Secrets of the Heart

Chapter 16: The Rescue

Callan had run crisis teams on four continents. He had once rerouted an entire bridge crew around a mudslide in the Andes with a satellite phone and a paper map. He knew how to make a plan in forty minutes.

He had never had to make one in snowshoes.

They ran. Or at least they tried to, crashing through knee-deep powder like two very determined moose, Lila laughing and swearing in equal measure. By the time they burst through the back door into Bev's kitchen, they were both soaked to the thighs and gasping.

Bev looked up from her crossword. Took one look at their faces.

"Let me guess," she said. "Somebody's coming."

"My brother," Lila panted. "Thirty-five minutes."

Bev set down her pen. "Room four's got drywall dust and no curtains, but the bed's real," she said. "Go."

It was, Callan would think later, the most efficient thing he and Lila had ever done together, and possibly the most efficient thing anyone had ever done in that lodge.

They split up without discussing it. She took the bridal suite. He took room four.

Room four was down the hall, half-renovated, with a plastic drop cloth over the dresser and a smell of fresh paint. He yanked the sheets back on the bed and punched the pillows until it looked slept in, not neatly, the way Lila actually slept, all kicked-off covers and one pillow on the floor. He carried her overnight bag down from the suite and dropped it on the chair, unzipped, with a sweater spilling out. He set her phone charger on the nightstand, then remembered her phone had supposedly died for lack of one, and shoved it back into the bag.

When he got back to the suite, Lila was making the four-poster bed.

Not just making it. She was making it the way she probably made the beds in every bridal suite she'd ever staged: hospital corners, pillows karate-chopped in the middle, the throw blanket folded in a precise diagonal across the foot. Her bra was gone from the armchair. One of the coffee cups was gone. The two chairs they'd pulled together by the fire had been pushed back to opposite sides of the hearth, exactly symmetrical.

"Toothbrush," she said, without looking up.

He grabbed his toothbrush from the bathroom. "Anything else?"

"The fire." She straightened, scanning the room like a general reviewing troops. "Would someone who slept in room four have lit a fire in here?"

"Bev would have. To keep the pipes warm."

"Good. Bev lit it." She took a breath. "How long?"

He checked his phone. "Eleven minutes."

They looked at each other across the perfect, empty bed. Her hair was wet with melted snow. Her cheeks were flushed pink from running. She had never looked more beautiful, and he had never wanted so badly to be anywhere else.

"We're good at this," she said quietly. It didn't sound like a compliment.

"Yeah," he said. "We are."

Then they heard it: the low, distant grind of a big diesel engine laboring up the switchbacks below the lodge.

Danny's truck roared into the parking lot nine minutes later, a lifted red F-250 with chains on all four tires, snow spraying out behind it like a parade float.

Jake was out before it had fully stopped. He came through the front door stamping snow off his boots, shook Bev's hand, and swept Lila into a bear hug that lifted her off her feet.

"You scared Mom half to death," he said into her hair. "She was this close to calling search and rescue. And I'm pretty sure she'd have made them listen."

"I'm fine, Jake. I'm a grown woman. I've been snowed in before."

"Not on my watch." He set her down and turned to Callan, clasping his hand and pulling him in for a back-slapping hug. "Thanks for looking after her, man."

Callan made himself hug him back. "Of course."

"Where's Tessa?" Lila asked.

"Home. Sick again." Jake's face flickered with worry, then cleared. "Some bug that won't quit. She said you two could handle yourselves, but I wasn't about to leave you up here." He spun in a slow circle, taking in the great room for the first time: the soaring timber ceiling, the stone fireplace, the wall of windows full of snow-heavy pines. His face lit up like a kid's. "Oh, man. Lil. This is it. This is the place."

"I told you," she said.

"You undersold it." He turned to Bev. "Can I see the room? The bridal suite? I gotta see where the magic's gonna happen."

The room went very quiet.

"Of course," Bev said, without missing a beat. "Right this way."

They all trooped up the stairs together. Callan felt like he was walking to his own sentencing.

Jake stopped in the doorway of the suite and let out a low whistle. Then he crossed the room in three strides and flopped backward onto the four-poster bed, arms spread wide, wrecking every one of Lila's hospital corners in a single second.

"Tessa's going to lose her mind," he said to the canopy. "Is that a fireplace? In the bedroom?"

"Bev lit it this morning," Lila said. "For the pipes."

"Bev, you're a saint."

"I know," Bev said.

Jake sat up, beaming, looking around the room as if he were memorizing it. His eyes passed over the window seat. The symmetrical chairs. The nightstand.

And stopped.

"Cal." He reached over and picked something up. Something heavy and silver that caught the firelight. "Isn't this your watch?"

Callan's heart stopped completely.

He'd taken it off last night. Late. On the nightstand. Right where his hand had been when Lila had pulled him down beside her. He had forgotten it existed. He had forgotten everything existed.

Jake was holding it up, frowning. Not suspicious. Just puzzled.

And Callan, who had talked his way through hostile board meetings and government ministers and a gun-wielding checkpoint guard in a country he'd promised Priya he'd never mention, could not think of a single word.

"Oh, that's my fault," Bev said.

Everyone turned.

"The flue in here sticks something awful." Bev shook her head in disgust. "I dragged your engineer friend up here last night to look at it, and he had to reach halfway up the chimney to get the damper open. Took his watch off so he wouldn't scratch it on the brick." She looked at Callan with mild reproach. "Told you you'd forget it."

Jake burst out laughing. "You fixed a chimney on your night off? Of course you did." He tossed the watch across the room.

Callan caught it without thinking. It was warm from Jake's hand.

"Thanks, Bev," he heard himself say. "I'd have been looking for that for a week."

Behind Jake's back, Bev met his eyes. Her expression didn't change at all.

Jake insisted that Lila ride down with him and Danny. "I'm not letting my sister go down that canyon without chains," he said, and that was the end of the discussion. So Callan followed alone in his truck, five car lengths back, watching the red taillights of the F-250 wind down through the white canyon ahead of him.

He could see the back of Lila's head through the rear window, in the middle of the back seat. She didn't turn around. He knew she wouldn't.

He thought about the cinnamon rolls. The frozen pond. The elk tracks. An hour ago, he'd been happier than he could remember being in years. Now he was following his brother down a mountain with a lie in his mouth and a watch on his wrist that felt like it weighed fifty pounds.

He was halfway down, where the canyon opened up and the sun hit the snow hard enough to hurt, when his phone rang through the truck speakers.

Not Jake. Not Lila. A number he'd saved months ago from a group text about Jake's birthday, and never once used.

Tessa.

He let it ring three times. Then he answered.

"Callan, hi!" Her voice was bright and warm, with just a thread of hoarseness underneath, as if she really had been sick. "Jake said you two got snowed in up there. I'm so glad you're both okay."

"Thanks. We're fine. Just heading down now."

"Good. I was worried." A pause. "I actually called the lodge this morning, early. Before Jake was even up. To make sure you two were safe."

The road curved. Callan's hands tightened on the wheel.

"That was thoughtful of you," he said.

"Bev's lovely, isn't she? She said you were both tucked in nice and warm." Tessa's voice stayed exactly as light and sweet as before. "She said the bridal suite was the only room in the whole lodge that was finished."

The red taillights ahead of him blurred for a second.

"Funny," Tessa said softly. "Jake told me there were two rooms."

Callan said nothing. He couldn't have spoken if he'd tried.

"Anyway," she said, brightening again. "Drive safe, Callan. The roads can be so dangerous this time of year."

The line went dead.