Page 20 of Burning Hearts

“It’s basically just gauze, but it has this powder stuff on it that stops the bleeding. Mostly they use it in military settings. It could save a life in the moment when something nasty happens.”

“Well, even if your life isn’t in imminent danger, we’re still going to use it on you.” She tore open the packet. “Lift up your shirt.”

Logan grinned. “I thought you’d never ask.”

“This isn’t the time to make light of what’s happening.”

“Sorry.” He winced, and not only because she helped him peel the material of his shirt away from the wound.

“This is a pretty nasty graze.”

“Stings.”

She pressed the gauze against the wound. “It doesn’t cover all of it. You need two.”

“Only got one.” He let out a breath and lowered his shirt, keeping his hand over the gauze now stuck to his wound. She looked up at him, and he saw the worry in her eyes. “I’m sure Tristan is going to be okay.”

“I put a tracking device on him.”

Logan blinked. “You did what?”

“It’s this ring thing. I slipped it into his pocket the first time I saw him. It’s new tech. They’re looking for backers, and my company is going to fund it.”

“What do you mean ‘your company’?” Before, when she talked about work, she’d always said “the company I work for.” But not this time. “Did you start a business? That’s impressive.”

She shook her head. “I still work at the same place.”

Huh. Maybe they were both just miscommunicating. “We should keep walking.”

Jamie looked around. “Where are we even going? I mean, at least those guys have stopped chasing us. But still.”

He touched her back and rubbed a hand between her shoulder blades. “All we can do is keep praying for Tristan.”

She didn’t respond to that.

They set off walking, falling into a comfortable silence. Or more likely, a stalemate. For a while, they found a trail. After that, he had her take a more direct route through the brush where it thinned out, and they were able to pick through the wilds.

Jamie said, “Do you have some kind of GPS that tells you where to go? Because I’m completely lost.”

“There’s a compass in my pack, but I left it with my stuff at your car.” Felt like days ago now that he’d been so surprised to see a vehicle with her stuff in it. So much had happened since then that it really should be dark by now, even with the long Alaska day. And yet it had barely been a few hours.

“So how do you know where we’re going?”

He looked up at the sky. “The position of the sun. The direction we walked and the hill to the right, the one we’re skirting around. I’ll admit, we’re going the long way on purpose so that we don’t run into those guys. They’ll probably expect us to take the trail that’s most direct to get to your car as fast as possible.”

Jamie kept walking ahead of him. “Doesn’t that mean they’ll be waiting at the car when we get there?”

“If they are, then we’ll just have to leave your car and keep walking.” He thought he might have heard her groan but wasn’t sure. Maybe he needed to distract her, but all he had in his head was the need to get her to safety.

Even though he’d decided to walk away from her as soon as she was all right, that didn’t mean he would ever quit caring about what happened to her.

Logan said, “A couple of months ago, before I came up here, we were training before the start of the wildfire season. I got a call from my sister that Bryce had disappeared, that he might’ve been kidnapped. For hours I had no idea if he was all right or even alive. All I knew was that he was gone and no one knew where to find him.”

Jamie glanced at him over her shoulder. “Do you get that twin thing where you can feel each other’s pain?”

“It’s more complicated than that,” he said. “It’s usually not physical. It’s more of an impression of what he’s feeling. Or at least, I know there’s no reason I should be feeling anxious or sad or scared. Or happy.”

“Did you know he was in trouble?”

---