Chapter 2
Chapter Two
ELIZA
The cabin is small. Warm. Smells like woodsmoke and pine, with something underneath that's just him. Cedar, maybe. Clean sweat from the hike. Whatever it is, it fills the whole space, and my body responds to it before my brain catches up.
Weston McCall moves through his home without looking at me.
Hangs his pack on a hook by the door. Stokes the woodstove with practiced efficiency.
Fills a kettle from the tap, sets it on the stove, pulls two mugs from a shelf.
Every motion is deliberate. Economical. A man who doesn't waste movement because the mountain taught him not to.
"Bathroom's down the hall," he says, still not looking at me. "Towels in the cabinet. You need to get out of those wet boots."
My boots. Right. Soaked through from the creek bed crossing. My feet went numb about ten minutes ago, and standing in his warm cabin is making them burn as feeling returns. The shivering I've been suppressing on the trail breaks through in one violent full body tremor.
He looks at me then. Really looks. Those blue eyes sweep from my soaked boots to my inadequate jacket to my face, and something tightens in his jaw.
"Sit." He pulls a chair from the small kitchen table and points at it. "Now."
The command in his voice should annoy me. It does annoy me. But my legs are shaking, so I sit.
He drops to one knee in front of me. Just like that, without asking, he unlaces my left boot with fingers that are sure despite the cold.
The boot comes off. Wet sock after it. His hand wraps around my bare foot, testing the temperature, and his palm is so warm against my frozen skin that a sound escapes my throat before I can stop it.
His eyes snap to mine. Hold.
"Other one," he says, voice rougher than it was a second ago.
The right boot comes off. Right sock. Both my feet between his massive hands now, his thumbs pressing into the arches, forcing circulation back. The pain is sharp at first, then gives way to tingling heat that crawls up my calves.
"You're lucky," he says. "Another twenty minutes and we'd be talking about frostbite."
"I had a timeline. The weather moved faster than the forecast said."
"The weather always moves faster than the forecast says." He releases my feet, stands, turns away. "That's why locals don't trust forecasts."
The kettle starts to whistle. He pours hot water over two tea bags and sets a mug in front of me without ceremony. Then he opens a closet, pulls out a pair of thick wool socks and a flannel shirt big enough to use as a dress, and drops them on the table.
"Change out of the wet layers. You can use the bathroom."
In the bathroom, which is barely bigger than a closet, I peel off my jacket and the damp thermal underneath.
The flannel he gave me is worn soft from years of washing.
When I pull it on, it falls past my thighs.
Smells like him. That cedar scent wraps around me while I button it, and something low in my belly tightens.
Stop it.
I'm here for Marcus Farrell. For the book. For the story of a man who walked into these mountains and vanished so completely that twenty years of searching turned up nothing. Not a bone. Not a scrap of clothing. Not a single answer for the family who still sets a place for him at Thanksgiving.
That's what matters. The work. It's always been the work.
Darius told me that. Right before he left. "You love dead people more than living ones, Eliza." Said it standing in the doorway of the apartment we'd shared for two years, his bag already packed, his keys already on the counter. "I can't compete with a ghost."
He wasn't wrong. That's the part I can't stop turning over. He wasn't wrong, and I picked the ghost anyway.
When I come back out, Weston is at the stove, stirring something in a pot. The smell of canned soup fills the cabin. Not glamorous. Not complicated. Just hot food for a cold night, made without being asked.
"The storm," I say, sitting back down at the table with my tea. "How long?"
"Three days. Maybe four."
My stomach drops. "Four days?"
"Blizzard warning through Thursday. The pass will be the last thing they plow, if they can plow it at all. Your rental's not going anywhere."
Three to four days. In a one room cabin with a stranger who looks at me the way Weston McCall does. Not with interest exactly. More like assessment. A man cataloging threats, deciding whether I'm one.
"Where do I sleep?"
"You take the bed." He nods toward the hallway. "Couch pulls out."
"I'm not taking your bed."
"You weigh a buck forty soaking wet and you were hypothermic twenty minutes ago. You're taking the bed." He doesn't look up from the soup. "This isn't a negotiation."
Something prickles along the back of my neck. Part irritation, part something warmer I refuse to name. "You always this charming with the people you rescue?"
"I'm not charming." He says it plain as weather. "Soup's ready."
We eat in silence at the small table, our knees almost touching in the tight space. The soup is hot, salty, exactly what my body needs. Warmth spreads from my stomach outward. The shivering finally stops.
He eats the way he does everything else.
Methodically. No wasted motion. Broad shoulders filling out his thermal, sleeves pushed up on forearms corded with muscle.
Silver threading through dark hair at his temples.
Lines around those blue eyes from years of squinting into sun and snow.
Late thirties, I'd guess. A face that's spent more time outside than in, built by weather rather than vanity.
"Marcus Farrell," I say, because the silence is getting to me. Because when it's quiet, I notice too much. The width of his hands around the soup bowl. The scar on his left knuckle. "You said you knew who he was."
"Everyone on this mountain knows who he was."
"His mother still lives in Grand Junction. She's seventy three. She calls the ranger station every November on the anniversary of his disappearance."
His spoon stops. Something moves behind his eyes. Brief. Gone before I can read it.
"I know," he says quietly. "I take the call."
The words settle into my chest. Every year. This man picks up the phone for a grieving mother, knowing he has nothing to give her.
"The original search reports have gaps," I say. "Sections that were redacted when I FOIAed them. The cabin you said collapsed in 2011, that was referenced in three separate witness interviews as a possible shelter location, but the search team never formally documented a sweep of it."
"Because it was inaccessible. The drainage floods in November. Nobody could get to it during the initial search window."
"But nobody went back after."
He looks at me. Really looks, the way he did when he was holding my feet. Steady, evaluating, missing nothing. "You've read the full case file."
"Twice. Along with the county coroner's records, the forest service incident reports, and every published interview with the search coordinator." My tea is lukewarm now. I drink it anyway. "I've been working on Marcus Farrell for two years. This isn't a hobby."
"No." He sets his spoon down. "It's an obsession."
The word lands in the center of my chest. Obsession. Darius used the same word. Different tone, same diagnosis.
"It's my job."
"Your job brought you to nine thousand feet in October with a rental car, a city jacket, and a hand drawn map. Your job almost got you killed today."
"And your job is rescuing people who make bad decisions. So I guess we're both doing what we're supposed to."
Something flickers across his mouth. Not a smile. Closer to surprise. The expression of a man who doesn't get talked back to often.
"Three days," he says, pushing back from the table. "Stay out of my way and we'll get through it fine."
He clears the bowls without asking for help. Washes them in the small sink while I sit at the table with my cold tea and his flannel on my skin.
Three days. This cabin. This man who smells like cedar and talks in commands. Who held my frozen feet between his hands without hesitation and told me to sit like I was something he needed to keep alive.
My phone has no signal. My laptop is in the car. My research is in the messenger bag I'm clutching like a lifeline.
Three days. I can handle three days.
He turns off the overhead light. The cabin settles into the amber glow of the woodstove, shadows moving across his shoulders as he pulls a blanket from the closet for the couch.
"Goodnight, Ms. Hart."
"Eliza."
He pauses with the blanket in his hands. "Goodnight, Eliza."
My name in his mouth. Low. Careful. Like he's testing whether it belongs there.
I walk down the short hallway to his bedroom. His bed. His pillow. His sheets that will smell like him all night while I lie awake pretending this is just a story I'm chasing.
The door closes behind me. Through the wall, I hear him settle onto the couch. The frame creaks under his weight.
Three days.
I press my face into his pillow. Breathe.
The cedar scent floods my lungs, and every nerve in my body lights up like a fuse being lit from both ends.
Three days is going to be a problem.