Page 6 of Burning Secrets

“Maybe. Take that end. Let’s lift him.”

He grabbed the animal and helped her lift him onto the back of the four-wheeler. Secured him with a couple bungie ropes, the math of her words freezing him through.

The food supply.

Oh no. But it made sense?—

She’d stepped away from the four-wheeler, pulled out a monocular, and now scanned the riverbed.

“What are you looking for?”

“The pups. And his alpha female, Cleo.” She sighed, turned. “You haven’t seen anything…like dead salmon in the river, have you?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

And the answer, of course, was yes. Oh no,yes.

He wanted to hit something.

“Just…nothing.” She frowned. Eyed his four-wheeler again, then looked at him, her jaw tight. And he didn’t know why, but he had the strangest urge to raise his hands again.

Silence thrummed between them, backdropped by the river rushing by, the hush lifting into the breeze.

“Who are you again?” she asked.

And for a second, he was back on the cliff, twenty minutes before he’d taken the shot, waiting for Rio to text him. Staring at the blue sky, the clouds congregating at the peak of the Denali massif. Surveying the vast green of the aspen and Sitka spruce, the craggy gray of the jutting mountains, the wildflower beauty of the valley. Even smelling the crisp, boreal-scented wind and hearing his own voice.

Lord, I need light. I need hope. I need answers.

I need out.

And maybe that’s why he looked at her, took a breath, and said the first true thing he’d said in over a year. “My name is Michael Crew Sterling. And I promise you, I’m one of the good guys.” He stuck out his hand. “You can call me Crew.”

She considered him a moment. A long, fragile moment where his hand sort of hung in the wind.

Then she sighed and took it. “I’m going to choose to trust you, Crew. Joann Butcher. My friends call me JoJo.”

“Are we friends, then?”

Her mouth pinched. “As long as you don’t try and kill me.”

His mouth quirked. “Not real high standards, then. I think I have a real chance here.”

She frowned, and then just like that, laughed. It emerged light and sweet and maybe a little short, but with it, light simply poured into his soul, swept out his breath.

He stared at her, nearly clutched his chest.

Yes, he wanted out, and now.

“Let’s get going so I can get back and figure out if his pups are in trouble.”

Oh.

He climbed onto the four-wheeler. Moved his foot so she could climb up behind him, her legs around his, her body against his back.

“Hang on,” he said. “It’s bumpy.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said, and gripped the side handles on the seat.

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