CHAPTER NINE
Day eight, and Jackson was being helpful.
The northeast quadrant rose sharply along an approach the average consultant would have needed a harness to manage, and he'd spent two evenings the previous week working out a non-harness route up the same face.
It added forty minutes to the climb and removed any need for technical gear.
He'd presented it to her that morning at the trailhead in the same neutral voice he used to present a perimeter assessment to Dominic.
She'd heard him out, looked at the line he traced on the map, and said that works.
He had not, in eight days of contract, offered her route assistance.
He was doing it now.
This is past monitoring, the wolf said. This is helping her.
He didn't let him finish the thought.
They were forty minutes up the alternate approach.
She was twelve feet ahead of him which was the standard distance Jackson kept on monitoring rotation, which was also the distance that let him watch the back of her neck without her knowing she was watched.
Loose strands had pulled free of the knot of auburn at the back of her head and lay against her collar.
The watch caught the light when she lifted her hand to brace against rock.
He'd been doing this for forty minutes and hadn't yet let himself look at her face.
They reached the upper site. A flat broad slab of stone with a long view south, a vantage he'd have set a sensor on in another life.
Claire set her instruments down, took a long drink of water, and stood at the edge a beat, looking out, hand braced on her hip, her body quiet in the late-morning light.
Jackson sat on a deadfall ten yards off and ate a granola bar.
She worked. He watched. She made notes in Helen, took readings, photographed the rock face, knelt at three points to test sample integrity.
She moved with the economy of someone who'd done the same job for nineteen years.
It was a thing of beauty. Thirteen years of valuing competence as the highest virtue of any pack member, and he knew it when he saw it.
At noon she sat on the rock five feet from him and unwrapped a sandwich.
They ate in silence for ten minutes.
It wasn't awkward.
It was the silence of two people who'd stopped pretending they weren't aware of each other. She ate her sandwich. He ate his. The wind moved through the trees. A jay called from somewhere downslope. The wolf in his chest was very still.
"This formation is interesting," she said, eventually.
"Yes."
"There's a vein I want to follow. The joints aren't matching what I'd expect for the age."
"I can clear the route this afternoon."
"I'd appreciate it."
She handed him a sample bag. He took it. Their fingers brushed.
Half a second. The bag changed hands. Both of them registered it. Neither acknowledged it. He put the bag in his pack.
Hers, the wolf said. He didn't respond.
She finished her sandwich. He finished his. They went back to work.
The afternoon was the route clearing. He went ahead, broke the brush at the points he'd marked that morning, came back.
She followed. Her body knew where to put her feet.
The terrain liked her the way it liked the pack regulars who'd walked these slopes twenty years, and he registered it without trying.
At end of day they descended in separate silence.
At the trailhead they stood beside their trucks. He set his pack in his bed. She set hers in hers. Standing six feet from her, he didn't let himself do anything other than stand.
"Same time tomorrow," she said.
"0700."
"Mr. Hale."
"Dr. Dunn."
He waited until her taillights disappeared down the access road. Then he drove home. Didn't turn on a single light when he got there. Sat in the front room in the dark for an hour.
Hers, the wolf said. Once. Then nothing.
The wolf, when he reached a certain quiet, said more than when he pushed.
He left the lights off.
* * *