Chapter 3
Chapter Three
ALICE
Take his picture? I try to come up with a good response, something kind and diplomatic, but I can’t.
Alice: Excuse me?
Marcus: Your possibly shady chauffeur. Take his picture. One with a clear view of his face that we could put on the evening news if we had to. Just in case.
To any non-Kilpatrick, this would sound extreme, but we’re like this for a reason. One of my sisters was a well-known athlete as a teenager, a figure skater, and she had a few run-ins with a fan that put us all on edge. But still.
My brother is barely nineteen. He should be on his way to a party or flirting with a pretty girl in the library. Instead, he’s helping me come up with a safety plan that involves the evening news. We’ve ruined him.
Or maybe we made him better. It’s too soon to tell.
Alice: I’m not taking a picture of a stranger.
Marcus doesn’t argue; he doesn’t have to. It won’t take long for my natural anxieties to fight this battle for him, and we both know it. All he has to do is wait.
It takes about seven seconds. Once I start picturing worst-case scenarios on a deserted mountain road, it’s over. If my sister’s ordeal with her fan taught me anything, it’s that people are unpredictable, and there’s only one way to protect myself in Ponderosa Falls.
I have to take a picture. Of a stranger.
Alice: Fine. One picture.
It needs to be covert, too. Partly because taking his picture is next-level paranoid, borderline creepy. But also because flying under the radar as a Kilpatrick always feels right—it’s our specialty. It’s just not my specialty.
Exhaling a slow breath, I flip to the camera app on my phone. Then I glance down at the screen like I’m reading something boring— nothing to see here —while I angle my phone for the perfect shot.
My plan is a mess from the start. There’s no good way to point your phone at someone beside you without them noticing, especially while pretending you’re reading something on the screen. I’m basically doing car yoga trying to get this picture, and Charlie quirks a curious brow.
“Just stretching,” I announce, rolling my shoulders and doing a few exaggerated head tilts. “All that time on the bus was killer on my joints and ligaments.”
My joints and ligaments? Nothing about that sounded natural, yet it’s my use of the word killer that really does me in. That slip-up gives me actual chills, and Charlie notices that too.
Luckily, he just thinks I’m cold. Reaching above the radio, he angles the middle air-conditioning vent away from me like a gentleman. Which is a real shame because it’s the beginning of summer, the hottest part of the afternoon, and I’m eight thousand feet above sea level in a box of windows on wheels. It feels like the sun is riding in the car with us, and the faintest prickle of sweat stings the back of my neck.
Even as I start to overheat, giving up on my photoshoot never occurs to me.
“Stupid phone,” I mutter out of nowhere. As stealthy as a Thanksgiving Day parade.
Charlie quirks another curious brow, and I keep going. “Is it a mountain thing? Because my reception is awful. I had half a bar a minute ago, but now I don’t have anything.”
I start angling my phone again before he can answer. Pointing it every which way like I’m on an epic quest for cell service. The second Charlie glances over, I snap his picture.
And my phone emits the loudest shutter click known to man.
It’s deafening. My ringer and text notifications are always on silent, but apparently, my camera volume was set to supersonic.
“Did you take a picture of me?”
Heat floods my face, and I don’t answer his question. I fumble around on my phone, trying to click out of my camera app and hide my treachery…except there is no treachery. When I catch sight of my screen, there’s just a random sideways photo of his steering wheel—and it’s blurry.
I went through all that trouble, and my picture isn’t even helpful. Unless the local police are skilled at tracking down blurry steering wheels.
Charlie pulls over, and my pulse jumps. “What are you doing?”
Now it’s his turn to not answer. He eases his brother’s car on to some kind of scenic overlook on my side of the road. It isn’t very big. There’s only room for a few gravel parking spots, but the view is spectacular—as long as you aren’t afraid of heights.
A lush expanse of evergreens stretches across the valley beneath us, accentuating how high up we are, and my pulse jumps harder. A metal guard rail curves around the edge of the overlook, protecting us from the drop-off below. Though we both know that isn’t going to save me. What’s done is done.
Is he going to rob me first or just shove me off this cliff and steal my luggage?
Or is he going to give me another one of those dangerous smiles?
I can’t tell if Charlie’s about to rob me, murder me, or make a pass at me. It doesn’t help that my mace is in my backpack. In the trunk. Or that I dropped my phone when he pulled over, and I can’t remember how to open car doors or escape. Some Kilpatrick I turned out to be.
At least I won’t have to see whatever happens next. His car is parked at the perfect sinister angle, and afternoon sun pierces my eyes like a dagger. Death by sunshine.
I flinch, squeezing my eyes shut so tight I couldn’t see anything if I tried. Charlie shifts beside me, and my stomach flips. I can feel him leaning closer, reaching toward me. Something creaks nearby, and a shadow falls over my face.
“You’ve got three seconds.”
Three seconds? Do murderers and thieves usually give you a countdown? Or scenic-overlook Lotharios? Do their voices always sound this friendly?
I count down anyway, my brain running on pure adrenaline. When I hit zero, I count down again. Four rounds later, and I’m still here. Waiting.
A soft chuckle echoes beside me. But that sounds pretty friendly too.
It isn’t close either, that sound. If Charlie leaned toward me earlier, he’s back on his side of the car now. Yet the shadow over my face hasn’t moved.
Slowly, I open my eyes. The car visor on my side has been angled to keep the sun from piercing my retinas—another gentleman move—and Charlie glances at me from behind the steering wheel, beyond amused. As if he knows exactly which conclusions I jumped to.
Holding my gaze, he tries not to laugh. “Waiting for something to happen, Carrots?”
That nickname shouldn’t put me at ease, but it does. Probably because it isn’t paired with a wolfish grin this time that makes my knees buckle. But even relieved, I don’t answer his question. What would I say?
To his credit, he lets me off the hook pretty fast, gesturing to my phone on the floor by my feet. “You’ve got three seconds.”
“Three seconds?”
“My sister sent me a photo of a sketchy Uber driver once. It made us both feel better—but I’m not staying parked like this forever. I’m fine with heights, but these roadside overlooks give me the creeps.” He turns his upper body to face me, ready for his mug shot close-up. “You’ve got three seconds.”
That’s all I need to hear. Snatching my phone off the floor, I line up my shot while he counts down, snapping that picture long before he hits zero. It’s a pretty good one too. As serious and in-focus as an actual mug shot. Perfect for the evening news.
I text it to my brother, and a fresh wave of embarrassment washes over me. Besides that one flirty-predator moment at the ticket counter, Charlie has been nothing but nice to me since I met him. And I’ve been nothing but weird. Glancing up, I mutter the only word I can.
“Thanks.”
“I don’t mind,” he says. But he doesn’t pull back on the road. “I just have one request.”
One request?
He doesn’t pair that with a wolfish grin, but my blood turns to ice, and I try not to break out in hives. What could a guy like that possibly want from a girl like me?
“Now you have to take a regular picture,” he says. “So when you make your vacation photo album, it doesn’t look like I’m the grifter who kidnapped you in Colorado.”
I laugh, relieved. He didn’t say I had to be in it too, but I lean closer, raising my phone to get us both in the shot as we make funny faces for the camera. Once I count down and hit the button, it’s basically the best group selfie I’ve ever taken. A real vacation album gem. But the happiness coursing through me fades too soon.
“All right, Carrots.” Charlie shifts the car back into drive and edges onto the road. “Let’s get you to your boyfriend.”
That should make me feel better. Yet as we finish our drive to the wilderness resort, a new sense of dread fills my stomach. I babble nervously about my boyfriend the entire way. I already told Charlie he came out here for a marketing job a few months ago, but now it’s all I can talk about. How excited he was, and how this was such a great opportunity after getting his master’s degree last year.
None of that chatter distracts me from the feeling in my stomach. Even the dense canopy of pine trees doesn’t help. They unfold around us as we near our destination, the terrain shifting from “dystopian canyon road” to “woodland paradise” in the blink of an eye, but my nerves refuse to settle.
“Did your boyfriend text you back? Does he know we’re coming?”
My lie is immediate. The truth is too embarrassing. “Yep. He’s running a little late, but he’ll meet me out front. You don’t have to wait around.”
If Charlie can tell I’m lying, he doesn’t call me on it. He simply nods as he drives under a massive wooden sign for the Ponderosa Falls Wilderness Resort. Then he does what I asked. He pulls up in front of the main lodge, helps me unload my luggage, and gets ready to drive away.
“You sure you don’t want me to wait with you?” he asks one last time, and he sounds so concerned, like he was never a wolf after all. As if he was a secret nice guy this entire time.
“I’m sure. I’ve wasted enough of your day already. Thanks for doing all this, though.”
As he turns to leave, the afternoon sun hits him just right, and he really does remind me of Gilbert Blythe from Anne of Green Gables . A small-town boy with brown hair and hazel eyes who’s a little bit mischievous but mostly sweet.
“Thanks for the ride, Blythe,” I tell him, and he doesn’t miss a beat.
“No problem, Carrots. Good luck with your guy.”
But when I finally spot my boyfriend a little while later, one thing is crystal clear.
I’m going to need a lot more than luck.