Page 18 of The Jade Stone Sleuth

Clara hadto endure a lot of teasing and questions on the bike ride along the Emerald River Trail and later that night with her parents. They all gave her a hard time and tried to find out everything she knew about Brex, which wasn’t nearly enough. She shouldn’t have let him leave early. Thinking about seeing Brex the next morning made it easier. A superstar had dropped into her life and she wanted to spend every spare minute with him.

She pulled into the parking lot at the Red Mountain Falls trailhead early the next morning, the smell of creosote greeting her when she opened her door. The scent was pungent to a lot of people but welcoming to someone who had grown up in the desert.

Brex’s beautiful silver SUV was already there. Her older Sonata looked dowdy next to it. Did she look the same next to Brex? She wouldn’t think about it.

Jumping out of her car, she hurried toward him. He strode her direction. The sun wasn’t up, but it was light enough to see his handsome face.

She’d had three serious boyfriends as an adult and each one of them had tragically died. Brex seemed far too tough and confident to die, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t have a horrible accident like Harrison, Kyle, and Malik.

He wasn’t her boyfriend. Not even close. He wasn’t even here long term and she hardly knew him. Her thoughts were running away from her.

But she was drawn to him. Magnetized. Had the good Lord put Brex in her path to give her a chance to trust in a man and find love and a future? She always trusted her Heavenly Father and felt His inspiration in her life, but she wasn’t certain if Brex was a gift from above or if she was so attracted to him she wasn’t seeing clearly. He could be gone tomorrow.

What was she going to do about this draw to Brex? If they did develop a relationship, how could she keep him safe? Maybe she should tell him about what had happened with the other men and beg him to stay safe and be ultra cautious. He could use his connections to Aiden Porter and figure out if there was foul play in her boyfriends’ deaths. They could determine together if she dared get involved with him or, rather, if he dared take a risk on dating her.

No. She wasn’t ready for any of that. Brex would think she was trying to get him to be her boyfriend. He might even think she was the one to blame for the deaths. She’d been the only one around and the creepiness of finding the jade stones that matched her eyes made her wonder if she wasn’t somehow at fault.

“Morning,” he said, gifting her with his incredible smile.

“Hi. Ready to get hiked into the ground?”

“With those cute legs of yours?”

“Oh, my.” She groaned. “I can’t believe you heard me singing yesterday.”

“I was hoping for more singing today.”

“Prepare for disappointment.”

He chuckled and gestured. “Lead the way.”

“All right, I will.”

She took off at a quick pace up the nearby canyon. The first part of the trail was on the edge of a stream that fed into The Emerald River that wound through Jade Valley. The farther they walked, the more the canyon walls closed in. The path through the red rock canyon grew narrow until the path was in the stream. Her valley would grow unbearably hot in the summer, but in March it was ideal, fifty to sixty in the early morning and rarely broke seventy-five at midday.

When they had no choice but to plunge into the chilly water, Brex said, “Well, this is unique. I don’t think I’ve ever hikedinthe river.” He gazed up at the almost sheer red walls dozens of feet high framing them and the blue sky. The sun had risen while they hiked, but they couldn’t see it from here. The sky looked unerringly blue, almost fake like the sky at Disneyland.

“Have you never done The Narrows in Zion?” she asked.

“I’ve only been to Zions as a teenager with my parents and sister and we didn’t do much more than a short hike that ended with us playing in the river.”

“That’s probably Riverside Walk, the start of The Narrows. Were there red rock walls?” She felt a twinge at bringing up the national park. Malik’s death gouged at her. She hadn’t been back to Zion since he died a year ago, even though her friends and family had begged her to go in the off season. She loved the park but wasn’t fanatical enough to correct Brex for saying ‘Zions’ not ‘Zion’ like the locals would.

“Yeah. Is the Narrows hike more like this?” He gestured around.

“It’s a lot wider than this, but yeah, you have no choice but to walk in the river. For miles and miles.”

“I like it.”

She smiled. She’d hoped he would. “Are your parents still in Colorado?”

“Yeah.”

“And your sister?”

“Yes. She’s married and lives a few miles away from them. They’re pestering her about grandbabies all the time.”

“My parents don’t have any married yet, so they pester all of us about getting married and then making them grandbabies.”

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