“Sure is,” he laughed. “That’s why I thought I’d better get out here while I have the chance. Not every day that good weather coincides with a day off work.”
“I’m kind of surprised,” Lorna said, walking along the side of the path so that he could take the most even part of the ground. “I thought there would be a lot of folks out today. Trail’s quiet.”
“Most people are at home, I guess,” he said, indicating the town in the distance. From a few of the nearer points, it was possible to make out thin trails of black smoke. “Cooking up a storm on the grill.”
Lorna nodded, shading her eyes to look over toward the town. “You’re right,” she said. “I didn’t even think of that.” She didn’t add the reason why: that she was single, of course, and didn’t have a whole lot of family to spend time with. Hiking was her thing all over: quiet, solitude, time to think.
Mind you, sharing it with someone else was turning out not to be so bad, after all.
“Personally, I’d rather be out on the trails any day,” he said. When she looked back at him, lagging just behind her steps, he smiled with a twinkle in his eye. “I’ve got no girl to go home to, so I spend as much time as I can out in the open air. I live a couple of towns over. That’s why I’m not usually around here.”
“Oh, yeah?” Lorna asked, her mind working. He was single, local, and undeniably attractive. This was shaping up to be quite the opportune meeting. She just wondered how she would broach the subject. Maybe she should wait for him to bring it up first, or casually mention something about showing him the trails if he wanted to try them again.
“Hey, maybe you could show me around here sometime,” he said, making her heart quicken. “Would that be all right? I mean, once my ankle’s strong again.”
“Sure,” she said. She didn’t dare look around at him, in case he saw the pink color high in her cheeks. “I’d like that.”
“I’m sure glad we met up today, Lorna,” he said, and she wholeheartedly agreed with the sentiment.
Then missed a step, realizing that he had said her name.
When had she told him her name?
She opened her mouth to ask if they’d met somewhere before, because how else could he know who she was? But even as she did so and began to turn to face him, something solid connected with the back of her head, right in a painful spot that seemed to rock her brain against her skull.
Lorna opened her eyes to find that she was on the ground, even though she had only blinked. There was a sharp pain ricocheting through her head, and as she groggily reached up to check for blood, she caught sight of him. Standing over her now, all trace of the favored ankle now gone. He was straight and tall, his posture strong, unyielding. There was a leather blackjack hanging from his left hand, which she dimly understood must have been the source of the pain in her head.
“Wha…?” she tried to ask. She was sleepy, despite the pain, and everything seemed as though it was moving through treacle.
“Don’t move,” he told her. His voice was flat and hard now, like a piece of slate.
She didn’t exactly intend to obey him, but on the other hand there was not much else that she could do. Lorna stopped groping through her own hair to find the source of the pain and attempted instead to roll over, a slow process that made her gasp and pause while her brain rocked and pounded.
He came back into her field of view from behind a clump of low bushes. Something else was in his hand now. It was long and glinted in the sun, the gleam of silver. Dimly, trying to fight a wave of nausea as she turned over, Lorna recognized what it must be: a sword of some kind, with a slight curve toward the end of the blade.
“I said,” he growled, coming closer and standing over her, blocking out the sun, “don’t move.”
Lorna looked up. The sun shot rays out from behind his head, leaving his face in black shadow. He raised the machete up, over his head, and moved his feet slightly, like he was finding the right posture. Lorna put one curled fist forward to crawl away, trying to move, to do anything that would help her escape.
There was a swishing sound as the machete came down toward her, and Lorna closed her eyes so that she wouldn’t have to see.
CHAPTER THREE
This is all fine, Zoe reminded herself, looking between Shelley’s laughing face and John’s, pasting a smile on her own to mimic them. Across from her, Harry—Shelley’s husband—was smoothing down his tie, quietly pleased with himself at a joke well told. It was a gesture so like one of John’s that Zoe had to stop herself from doing a double-take. What was it about ties that begged to be smoothed down?
“This was a great idea, Shelley,” John said, raising his glass of wine toward her before taking a sip. He’d picked out yet another blue striped shirt for the dinner date. Zoe had been keeping track of how many he owned, and it seemed to be quite a lot.
“It was,” Harry agreed. “It’s nice to get to know your colleagues a bit better.” He offered a gentle smile to Zoe, as if to let her know that everything was forgiven. Together with his messy brown hair, which always seemed kind of softly wild, it gave him a somewhat genial look.
For her part, Zoe flushed a little, though she returned the smile. Last time she had been invited to have dinner with Harry and Shelley, she had run out of the house in a panic, feeling the weight of Shelley’s perfect life crushing down on her.
But that had been before. Before Dr. Monk had helped her, before she had gained control over the numbers that had colored every moment of her life until then. Before she could ever imagine sitting in a busy restaurant with three other people, with crisscrossing and overlapping conversations, and being able to keep up with it all.
“Your main courses,” the waiter announced, appearing behind Zoe with four plates balanced along his arm and in his hand. There was a general murmur of approval around the table, everyone drawing their hands and elbows back, making way.
Zoe looked down at her plate as it was placed before her, her eyes flicking across the side salad. Counting five leaves of iceberg lettuce, three of romaine, two cherry tomatoes, one quarter of a sliced bell pepper—
She closed her eyes briefly, finding her way to a tranquil beach island with nothing around but the gentle lapping of waves. Under the table, John’s hand found hers and squeezed. Her eyes flew open to fix him with a smile, and she breathed again, putting the numbers back into the background where they belonged. He didn’t even know her secret, and yet he still seemed to instinctively know when she needed comfort.
“It looks delicious,” Zoe said, sneaking a glance at the others’ plates and finding the same.
There were noises of agreement around the table, and clattering as each of them picked up their cutlery and started to dig in. The arrival of the food was both welcome and unwelcome. It provided an excuse not to have to keep up with constant conversation, but also left the table shrouded in silence, something that always made Zoe uncomfortable.
Well, truth be told, she was most comfortable of all when there was silence. But she knew the social expectations of the others, the pressure that would demand the silence to be filled. She looked up anxiously and caught John’s eye, and he grinned at her around his fork. She reached for her glass of wine and took a sip, reassured that this was how things were supposed to be.