Page 37 of Wild Child
“When did you become such a wuss in the cold?”
She sent me a casual glare, and I laughed again. Her faked annoyance faded into a smile of her own.
"I'm just teasing. You're killing it, Ellie. You're doing a great job up here."
"Thanks." She sank her teeth into her bottom lip, then shook her head, as if to get out of her own thoughts. "I . . . I really want this."
"You'll get it. Do you need a long-sleeved shirt?" I asked. "You can borrow one of mine. You look cold."
For a half a second, I could have sworn she considered the offer, but then she shook her head. "No, thanks. I have my own. I'm not all that cold."
A sound from behind us drew her gaze back and she sighed. "I should go check on Kimball."
I straightened up, righting the tubing that had twisted up between the filtered bags. The water was cool in the bladder, and I couldn't wait to drink it. Everything tasted better up here.
"I'll get a fire ring going," I said.
"Thanks."
She hesitated, then started back toward the tents. I watched her go, unnerved by a pair of eyes that peered out of a small pup tent across the meadow. Kimball looked up, saw me watching him as he studied Ellie, and disappeared inside with a little wave.
* * *
"So," Kimball drawled. "About that map?"
Firelight flickered on Ellie's face that evening as she looked up from an empty rehydrated meal package. She tossed it onto the fire, and the edge of the package curled on itself. White formed around the edges as they shrank and collapsed in. Lines of crimson flared beneath it on the coal bed.
"You want to see where we are?" she asked.
"Can I show you the meadow that a haunted cabin is supposedly located in?" He scooted closer to her on a fallen log that doubled as a bench. "Maybe it's not too far away from where we are now."
"You saw it on a map?" I asked.
Kimball didn't look my way. "Yeah, the guy showed it to me."
"And you'll remember?" Ellie asked. "Maps are complicated, especially the mountains. We may not look at the same map."
"Sure." He shrugged. "How hard can it be?"
Ellie refrained from commenting, and only her professional career kept me from laughing out loud.
"What was the story behind this cabin again?" I asked and eyed his closing proximity to Ellie. He kept a short inch or so between them and I had to physically calm the rising hair on the back of my neck.
"A guy died there," Kimball said. "Said it had buried treasure."
My neck tightened. Buried treasure? That's not what the story had been the first time he mentioned it at the beginning of the hike. Steve's gaze flickered to Kimball, then away. So, he caught Kimball's blunder as well. Interesting. I poured water into a tin bowl and used the pad of my thumb to wipe residual rice and teriyaki chicken off the sides.
"Oh, right." I cleared my throat. "I thought you said it was haunted."
Kimball paused. "Oh. Yeah. That too. You know, the ghost guards the treasure. The same old story."
Ellie rummaged through her backpack on the other side of her log, then extracted a folded map. Overhead, stars popped out of an impressive sky. Steve finished eating his second rehydrated meal and tossed the bag into the flames. For all their weird tensions earlier, Kimball was eager to pitch food Steve's way.
Ellie swallowed a bite of her protein bar as she unfolded the map. After a few moments perusal, she tapped on one spot. "We are right here."
Kimball's obsession with this cabin had been weird this morning, but now that he was lying about something, it was my business. I finished wiping the bowl down with my fingers, tossed the water away, stood up, and sat next to Ellie on her other side. Kimball glanced up, but didn't meet my gaze.
"Here's Pineville." A subtle sense of hesitation lingered in her voice. Ellie tapped the map, then drew her finger along a canyon road, through a mountain, and into a very small meadow where we lingered. "This is where we came today."
