“But he never did.”
She glanced up at Lowe and shook her head. “No, he never did. As soon as she calmed down, he was back at his old tricks, trying to kill himself on skateboards or snowboarding, or off getting into trouble with the local police.”
Lowe gave her a look that said he wanted to ask what had happened to her brother, so she dropped her gaze to her lap and avoided him.
The trees began to thin and Lowe lifted his head.
“And here we are.”
Those words made her look up too and her eyes widened as she stared into an enormous clearing blanketed with snow.
A clearing that didn’t have just one or two cabins as she had expected. There had to be close to a dozen of them, with five of them near to her and others dotted around beside the forest where it started again directly across from her. None of these cabins had been on her map. What kind of secret life were the people who lived here leading? And there were people who lived here. The cabin that stood proud in the middle of the clearing to her right had smoke curling from the chimney, rising into the cold, still air.
Lowe carried her in that direction, skirting along the edge of the woods, towards a pair of cabins that stood with their backs to the trees. Both of them had a single storey below the steep pitched roof and both were raised on pylons, lifted away from the ground. They were identical, although one was older.
They had to be Lowe and Knox’s homes.
“I still can’t believe you live up here in winter.” She stared at the cabins ahead of her and then peered over his shoulder towards a pair that had been built a short distance away, facing the lone cabin that stood in the middle of the clearing. “How many people live here?”
“Three all year. Five most of the time. Sometimes the others come and stay a little while, but mostly it’s the five of us.” He rounded the raised deck of the first cabin with its back to the woods and carried her up the steps. “This is me.”
He set her down by one of the posts that stood on either side of the steps, supporting the overhanging roof. She gripped the wooden railing beside it and stared out at the settlement, still unable to believe there could be so many cabins in one area without anyone marking it on a map.
Cameo’s gaze tracked over the cabin in the centre and drifted towards the woods to her right, trees that it faced, and then backtracked as it caught on something in the deep snow.
“Is that… blood?” She stared at the patch of crimson on the trampled snow.
Lowe was quick to turn and even quicker to leap from the deck, landing in the deep snow. He sprinted through it, kicking it everywhere, and her eyes widened further as she spotted something else.
A brown mound of fur in the middle of the huge patch of blood.
A bear.
Lowe was running right for it.
“Oh my God. Don’t go near that bear!” She hobbled for the steps, fumbling for her bear spray, her heart a jackhammer against her ribs.
Lowe skidded to a halt a short distance from the injured animal, his back to her.
She missed what he said, the distance between them too great for her to hear him, and limped closer, determined to protect Lowe.
When she was halfway to him, he spoke again, and she caught what he said this time.
“I need to move him.”
“It’s a bear. You need to back away. I don’t know what attacked him, but—” Cameo tried to take another step towards him as she readied her bear spray and grunted when pain shot up her leg. She doubled over, clutching her left knee and breathing through the need to vomit.
Lowe huffed as he pivoted to face her. “Let’s get you to my cabin. All nice and toasty like. I’ll deal with him, and then I’ll deal with those fucking cougars.”
He strode to her, swept her up into his arms and carried her away from the bear.
“You can’t shoot cougars!” She glared at him, anger getting the better of her as she thought about him hunting down a creature that had only been acting on instinct, doing what it had to in order to survive. “Regulations state that you need a licence for a start. Do you have a licence?”
She hoped to God he didn’t. While she knew that maintaining the population of predators was important, she never had been able to stomach trophy hunting, and he sounded as if he was talking about taking out more than just one cat.
“I didn’t say I was going to shoot them.” Lowe set her down just long enough to open the door to the cabin and picked her up again, carried her inside without removing his boots.
She stared at the trail of snow he left in his wake as he banked right, sweeping between an old dark blue couch and the small kitchen that faced the deck. He carefully carried her up a set of winding wooden stairs. A window came into view and she looked out of it, trying to see the bear, hoping it was gone, scared away by Lowe approaching it. She couldn’t see far enough to the right to spot whether it had gone.
Lowe gently set her down on the double bed that took up a lot of the loft bedroom and eased back from her. “Stay here. I’ll be back before you know it.”
She lunged for his hand and grabbed it, stopping him from leaving.
When he looked back at her, she offered her bear spray. “At least take this.”
He curled a lip at the red canister. “I don’t need it. The bear is in no condition to fight.”
She didn’t believe that for a second. Wounded animals were dangerous, liable to attack anyone who approached them. She stared up at him, a tight feeling growing in her chest as she thought about him out there with the bear. Sickness brewed as she searched his eyes, hoping he wasn’t one of those men who thought they could befriend wild animals. She knew all the tales of men who had thought that, who had tried to live with bears as if they were pets, and all of them ended badly.
“What’s that look for?” His expression softened and he eased to a crouch before her. “Worried about me?”
“Worried you’re one of those crazy folks who think befriending bears is going to end well for them.” She couldn’t stop herself from saying that, needed to hear him say that he wasn’t and she was overreacting.
He chuckled, lifted his gloved hand and frowned at it. He pulled his gloves off and brushed his fingers across her cheek.
“You don’t have to worry about me. I’m not the crazy one, remember? I’ll just run the bear off.” He swept his fingers lower, his touch like black magic, soothing her. Or maybe that was his words at work and that earnest look in his eyes that made her feel he hated upsetting her. He stood and turned away from her. “The bear is probably dead anyway. You saw all the blood.”
She had. There had been so much of it. She had come across plenty of dead animals in the past, and the brutality of some of the scenes had stayed with her, but she had never seen as much blood as what was out there painting the snow crimson.
Something crossed his face and he hurried down to the ground floor of the cabin. For a moment, she thought he was going to leave, but then she heard him opening and closing cupboards and muttering. He appeared with several colourful bags tucked in his arm and dumped them on the bed.
“To take the edge off.” He cast her a smile and she wanted to pick him up on the fact he thought she needed half a dozen bags of chips to merely take the edge off her hunger. He didn’t give her a chance. He gave her another serious look. “I’ll be back to make something better. Just stay inside, get some rest.”