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Like going after her.
Bracing my boot on the wood, I wiggle the axe head free and take a moment to catch my breath and turn my face up to the cooling rain.
The same soft movement I’ve heard in the perimeter of the clearing all day starts again.
Gray isn’t even trying to be stealthy today.
He steered clear of me for the first few days after his almost-attack on Callista and has finally grown bold enough to test me out to see if he’s been forgiven.
I ignore him.
Partially because I’m not over what he almost did to her that night but mostly because I have something more important to worry about—what is happening to Callista now.
Worry eats away at me, the pain of it making me wince as I return to my task, trying to push it away long enough to regain control of myself.
I swing the axe again, and woodchips fly with each strike. It only takes a few more before I finally make it through, then kick the piece off to the side with the others.
With the shed already more than stocked, all the work I’ve been doing has produced so much excess wood—both for fire and construction purposes—that I won’t have to touch another tree on this mountain for months.
Unless she doesn’t come back…
If that happens, I may down every single one on this peak out of sheer fury.
Where are you, Callista?
I glance at my watch again, confirming what my biological clock and the darkening night have already told me.
She’s officially late.
Well beyond the time we agreed upon for her return.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I grimace, letting my axe fall to the ground so I can pull it out and check the message. Likely another asking about the status of the surveillance equipment.
There are only so many excuses I can make for its continued “malfunctioning,” so many lies I can tell before they won’t work anymore.
Another complication to add to Callista’s non-arrival.
I read the screen, and my legs almost give out from under me. Staggering forward, I lower myself onto the remnants of the tree trunk I’ve been destroying and reread the words, hoping I got them wrong.
You shouldn’t have let her go.
“No. No. No. No. No.”
Shoving to my feet, my boots slip in the growing mud from the increased rain, and I only make it a few steps before I have to stop to think, my head spinning with the different possibilities.
I’ve failed.
Her absence has been noted.
But that doesn’t mean I need to panic…yet.
Taking a deep breath, I fire off a reply that I hope buys me time to get her back to the mountain.
She’ll be back.
That’s what she told me.
What she promised.
