“So don’t go out alone,” he joshed back. “It’s always the girl who goes out alone who meets the monster.”
“Good point. Isolated cabin, nobody around, dark woods, yeah, I wouldn’t last very long. I’d be lucky to be listed in the credits as ‘girl number three.’”
“Which means you lasted longer than one and two.”
The last of the tension seeped out of her and she laughed. “Sorry, I just got mad at myself for being careless.”
“I was careless, too, like I said. So, okay, we’ll follow reasonable OPSEC rules and REDCON procedures, but right now there isn’t a whole lot of reason to be frightened of anything. I think Buddy and Cap would be happy if they thought we’d forgotten all about them, and that’s the impression I intend to create.”
“What about the sheriff?”
“I doubt he wants to stir the pot without some additional proof that something’s going on. Mostly we’re just going to have to keep an eye out and see what develops.”
Then he pulled the zipper up on his jacket. “I’m going out to look around, check on Dusty.”
A thought struck her. “Wouldn’t Dusty have made some kind of ruckus if something was out there?”
He shook his head. “Dusty doesn’t react to much except bears, wolves and snakes.”
“I guess we know what wasn’t out there, then. I’ll come with?”
He shook his head. “We don’t want to appear too alert if someone is out there. Let me just take an ordinary look-see, the kind I often do. I won’t be long.”
Of course he didn’t find anything. She suspected that neither of them had expected him to, not in the dark. Probably an animal. It had to be an animal.
Because surely they were making too much of this Buddy character?
But then she remembered how he had accused her of spying, and warned herself not to go into a state of denial. Spying was something that worried a person only if they had something to conceal. Especially spying from so far away.
She was glad, though, that Craig didn’t decide to sleep outside. He spread his sleeping blanket on the floor near hers and that simple choice meant more than it probably should have.
Oh, to hell with it, she thought. Just let it go. Nothing would come of this, and thus she had nothing to be worried about. In a few weeks, or sooner if she got the urge, she’d move on. The way she’d been moving on for a long time now.
Chapter 7
Three days later, Sky was convinced the problem, whatever it had been, was over. Craig patrolled but didn’t find anything untoward. She went out and painted and no one bothered her. She wandered in the woods sometimes, enjoying the way light and shadow danced beneath the trees. She even found an absolutely perfect ravine, narrow and deep, full of large boulders, some of them still sharp in comparison to those worn by the water that raced through it almost but not quite like a waterfall.
The place was so full of power, the power of rocks, water and trees, that she fell in love with it. Ideas for paintings buzzed around in her mind, demanding expression.
This was what she had come all the way out here for, to find the essential creativity, to feel again the energy trying to burst out through her paintbrushes.
Enthralled, she snapped photos even though the light was dim in this tree-sheltered space, filtered and green for the most part although here and there the sun broke through to sparkle almost blindingly on water.
Moss covered a lot of the rocks, but the ones that interested her most were the ones that were bare. Rocks had always appealed to her in some way, the larger the better, and she thought these were gorgeous.
She was definitely bringing her gear back here.
She sat for a while on a flat-top rock with water rushing along one side of it, feeling as if she had fallen into a magical world. Well, these mountains seemed magical everywhere she went, but this place heightened that sense.
It was the kind of place that made her think a faerie could pop out from behind a tree, or even that a tree could slowly stir and talk to her. Fanciful thoughts, but they added to her pleasure. If humans had ever passed by here before, they had left no trace at all. It would have been easy to believe that she was the first person who had ever set