Chapter 17 Annie #2
“Your face is a combination of two people who loved each other. And two people before them, and two people before them for thousands of years. If that doesn’t make you feel beautiful, I don’t know what will.”
Emotion welled in her chest at his words and Annie looked away, toward the last of the purple light rimming the western horizon.
“Someday, I hope you have a little girl of your own with every bit of your freckles. Then you might see what I see when I look at you.”
Annie couldn’t breathe with him staring at her like that, saying those words that sank right through her skin to that broken place in her heart.
She shook her head and smiled. “Enough about me. It’s your turn, tell me something about you that no one knows.”
Daniel’s smile faded and his gaze dropped into the fire. For a full minute, he stared at the flames without speaking.
“I don’t think I can,” he said finally.
The last of the light had left the sky, and the lake was murmuring in the darkness outside the circle of firelight.
Annie said Daniel’s name, and he looked up, eyes wary.
“I want to know you. I have to know who you are if we have any shot at turning this into something.”
There was pain in his eyes now, and they faltered again, staring down at the ground between his feet.
“I can’t.”
Annie waited. And waited. When Daniel looked up at last, his features were heavy with the weight of some decision, some inward wrestling match.
“Please,” she said quietly.
Another minute passed, the air between them growing taut with his silence, and then he spoke at last.
“My name isn’t Daniel.”
The evening had been a sonnet, a slow and lilting melody, and with those four words, the first wrong note had been played, jarring and flat and tainting everything that had come before it.
Annie stopped breathing. “What do you mean?”
He wasn’t looking at her, and Annie could feel the curtain falling between them again, swift and sudden, breaking the magic that had held her spellbound.
Her throat tightened, heart rabbiting in her chest. She had come all the way up here to be with this man.
Alone. And the plain fact was that she had no idea who he was.
“What do you mean?” she said again, a little more forcefully as she stared at him in the flickering light.
His throat bobbed before he answered. “I mean Daniel Barela isn’t my real name. I changed it. I… took it. From someone else.”
He looked up at her then, eyes glowing in the firelight, and Annie suddenly knew what it was to be an animal, lured into a trap by something enticing, only to discover the metal teeth a moment too late.
Every ounce of her common sense had warned her to stay away from this man, with his silence, and his secrets, and his NO TRESPASSING signs, and yet here she was, at the moment of no return.
Make sure someone knows where you are, Annie girl. Always.
It was the very first rule her father had taught her about the wild, and right now, no one did. No one knew she was up here in the middle of absolutely nowhere with a man who was about to confess his darkest secret. No one but him.
She was certain he could see her collarbones rising and falling far too quickly as she stared at him, fear tainting the dark edges of the clearing that had just a moment ago seemed so peaceful.
“Why would you do that?” Her voice was deadly calm, the voice she used when approaching a frightened or wounded animal.
Daniel opened his mouth, closed it again, and cleared his throat.
“I had to.”
She wanted to scream. It was the third time he’d used those words, but now they sounded sinister and utterly wrong.
Her first instinct was to bolt for the trees as fast as her legs could carry her, but she had no doubt in her mind that he’d be faster. She’d seen him sprint across a street like an Olympian, and he knew this clearing and these woods far better than she did. There was no way out.
“I want you to tell me who you are,” she said, failing to keep her voice steady. “If your name isn’t Daniel, what is it?”
She could keep him talking, keep him engaged while her mind whirled, grabbing at all the factors in play: the distance between her and the Jeep, the closest neighbor, who was too far down the hill to hear her scream, the two sharp kitchen knives resting on the circle of stones between them, and the heavy truth that whatever this man was hiding from her, it was bad enough to drive him up here all alone in the first place.
“It’s Nico,” he said quietly. The word sounded rusty with disuse.
He was watching her now with a curious mixture of apprehension and defeat, but whatever connection he thought she’d make at the sound of that name, it wasn’t clicking into place. Nico. Nico who?
Annie didn’t answer, offering him more silence, an opportunity to tell her everything, to be honest. When at last he spoke again, each word was heavy.
“I’m Nico Dunn, Annie.”
His confession was met with more silence, but the fuse had been lit, and five seconds later, the bomb detonated.
Annie’s eyes widened in the firelight. She had the distinct feeling that the clearing was caving in around her.
This was the horrible, sinking terror of tracking a cougar way up into the hills and suddenly whirling around to find the powerful predator standing in the middle of the trail, tracking her instead.
She had been exactly right when she thought she recognized him.
She had seen him before. His face had been infamous, tied forever to the cold case that ripped through the Northwest all those years before.
The sixteen-year-old Boy Scout from Redmond, Oregon, who had disappeared from his troop during a hike around Mount St. Helens; just vanished in the middle of the night from a circle of sleeping bags around a campfire.
At first, search and rescue had assumed that he’d run away, but later, on a trail leading north, a torn piece of his clothing was found with blood on it, and then a shoe, and suspicion about an animal attack took over the headlines.
But the thing that everyone remembered about the case, the thing that made Nico Dunn a household name, was the shocking turn of events after the bloodied clothing was found.
Gary Dunn, the boy’s stepfather, had come forward and called a press conference, telling reporters that his stepson had made an attempt on his life and was running from the consequences, with a plea for Nico to come home and receive forgiveness.
After that, the words ATTEMPTED MURDER were slapped beneath that famous school photo, becoming more a part of the boy’s identity than the name Nico Dunn itself.
Wild theories abounded. Amateur sleuths became obsessed with the case, the young, wide-eyed, innocent-looking boy in the photo, the baby-faced felon who had escaped and brilliantly faked his own death, some assumed, to live life as a criminal off the grid.
Fear spread, and the manhunt was massive, combing miles north of Mount St. Helens, the way they’d assumed he’d gone by the trail of breadcrumbs left behind.
Months had gone by. The leads dried up, and the news stations moved on to the next big thing, most people assuming that Nico had indeed met some grisly end out there in the remote wilderness. Eventually, his name faded into oblivion, but all this time…
“Are you really him?”
Another log popped in the fire, sending up a flurry of red sparks that lit Daniel’s eyes for a moment as he nodded.
Annie had a decision to make. Right now.
On the one hand, there was what she should do, the thing she’d scream at any woman in this situation to do. Run for your life. Do whatever it takes to get as far away from this man as you possibly can.
Daniel was watching her, his expression unreadable.
Annie did not run. She did not scream. Instead, she leaned forward in her chair and met his eyes with every scrap of courage she could muster.
“Tell me everything.”