Chapter Seven #2
"That's him," I say, and I'm crying. I don't even realize it until the tears freeze on my cheeks. "That's Waldo."
I lower the binoculars, turning to Nash. I expect him to be impassive, professional. The guide who got the client to the target.
But he's grinning.
It's real, a blinding, boyish expression that crinkles the corners of his eyes and remakes his entire face, nothing like his usual charming, client-managing grin.
"You found him, Aris," he says.
"We found him."
"No." He shakes his head, lowering his glasses. His hazel eyes lock onto mine, intense and warm. "You did. You tracked a ghost across five hundred miles of wilderness on a hunch and a promise. I just drove the sled."
The validation hits me harder than the cold. After a last year of fighting to keep this project breathing, of being dismissed by the department as sentimental, of doubting my own sanity, here is this man, this hunter, looking at me with absolute, unadulterated respect.
"I …" My voice fails.
Impulsively, driven by the adrenaline and the overwhelming relief, I reach out and grab his arm. "Thank you. I couldn't have … I wouldn't be here without you."
Nash looks down at my hand on his arm, then back up to my face. The air between us pulls taut, an electric tension that has nothing to do with caribou.
"You're freezing," he says, but he doesn't pull away. Instead, he covers my gloved hand with his own. His hand is huge, warm, engulfing mine. "Let's get the data. Then we celebrate."
He turns to the valley, but the moment lingers, a physical sensation on my skin.
We spend the next hour in a fever of productivity.
I set up the spotting scope, while Nash helps me calibrate the telemetry equipment.
We're too far to dart him today. The wind is wrong, and we need to study the herd dynamics before risking a capture attempt, but we can get the baseline data we need.
I work the camera, snapping hundreds of high-resolution images, while Nash acts as spotter, calling out behaviors.
"Bull is displacing the subordinate male," Nash murmurs, his eye pressed to the scope. "Aggressive posture, but no contact. He's conserving energy."
"Noting dominance display," I reply, my fingers flying across my tablet. "Is he favoring the left hind leg? Thaddeus thought he had an old injury."
Nash watches for a long minute. "Negative. Movement is fluid. He looks prime, Aris. Healthy. Strong."
"Good. That's good."
"He's checking the wind," Nash notes. "Smart. He keeps putting the cows between him and the open ground."
"Using the herd as a buffer," I say, typing. "Self-preservation over protection?"
"Or he knows if he goes down, the herd loses its navigator," Nash counters. "Maybe he's protecting the asset."
I pause, looking at Nash. He's focused entirely on the animal, his profile sharp against the white sky. He understands this creature. He analyzes the behavior not just as a biologist would, charts and graphs, but as a fellow predator, understanding the logic of survival.
"You really admire them," I say quietly.
He lowers the scope, glancing at me. "Hard not to. They survive in a place that tries to kill them every day. They don't complain, they don't give up. They just endure."
"Like you," I say before I can stop myself.
Nash goes still. He looks at me, really looks at me, and I feel that dangerous pull again. The one that makes me want to lean across the six inches of snow separating us and find out if his mouth tastes like the coffee we drank this morning.
"Aris," he says, his voice dropping to that rough register that vibrates in my chest.
"We should … we should get the wind speed measurements," I say quickly, scrambling backward into my professional shell. I grab the anemometer from my pack, fumbling with the case. "For the data set."
Nash watches me for a beat too long, seeing right through my panic. Then he nods.
"Right. Wind speed."
We work until the light begins to fail, the sun dipping below the peaks and turning the valley into a bowl of purple shadow. Waldo and his small band move into the dense timber for the night, vanishing as effectively as if they'd never been there.
But we have the photos, the GPS coordinates. We have proof.
"We need to head back," Nash says, packing the scope. "Don't want to navigate the ridge in the dark."
The ride back is different. The triumph of the day buzzes in my blood, keeping the cold at bay. I hold onto Nash, and this time, I let myself rest my head against his back, just for a beat, because I'm tired.
When we get back to camp, the adrenaline crash hits us both. We stumble into the tent, clumsy with fatigue. Nash fires up the stove outside, vent flap propped, while I download the day's data to the backup drive, terrified that something might happen to the images.
"Here," Nash says, handing me a mug of hot chocolate. He must have packed the mix as a surprise; it wasn't on the inventory list.
"Luxury item?" I ask, wrapping my hands around the warmth.
"Morale booster," he corrects. "You earned it."
He sits cross-legged opposite me, blowing on his own mug. The lantern light casts dancing shadows on the tent walls, creating a small, golden world that contains only the two of us.
"So," he says, stretching his legs out. "You found him. Three years of work. How does it feel?"
"Surreal," I admit. I take a sip of the chocolate. It's sweet, hot, and insanely good. "I kept thinking … I kept thinking Thaddeus would be here. In my head, I always pictured showing him the photos."
"He knows," Nash says. He says it flat, with the same certainty he uses when he talks about ice thickness or wind direction.
"You think?"
"I think energy doesn't just disappear. It changes form." He sets his mug down. "He put his life into this. You picking it up … that keeps him in the game."
I look at his hands resting on his knees. They're large, scarred, capable hands. Hands that can field dress a deer or fix an engine or, apparently, gently guide a grieving academic toward peace.
"You're not what I expected, Nash Hollister," I say softly.
He looks up, his gaze holding mine. "What did you expect?"
"A brute," I admit, the honesty slipping out. "A trophy hunter. Someone who saw animals as points on a scoreboard. Someone loud and arrogant who would mansplain the woods to me."
He laughs, a low, genuine sound. "And now?"
"Now …" I hesitate. My heart is hammering against my ribs. The air in the tent feels suddenly thin. "Now I see someone who respects the land more than anyone I've ever met. Someone who listens."
I lean forward slightly, closing a distance I have no business closing. "Someone who makes me feel safe when I should be terrified."
Nash's eyes darken. He leans in too, the space between us shrinking. The tension is a physical weight, heavy and sweet. I look at his mouth, wondering, wanting.
"Aris," he whispers. It's a warning and an invitation all at once.
I could close the gap. I could reach out and touch that scar on his jaw. I could let this happen, let the adrenaline and the triumph and the isolation push us into something reckless.
Professional boundaries, my brain screams. He is an employee. You are a scientist. This is a field expedition, not a romance novel.
But God, I want to.
I take a breath, holding his gaze for one jagged heartbeat longer. Then I pull back.
"I need to review the herd photos," I say, reaching for the camera. "Check for any other anomalies."
Nash freezes. I see the conflict in his eyes, the desire, the restraint, and then, finally, the resignation.
He nods slowly, leaning back against his pack. The distance between us is only a few feet, but it feels like a canyon I've just desperately, deliberately carved.
"Right," he says. "Review the photos."
He picks up his mug, but he doesn't drink. He watches me as I power up the tablet, his eyes unreadable again. But his hand, resting on his knee, is clenched into a fist.
I stare at the screen, the image of Waldo blurring before my eyes. We found the caribou. We achieved the breakthrough.
But as I sit here in the lantern light, listening to Nash breathe, the caribou starts to look like the easiest thing I'll have to wrestle with out here.
I scroll through the photos, seeing nothing, feeling everything.