Page 33 of Unwanted

She did take Agent Gallagher’s words under advisement. She respected him. She liked him. She appreciated that he’d shared information he didn’t have to with her and that he cared about helping her with her situation too—a situation that wasn’t even part of the reason he was in Helena Springs. He obviously cared about her safety, and after a lifetime of not having a father figure, his concern was a balm to her soul. But…but…he hadn’t spent a night and a day with Lucas. He hadn’t had time to develop a sense of the man’s…goodness.

She wished she could call Lucas and thank him for what he’d done for her—not only led her to her parents’ car but helped her find the closure she’d been searching for since that snowy night when she was a child. She wished she could call and ask him if he needed anything now that he was totally alone—a ride to town, some food or water…matches… She wished she had some way to repay the favor he’d done for her, but she couldn’t ask him without going in person.

Harper glanced outside her window at the darkening clouds. I understand why you did it once, but maybe repeating it should be avoided. She understood Mark’s logic, but she needed to answer her heart’s call. If she was going to gather some items and make the drive to Lucas’s, she didn’t have a lot of time to stand around waffling.

She hesitated only another moment before grabbing her coat, hat, and gloves; pulling on her boots; and heading for the door.

Chapter Nineteen

Morning sun touched Jak’s naked shoulders. Warm. Soft. Good. An invisible hand tossed glitter all over the surface of the river. Jak laughed as Pup splashed through the water, his tongue hanging out and making it look like he was grinning. He came to Jak, his limp less now. He had gotten better from his injury, but it had taken the whole winter, and the limp still stayed. Pup would never be the hunter he was before. Jak was responsible for him now. That was okay. Pup had taken care of him for a time, but now it was Jak’s turn and he was up to the job. “I won’t let you down, boy,” he told Pup, as much as himself. Saying it aloud, saying it so another pair of ears heard too, felt like the most important promise of all, one he would never break.

Pup was his best friend. And best friends kept promises to each other. That was all.

Pup let out a chuff noise, and Jak smiled, knowing that Pup had understood him and knew he was not alone out there, even if he didn’t have a true pack. “I’m your pack and you’re mine,” Jak said, scooping up a handful of water and throwing it at Pup. Pup shook off the water, throwing droplets right back, and Jak laughed as he turned his head away.

It was a good day. The sun was warm. Spring was waking up the earth. He had enough food, and soon the forest would give him more. And he had a friend he loved. War fighting might be going on somewhere in the near faraway, but there, for that moment, he was safe.

He looked to where the mountains became the sky, a shiver rolling through him. Winter always waited. It might seem far away for now, but it would be back before he was ready. It would come back to steal his hope—of survival, of rescue, of having a family or people to love him.

Maybe no one could ever love him now anyway. Not after the things he’d done.

The rushing sound of the water brought him from his dark thoughts, and he tried his best to shake off the feeling of…aloneness. His sad feelings inside were all different, though he didn’t have names for all of them. But the word that seemed to fit each one was alone.

He reached down and brought a handful of water to his chest, using his hand to wash under his arms and then along his shoulders. It felt good to be clean, good to feel the cold drops sliding down his skin, reminding him he was alive. Not like the boy he’d killed and left lying in the snow.

Thinking about that boy still caused a dark hole to open in the pit of his stomach, something that felt like it would always be empty. Hollow. Sometimes when he thought about that boy, he remembered the picture he’d seen in Isaac Driscoll’s house, the one of the men fighting the bloody battle with spears and arrows. He wondered if pits opened inside them each time they took a life and thought that if they did, those men must feel like walking darkness.

At the first thaw, Jak had gone back for the blond boy’s bones, planning to bury them on the hillside where an old bent tree grew with a hundred million wildflowers all around that, from the close faraway, looked like rainbows touched the earth. There was a lake at the bottom of the hill where pairs of white swans—mates for life—floated, even in the winter when the water was icy and mostly frozen. He’d thought about it and decided that if someone was going to bury him, that’s the place he would hope they’d pick. But the blond boy’s bones had been gone, carried off by animals, scattered through the wilderness.

He dreamed of him sometimes, his bodiless head talking to him from the ground, asking Jak to give back the rest of him. He woke up screaming, Pup whining next to him.

Jak picked up a stick and tossed it to Pup, who splashed through the water, taking the piece of wood in his mouth and bringing it back to Jak. He did this a few more times as Jak kept washing his body, looking with interest at all the places hair was sprouting, prickly like the late summer grass. His skin was rough and scarred, and he could feel the way his muscles had grown as he ran his hands over his bare skin. He’d grown so much taller since last winter that his pants were now way too short and his shirt had ripped across his shoulders. He’d have to see what Driscoll would take for a few new pieces of clothing, though summer was coming and new clothes could wait. He would rip the too-small pants into shorts and go shirtless for a while. He never looked forward to seeing Driscoll, so he’d live with what he had and hand-make anything he could.

How old am I now? Time was a cloudy, wavy line he couldn’t quite hold on to. He had no idea if it was Monday or Sunday, February or March. Only the winters stood out to him—those dark, miserably cold days, when even the sun left early. Even though he had shelter now and warmth when he could get matches from Driscoll, he still had to go outside to find food, and he and Pup were still alone when the wind screamed and howled and the roof shook and it felt like the world was ending.

Sixteen, he thought, counting in his mind. I think I’m sixteen. He’d lived alone for ten winters.

Jak started making his way to the shore, whistling for Pup, who hadn’t come back with the stick Jak had tossed into the trees a while ago. Damn wolf had probably seen a squirrel and gone after it. Well, good for him if there were still a few things he wasn’t too limpy to hunt.

Jak used his shirt to towel off, shaking his shoulder-length hair like Pup did, water drops flying out around him. The back of his neck tickled, and he raised his head, squinting into the forest. He felt…watched. He sensed it sometimes, like today. The tiny hairs on the back of his neck would stand up, and he’d feel sure someone was looking at him through the trees.

He whistled again, that feeling of being watched staying with him. Jak had learned to trust his instincts, to count on them for his survival, so he did not brush away the feeling. He wondered if the enemy sent spies into the forest to see who lived there and find out why. Or maybe others—like the blond boy—were living close by and watched Jak to find out if he was good or bad.

Jak pulled on his jeans, running his hand over the pocket to feel the hard bump of the pocketknife there, and then grabbed the knife that had belonged to the blond boy, tying it to his waistband with an old piece of cloth from clothes he’d gotten too big for. He tossed the damp shirt over his shoulder and headed for the woods to find Pup.

It got cooler as soon as he stepped into the trees, splinters of light coming through the gaps at the tops of the old giants of the forest. He talked to them sometimes when Pup was out hunting or when Jak had left him sleeping in front of the fire. Sometimes he got so lonely—needed another person so much—that he pretended the trees were wise old men who had answers to his millions of questions, and if he just listened hard enough, they’d whisper what they knew. The way they whispered to each other deep under the ground.

The same, only different, as the whispers inside him.

Maybe he shouldn’t hope the trees would share their whispers. Maybe if they did, he’d know he’d started to lose his mind.

Maybe the forest made everyone who lived there go crazy finally because Driscoll didn’t seem right in the head either.

“Pup,” he called, pushing a branch aside. Where is he?

Jak stilled when he heard what he thought was a whimper, turning toward the sound and moving faster through the shrubs just sprouting pale green leaves. That’s when he saw him, lying on the forest floor in a pool of spreading blood.

“Pup!” he yelled, running to him and falling to his knees at his side. There was a long wooden arrow sticking from Pup’s neck, blood flowing from the wound. Jak’s heart pounded with fear and sickness. “It’s okay, boy. It’s okay,” he choked as he pulled on the arrow and Pup made an awful, high-pitched screaming noise and more blood poured from the wound. Jak let out a sob, not knowing what to do. He put his hands around the arrow, trying so hard to stop the rushing blood. He met Pup’s half-closed gaze, and the wolf held eye contact for a few moments, his tongue poking out to lick Jak’s wrist, his blood pumping between Jak’s fingers.

---