Chapter 4
ROWAN
Idon’t know what I expected to see when I opened the back door, but it wasn’t the woman before me.
Her blond hair — which looks like it was, at some point, styled — sticks to her head, and there’s mascara smudged around her wide green eyes. She’s wearing little brown shorts and a cropped green jacket, plus hiking boots that look like they just came out of the box.
And when I open the door, causing her to look up at me, she screams.
And screams.
“Hey!” I don’t mean to shout, but it barks out of me, startled and confused. Why the fuck is she screaming? She’s the intruder in a heap on my porch.
The hey startles her, too, stopping the screaming, thank God. Cheese barks inside, trapped in one of the spare rooms. I was worried a deer or, God forbid, a bear cub might have fallen onto the porch, and the last thing I needed was Cheese trying to edge her way out the door.
“Please don’t kill me!” the woman says, throwing her arms up in front of her face and reeling away from me, so her back presses up against the railing.
There’s nothing behind her but open air, but I doubt she has the presence of mind right now to think about that.
Good thing the railing is stable. “I— I can pay you. At some point. Maybe next week when I get paid. Do you have Venmo?”
“I’m not going to kill you,” I grunt, not letting the ridiculous circumstances of this situation — and what she just said — amuse me. I am not amused. I should just tell her to get lost, but there’s something about her that makes me ask, “What the hell are you doing on my property?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know anyone lived here,” she says, staring up at me from her place on the porch, though she repositions herself, wincing a bit as she does. Her arms are shaking.
“Were the Keep Out signs not clear enough?”
I’m doing my best to temper my anger. What are the chances that she really is just a random camper — wearing hiking boots right out of the box — who got lost? Regardless of who she is, she’s clearly terrified right now. That, or an amazing actress.
As a six-foot man with a pretty good right hook, I’d be spooked if I were in her situation, too.
I’m just starting to soften towards her, to feel bad for coming out and making her scream, when she goes on, clearing her throat and glancing above my head toward the roof of the cabin, “I just came to get my drone.”
“Drone?” I growl, all good will toward her disappearing. I step forward and let the door slam shut behind me, which, in hindsight, doesn’t help me with the allegations of seeming like a murderer, especially when it causes the porch to go dark again. But it’s hard for me to care.
What the hell would a random camper or hiker be doing up here with a drone? After dusk, no less.
This is exactly what happened last time.
“I’m camping here,” she says, raising her hands up. “I was just— I didn’t mean for it to fly over your place.”
As if I believe that. “It doesn’t matter. You can’t fly it on national forest land without a license. And I would have known if you got a license.”
She blinks up at me, and for a brief moment, I catch a wave of curiosity move over her face.
Then she seems to remember her predicament and buries it.
I shouldn’t have said that. I shouldn’t be giving her any clues.
Even if she isn’t actually part of the press and doesn’t already have a lead on who I am, she could still figure it out.
There’s a certain sense of recognition in her gaze, and it doesn’t sit well with me. I’ve seen that expression on other people’s faces before.
Back when I was living with my sister and journalists would find me when I was out for coffee, pretending they didn’t know who I was. Then, later, the guy who showed up at my cabin, sticking the lens of his camera up against the windows, trying to catch me on film like fucking Bigfoot.
“Just get out of here,” I say when she doesn’t respond, because I don’t want to give her the chance to ask questions. That never ends well for me.
“I—” She casts a glance upward, toward the ceiling. “What about my drone?”
I wave my hand, knowing the reason it came down — the defenses I set up around my place for that very reason. You can’t fly a drone too close to my perimeter without the system recognizing it and sending out electromagnetic pulses to bring it down.
Her drone is, most likely, fine, but I’m not going to tell her that. Not before I get the chance to access it and delete the files from its internal storage. A thought occurs to me.
“Give me your phone.”
“What?” she shakes her head. “No way.”
I hold my hand out to her. “I need to delete the footage of my place.”
“There’s no footage,” she says, holding up her hand. “I didn’t even get close enough to know there was a — whatever this is — here. I saw a dog and wanted to make sure it was okay.”
Of course. Cheese always goes wild just before a storm, and the two extra seconds it took for me to get her inside earlier were enough for this stranger to spot her.
As though attuned to my thoughts, a low rumble of thunder sounds to the east. I glance up and catch the spot on the horizon where the dark clouds are obscuring the stars.
It’s coming in quick, drifting in over the horizon like in a cartoon. I need to get her out of here, but since the back porch juts out over the side of the mountain, there’s no way for this woman to get out of here without coming through my place.
I sigh, pinching the bridge of my nose. It would be ideal to just check her phone, but it’s not like I’m going to fight with her to get it.
In fact, I don’t want to spend too much time with her at all, in case she might recognize me. My hair is longer, I’m five years older, and I have a full beard, but that didn’t help me last time.
“All right, just— come on.” My words are clipped, the impending storm putting more pressure on this. Even with how pissed off I am that she’s here, and that she was flying a drone, it’s not like I’m going to make her jump over the railing.
Besides, I’ll just get her phone from the drone. With access to it, I should be able to get into her other systems, too. Delete the files remotely without her knowing I’ve even been poking around. It’ll be a pain in the ass to set up the satellite internet and run all the proxies, but I’ll do it.
Giving me a pretty strong side-eye, she gets to her feet, holding onto the railing and muttering something under her breath that sounds pretty vulgar.
It only gets worse when she looks to the side and sees what her fate could have been.
If she hadn’t landed on the back porch, she would have gone tumbling right over the side of the little cliff my place is situated on.
And the worst part is, I might not have heard that. Or just assumed it was an animal. I try not to think about it, then wonder if I should put some sort of railing up on the roof in case something like this happens in the future.
Seeming to grit her teeth, she takes one jagged step toward me, and my eyes drop to her feet. She stands on both of them but heavily favors her right side.
“Are you injured?”
“No,” she says, her voice tight, her eyes skipping up over my shoulder, toward the door. “Just get me out of here.”
“Fine. Close your eyes.”
Her gaze darts to mine. Her eyes are almost startlingly green. If she was an actress, she’d be cast for the color of them alone. Like those actors with the bright blue eyes that seem to pierce right through the screen.
But hers are more rich than that, like a deep emerald. And they’re narrowing suspiciously at me. “I’m not going to close my eyes. What if you kidnap me?”
“If you didn’t want to be kidnapped, you shouldn’t have fallen onto my porch in the middle of the night.”
“This is a lawsuit waiting to happen.”
“No, it’s not. If anyone is going to sue, it’s me.”
“What?” Her eyes go wide.
“Do you not know what keep out means?”
“I didn’t think anyone really lived here! I figured some ultra-rich asshole just bought up land out here because he could. Or maybe for hunting or something.”
“If it were hunting ground, and you were running around without a vest…”
She sighs, exasperated, and for some reason, I want to chase the sound. Something in me likes the back-and-forth of this conversation. The easy rapport we’ve had up to this point. It almost makes me miss being around people.
Almost makes me miss having friends, the way Elliot and I used to trade quips, debate over nothing, and try to solve the unsolvable together.
Luckily, before I can keep thinking about that prick, the woman throws her hands in the air and draws me out of my thoughts. “Well, who— who lives in a frickin’ hobbit hole, anyway?” she says as she gestures broadly to the cabin behind me.
I swallow my laugh, and my joy over the fact that she knows what a hobbit hole is. My nerdy little heart is going to light up at the connection, and we can’t have that. I sober up, force myself to level my voice. “Close your eyes, or find another way out of here.”
“Are you serious?”
Holding her gaze, I nod, then, seeing the newly inquisitive glint in her eyes, I tip my head down so she can’t get a good look at my face. “I can blindfold you, or—”
“Fine.”
To my surprise, she actually does what I say. This entire thing is ridiculous, but I take her elbow — doing my best not to think about how it feels to touch her — guiding her through my place. We pass down the hallway, through the small living room, and into the entryway.
It only takes a few seconds to reach the front door, and I sigh in relief.
Except when I open it, the first few splatters of rain are starting to come down, painting the dirt beyond the porch darker brown. The trees out past that are already starting to dance, that familiar intense sway that speaks to a high wind.
Together, we stand in the doorway, the moment stretching out.
“Fuck,” the woman mutters, and when I glance over at her, I realize she’s opened her eyes. I sigh, remove my hand from her elbow, and watch as the first few plops of rain quickly turn into a heavy, persistent pour, the mist from the impact hitting my shins.
It would be beautiful if it weren’t for the fact that it’s trapping her here. With me.
“Fuck, indeed.”