Chapter 2 Lara #2
“They were my first stop.” My hand balled in a fist as I recounted how that had gone.
“When I didn’t find her at her apartment, I went straight to the station to report her missing.
When I explained what happened, they told me to wait and that not every crappy boyfriend who takes a girl on a camping trip intends to murder her. ”
There wasn’t a time when I’d ever not been professional, but that moment sure came close. It was like the national coverage and publicity of the case where that had happened turned the two officers I’d spoken to bitter instead of better.
Calder muttered something under his breath; it sounded like a frustrated of course, but with the wind blowing across the property, it was hard to be sure.
“As I was leaving, the receptionist mentioned there was a private company in the area that specialized in finding missing people. She said you’d rescued a young girl who’d been stranded in Yellowstone for over a week when even the park rangers had given up. Well, maybe not you—”
“Maddie,” Calder interrupted. “Her name was Maddie, and it was me.”
I swallowed. “I asked for the name of the company, and as soon as she told me Stone Tracking Services, I realized who it was—that it had to be you.”
“Had to be me?”
“Maybe not you, but your family.” Last I knew, he’d been heading into a law internship. “Rachel told me that your family was big into hunting and tracking. Plus, there was the time you found Pebbles.” The grass started to thicken, turning from yellow to green as we walked farther from the house.
Calder slowed and looked over his shoulder. “That’s right. I was surprised she made it all the way to the next town over.”
“All the way into a tree in the next town over.” Heat fizzled along my spine when I remembered, quite vividly, those minutes as he climbed to reach the escaped cat and bring her back down.
How both heads of his biceps brachii visibly flexed as he grabbed those first branches.
The curve of his deltoids and trapezius muscle bulging against his shirt as he hoisted himself higher.
Then there was the broad sweep of pectoralis major from his sternum to his shoulders as he reached out and plucked Pebbles from the end of the branch and held her to his chest. And, of course, no lesson was complete without recalling the reveal of his rectus abdominis when his shirt snagged on a twig on the way down, lifting the fabric to reveal twin stacks of tightly bricked abs.
The way he’d looked at me when he returned Pebbles to my arms wasn’t part of the lesson, though. An imagined look, of course, because he was Rachel’s boyfriend.
“So you knew it had to be me because I saved your cat a dozen years ago?” He chuckled, the sound feeling like a luxury for a man who lived so sparsely.
“She was technically Rachel’s cat,” I corrected without thinking, and Calder stopped.
Procerus, corrugator—his brows knotted tighter as he stared at me. “She said Pebbles was yours.”
Oh, Rachel.
It had been twelve years, but it was these stupid little lies of hers that hurt the most. The ones that reminded me of the lengths she’d go to hide who she was to please the person she was with.
“She knew you didn’t like cats, so she asked if I could keep Pebbles at my place,” I explained, wishing this little lie was the extent of it, but it was nothing compared to the bigger ones.
After a few months of dating, Rachel had started telling Calder she was staying at my house off campus for the night when she was really at frat parties with her roommate.
I wasn’t complicit in the lies, just a casualty after the fact.
An obligated If Calder asks, Lara, I was with you last night alibi.
I’d told her to leave me out of it, but she never did.
And because she was my sister—always the two of us against the world—I’d protected her. Maybe more than I should have.
Back then, I hadn’t known enough or had enough foresight to give my sister relationship advice. It was only after their breakup that the guilt hit me.
I was an analyzer. A diagnostician. A doctor. And I couldn’t help but diagnose the cause of my sister’s increasingly problematic relationships as symptoms stemming from a single traumatic injury: that first devastating heartbreak inflicted by Calder Stone.
There was a flash of something on his face—maybe regret, but it moved too quickly, too slightly. Like the rush of a breeze. There and gone, before I could be certain.
It didn’t matter what it was. I wasn’t here to scold a grown man for the lasting consequences of a choice he’d made twelve years ago. Neither my lingering resentment nor my frustrating attraction for Calder made any difference to the reality that he was my best shot at finding my sister.
Glancing back, I saw how far we’d walked from the house, the structure now small and sitting at the base of the shallow but measurable hill I hadn’t even realized we’d been slowly climbing.
“What’s that?” I asked, pointing to another, smaller cabin I could see beyond the Stone homestead; it looked to be about the same distance from the main house as we were, though the terrain between the two buildings appeared much flatter.
Calder didn’t even look before answering, “Watchtower. Where my brother Callum lives.”
“Watchtower?”
“He does all of the technological tracking, communications, and case management for the business.”
Squinting, I could just make out the large wraparound porch and the several satellite dishes attached to the roof. And then it hit me—the memory of the message Rachel had sent me a few years ago.
“Wait. He was the storm chaser?”
Bits and pieces of the news article about the Widowmaker, a massive tornado that had wrecked through Wyoming not that far from here, claiming the life of one storm chaser and paralyzing another.
A picture of the famed tornado wrangler known for his easy smile and characteristic cowboy hat: Callum Stone.
When Calder didn’t reply, I yanked my head back in his direction and found he’d disappeared.
There was a row of ancient evergreens lining the top of the hill in front of me. Behind it was the only place he could’ve gone. Rounding the trees, I stopped short, realizing their purpose: to conceal the massive Airstream parked behind them.
Calder stood, holding open the silver door, waiting for me. “Come in.”