Page 35 of Death Valley

The water drips from my hair, tracing cold rivulets down my back despite the morning sun warming my face. Jensen walks a few paces ahead, his shirt still damp in patches where he hadn’t bothered to dry off properly. We haven’t spoken since getting dressed and leaving the watering hole, since I’d seen something like regret cloud his eyes.

I hope it wasn’t regret. I know he said last night that there was no us, but I still don’t want things to get weird and awkward. I want our physical encounters to remain separate, a way for the two of us to blow off steam. And then some.

“Might as well explore some of the trails before we head back,” he finally says.

I hitch my pack higher on my shoulder, willing my body to forget the feel of his body against mine. “I know.”

I turn my attention to our surroundings. The forest is alive, dappled sunlight filtering through the pine canopy, birdsong floating on the gentle breeze. It’s hard to believe we’re searching for my sister’s remains in this peaceful place. Hard to believe anything bad could happen here at all.

But I know better.

Jensen stops abruptly, head tilting as he studies the ground. I nearly run into his back, catching myself at the last moment. He crouches, fingers hovering over something I can’t see.

“What is it?”

“Trail’s been disturbed.” His voice is different now; focused, clinical. The tracker, not the man whose dick had been down my throat twenty minutes ago.

I kneel beside him trying to see what he’s looking at, our shoulders almost touching. “Animal?”

“No.” He points to what looks like perfectly ordinary dirt to me. “See how the pine needles are arranged? Too deliberate. Someone tried to cover their tracks here.”

“Recently?”

His eyes scan the forest floor, following something invisible to me. “Hard to say. But it’s heading away from the main trail. Toward those rock formations.”

I look in the direction he’s indicating, a small ridge of granite jutting from the hillside, maybe half a mile away.

“Probably nothing,” he says, but he’s already moving toward it, his stride purposeful. “Still worth checking out.”

I follow, trying not to stare at the way his shoulders move beneath his shirt, trying to focus on why we’re here. On Lainey. Not on how Jensen McGraw tastes like pine and river water and something wild I can’t name.

“You’re thinking it could be connected to Lainey?” I ask, falling into step beside him.

“Nah,” he says. “But we camped here last night, so it’s worth looking to see if anything or anyone else was…around.”

He’s careful not to give me false hope, I’ve noticed. Never promises anything he can’t deliver. It should make me trust him more, this careful honesty. Instead, it makes me wonder what else he’s being careful about.

The path Jensen follows is barely visible, more intuition than trail. I’m not sure how he sees what he does, but there’s no denying his focus, the way his eyes catch on details I would walk right past.

“There,” he says after a few minutes of silent tracking. “Sky pilots.”

My heart skips, then races at the sight. A cluster of blue-purple flowers sway in the breeze, nestled against the granite outcropping we’ve been heading toward. They’re delicate but sturdy, the kind of wildflower that survives in harsh alpine environments where little else grows.

“Lainey loved those,” I whisper, pressing my hands to my chest, as if to keep my heart inside, sadness sweeping through me.

Jensen turns to me, brow furrowed. “Did she now?”

“Since we were kids. Our dad took us camping once near Mt. Shasta, and there were fields of them. She called them her ‘mountain friends.’” The memory catches in my throat. “She even tried to grow them at home, but they never took.”

He studies the flowers, then me, something unreadable in his expression. “Sky pilots only grow above ten thousand feet naturally. We’re not high enough. These shouldn’t be here.”

“What are you saying?”

“Someone must have planted them. Recently. They’re not established enough to have self-seeded.”

I step closer to the delicate blue blooms, my fingers trembling slightly as I reach out to touch one. “Do you think…” I begin, my hope palpable. “Lainey could have planted them three years ago?”

“Dunno,” he says. “Could be anyone.”

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