Page 51 of Unwanted

Her smile did slip then, but she nodded and turned, closing the door softly behind her. He released a breath, massaging his temples, trying to move his mind back to the case.

But his focus was gone, at least for the moment. As he was closing the study Dr. Swift had sent him, he made note of not only Isaac Driscoll’s name, but also the name of his assistant who had worked on the study: Kyle Holbrook.

He put in a call to Rayform and found that the man was still listed on the directory, but his voicemail picked up when Mark dialed it. He left a message and then tapped his pen on the desk, the smell of grilled cheese and tomato soup drifting under his door as he sat staring at the wall.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The snow sparkled under the silver-gray sky, fat flakes floating down and melting on Jak’s skin as he slid across the open field. The long, flat shoes he’d put together made it easier to walk over the ice-crusty ground without sinking into the soft, fluffy snow beneath. He wished he’d thought of making something like these a long time ago. But how could he? He learned the best he could as he went along, figuring new and better ways to survive. These shoes weren’t a…what was the word? He didn’t need to have them, but they were nice to have.

His mind drifted, the words of the woman in the picture going around in his head. He talked to her sometimes, asked her questions, tried to guess what her answers would be.

Sometimes, like today, when his mind wanted to drift from the cold of winter, he’d say the words that brought him peace. He’d say them over and over again until his heart settled and he could find something good about the day. About life. About his presence in a world that only made sense in a physical way. To Jak, the writings of the woman were his friend; she was his priest from the story that he’d never actually read and his teacher. He loved her, even though he’d never met her. He visited her sometimes too, in the bottom of that canyon. He sat outside the car where she’d died, said words to her and the man. He wondered if they’d died right away or if they’d suffered. He wondered where their child was—the girl. He felt so much sadness. He wished he could have saved them. He wished they were alive and he could meet them. He would ask the woman all the questions in his mind and heart. She had so many more words than he knew.

In his pretending, she answered. He closed his eyes and heard her speak, clearer now than the faded voice of his baka.

It had been five winters since he’d found the car and the blue bag, and while he would never say his living was easy, the writings he’d found had made things…better. He wasn’t sure exactly why. He only knew that the writings had changed his mind about wanting to die. Had he really wanted to die though? No. He had wanted the pain to end, the loneliness. The writings had made him care about living.

His muscled legs pushed one board forward, then the next, sliding across the snow, his breath puffing white in front of him for only a brief second before it was snatched up by the wind.

Movement caught his eye, and he slowed, his muscles tensing as he spotted a person far off to his right. Hide? Slink? No. He crouched low as he loaded an arrow into his bow, looking through the scope.

It was…a woman?

Jak lowered the bow and arrow, standing back up, his fast heartbeat slowing down, questions circling in his mind. Fear.

The woman was fast-walking toward him, taking big steps in the snow, sinking down and then, with a lot of trying, lifting her foot again and again. Jak was still with shock and confusion. As she got closer, Jak saw that she wasn’t wearing any winter clothes and much of her skin was showing. And she looked like she was crying, big chest-moving wails that came to where Jak was standing.

Jak took two steps toward the woman at the same second that she spotted him. She stopped and then moved toward him again, picking up her footsteps, tripping and getting back up. “Help!” she called. “Help!”

Jak moved toward her quickly, and she tripped again, pulling herself up, her wails getting clearer the closer she got. “Please, please!” she cried. “I need help!”

“What happened?” Jak asked as the woman collapsed in his arms, shivering and crying, her skin purple-red and covered in goose bumps. Her wide gaze moved over his face, her lips shivering so hard her whole jaw was shaking.

“Lost… The enemy chasing me…” Another big shiver went through her, stopping her words, and Jak’s skin prickled with unease. The enemy? He looked behind her, from where she’d come. He’d always felt mostly safe from other people in this wilderness, safe from the war and whatever might be going on out in the world. Nature had been his enemy…any other danger seeming very far away. But now…here was a woman running from this enemy that he’d only thought of as the booming voice behind him telling him the only goal was survival.

“Please help,” she cried softly, looking at him in a strange way. Jak took off his animal-skin jacket, the one he’d made himself, held together with long strips of the tough, stringy parts between deer muscle and bone that he’d bleached and dried in the sun. He wrapped the jacket around the woman as her knees gave out, but he caught her, lifting her easily into his arms and heading toward his cabin.

When he got there, he set her down in front of the open wood stove, wrapping his blanket around her bare legs and throwing another log on the fire so it leaped and grew, the warmth traveling farther into the room.

The woman began to move, pushing her long red hair out of her face and sitting up slowly. “Where am I?”

“My cabin. Who’s chasing you?”

Her eyes flew to the window. “I don’t know who they are. I think I lost them, but”—her gaze moved quickly to the side—“uh, I got all turned around, and then I just kept walking.”

Jak had an odd feeling about the woman. It was like…he sensed danger, but…that was stupid. This woman was half his size. No threat to him. But he felt…not right, and he wasn’t sure why. “What happened to your clothes?”

“The enemy took them before I got away.”

Jak frowned. “Tell me about the enemy.”

She blinked. “What?”

“I—” He ran a hand over his jaw, trying to figure out how to explain things to her. “I don’t know anything about the war. I’ve been living here since I was young.” He sat on the edge of the bed next to where she sat against the wall. “Can you tell me what’s going on? Does anyone talk about when it might end?”

She stared at him for a minute, a line coming between her eyes. “I don’t know a lot either. I’m, uh”—she did that weird moving thing with her eyes again—“from somewhere else.”

“Somewhere where the war is not being fought?”

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