Chapter 10 Calder
Calder
A few years ago, we’d been hired to find an Idaho woman who’d gone missing while on vacation in Florida.
Creed had taken the drive down to Miami, while I’d been tasked with looking into the time-share company that owned the condo she rented.
Despite growing up on the ranch with Cassius’s repeated endurance trials, I’d been surprised to find how ill prepared I was to withstand the desperate determination of a time-share sales pitch.
The ninety minutes was nothing short of indoctrination rather than information.
And that was exactly what I was reminded of while listening to Maxwell’s introduction to the retreat: thirty minutes of carefully crafted indoctrination for a decision we couldn’t get out of. At least, not easily.
Pretending to be engrossed in her slow, soothing proselytization, I monitored the direction and distance from the parking lot.
We headed east for about five miles and then, maneuvering through a stretch of trees, turned a little northwest, following preworn tire tracks through the mud I presumed the Jeep had made over the last several days.
When we finally stopped, it was in a pocket of dense forest that couldn’t have been more than seven or eight miles from the main road—a relatively short distance, considering all the doctor’s emphasis on wilderness immersion.
Then again, in Wyoming, you didn’t have to go very far into untouched land to feel light-years away from civilization.
Matthew parked and turned off the engine just as Maxwell’s introduction ended. “We’re here,” our impassive guide announced and exited the Jeep, seemingly expecting me and Lara to follow.
I pulled the passenger seat forward and froze. Lara’s skin was flushed, from her cheeks to her chest, her pupils the sharpest of points. Wisps of her hair had worked their way out of the tie holding them back.
“You okay?” I held out my hand.
She nodded, but as she clutched my hand and stepped out of the Jeep, she murmured, low enough for only me to hear, “There was something in the smoothie.” Anger shot through me, and she felt it. “I’m fine.” She gave my fingers a hard squeeze as if to order, Don’t say anything.
Say anything? The anger I felt was lethal, not conversational. Drugging the people who came here? I tried to bury the emotion, knowing it wouldn’t serve me, but I couldn’t. The way I . . . thought . . . about her wouldn’t let me.
“Calder,” she pleaded softly, but my feet stayed rooted—fossilized to the ground. I should stop this now. It didn’t matter whose plan this was. When she was with me, she was my responsibility. Mine.
She tugged on my hand, and against my better judgment, I moved. I went with her. I made another exception to my rules.
“This way,” Matthew said, not bothering to wait before leading us through the trees.
Even with the crunch of footfalls on foliage shed to the forest floor, the cool breeze still quivered with the very faint hum of cars through the woods—audible if you were listening for it—confirming my assessment.
After about twenty yards, the trees opened to a small clearing with a woman, her dark hair braided down her back, sitting cross-legged on a giant blanket in the center, her eyes closed and her hands on her knees in apparent meditation.
“Dr. Julia.”
She had to have heard our approach, but Dr. Julia Maxwell didn’t open her eyes until Matthew called to her.
“Lara, Calder.” She came to life with a broad, staggeringly white smile and rose to greet us. “Welcome to Wilderness Within.” Her voice resonated with authority and warmth, an invitation to trust.
Now in her early fifties, Maxwell looked a decade younger, her features frozen with unnatural assistance. Like Matthew, she wasn’t wearing the uniform, but instead loose pants that landed at her ankles and a long cardigan draped over a plain top, all in beige.
“Welcome,” she repeated and took my hand. “I’m Dr. Julia Maxwell.”
She wasn’t wearing any rings, but the tan lines on several of her fingers suggested that bare skin wasn’t her norm—and neither was the Wyoming climate.
Unless she was outside working on a ranch from sunup to sundown, but even if I hadn’t known about her condo in Palm Beach, her hands were too soft to suggest days spent outside doing any kind of manual labor.
“Is this the retreat?” I assumed the part of skeptical boyfriend, figuring it was common.
Beside me, Matthew tensed, and the larger man’s arms folded slowly over his chest; he didn’t like that I’d questioned the doctor. His leader.
Maxwell lifted a staying hand, though her gaze was so intent on mine that I almost missed the wordless order to stand down.
“This,” Maxwell began, her extended hand flattening and sweeping around to indicate the glen, “is the Sanctuary. It’s where all of your private counseling sessions will occur with me over the next two weeks.
It’s a reassuring distance from the center of the retreat, where you don’t have to worry about any infringement on your privacy. ”
As I followed her hand, the tracker in me picked up on the subtle but slightly depressed browner grass that led through the trees to the east, worn down from the trek of couples back and forth from the base of the campsite to the Sanctuary.
While that bruised earth was by far the most defined on the ground, it wasn’t the only path from the glen. A mar of footprints led north of the clearing, much fainter, probably only traveled by one or very few persons. That was the path I wanted to follow.
“I always start every retreat experience here with each couple individually,” Maxwell continued, and I returned my focus to her.
Exploration would have to happen later. “I find that beginning this journey in a safe, intimate, and secluded space is a critical first step to connecting to our true, wild cores. So the three of us will be resting and reflecting here for the next hour before I bring you to the campsite and to your lodgings.”
“I see,” I murmured, my pulse thudding just a little harder when Maxwell reached for Lara’s hand.
“Hello, Lara. Did you enjoy your welcome smoothie?”
“I did, thank you.” Whether or not the words were true, there was no disguising the subtle change in Lara’s voice. It was a little lower. A little slower.
“It’s my own proprietary blend of all-natural ingredients.
I designed it to help my clients relax and start to break through those barriers that hinder us from reaching our wild core,” Maxwell explained, her head turning, eyes lingering on me for an extra second, making sure I knew that she knew I hadn’t taken the offered drink.
But there wasn’t chastisement in her gaze—only confidence.
Like she enjoyed breaking disbelievers down.
Releasing Lara’s hand, Maxwell turned to the security guard. “Thank you, Matthew.”
It was equal parts gratitude and dismissal, yet the security guard hesitated, watching the woman with a look I recognized as longing. I pretended my interpretation wasn’t from acute familiarity.
When Matthew realized I was observing him, he quickly lowered his head in a strange kind of subservient bow and murmured, “Yes, ma’am.”
Maxwell’s expression was frozen in a placid smile until her guard was gone from sight.
“Please, join me.” She motioned to the blanket.
I moved my hand on Lara’s back and guided her over. Part of the ruse. It was part of the ruse that my hand slid to her waist, then up along her back, her shoulders as she sat, and that my chest thumped extra hard when she turned her face up to mine. Part of the ruse.
Lowering to join her, my uncomfortably stiff dick reminded me that the only person I was fooling was myself.
“Welcome again to Wilderness Within. It is my honor to be a part of your relationship journey and transformation over the next two weeks.” Maxwell sat on the pillow that had been hidden under her before, placing her a level above us.
“Since you’ve listened to my introduction on your ride here, we can begin taking those first important steps to finding our wild cores.
Only once we access that inner wildness and nurture it, can we truly connect with one another. ”
If I were here because I’d wanted what her retreat promised, it would be easy to believe her.
Whether she believed it herself or was that good of an actor, Dr. Julia Maxwell presented her platform with a conviction that was almost hypnotic.
Maybe it was hypnotic, I thought, glancing at Lara, with her wide eyes and blushed cheeks, her attention rapt on the smooth-talking doctor.
“Where we begin today isn’t with the basics, but the essentials. Not the details of your relationship history, but the depth. When you leave the Sanctuary today, you should leave uncomfortable,” she warned. “Like a muscle you haven’t used in some time was just exercised to its limit.”
Lara shifted next to me, her knee bumping against mine. We’d rehearsed details this morning. Fast timelines and essential facts. All the things Maxwell had just said she didn’t care to know.
“Your wild core isn’t soft or tame. It’s been caged.
Locked away and silenced.” Her eyes drifted slowly between Lara and me.
“I used to ask couples why they’d come here—what brought them to Wilderness Within.
I don’t need to ask anymore.” Her confidence continued to spread, smooth like butter from her mouth, and hunted for any trace of ego.
Growing up on the ranch meant limited contact with the outside world beyond a monthly trip into town for groceries, clothes, and to visit the library. After eighteen years of survivalist living, going to college and being around so many people had been a shock to my system.
Cassius might not have prepared us for society, but as in all things, adaption and evolution was still the key to survival. So I’d signed up for an introductory psych course my first semester.
As it had turned out, reading people and understanding their motivations was, at its core, very similar to tracking in the wilderness.
They both involved seeing disruptions in nature’s patterns.
Like how the bent blades of grass heading north from this small glen, and the subtle injection of self-importance in Maxwell’s altruistic air, suggested there could be more to the story.
Was she a full-blown narcissist like most cult leaders?
Maybe. Maybe not. I’d found narcissism harder to detect in women, mostly because narcissistic men tended to be grandiose: overt, egocentric, and needing attention.
Whereas women presented more covertly. In Maxwell’s case, the appearance of altruism and a desire to help could be simultaneously masking and fueling her need for superiority.
“I know you’re here because you feel like there is something missing in your relationship.
Something broken. Well, I’m here to tell you not to worry; nothing is missing, just buried under the trappings and trauma of society, and it’s my job to reach inside the both of you and break that wildness free.
” She acted out the notion with her hands, stretching them out as she spoke, locking her fingers tight together, and then yanking them apart.
“There can be no secrets here. No hesitation. The only way this will work is with wild honesty. Wild intimacy. And wild trust.”
I listened, feigning complete focus. What kind of secrets did she coax her clients to reveal? Anyone who could afford $8,000 for a two-week retreat was the kind of person who could afford big secrets.
Was that where her money came from? Drugging her clients and then blackmailing them with the protected information they gave her?
“Are you ready to break free, Lara? Calder?”
I nodded as Lara answered, “Yes.”
“Wonderful.” Maxwell’s smile spread. “Then let’s begin.”