“Christan?” Arsen asked. Then they were having some kind of silent communication that bros have and Lexi wasn’t included. Which was fine. She wasn’t interested in talking to either of them. They couldn’t force her to take part in a fake intervention if she didn’t want to, and it wasn’t as if being in the wilderness intimidated her. Lexi had trekked through plenty of empty places while researching locations, and they’d foolishly provided the hiking boots. She was no longer going to wait around feeling helpless.
Lexi decided her first action would be to locate some water. Then she would leave, walk away, and Arsen could explain her disappearance to his good friend Marge—who she would really fire the moment she got home. It occurred to Lexi that she was acting badly. In her own defense, she’d been sitting on the rocky ground for at least an hour with nothing to do but have inane conversations and watch the red ants move bits of grass around. She was entitled to be irritable under the circumstances.
With that justification, Lexi looked at her options. In her experience, backpacks contained water, and there were backpacks right in front of her. It would serve them right if she took matters into her own hands, maybe threw their underwear all over the ground.
Arsen was still in his conversation with Christan, so Lexi saw no reason to question her actions. The first backpack held clothes of the male variety and she tossed it aside. But the second held pay dirt.
It just wasn’t the dirt she’d expected.
There was a file, filled with photos that looked like—was that her cottage?
“Oh, my god!”
“Lexi.”
“Is that my bedroom?” Arsen reached for the photos but Lexi danced out of his reach. “Oh, no, Bucko, you get to explain this. All of this.” She waved them beneath his nose, thinking he could explain the brown grass and red ants as well.
Arsen was stalking toward her but wisely staying beyond her reach. There were photos of her deck, her kitchen, her bathroom... Lexi tossed photo after photo onto the ground because whoever had taken these photos had been following her for a very long time.
Arsen reached for her. “We can explain—"
“I’ll just bet you can.” Lexi wrenched away, hating him. Both of them. Hating Christan a little bit harder and not understanding why. “Just like you can explain me being here when I don’t remember, and why you took my phone.”
“The reason you were running—”
“Oh, so now we’re back to the running?” Were those tears in her eyes? No, she refused to waste that kind of emotion on them.
“Lexi, please, we aren’t trying—”
“The hell you aren’t trying.” Lexi was shaking the last photo in the air as if it was a weapon that would protect her if he attacked. And yelling, yes, lots of yelling.
Her vision was distorting again, too, because now Arsen had that heat wave vibration going on around him. He disappeared at the edges, the way Christan had when he’d pushed aggressively from the rocks.
But none of it was as bad as realizing they’d lied. Why did she feel hurt by that? People always lied.
Lexi closed her eyes. She wanted to be back home in Rock Cove. She wanted to stand beneath the cool fir trees dripping in the rain, listening to her grandmother’s voice as she said, Galaxy, what do you believe? Are you a pinpoint in the vast emptiness, alone in the dark, or are you part of something more?
In the background, two events registered. The first was the sound of car doors opening, then slamming shut, and Lexi opened her eyes to find the source.
The second was Christan as he flicked his hand in her direction.
Lexi landed hard, and face first on the ground.
CHAPTER 5
“Well, that worked out well.”
Lexi didn’t believe “worked out well” adequately rose to the occasion. But she recognized the voice. It belonged to Marge, her former therapist, former best friend and surrogate mother figure. And her biggest betrayer.
Lexi was lying on the ground. She wasn’t able to move and she didn’t know why, other than her arms and legs refused to push her upright. It was a little humiliating when she thought about it. A little bizarre. But Marge seemed to take everything in stride, looking sophisticated and motherly at the same time. The older woman fit the wilderness environment as comfortably as she did the cozy therapy office in Rock Cove. She was tall and blue-eyed and there was a man walking at her side. A tall man, well-built with mink-colored hair, wearing jeans and a black sweater that caressed his shoulders.
Lexi wanted to think about that for a moment, think about why her friend would have lied about having a man in her life.
Lexi thought Marge lived alone; it was one of the reasons they’d bonded, but it was definitely not the reality. The man leaned in, pressed his lips to Marge’s temple, whispered something that made the woman laugh. It was an intimate laugh, the kind of laugh a woman only gave to one man. The sun shifted behind a swift moving little cloud and came out again. Lexi glanced around the empty landscape before looking back at Marge.
The couple approached, the men doing the forearm grab men do when they’re part of the tribe. It took a few moments. Marge was standing to the side wearing a plaid shirt in shades of green with khaki slacks and boots. The sunlight caught in her honey-blond hair, making it shimmer around her shoulders.
“What did you do, Christan?” Marge was looking in Lexi’s direction, while everyone else seemed to be waiting, tense.
“Nothing.”
“You can’t keep putting her on the ground every time you lose an argument.”
“I wasn’t losing.”
“Well, you still can’t do it, it’s considered abusive now. Go on, let her up.”
The predator tipped his head arrogantly, widened his stance and crossed his arms against his chest. His expression hardened. The breeze skittered and gritty bits of sand drifted in the air before Arsen moved his hand. The pressure holding Lexi eased. Christan waited until she was on her hands and knees and then flicked his hand again. She went down. Hard. Marge looked at Christan and her eyebrow flicked up.
“What are you, three years old? Let her up, Christan.”
He did nothing. Marge’s expression could have brought a grown man to his knees, if that man had been so inclined. Christan obviously wasn’t inclined. Marge blew out an irritated breath.
“Please,” she said after a moment. “Robbie needs to set up the canopy and I want it overlooking the river.” Then, as if a bribe would work when intimidation hadn’t, she added, “He has cold beer.”
Marge turned, waving a hand toward the black vehicle, and the conversation ended unless they were doing the silent communication again. Lexi watched with growing indignation as the group moved away. Christan could damn well come back and let her up because she wanted the sand out of her mouth. And the ants. They were beginning to concern her. She wondered if they knew she’d murdered one of their own.
But more than that, she wanted to know what the hell was going on, especially with the hand flicky thing Christan used to put her on the ground. She squeezed her eyes closed and then opened them. Men began carrying a small table and chairs to the hill Marge had chosen for her last stand. A white canopy went up, stakes pounded into the ground with rhythmic thuds—a medieval pavilion where the lords and ladies came to enjoy the carnage. All that was missing were the bright streamers and men on stomping horses.
Christan had moved back into her range of vision but there was no sense of relief. The man was arrogant. When he walked past without even acknowledging her, the wave of remembered loneliness was crushing.
You’re old enough to understand, Galaxy, her mother had said as she’d walked away. Their last conversation, probably the only truthful conversation they’d ever had. Her mother wanted a life and there’d been no room for a child. It was better that way, the way it ended, with a child and a stuffed bear and a mother disappearing in the mist.
It taught Lexi an insight she appreciated to this day. Life was limited in what the heart could absorb. Most hearts overflowed with the crap people drug around, so there wasn’t any point trying to get in if there wasn’t any room.