Out here in the uncut trees looking for him? Really?
“James!” the woman—Rebecca?—yelled again.
What was she doing out here?
Bruce’s phone started going off, some Latin-beat ringtone warbling through the night. James headed toward the sound and saw the very dim light of the phone’s face, partially buried in the snow in the midst of a stand of noble firs. As he snagged the cell from the ground and dropped it into his jacket pocket, he wished to high heaven he hadn’t agreed to meet Sophia for whatever “urgent” reason she’d concocted.
He had to convince her it was over.
* * *
Intent on catching up to James, Rebecca half-jogged to the spot where she’d last caught a glimpse of him, pushing forward into this man-made forest, avoiding stumps and saplings, the cold air brittle against her cheeks, branches catching on her hair, clouds beginning to gather overhead.
“James?” Squinting, she tried to make out movement between the firs and pines, but the woods were quiet, the lights from the tree lot becoming more distant. “James?” she yelled, hoping to catch his attention, then louder, “James!”
Nothing.
Damn the man.
She stubbed her toe on a stump and nearly fell. Smothering a curse, she slid her phone from her pocket and turned on the flashlight app to illuminate her path.
“James?”
Still no response, but she felt as if unseen eyes were watching her, zeroing in on the bright light from her phone.
Just your imagination.
Get over it.
Still, she paused, straining to hear.
Was that the sound of footsteps behind her?
The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.
Whipping around, she shone her light into the darkness.
Nothing.
No one.
Just eerie blue illumination and the sough of a breeze rushing through the branches of the evergreens, a battalion of dark sentinels surrounding her.
“Pull yourself together.” Slowly, she swung the flashlight’s beam over the snow-packed earth, where the light glinted and pierced the shadows.
She decided she’d never find him in over forty night-dark acres of man-made forest. What had she been thinking? The smarter move would be to go back to the café, buy a hot cup of coffee, and sip while watching for him to return to his Explorer. An even smarter move would have been to phone or text him.
She started to punch in his number as a gloved hand reached out from the darkness and snagged her forearm. “Rebecca? What the hell are you doing here?”
She whipped around, face-to-face with him. “God, you nearly gave me a heart attack!” She yanked her arm from his grasp. “I came looking for you. You weren’t at the inn, and they said you were out here.”
“They were right.”
“I’ve been thinking,” she rushed on. “We, um, we didn’t leave on the best of terms the other night.”
“You walked out on me.” And as he said it, his words still hanging on the night air, Rebecca’s heart clutched. She thought about another time, when the situation had been reversed, when he’d left her for good. For another woman—her own damned sister.
As if he too had realized what he’d said, he let out a huff of disgusted air. “Damn.” He grabbed her arm again, more gently, and muttered something under his breath about being an idiot. “Look,” he admitted, “I don’t know how to say, ‘I’m sorry,’ you know, about everything that happened between us.” He paused as if waiting for her to interject something. She didn’t. Wasn’t going to let him off the hook, not about this.
“And even if I could, it doesn’t seem enough.”
“It isn’t.”
“What would be?”
“Nothing.”
“I was an ass.”
Again, she kept her silence, noticed the first flakes of snow drifting from the sky.
“Probably still am, all things considered.”
“No ‘probably’ about it.” Then she brushed the air with her hand, dismissing it. “Maybe we shouldn’t go there right now.”
“When, then?”
“Never,” she said quickly, nodding sharply in agreement when she heard her own words. “Yeah, never would be a good time.”
Even in the half-light from the snow’s reflection, she saw him wince. “Okay,” he finally said. “Listen: I’m trying to apologize here. And it’s not easy.”
“Good.”
“The appropriate thing would be for you to say, ‘It’s okay.’”
“But it’s not. And it never will be. But we still have to find Megan. So either you work with me or you don’t. That’s what I came to tell you, to clear the air—the recent air. I’m just letting you know that I’ll be around here in Riggs Crossing, and I’m not leaving until I know what happened to my sister. I just need to find her. I didn’t