Chapter 7 Lara
Lara
Pretend to be dating Calder Stone.
I wouldn’t say it was my finest moment, but while I was on the phone with the receptionist, my skin had started to tingle the way it did when a trauma case came into the emergency room, and I had split seconds to make calls that could be life or death.
While I hoped—desperately—that wasn’t the situation Rachel was in, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right.
So I’d administered the lie . . . and watched Calder turn from calm stone into a churning volcano. Glowing. Smoking. And about to erupt.
After instructing me to leave my rental and get back in his truck, we rode—in taut silence—back to the ranch.
I’d never seen him look so intense before.
Not then. Not now. Calder wasn’t used to playing by anyone else’s rules but his own, and now I’d just gone and changed the entire game.
I knew it wasn’t ideal—that I’d stepped on his proverbial professional toes.
And signed us up for a couples’ retreat.
But I didn’t have a choice. My gut told me this was the only way to find my sister.
My gaze flicked to the man stewing beside me.
If I looked closely, I’d see the smoke of frustration coming out his ears.
The problem was, if I looked too closely, I’d see other things: the knot of his jaw muscle about to snap from the tension and the gold flecks starbursting from his pupils from our almost-collision inside the diner.
With the way he stared at me—at my mouth—any other doctor might have diagnosed that look as desire, but I couldn’t; I wasn’t a specialist in my sister’s ex-boyfriend’s emotions. I couldn’t be.
As we pulled into the driveway, the sun dipped low in the sky, a yolk drooping toward the jagged, lofty mountains that would puncture its vibrancy and spill its soft warmth over the towering steeps.
This time, the Stone homestead appeared like a gem nestled in a forested fist—a sanctuary tucked into its surroundings, protected and picturesque.
I could see why Cassius Stone had chosen it. Why anyone would choose it.
Instead of going to his Airstream, Calder drove past his dad’s house to the second building I’d spotted from the top of the hill: his brother Callum’s house.
The Watchtower, he’d called it.
Without speaking, on par for the drive, he parked and we got out of the truck. While Calder strode straight toward the entrance, my pace was slower as I took in the building.
It was newer construction, a wraparound porch that enclosed the whole building and provided a 360-degree vantage point to the fields and mountains that stretched in every direction.
Calder walked up the handicapped ramp to the front door, and I noted how the ramp wasn’t in addition to the stairs, but in place of them.
My vague recollection yesterday was now confirmed: Calder’s younger brother had been the famed storm chaser who’d barely survived his last encounter with a tornado.
I moved to catch up and almost missed the home’s most striking feature: the glass-encrusted dome in the center of the roof, perfect for viewing stars and storms.
“Callum!” Calder called and banged on the front door.
A dog tore around the corner, emitting a single bark of greeting before wearing a circle around my legs. I recognized the breed—a blue heeler, just like my neighbor’s dog back in Phoenix.
“Hey, buddy.” I smiled and crouched, giving his wet nose my open palm to sniff.
“Lara, meet Twister,” Calder grumbled.
“Hi, Twister,” I said as he licked my palm, and then slid my hand back to scratch behind his ears. “Is he your brother’s?”
“Sort of” was the only answer I got before the door opened.
I stood, my eyes widening when there was no one on the other side.
“Cal?” Calder called again, stepping into the house.
I followed, seeing that the other side of the door was rigged with various sensors and a large pistonlike control that allowed for a remote command to not only unlock the door but also open it.
“Coming,” a terse voice sounded from a distant corner.
Calder folded his arms while we waited, clearly intent on maintaining our no-talking atmosphere. Fine with me. I crouched and continued to love on Twister while I took in the inside of the house.
From end to end, the large open space flowed from the kitchen and dining area, through the living room, to an office at the far side.
I admired how it was designed intentionally to accommodate its handicapped inhabitant—and couldn’t miss how it was furnished to be unaccommodating to everyone else.
The kitchen had a table but no chairs. The living area: a TV and a single recliner, but no couch.
And in the office, three desks spanned the wall, with no fewer than seven computer monitors between them and no desk chair.
I wondered whether the intent was to discourage unwanted guests or to reflect a lingering bitterness toward the reminder that his life would now be lived from a wheelchair. Maybe it was both.
Between the living room and the office was a staircase to the glass-domed loft. Except it wasn’t stairs, but ramps, I realized as Calder’s brother flew down them and came to a turbulent stop ahead of us.
Something it was clearly built for. The custom wheelchair reminded me of a fancy race car with its cambered wheels, bright-teal decals, and missing armrests. And the man in the driver’s seat looked equally as reckless.
Callum’s short hair fell unkempt on his head, a shade lighter than his brother’s. Like Calder, he wore a plain tee that stretched over a strong upper body that now compensated with additional muscle for legs that rested motionless in navy sweatpants.
“You never got back to me,” Calder greeted.
“I was busy, and you never said it was Category 5 urgent,” Callum replied before turning his attention to me, his cold blue eyes narrowing severely.
“Callum, this is Lara. I’m searching for her sister.”
Callum regarded me like a stranger, something that he knew existed in the world but was both unexpected and unwelcome.
His chin jammed down in a brusque nod—the only greeting I was going to get—before he said to Calder, “I have info on that retreat.”
Grabbing one wheel tight, Callum whipped his chair around so fast, I was surprised the tires didn’t screech as he headed for his computers, clearly expecting us to follow.
Calder turned to me and muttered, “Don’t take it personally.”
I didn’t—wouldn’t. I’d worked in medicine long enough to recognize when someone’s rudeness wasn’t a reflection of me, but of the pain, physical or emotional, of their own circumstance.
We joined Callum and my eyes roamed over the theater of information displayed on the computers. Some of them had weather maps on steroids, one had some kind of simulation program running, and another had paused on drone footage of the bird’s-eye view of a mountain face.
“Wilderness Within was incorporated three years ago by Dr. Julia Maxwell, licensed psychologist originally based out of San Francisco, specializing in relationship therapy,” Callum said, a woman’s headshot appearing on the monitor directly in front of him.
“There was no address on the website or anywhere on the internet that I was able to find. However, there’s a property owned by the corporation. ”
A new window opened up with an aerial photo pulled from Google Maps of a small building and parking lot about thirty minutes east of Jackson.
Callum zoomed in. “The building is maybe only two thousand square feet, and the lot can’t be more than an acre.”
“So, not where they have the retreat,” I huffed.
“Most likely the address they’ll send you tomorrow,” Calder said. “It looks like where they have participants park and check in. There’s probably some kind of storage area where we’ll leave our phones, and then they’ll transport us to the actual location.”
“‘Us’?” The singular word was the only interest Callum had shown in anything other than delivering the details he’d found.
Calder ignored him. “Do you have a recent image of the property?”
“I did a drone sweep, but it looks nominally the same. Maybe a fresh coat of paint on the building.” Callum pulled up a video on the left-hand screen, the camera approaching the building and then zooming down on the lot.
“Wait!” I blurted out and moved over to point at the footage, brushing Calder’s arm in the process. “That’s Rachel’s car.”
I pretended not to notice how he stepped to the side, creating some clearance between us, as he said, “Do you have a better angle, Callum? We should run the plate—”
“You don’t have to. Zoom in there.” I pointed to the back windshield, the Wyoming State decal sharpening into focus.
Below it, one for the University of Colorado School of Medicine.
“I gave Rachel my car when I moved to Arizona; those are my stickers.” I turned to Calder. “This means she’s at the retreat.”
His frown angled so deep, I was surprised the corners of his mouth didn’t strike gold.
“It means her car is parked at this building,” Callum corrected, instantly sobering my hope.
He was right, though. This didn’t explain where Rachel was now.
The singles’ program had ended two days ago, and there’d been no word from her.
Would she have stayed for the couples’ session?
Was that even allowed? Had she met someone else at the retreat?
I shuddered. That would be diving in pretty deep with someone she’d just met.
I hated to say—to think—it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility, especially because the alternative . . .
“Zoom out again,” Calder directed. “The land it abuts here to the east—”
“BLM.”
Calder swore under his breath.
BLM was the designation for land belonging to the federal government’s Bureau of Land Management. I didn’t know exactly how many acres of public-use lands they held in the state, but it was in the millions, and it was popular with campers and hunters because it came with very few rules.