Page 10 of Tamhas

4

Keira

It was absolutely gorgeous. Like, take my breath away gorgeous.

New York was beautiful, no doubt about it. I’d spent most of my childhood and adolescence on the other side of the river and had passed more nights than I could count gazing out the window of whichever foster home I was in at the time, staring at the city skyline.

Wishing I could be there.

Emelie and I had made a pact at a young age, promising ourselves and each other that we’d make lives for ourselves over there one day. On the other side of the river. It might as well have been Oz, it was so magical and mystical.

We’d made it over the river, all right, but neither of us could come close to affording Manhattan rent. Emelie’s nameless, faceless clients paid out the nose for the work she did, and I was more than comfortable, but the two of us could only afford Brooklyn—and even then, the real estate market was much tougher there than in much of the rest of the country.

I tried to remember the most beautiful the city had ever looked to me. Probably one night during a snowfall when I was around thirteen years old. I’d only been able to get a good look at the skyline from the tiny bathroom window, over the toilet. I’d stood on the closed lid for hours and just stared out as the snow fell, creating a sort of fog which the lights of the many skyscrapers had shone through.

Even then, nothing I’d seen came close to mountains of Scotland—specifically, those outside of Edinburgh.

I parked my rental car on the side of the road, as close as I could get to the mountain I was looking for without actually driving through the woods. It would be roughly an hour of hiking after that point. In the back of the car was a pack with water, protein bars, a flashlight just in case I ran late and wasn’t able to make it back to the car before sunset.

Seeing as how it was only ten in the morning, however, I didn’t think that would be a problem. But it was never a bad idea to be prepared.

Was I really doing this? I hadn’t wanted to admit it to Emelie at the time, but she was right: this wasn’t like me at all. I took my training seriously, I took my work with Hank seriously, not to mention bounty hunting whenever I got the chance.

I wasn’t the girl who picked up and went off to Edinburgh, for God’s sake. I didn’t hike in unknown woods all by myself, either. And even if I did any of these things, I sure as hell didn’t do them for the sake of finding a man who was a virtual stranger—who I was not getting paid to find, anyway.

Even so, I put one foot in front of the other. Again. And again. Soon, I was well into the woods and couldn’t see the rental car when I looked over my shoulder. Driving on the other side of the road was quite the challenge. I wouldn’t be taking any unnecessary road trips, that was for sure. As it was, I felt lucky to have made it to the woods alive.

I recognized as I walked how much life in the city afforded me—and what it didn’t. Sure, there were parks here and there, and they were pretty, but there was nothing like the majesty which spread out all around me as I hiked. Towering trees that seemed to touch the sky. Instead of music pouring out of car windows and the open doors of bodegas, the singing of birds combined with the running of squirrels and the babbling of a winding brook to create a music, unlike anything I’d ever heard.

It took me a minute to come back to my senses. A city girl could get lost in woods that thick if she didn’t pay attention. I checked my compass against the direction the map told me to take before I started up again, pulling a water bottle from my pack as I walked.

If Tamhas lived around here, among this, lucky him. No wonder he seemed so removed from the world, so untouched by it. Sure, the only face-to-face talking we’d ever done was via Skype. It wasn’t like he lived in a complete tech bubble.

But he seemed to come from a different time, even if he was using technology nobody had heard of even when I was a kid. Certain words he’d use, the way he put a sentence together. It felt like talking to a character out of an old historical movie.

I guessed that was what drew me to him even more than the physical. We hadn’t seen each other for a long time, well into our weird little friendship. I’d only had his emails and the occasional chat to go by before we suggested to use our webcams.

God, my heart had raced just before the first call connected. What if he didn’t like me, and all that. Months of chatting about just about everything under the sun had left me feeling sort of attached. I’d look forward to hearing from him.

Eventually, I’d started checking my email first thing, right after opening my eyes every morning. If there wasn’t one, it would sort of bring down the morning—until I heard from him. It wouldn’t even have to be all that much, just a quick note to let me know he was thinking of me and hoped I had a good day.

And it would be a good day after that.

If he hadn’t liked what he saw during that first video chat, I would’ve seen it right away. I had always been able to read people without trying. And it would’ve crushed me.

That was why it mattered so much that I find out why he’d disappeared. It wasn’t like me to fall for a man I’d never met in person, so I wouldn’t have admitted it even to Emelie. But that was why. If he’d gone out of his way just to let me know he was thinking about me every single day, why would he suddenly stop?

She didn’t know him as I did. Or like I thought I did.

I sighed, looking around with my hands on my hips and a frown on my face. I was starting to get sweaty. I looked up over the tops of the trees, looking for the arrowhead mountain peak. Where the hell was it? It should’ve stood out over everything else.

Or was I losing track of things? A very good chance of that. I pulled the map from the pack and sat down, intent on finding exactly where I was and how to keep going. The last thing I needed was to make myself even more lost.

According to my compass, I was heading in the right direction. The GPS was back in the car, but judging from what it told me, I was due to hike north. I was still moving north. I’d been hiking forever, but I still hadn’t reached the mountain.

This was all a big mistake. I was more positive of it than ever. I should never have come.

Life went on around me in the woods. I had half a mind to tell the birds to shut up with their singing—they were making it so I could hardly hear myself think. It was practically dusk in the forest, under the trees, with just a little light coming through gaps in the branches. I cooled off pretty quickly thanks to that.

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