Chapter 6 #2
Still, she liked Ham. The kind of guy who wouldn’t ask his team to do anything he wouldn’t do.
“What does he want?”
“For one, North’s trying to find you.”
Those words. They just swept through her with heat and spark and light.
North. Trying to find her.
She blinked against the heat in her eyes, the thickening of her throat. But hadn’t she known it in the core of her cells?
Don’t expect me to show up next time you—
Right. She knew him better than that. Knew him maybe better than he wanted her to…
“Just…call Ham, okay?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“And Seel? Whatever’s going on…be careful.”
What? “I’m fine, Jake. Really.”
Then she hung up and dialed Ham. Because yes, she had his number in her contacts, just in case…
Well, just in case someday North didn’t come home.
Ham answered before the first ring ended. “Where are you?”
Oh, apparently he had her contact information too.
Josephine walked over with her promised cup of tea. Selah sat down in the desk chair. “I don’t know. Some small town.”
“Dryden,” Josephine said and Selah repeated it.
“It’s on the Wenatchee River.”
She looked up as James walked back into the kitchen.
“Listen. North is looking for you.”
There it was again, the heat, the warmth. “I’m safe.”
“He’s…I don’t know where he is. Off the grid somewhere. His phone’s gone dark. Listen, get to York’s house. It’s not far from you.”
“York?”
“He’s a friend.”
“If he’s in Leavenworth, the roads are blocked,” Josephine said.
“Did you hear that?”
“Yeah,” Ham said.
“Where does this York live?” James asked, his fingers on the rim of his teacup. He said it softly, so she repeated it for Ham.
“About thirty miles north of Wenatchee, in a little town called Shelly. I can send you a pin. Hang on a second.”
The pin came through with a notification signal, and she opened her maps app. Looked like about an hour, maybe two, away. “Got it.”
“You sure you can get there?” Ham asked.
“She’ll get there.” James walked over to the phone and looked over her shoulder at the map. “Don’t worry.”
Silence on the other side. “Um, Selah, do you have me on speaker?”
“Yeah, I’m here with my friend James and the B&B hostess, Josephine.”
“Hello,” said Josephine.
James rolled his eyes.
“Selah, take me off—”
Her phone died. She stared at it. Dead. How—
She wiggled the cord. No life. “I think there’s a reason why this phone charger was left behind.”
“Oh dear,” said Josephine. “Leave the phone with me. I’ll find a charger that works. You go get a bath.”
Selah’s room glowed softly from a bedside lamp Josephine must have turned on. The brass bed looked impossibly inviting, its quilts turned down, a chocolate on the pillow as if this was a normal B&B stay. Like she wasn’t running from whatever had happened on that mountain.
The bathroom door stood ajar, steam curling from the claw-foot tub. Josephine had added lavender bath salts, their scent soft in the air.
She turned to the bathroom and stopped. A Bible sat on the nightstand, opened to Isaiah. A verse jumped out, underlined. You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.
Peace. When had she last felt that?
The bathroom tile was cool under her feet as she peeled off mud-stiff jeans and the sweatshirt that James had given her. Purple bruises bloomed along her shoulder from the accident. Her ribs ached from holding on during their wild ride down the mountain.
The mirror showed a stranger—grimy and tangled blonde hair, shadows under her eyes, a smudge of dirt across her cheek. She looked like someone who needed saving.
She stirred her hand in the water, the lavender bath salts turning it milky. A basket on the edge of the tub held small luxuries—handmade soap, a loofah in a plastic bag, bath oil that smelled like vanilla.
Selah sank into the water, heat seeping into tired muscles. Night had fallen, and the window above the tub gave her a slice of sky—stars emerging as clouds parted.
The same stars she and North had watched from his deck back when she’d wanted to tell herself that he wasn’t, well, what she imagined him to be.
A mercenary.
She remembered that night with sudden clarity. How the spring air had carried the scent of his neighbor’s lilacs. He’d talked about how he’d gotten into the military—
growing up as a pastor’s kid, wanting to be a warrior for God.
The warrior part had been literal, not figurative, apparently.
He’d told her about his first deployment as a SEAL—not the classified parts, but the human moments. The children who’d followed the convoy, begging for candy. The old woman who’d offered him tea in a blown-out building.
“Sometimes,” he’d said, “doing the right thing means breaking the rules.”
She’d kissed him then, tasting the noble warrior in him, denying anything else.
And then…
She closed her eyes. Maybe she hadn’t been fair. The world was a dangerous place, and…
And all it took for evil to prosper was for good men to do nothing. She certainly couldn’t accuse North of that.
Except…was he a good man?
She was just tired. Too tired. And now her water had turned tepid.
She washed her hair with a coconut shampoo that made her think of Mariposa, so maybe she was being haunted, and then got out, toweled off, and pulled on the bathrobe.
The mirror had steamed over, hiding her reflection. She tied her hair up in a towel, then gathered her dirty clothes and, cinching the robe tight, headed down the hallway and dumped her clothing into the washing machine.
When she returned to her room, she headed to her backpack to find her toiletries kit.
The canister was gone. What?
Maybe she’d taken it out. She searched the room. Not on the table, not on the bedside stand or the bureau.
Huh. The floor creaked outside her door. She froze.
“Everything okay, sugar?” Josephine’s voice. “Brought you some fresh tea. I’m still trying to find a working charger.”
Selah snugged up the bathrobe and went to the door. “Come in.”
Josephine entered with a tea tray, complete with cookies and tiny sandwiches. She set it on the bedside table, next to the open Bible. “Thought you might be hungry. It’s been quite a day.”
That was one way to put it. “Thank you. For everything.”
“Your man’s settled in down the hall. Said to tell you he’ll be checking the vehicle, making sure it’s ready for morning.” Josephine straightened a quilt corner.
“He’s not my man. He’s a stranger I met on the train.”
Okay, that sounded unkind. James had turned into more than that, really. A friend she met on the train? A criminal she met on the train?
“Well, he’s certainly looking after you.”
Yes, he was.
“Sleep well.” Josephine’s eyes held something like concern.
The door clicked shut. Selah sank onto the bed.
Outside, gravel crunched under tires. She moved to the window. James stood in the shadows beside the ATV, opening up the seat cargo area.
And then he tucked the container into the seat compartment. Wait—what?
As if he had heard her thoughts, James glanced up at her window, face unreadable in the dark.
She pulled away, her heart hammering.
Calm. Down.
Still. What was going on?
Through the floor, she heard James’s footfalls on the stairs. The tea grew cold on the bedside table. Isaiah’s words about perfect peace stared up from the open Bible.
Then she got up, went to the door, and turned the lock.
* * *
The scream lifted North out of his body and back to the soggy night.
Or rather, barn.
Hay poked through the horse blanket he’d found after crawling into the space to get out of the downpour, and his body screamed from the fall off his formerly trusty steed.
A girl stood frozen in the barn doorway, maybe six or seven years old, her blonde hair caught in a braid. She held a flashlight, now trained on him. He lifted a hand to protect his eyes.
“Amy!” A woman came into the barn. “Don’t scream. I’m sure that cat’s somewhere—oh my.”
Maybe early seventies, although he really couldn’t make her out in the dim light, the woman gathered Amy close to her.
“Ma’am—”
“Frank!” She stepped back, glanced toward the house. “Frank—there’s another one!”
Another one?
North fought to his feet, failed. “I’m not here to hurt—”
An older man burst through the door, shotgun raised. “Get back!”
North’s SEAL training kicked in, and he noticed the experienced grip, military stance. The man knew how to handle weapons. North raised his hands slowly, ignoring the throb in his temple.
“Don’t move.” The man positioned himself between North and his girls. He wore a flannel shirt, a pair of jeans, and boots, and a look that said he was serious.
That’s what North got for trespassing in them thar hills.
“I’m not a threat,” he said. “I’m hurt. And looking for someone.”
“Stand up. Slowly.”
North complied, using the stall door for support. His muscles had stiffened during his few hours of sleep, and dried mud crackled on his clothes.
“Any weapons?”
“No, sir.”
“Who you lookin’ for?”
“A woman. Her name is Selah. She might be traveling with a man—dark hair—”
“What do you want with them?”
So that was a yes. He studied Frank. “She’s…my girlfriend.”
“Sure she is. She seemed pretty friendly with that other fella.”
And so much for the chill as numbness spread through him. Then heat. Spark. Fire. “He’s dangerous.”
“This is not news to me, son. How do I know you’re not the same?”
North’s mouth opened. “What do you mean how do you know—”
“Four years of Army Intelligence as well as combat in Vietnam. I have a sense about these things.” His mouth tightened. “And they were driving a stolen truck that belongs—belonged to a buddy of mine.”
Oh.
“Is she okay?”
Frank considered him for a moment and then sighed and lowered the shotgun. “That was the right question, son. What’s your name?”
“Nolan Gunderson. I go by North.”
“You’re former military.”
He nodded.
The man held out his hand. “Frank Hendrickson. You’re bleeding.”
“I am?” He touched his head. His hand came back a little moist. “I fell off my horse.”
That took a second, clearly, to sink in.