Page 60 of Wind Valley

He just smiled and dove underwater. When he came up, his hair soaked with water, he tugged it into spikes that quickly froze in place. He looked like Sid Vicious with white hair. Even the hairs of his eyebrows crusted over in frost. Then he dipped under again, his hair instantly thawing so it flowed freely. The next time he surfaced, he plastered all his hair to one side, where it froze in an extravagant swoop.

That was it. She had to try this for herself. They spent the next spell of time playing goofy games with their frozen hair and laughing hysterically.

Stalker? What stalker? Who even cared. Nothing seemed to matter anymore in this magical warm world.

When they’d had enough fun with their hair, they slowly paddled to a more dimly lit section of the pool that Lachlan said was the hottest. “This is my favorite part,” he told her. “I’ve had all my best revelations here.”

“Good. We need a plan. I assume we can’t stay in these hot springs forever. Can we order Door Dash to come here?”

He chuckled as he nestled his back into a cozy nook between two rocks. “I’m glad you like it here. Bear has a Japanese hot tub that he’s never set up. I keep bugging him to let me handle it.”

“Oh yes. Yes yes yes! Let’s do that as soon as we get home.” Her mouth fell open as soon as she realized what she’d just said. As soon as we get home? That sounded so very couple-y. And since when was Firelight Ridge her home?

But Lachlan didn’t seem to notice any of that. He tilted his head back to look up at the sky. “Look,” he said softly. “Solar flares are agitating the gases in our atmosphere, which is refracting the light into different colors of the spectrum. Also known as the northern lights,” he added when she looked at him blankly.

Then she too looked up, and it didn’t matter what scientific explanation there was for the ethereal sight of shimmering waves of light across the sky. To her, it was magic.

32

They watched the aurora borealis in silence for some time. Lachlan knew this enchanted interlude wasn’t going to last forever. Eventually the cold air would catch up with them, and they’d scamper inside and return to reality. But he intended to savor every moment until that happened.

Sharing the hot springs with Maura was bittersweet; he knew that forevermore, long after she’d left, he’d remember her eyes shining through the drifting steam and her laughter as she painted frosty shapes on her skin. His heart ached to tell her how he really felt about her. That he’d never only seen her as a friend, and the more time they spent together, the more he…loved her?

Yes. That was it, plain and simple. As if anything involving Maura could ever be simple, he thought. Not in her current situation, anyway.

He forced his thoughts away from her and back to the wolf. If some habitat disruption was affecting the wolves, was it the same thing the smaller wild creatures were responding to? He thought about the military aircraft that had picked up the Reeds when they left. Hadn’t Gunnar said that one of the kids had been sick? If they’d left in a hurry, maybe something had gotten left behind.

“That family,” he said out loud.

“Excuse me?” Maura was still staring dreamily up at the sky.

“Dr. Reed. Maybe he wasn’t just trying to survive off the grid. Maybe he was doing some kind of research. He studies clean energy, right? Maybe he was working on something top-secret, and that’s why a military aircraft picked them up. Just speculating,” he said quickly, when Maura shot him a look.

“No, this is good. It explains why he chose Wind Valley in particular.”

“He had his family with him. Maybe we should contact them since he won’t talk.”

“That’s a great idea,” said Maura. “We could start with his ex-wife. I was reading a bit about her after he hung up on us.”

“Good thinking.” He smiled and skimmed his hand across the surface. “The hot springs working its magic again. Didn’t I tell you about this place?”

Odd that he had such faith in a pool of water surrounded by rocks. But his experiences had been real, even if he couldn’t quite explain them. Maybe it had to do with the ordinary boundaries of logic dissipating in the steam, allowing his brain to make new connections.

“There is something I’ve been thinking about,” Maura said after a time, bobbing her toes above the water, one foot, then the other.

“Tell me.”

“Your question from earlier, about my long-term plan. It was a valid point. I’m realizing that it might not be sustainable to simply stay one step ahead of SS for the rest of my life.”

“Hmmm.” He’d been thinking the same thing for a while, but hadn’t wanted to throw cold water on her hopes. “Any other ideas?”

“Well, I could agree to testify against him. If he’s in jail, he can’t bother me.”

He looked at her closely. “You don’t sound like you believe that.”

She shrugged, her bare shoulders rising briefly above the water’s surface. They were both immersed up to their necks; he imagined they must look like two bobbleheads floating at sea. “I doubt he’d go to prison. Most likely, he’d get some kind of suspended sentence or probation. Maybe that would scare him enough to make him stay away from me, or maybe it would piss him off even more. There have been so many times when I’ve thought, now he’ll stop. Now he’ll move on. And he just doesn’t. I think he has some kind of disorder. What else could explain it? Maybe if he got some treatment…but I already told you how his father shut me down when I suggested it.” She floated her arms to the sides, her hands skimming through the steam. The closest light—a dim shade of magenta—gave the scene a vague air of emergency.

Dammit, this was supposed to be relaxing.

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