Page 14 of Lion's Share
When we reached the clearing, though, it was empty, and I shot him a questioning look.
“What now?” I asked, making sure to keep my voice pitched low…just in case.
“We find a good hiding place and wait,” he responded in a similar undertone. “There’s no way of knowing when our man is going to show up, and it’s still fairly early.”
I’d been afraid he would say something like that, although at the same time, I understood that it wouldn’t be very wise to go tearing all over the forest in search of the stranger. If it turned out that he didn’t come to this clearing tonight, then we’d check the trail footage again the next morning and see if we could establish some kind of pattern to his behavior.
For now, though, we needed to conceal ourselves as best we could.
On the other side of the clearing was a grouping of young fir trees, not much taller than Ben. Their branches were thick and full, and would provide much better cover than the birches with their skinny trunks or even the full-grown coast redwoods, which were often bare for yards along their trunks before they fleshed out toward the forest canopy.
I inclined my head in that direction, and he nodded. Moving as quietly as we could — although I couldn’t help wincing when I stepped on a twig — we headed toward the little trees that would provide our best cover. There was always the chance that the stranger might approach from behind us, in which case we were sunk, but I didn’t think that would happen. The trail came into the clearing from the other direction, and behind us was pretty much trackless wilderness. True, the man we were looking for had seemed like like a professional, but I had to hope he still wouldn’t think that blundering around in an section of the forest that didn’t have the slightest hint of a path was a very good idea.
By necessity, Ben and I had to stand close to one another. I could feel the heat of his body, even sense the warmth of his breath, before he turned to look behind us. All my senses seemed unnaturally heightened, which I knew must be due to his proximity rather than any impending confrontations.
But I couldn’t allow myself to be distracted. Even though it was becoming increasingly difficult to ignore how I responded to Ben Sanders, this wasn’t the time or the place.
Despite the way my traitorous mind whispered that kissing him and having the stranger catch us in an embrace would certainly provide a good alibi as to why we were out here in the middle of nowhere as night fell.
On the other side of the clearing, a twig snapped, and Ben went immediately on the alert, head lifting as he tried to peer through the young fir trees’ branches to see what was going on. While they provided good cover, they were something of an obstacle when it came to having a good view of our surroundings.
I also pulled apart a couple of branches, trying to ignore the tree sap sticking to my fingers. Well, some hand sanitizer would take care of that. I always carried a little purse-sized bottle in my backpack, just in case.
But it wasn’t the stranger who’d snapped that twig. Instead, it was a mule deer doe stepping delicately into the clearing, accompanied by her white-spotted fawn, probably only a few months old, all fragile legs and big, liquid eyes. I held my breath, not wanting to scare off the elegant little pair as they nibbled at the sparse grass in the clearing before they moved on, following a trail only they could see as they moved deeper into the forest.
Beside me, Ben held himself equally still, waiting for a long moment after the doe and her fawn had disappeared into the forest before he said anything.
“Maybe they weren’t what we came here to find, but I’m glad we saw them.”
So was I. While I knew these woods held all sorts of wonders, it reassured me to see that ordinary creatures flourished here, too, and that sometimes your soul needed a reminder that life went on despite whatever drama might be occurring in your personal orbit.
I nodded but didn’t say anything. Although the presence of the deer told me the man we were waiting for probably wasn’t anywhere nearby, it still seemed better to remain quiet, just in case.
So we waited in silence…and waited…and waited. The woods grew darker, but my eyes adjusted enough to tell me the clearing remained stubbornly empty.
At last, Ben spoke.
“I don’t think anyone’s coming here tonight.”
The same notion that passed through my mind, but I was still glad he was the first one to give voice to those doubts.
“So…what now?”
He hitched his shoulders. In the gloom, I couldn’t see his expression clearly, and yet I guessed he wasn’t looking too thrilled about life right then.
“Well, we came all the way out here. I suppose we might as well take a closer look at the carvings and see if there’s anything we missed.”
If that was all he wanted to do, then we should have come out here in the daytime when we could have seen better. However, I knew that thought wasn’t entirely fair. After all, neither of us could have known that the black-clad stranger was going to be a no-show.
“All right,” I said, and knew I sounded way too resigned.
At least we both had decent flashlights.
Dutifully, we went from one tree to another, taking more pictures with our phones. I still wasn’t sure what any of this was going to do to help, but I had a feeling that bringing up the sunk-cost fallacy with Ben right then probably wouldn’t be a very good idea.
“I still can’t figure out why he marked only half the trees,” he said as we sat down on a fallen log to regroup. “If he meant to come out and finish the job, then why didn’t he show up tonight?”
My shoulders lifted, and I reached inside my pack to pull out my steel water bottle. “I have no idea,” I replied. “Maybe he only works on half the trees at a time so he can range farther afield and then can come back to finish the job when he has time.”
