Chapter Four
Hannah wrapped her hands around her hot chocolate, the last of which was swirling in the bottom of her mug, as she glanced out into the darkness and tried to muster the courage to go outside and head back to her cabin.
“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to this kind of cold,” Bailey complained as the two women sat in the small common room toward the back of the lodge.
Hannah chuckled. “Oh trust me, you’re not going to have much of a choice,” she teased.
Bailey rolled her eyes. “I have no idea how I’m going to survive,” she announced, laying the back of her hand on her forehead in a dramatic swoon.
“At least you have Aaron to keep you warm,” Hannah pointed out without thinking.
Bailey cocked an eyebrow. “You think it’d be easier for you if you had a guy waiting back at your cabin for you?”
Hannah shrugged, feeling her cheeks start to get a little warm. “I don’t know,” she muttered. She didn’t want to admit how lonely she’d been feeling these last few months. More than ever she found herself wishing for companionship like River and Bailey had with their men.
Both women had fought hard for their relationships, and deserve every moment of happiness they had.
Bailey against the crooked cops she and Aaron had to expose to find their second chance and River and Cade dealing with River’s past, including an obsessed cult leader.
They’d all faced devastating odds and had come out the other side stronger and more settled as couples in loving relationships.
Hannah longed to have what her friends had.
Someone to stay in and cuddle with on the dark, freezing winter nights. Someone to share the day’s troubles and setbacks. Sometimes, she would lie in bed and stare out into the cold night beyond, wondering how she was supposed to get through another year without someone by her side.
It felt like everyone around her was settling down and getting comfortable in a life with someone else, but she was still in her cabin alone. She didn’t want to go back to it, not quite yet, not when this hot chocolate and company was so cozy.
“Well, I guess I should get back to my cabin. Aaron will be wondering what happened to me,” Bailey announced, getting to her feet and stretching. “You ready to brave the cold with me, Hannah?”
“Guess I could give it a shot,” Hannah agreed, standing.
But before they could make it anywhere, the lights cut out.
“Oh no,” Bailey muttered in the sudden darkness. “What’s going on?”
Hannah pulled her phone out and switched on the flashlight so the two of them could avoid bumping into furniture while the back-up generators kicked into action.
It wasn’t entirely unusual for things to go wrong around here, especially in the winter.
The cold weather sometimes froze the pipes and made it difficult for repairmen to get out as quickly as they might have normally.
But as they stood there, nothing happened. The beam of Hannah’s phone light cut through the darkness, but no other lights were clicking back on.
“Shouldn’t the backup generators have kicked in by now?
” Hannah asked, a little nervous. She suddenly felt like the darkness was consuming them.
Her mind couldn’t help flashing back to the fire a few months earlier, like it did every time lately when something went wrong.
Something like this was enough to make her palms sweat and her heart beat out of her chest.
“I think so,” Bailey muttered. “Come on, let’s get out to the front. The fireplace will give us some light, at least.”
Hannah let Bailey lead the way but kept her phone flashlight trained in front of them as the two women made their way to the reception area of the lodge. The fire crackled cozily when they got there, but the usual comforting aura of the flames in the hearth didn’t do much to settle Hannah’s nerves.
“I swear,” a voice cut through the darkness, two sets of footsteps coming toward them, “if the power in this place has gone down after I paid all that money to set up new generators, I’m going to kick some serious a—”
“It’s going to be okay,” Xavier soothed Lawson, and Hannah felt calm wash over her as soon as she heard his voice. Even after everything that had happened between them, she found his presence enormously comforting. As long as he was around, she knew they would figure out what was going on somehow.
“You know what’s happening?” Bailey asked Lawson and Xavier as they reached the women.
Lawson shook his head, lit by the glow of a flashlight in his hand. “No idea. I just got those generators for the winter, so they should have kicked on by now. Xavier and I are going to go out and check what’s going on.”
“I’ll come with you,” Hannah replied at once, without thinking. Her brother pulled a face, clearly trying to think of some way he could talk her out of it, but Xavier nodded in agreement.
“We could use as many eyes on it as possible,” Xavier agreed. “Bailey, you want to come, too?”
“I think I could brave the cold,” Bailey replied. “Plus, I really don’t want to stay in here alone.” She put on the coat she’d been carrying. Hannah did the same, and they followed the guys out to the generators at the far side of the lodge.
It was bitingly cold outside, and the freezing air nipped at Hannah’s skin.
She moved to zip her coat up, but with her phone in one hand she couldn’t get a proper grip on the zipper.
She turned off her phone’s flashlight, intent on putting it in her pocket, but with the light off, it was too dark to see the ground in front of her.
Suddenly, her shoe snagged in a crack in the sidewalk, and she tripped.
“Ahh!” she yelled and fell to her knees.
Everyone spun around to make sure she was all right, but she had already hit the ground with a painful thump, scratching up her knees in the process.
“Hannah, are you okay?” Xavier asked as he rushed over. Crouching down, he put his arm around her, and the feel of his warm touch on her made her head spin.
“Uh, I’m fine,” she managed, glad he couldn’t see the flush to her cheeks or just how much she enjoyed having him so close to her. He helped her up, and she leaned on him a little longer than necessary.
Lawson chose that moment to sweep his flashlight over her, to make sure she was okay, and Hannah had to lower her gaze to the ground to avoid being blinded by the light in her eyes.
She hoped he hadn’t noticed the dreamy look on her face while she leaned into Xavier, enjoying his comfort and warmth.
“Someone must have cut the power on purpose,” Xavier growled, his arm still around Hannah holding her to his side. It didn’t strictly need to be there, but there was no way she was going to be the one to pull back.
Bailey shot her a pointed look in the flashlight’s glow, as though she could sense the tension between them too, and Hannah bit into her lip and quickly lowered her gaze again.
She hoped the other woman wouldn’t say anything in front of Lawson.
As far as her brother knew, there was nothing left between her and Xavier at all.
The last thing she needed at a time like this was Lawson getting mad. They had other things to focus on.
“And it’s getting people hurt,” Xavier added, squeezing Hannah’s shoulder slightly.
Hannah’s pulse fluttered, hearing the protectiveness in his voice, as if he wanted to do everything he could to look out for her.
“I just scuffed up my knees, that’s all. I’m okay, really,” Hannah replied. “Let’s go out to the generators and see if there’s anything we can find.”
Xavier finally let go of Hannah, and she immediately missed his warmth.
The group continued along the path to the generators without any further injuries.
When they got there, sure enough, lengths of wire had been yanked out of the control panels and snipped.
It looked neat and precise, as though someone had come with the tools to make it happen and knew what they were doing.
Lawson grabbed the wires, inspecting them closely. “Who the hell would have done this?” he demanded to nobody in particular, turning back around to face the group.
“The Haynes brothers, I bet,” Bailey cut in.
Hannah turned to Bailey with a groan. “The guys who live at the ranch just over the mountain?”
“Yeah, them,” Bailey replied. “They’d be my first suspects anyway.”
“But why would they have done this?” Hannah asked, confused. She didn’t exactly have many good things to say about the brothers, but she doubted they would have gotten involved in something like this.
“I don’t know,” Bailey replied. “To cause trouble.”
Lawson and Xavier exchanged a look.
All of a sudden, Hannah felt a familiar feeling deep down in her stomach—a feeling she had promised herself she would never ignore again.
It was the same feeling she’d had on the night of the fire, just before she had smelled the smoke filling the air and been faced with the cruel reality of what was happening.
She wrapped her arms around herself. “I want to go back inside.”
Bailey nodded. “Come on, let’s go,” she agreed, taking Hannah’s arm and steering her back down the walkway toward the main doors. “I’ll take a look at those knees for you.”
Hannah was more careful about where she stepped this time.
Sneaking a look at Bailey out of the corner of her eye, she tried to ask her next question as carefully as she could.
Bailey was a police officer down in Blue Ridge and she didn’t want to cause problems or get the other woman in trouble by asking too many questions.
“Why do you think the Haynes brothers might have had something to do with this?” she asked.
“They’ve pestered us on and off in the past but it’s never been anything that’s caused real damage.
Is there something official going on with them in town? ”
“Because they live nearby and like to cause trouble, and I’ve seen plenty of reports at the police station coming in about them over the last few months.
” Bailey sighed. “Nothing too serious, mostly just intimidation around town, but they’ve clearly gotten it into their heads that they have some kind of ownership of the lodge.
They’ve been heard mouthing off to whoever will listen when they’ve been drinking. I don’t know how far that might go.”
Hannah shivered. Her only encounter with the Haynes brothers had been when the younger one, Ron, had catcalled her in town.
And then he had followed her almost halfway back up the mountain to Warrior Peak before he gave up.
It had spooked her, sure, but she had just chalked it up to a bad experience and figured they would leave it there.
“That definitely is unsettling. But I still don’t understand why they would want to cause trouble here?
I mean, are they targeting this place or Lawson and Xavier specifically?
” Hannah wondered aloud as they entered the lodge once more.
The two women paused in front of the fire, turning their hands back and forth in front of the flames to warm themselves through.
“Honestly, I don’t know,” Bailey admitted. “They were just my first thought with all the other complaints about disturbances by them in the area.
“Do you think they know about Lawson’s and Xavier’s backgrounds?” Hannah asked. “I mean, it seems kind of crazy to start something with both being former military and CIA.”
“Yeah, but the Haynes brothers have never struck me much as guys with any smarts,” Bailey pointed out. “There might be a reason they’re doing all this now. Maybe I’ll go around to their ranch with Sheriff Willis tomorrow, see if I can figure out what they’re doing.”
“You don’t think that might aggravate them?” Hannah asked nervously. She didn’t like the thought of Bailey getting into trouble, though she knew Bailey could handle it a million times better than she would ever have been able to.
“It might,” Bailey admitted. “But I can’t just stand aside and let them do whatever they want to this place. Warrior Peak is sacred ground as far as I’m concerned.”
Hannah smiled. She was right about that. The lodge and the core staff here were a safe place for Hannah, had been for years now. She loved it up here, even if it was cut off from the rest of the world. She had everything she needed, and she wouldn’t ask for a thing more than that.
Apart from the Haynes brothers, if they really were behind this, to leave them the hell alone, of course.
The sound of a car drew their attention, and both women lifted their heads. A pair of taillights were vanishing out of sight, and Hannah knew from a glance who they belonged to.
Uh-oh. Looked like Xavier was going to confront the Haynes brothers all on his own.
Hannah didn’t envy them one bit.