’s supposed to be outside.”
“Sorry.” Luke supposed that Rogue must have come in when he and Inga did, though he hadn’t noticed him. It was amazing how stealthy a giant black dog could be when he wanted to. “Why were you keeping him outside?”
Inga’s face was flushed from the heat, her hair sweat-damp, and there was a smudge of flour on her nose.
She looked delicious, and Luke only belatedly managed to register her answer.
“We’re not sure how he is with small kids.
He seemed okay down at the dock, but we didn’t want to wind him up too much. ”
“We’re going to have to let them play together sooner or later, unless we tie Rogue up.”
“Do you know how he is with kids?” Inga asked pointedly, and Luke remembered that Rogue was supposed to be his dog.
“Uh, I haven’t seen him interact with kids, so I’m not sure. He’s been great with the baby griffins, though, hasn’t he? I think he’s fine with small, cute things.”
Nita looked blank. “With the what?”
Inga took the pancakes off the fire to avoid scorching, and they all trooped outside, to Rogue’s delight, so Nita could see the baby griffins. The chicks were out of the nest at the moment, toddling around while their parents shepherded them and hissed at the humans and the dog.
Nita was charmed, and Jo-Jo instantly went into paroxysms of delight, babbling wildly and reaching out for the griffin babies with her chubby hands.
Instead of baby griffin fluff, one of her hands smacked into Rogue’s fur. The dog had quietly interposed himself between the baby and the griffins, not aggressively. Jo-Jo switched to trying to grab Rogue’s ears.
“No, baby!” Nita protested. “No, dog!” She pulled Jo-Jo closer to her, having to pry the small plump hand off Rogue’s fur to accomplish this.
“I think he’s trying to protect the griffins from the baby,” Luke said cautiously.
Rogue sat down and looked like he had no intention of going anywhere.
Nita hesitated, then knelt with the baby in her lap. Jo-Jo, thrilled, squealed and tried to throw her arms around Rogue—the key words being “tried to” because Nita pulled her back. Rogue cautiously lowered his head and nudged at Nita’s leg, then moved so that Jo-Jo could grab his ears again.
“Okay, you win,” Nita said. “He’s fine with kids, it seems like.” Jo-Jo was now tugging and pulling on the massive, floppy ears. Aside from tilting his head a little to dislodge her from the most sensitive places, Rogue seemed unbothered by this.
“We think he’s smarter than most dogs,” Inga said rather delicately, leaving aside the matter of why they thought that. “And his breed are usually very good with kids, you know.”
“Oggie!” Jo-Jo declared happily.
“We’d better go eat before the pancakes get cold,” Inga said. “It’s not like there’s a microwave around here.”
Back in the cabin, she was dishing them up generous helpings of pancakes and eggs when Luke felt his entire body tense, a full-body wave of adrenaline and anxiety that flooded over him and prickled the hairs on the back of his neck.
He had no idea what had caused it until a few seconds later, when he became aware of the low thumping of helicopter propellers.
He must have felt the vibration before he heard it.
At the stove, Inga tensed and paused in the rhythm of her pancake-flipping.
“Oh, those idiots again?” Nita was sitting on a bunk with Jo-Jo in her lap, trying to get the baby to eat a piece of a pancake rather than feeding it to the dog. She glanced up with annoyance.
“Those idiots?” Inga said.
The noise was loud now. Luke realized that he’d risen from his chair without being aware of it. He had to force his hands to unclench. They couldn’t be landing here, could they? Cold sweat prickled his spine. The cabin suddenly felt like a trap.
“Yeah,” Nita said, most of her attention occupied with the baby.
She glanced over at Luke, who had gone to the window.
“It’s a military helicopter, right? Have you guys seen it?
I don’t know if it’s the same one or a whole group on maneuvers, but they’ve been flying around Westerly Cove for the last couple of days. Really annoying.”
“We, uh, we saw one out flying around,” Inga said, her attention on Luke. “Kind of low, going down the coast.”
“Yeah! Everyone’s scared to shift, afraid they’ll get caught at it. I hate it when they decide to do this kind of thing. It’s bad enough having to look out for the flightseeing tourists—Oh, Jo, stop it.”
The baby petulantly threw the pancake on the floor. Rogue, who had been watching intently, sensed victory and dived in to snap it up. However, instead of eating it, he offered it back to Jo-Jo in his mouth. Jo-Jo grabbed for it.
“Oh, now you want it?” Nita complained, rescuing the dirty and dog-slobbered pancake. She gave it back to Rogue. “Nice dog. Here you go, eat it quick before she starts licking it again.” Rogue decided the pancake was fair game and snapped it down.
Meanwhile, the noise of the helicopter continued to be loud, changing direction as if it was circling the cabin.
“Are they landing?” Inga asked, voicing Luke’s concerns. From the cabin’s small window, he still hadn’t caught a glimpse yet. It must be directly overhead.
“Maybe they’re doing some kind of survey,” Nita suggested. “Like geological or stuff.”
Inga laid down her spatula. “I can go out and—”
“No!” Luke said sharply. He made eye contact with Inga and gave his head a little shake, trying desperately to convey what he was thinking: that letting them see her would make things worse.
The last thing he or Inga needed was the owners of the black helicopter connecting this cabin to the mysterious “hiking couple” with the dog.
They were already looking for a man and a dog, and if they amended that to a man, a woman, and a dog, hiding would become exponentially more difficult.
There was no way most of that could possibly have come across unless it was by pure telepathy, but Inga picked up the spatula again.
“Yeah, you’re right,” she said, having to speak up to be heard over the helicopter’s noise.
It sounded like it was directly over the house now.
Luke felt like his skin was going to crawl right off his body.
“They’ll go away any minute now, I bet.”
“If they don’t, someone should go out and take a picture of those dumbasses and send it to the military’s public relations department,” Inga said, looking up at the ceiling. Rogue growled softly. “This absolutely cannot be legal. I think there’s a minimum height they’re supposed to operate above.”
Just as Luke was halfway preparing for commandos on zip lines to burst through the roof, the thunder of the helicopter began to fade. It was clearly moving away, growing softer with distance.
“Do you think they’re studying the griffins?” Nita asked. “They’re certainly unusual enough. It looked like a military helicopter, but it could be wildlife biologists.”
Inga and Luke shared a look.
“That sure could be,” Luke said. “It makes sense.”
It made no sense, really, but it was an explanation that Nita seemed to buy. Luke tried to unkink the giant knot of tension that his body had turned into.
Inga laid down the spatula again. “I can’t say if that’s it or not, but I’m gonna run out and check that the griffins didn’t get blown off the hillside by those idiots.”
“I’ll help,” Luke said, and followed swiftly.
He found Inga a little ways away on the path to the spring, looking at the cabin with her hand over her mouth. The helicopter could still be heard very distantly, and he felt his knees tense with the urge to spring back into the cabin. However, it didn’t return, and he went to Inga instead.
“You okay?” he asked quietly.
“I’m fine.” Inga ran her hands across her face. “That was so tense. Scary tense. I thought they were going to come down like Mission Impossible style. Does that happen in real life?”
“I thought they might too, but now I think they might have been using an infrared detector,” Luke said slowly.
“That would explain the reason for all the low passes. If so, having Nita here is the biggest stroke of luck we could’ve asked for.
The cabin would show up as occupied by several people.
If they’re expecting a lone guy with a dog, there’s no way they would think I was here. ”
He put a cautious hand on her shoulder. Inga leaned into it.
“Luke, when Nita leaves, I think we should go back to Westerly Cove with her,” she said very softly.
“I don’t think—”
“Hear me out. I know this sounds crazy to you, and it does to me, a little bit. But I’ve told you that I believe Westerly Cove is uniquely protected. And I really do believe that. There’s no better place to hide out for a while.”
“I don’t want to bring danger to everyone there.”
“You won’t. Think about it. Even if you don’t believe that Westerly Cove is necessarily safer than anywhere else, you’ll have so many more resources than you do here. So many more options. We can look stuff up on the internet, for one thing. If you need to leave, there’s a road, and lots of boats.”
“Inga, you don’t know what these people are capable of. They will absolutely go through other people to get to me. I shouldn’t have stayed here as long as I—”
“Hey!” Nita called from the door of the cabin. “Are you guys gonna come in and eat, or what?”
Inga turned to look at him hopefully.
“I’ll think about it,” Luke told her. He didn’t have it in him to just say no to those hopeful eyes.