Pete picked up on the second ring. “’Sup?”
Sam held out his hand for Gus’s keys. Good boy, he handed them over.
Sam only took a quick breath, skipping right over the past, into the present. No, the future, to the truth. “Pete, get the tranq gun and meet me at the pit. I need you, bro.”
“We should run.”
Quinn spoke quietly in Willow’s ear, his voice so muffled she almost didn’t hear it.
Or maybe she’d simply thought it. Because as the sun began to set, she did the math. Once the sun went completely to bed, darkness would descend.
They’d have no idea where the bear would be. Make that bears, plural, because right behind Mama Grizzly, with the silver mane and the gray-black jowls, lingered two cubs about six months old.
Not a small grizzly, either. Maybe four hundred pounds, the size of a buffalo. Her powerful limbs had ripped apart a downed tree, and she was rooting through the log for insects.
The cubs dove in, ate their fill, then lay in the middle of the path, out for a lazy sunning.
Quinn hunkered down next to Willow, who was hidden in the brush and looking for a nearby tree to climb. He’d dropped his phone on the path, and every time it vibrated, a thread of terror tightened around Willow.
So far, the animal hadn’t come over to investigate, but as it moved toward them up the trail, she prayed the battery would die.
The cell phone ringing did press into her brain one thought.
Sam.
Nothing else but that emerged, and even as she pulled out her phone and dialed his number, she had to roll her eyes at the sheer absurdity of calling Sam to her aid, again.
Certainly she was the last person he’d want to hear from.
Except, he was a rescuer—and even if he didn’t love her, he’d show up.
“I know I hurt you, and I’m so sorry, I’ll never do it again . . .”
She barely registered his words until after she’d hung up the phone, after he’d said the most important part.
“Don’t move. I’m coming to you.”
How she wanted to believe that it wasn’t just his heroism that ignited those words.
But she’d gladly take just heroism at the moment.
She watched through the foliage as the bear wandered past them, stopped for a moment at the overlook, then moved up the trail. Mud matted its fur, and she could smell the rank odor of feces and rot and not a little blood. It wore a jagged scar on its shoulder, which was infected and seeping.
Willow covered her nose to keep herself from gagging.
“It’s moving up the trail. If we don’t go now, we’ll be stuck here all night.” Quinn started to move, but she grabbed his shirt.
He looked back at her, his eyes wide, probably from fear but also the adrenaline pulsing in his veins. She felt it too, the bolt impulse.
Especially since the animal and the cubs had moved past them, maybe kept going.
Except: “Don’t move.”
She couldn’t get Sam’s words, his soft, solid voice, out of her head.
No, not Sam. Because the words went deeper, into her bones, resounding through her.
Be still.
Yes, there it was again, finding her heart, her soul.
That was her problem, wasn’t it? She just couldn’t . . . wait. Couldn’t curb her fear that no one would want to rescue her. So she jumped out ahead, on her own. Saving herself.
Quinn edged forward, his breath shallow.
Be still.
She put her hand on Quinn’s back. “Shh.”
Quinn hunkered down next to her, his voice low. “We need to go now, before we lose the light. With the bear and her cubs behind us, we can outrun—”
“No.”
“Willow.”
“We’re staying.” She pitched her voice as low as she could make it. “First, now we’re upwind, so if we go out there, we’re going to smell like a piece of pizza that’s been sitting under the warmers. Second, bears can run something like forty miles an hour. I’m not sure about you, but I can’t top a seven-minute mile.”
The old saying about not being able to outrun a bear as long as you could outrun the person behind you flickered through her mind.
Yeah, well, she’d be bear bait.
“Run if you want, but I’m not leaving. As your former youth leader, I don’t want to see you become a tasty snack. Stay here. Sam is on his way.”
“That was fifteen minutes ago.”
“He’ll be here.”
She pressed her head into the forest floor.
Be still.
She counted her heartbeat, forcing herself not to panic, even when she heard the rooting of the bear, a low growl, way too close.
Quinn hadn’t moved, but he’d begun to tremble.
“Quinn,” she whispered. “We’re going to live through this. You’re going to give Bella the necklace and tell her that you love her. Then you’ll find your dad and thank him for offering you a decent education.”