I’d know that frame, that thick braid of chestnut hair, that profile with a slight bump in her nose anywhere. Hell, I’d been there the day she’d broken it when we were kids. I’d been the one to carry her out of that mine.
She stood about fifteen yards in front of us with her hands out and open, but she wasn’t retreating from the double-barreled reaper pointed straight at her chest. Backing down had never been in her nature, and while I’d always been intrigued by her tenacity, right now I was cursing her stupid stubborn streak.
Willow Bradley was going to get herself shot.
Sullivan’s Willow.
You gotta help me here, Sully. I sent the thought rather than spoke it, knowing Xander wouldn’t understand.
“Walk through the trees until you can come up behind him. As soon as I give you the signal, get that gun away from him,” I whispered to Xander, leaving zero room for argument.
“What signal?”
“Trust me, you’ll know.”
“He won’t recognize you. He’ll shoot you,” he hissed.
“Better me than her.” Death had never scared me. We’d played a game of cat and mouse for as long as I could remember, and one day I would lose. It was that simple.
If I died today, then so be it.
I moved.
Chapter Two
Willow
Think, Willow. Think.
This was Mr. Daniels. I’d known him my entire life. Alzheimer’s or not, there was no way he was really going to shoot me, right?
Except there was this one troubling factor: he had no idea who I was. Oh, and he had a shotgun pointed at my chest. That was troubling, too.
“Mr. Daniels,” I tried again, keeping my voice soft. “It’s me. It’s Willow. I live next door, remember?” If you considered a mile away next door.
The breeze whipped a loose strand of my hair across my face, but I didn’t dare tuck it back beneath my hat. The sun had set precious minutes earlier, and it was already getting dark. What if he just couldn’t see me?
“Be quiet!” he shouted, jerking the shotgun. His eyes were wide and wild but not evil. He simply didn’t know me or the circumstances that had led him here.
I gasped in reaction, my heart jumping into my throat. What if he pulled the trigger? What if it went off the next time he jostled it like that? We were half a mile away from the Danielses’ place and three-quarters of one above my parents’. My cell phone was in my pocket, but I had a feeling he’d shoot me if I reached for it. At this range, I’d be dead before they could get me to a hospital…if they found me.
At least there were other search parties out right now. They’d come at the sound of gunfire.
“There are cougars out here, you know,” he snapped.
Like the one that had mauled his wife fifteen years ago on this very field.
“What are you doing here? You’re trespassing!”
I didn’t bother arguing the trespassing point, since technically, I was. But Dorothy had called in a panic, and I’d immediately headed out to look for Mr. Daniels just like I had a few times in the last month. The gun… Now that had been unexpected.
“I know there are cougars,” I told him with a slight quiver in my voice. “You taught me what to do if I ever ran into one.” I’d been seven years old when he’d pulled aside Sullivan and me for lessons. Naturally, Cam had played the cougar while Alexander watched in quiet judgment.
Cam. My chest tightened in that same physical ache it always did whenever he crossed my mind, even with the present danger. Heck, maybe because of the danger.
“I don’t know you! Stop lying! What do you want here? Why are you on my land? Get out!” He jabbed the gun toward me.
“Okay,” I said with a nod and backed up a step.
“Stop moving!” he screamed, his voice pitching high in alarm. “Don’t speak!”
I halted immediately. He was slipping further and further into the episode, and my mind stopped fighting the possibility that he might shoot me, my muscles locking in paralyzing acceptance.
Movement to my left caught my eye, and I turned my head a fraction of an inch to see the shape of a man only a few arm lengths away, approaching with hands up, palms out. Who was it? Where had he come from?
I couldn’t make out his face beneath the baseball hat, but he was massive, dwarfing my five-foot-four frame as he put himself between Mr. Daniels and me. The broad expanse of his back blocked my entire view.
I didn’t recognize him—which was odd, considering there were only about a dozen of us who usually came to search for Mr. Daniels—but there was something familiar in the way he held himself, the way his posture advertised submission but his energy felt 100 percent aggressive. I had the utterly illogical impression that this guy was more dangerous than the loaded gun pointed at him. At least, I assumed it was loaded. If it wasn’t, at least it would be a not-so-hilarious story to tell Charity later.
For all that Dad accused my sister of being impetuous, Charity had certainly never had a shotgun held on her.
“What is this? Who the hell are you? How many of you are there?” Mr. Daniels questioned, panic rising. The shoulders in front of me rose as if he were preparing to— “No, don’t speak! All lies! You claim jumpers are all full of lies!”
Well, that story changed quickly.
The man reached back, hooked his hand around my waist, and tugged me closer. I tensed, even though the violation of my personal space was nothing compared to the shotgun pointed at us. His arm was a vise, locking me in place with casual strength. Just like freshman year when— I cut myself right off. There’s no way.
“Be careful,” I said softly to the stranger. “He has Alzheimer’s. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
He pulled me tighter against his back, and the scent of mint and pine filled my nose as he started to shift in tiny movements so my back was to the trees and not the ravine. God, that smell… I knew it.
“We’re just hikers,” he said to Mr. Daniels, low and slow.
Certainty slammed into me with the force of an avalanche, knocking the breath from my lungs. My eyes fluttered shut as I swam through the flood of memories, desperately hoping I wasn’t the one hallucinating right now.
“Cam,” I whispered, letting my forehead rest against his back as I gripped a fistful of his coat.
“Are you okay, Willow?” he asked, so softly that I would have gone with the hallucination theory if I hadn’t felt his deep voice rumble through his chest.
I nodded, the fabric of his coat soft against my skin. Maybe Mr. Daniels had already pulled the trigger. Maybe I’d never felt the impact. Maybe he’d killed me instantly. That was the only logical explanation for Cam’s presence.