Page 36 of Wind Valley

The story included a photo. A color photo, in which Maura’s hair was a tawny brown with lighter streaks. She looked happy in the photo, grinning in triumph, surrounded by the five members of the debate team. But that wasn’t what caught his eye.

There was a man in it too, a police officer in uniform off to the side. Lachlan couldn’t tell if he was part of the celebration or not. Several parents were mentioned in the caption, along with the team members, but none of them were specified to be police.

Unlike everyone else in the photo, the officer wasn’t looking at the camera. He appeared to be looking at Maura. Intently. Creepily.

Lachlan clicked on another story about an active-shooter drill at the middle school where Maura worked. This article included a photo, too. In this one, the same police officer was speaking to a group of students and teachers. But he was entirely focused on one teacher—Maura. Whereas she was the only member of the group not looking at him. She hugged her arms around herself in a self-protective way. Her body language read fear, loud and clear.

Chills swept up and down Lachlan’s body, from head to toe. Maura had a stalker. No wonder she wanted nothing to do with men. No wonder she’d fled to a place as remote as Firelight Ridge. And if the stalker was a police officer, no wonder she’d picked a place with no law enforcement. No wonder she was so afraid she answered the door with a frying pan.

He closed his iPad, feeling sick.

What now? The one thing he wouldn’t do was push her or crowd her in any way. He should keep his distance.

No, he couldn’t do that. What if the stalker found her? He needed to stay connected to Maura so that if she needed him, he’d be there.

But staying close to her would be torture, because the more time he spent with her, the more he cared for her.

Too bad. He’d just have to get used to it. Protecting Maura was the most important thing, more than his wounded feelings. Should he tell Gil, who was a professional “protector”? No, that would be betraying Maura’s confidence—even though Lachlan had found this information himself.

He could be Maura’s backup on his own, no need for Gil. He knew how to defend himself physically. Gil had made sure of that, since bullies used to be drawn to Lachlan’s dreaminess and innocence. After he and Gil had graduated high school, Lachlan had been on his own, and had a broken nose and a quirky left thumb to show for it. He didn’t like to fight—he was a dreamer, not a fighter—but he could if he had to. In fact, he could do so ferociously, because he didn’t believe in doing anything halfway.

If he could defend himself, he could do the same for Maura, especially now that he knew what she was dealing with. Or at least, some of it. One photo in a newspaper didn’t tell the whole story.

A strange feeling came over him, and he looked up sharply. Was someone out there in the dark watching him? The moon was only half full, but the way it reflected off the snow gave visibility to the road. He didn’t see anyone out there, but he felt someone’s presence in the rise of goosebumps on his arms.

He wished he had a frying pan on him.

Then a large dark figure trundled out of the trees and onto the road. A moose.

Lachlan slumped against the back of the bench with relief. Unless a skinwalker had taken the form of that moose, he’d been worried for nothing. You’re a scientist, he scolded himself. You know skinwalkers don’t exist.

But in the dark depths of the Alaskan nighttime wilderness, anything seemed possible. Even scientists felt the primordial, very human fear of the unknown.

20

Something had changed with Lachlan, and Maura didn’t like it. Instead of greeting her with that sweet smile of his when she took her seat at the bar, he kept a “professional” expression while he took her order. He wasn’t avoiding her—quite the opposite. She noticed that he kept a watchful eye on her, hovering close but not too close, like a self-appointed bodyguard.

He was acting more like his brother Gil—the intimidating guy you didn’t want to mess with. But this was Lachlan. The curious, openminded, interested-in-everything brother. Not the badass one with the fists.

She missed the old Lachlan more than she could have imagined. Where had his easy smile gone, his dreaminess, his sunny nature? It felt as if the sun of his personality had gone behind a cloud, leaving the world more gray and sad than it had been.

Every day after school, she’d walk down to The Fang, where she’d meet Pinky to get a ride back home. Since Pinky always wanted to stay with his buddies as long as possible, she got in the habit of going over lesson plans and homework at a table in the corner of the bar.

Bear and Lila actually created a sign for her, so that everyone knew that table was hers. It read, “Teacher at Work,” which she found very endearing.

From her table, her gaze would be irresistibly drawn to Lachlan, especially when he was busy concocting his latest cocktail creations. She loved the intense focus he brought to something as mundane as a Bloody Mermaid—his version of a Bloody Mary, with blue-green algae mixed in with the horseradish. The way he’d mix and sip and test and try again…what would that experimental mindset be like in other areas of life? Like the bedroom?

She sighed and gave up on correcting the multitude of grammatical errors in Sarah Chilkoot’s essay on glaciers. Mug in hand, she wended her way past a game of checkers, a table full of knitters, and a man in a balaclava slouched over a tankard of ale muttering to himself. Typical evening at The Fang.

“I’m making meatballs again tonight, special request from Pinky,” she told Lachlan, after he refilled her tea mug with more hot water. “Want to come over?”

“No thanks, I’ve got some work to do tonight.” He stepped away from her to take someone else’s order.

Well. That stung. She’d gotten used to the warm admiration and interest that always emanated from Lachlan. Although she hadn’t pursued it—for very good reasons—it made her feel better about life in general.

He doesn’t owe you anything, she reminded herself. You turned him down, remember?

She carried her mug back to her table and got to work on poor Sarah’s essay. Whoever had taught her the basics of writing had skipped over grammar completely. She cringed as she corrected the fifth misspelling of the word “rock.” Where did Sarah get her aversion to the letter c?

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