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“Sure.” Umi was already reaching for her phone. “You’re going back out? Take a kit and radio.” She nodded at the first aid room where go-bags were kept prepared for emergencies like this.
“Is Logan—?” He nodded at Reid’s office.
“Yep.” Umi nodded and identified herself to whoever had answered her call.
As Trystan walked into Reid’s office, he had Storm in one arm, the backpack dangling off the other.
Logan was on the phone and frowned at the way Storm was bellyaching. He motioned at his call.
Trystan dropped the backpack and cut an urgent line across his own neck.
“No, that’s my brother crying,” Logan joked into the phone. “Lemme see what he wants. I’ll get right back to you.” He hung up and scolded, “Dude.”
“Cloe’s hurt. I have to get back to her.” Trystan passed Storm across the desk to him. “She’s wet, hungry, and fully charged on naps so yeah, I owe you.”
“Shit.” Logan took Storm, but kept frowning at Trystan. “You left Cloe out there by herself?”
“Didn’t have a choice.” Trystan nodded at the baby, who grabbed a handful of Logan’s collar and tried to eat it. “Cloe’s at the bottom of Pick-Up-Sticks Falls.” He grabbed a pen and made an X on the map on the wall. “Umi’s organizing an extraction from Caution Cove.” He gave that a little X, too. “I’m taking the company truck to the airport.”
“Keys are in it.”
It would only shave a few minutes, but Trystan was feeling really guilty about leaving Cloe alone out there. He had rejected her, then abandoned her to fend for herself. She was probably slotting him next to Ivan under the heading of Men Who Don’t Deserve Me.
“I’m taking a radio. I’ll let you know when I’m back with her.”
“Be careful.”
Trystan nodded and walked back to Umi’s office for the supplies.
“There are crutches in there, too,” she reminded him.
He nodded and left a moment later, slipping past Reid’s office where he could hear Logan talking calmly over Storm’s cries.
“…know you’re starving, but you stink so we’re dealing with that first.”
*
Was the nexthowl closer? The same? Farther away? It was impossible to tell.
It wasn’there, Cloe reassured herself. That emboldened her to spend a few minutes gathering more firewood—half of which she had discovered only smoldered because it was wet, but she figured the smoke was a good signal to animals that they should stay away so she shifted herself out of the cloud as necessary.
When she tired of hopping around, she bunched the emergency tent around her middle like a sleeping bag. It was thin as tinfoil, so it didn’t cushion her seat on the rocks, or her back where she leaned against the log, but it was better than bare legs.
She did a careful inventory of everything she had, portioning out how to make her food last for two extra days if she had to. She would wait until dark to eat anything else. She would know by then if Trystan was really coming back or not.
Was he?
I’m sorry, Storm, but your auntie got eaten by a wolf. It was kind of my fault, but it was convenient for the rest of us that she just disappeared.
Trystan wasn’t like that, she scolded herself. None of them were. Maybe they didn’t really like her, but they didn’t hate her enough to kill her.
She was pretty sure.
She tried to calculate when to expect him. They had left Raven’s Cove around nine this morning, which had them eating lunch in the cove around noon. They had been there an hour or so and walking this far had probably been another hour so he’d left her around two or two thirty?
What time was it now? Four o’clock? Five?
The gray sky gave her no sun to watch. She had the sense that the afternoon was turning to evening, though. Her stomach was no longer satisfied with two cups of reconstituted soup. It told her it was dinner hour and she had expended a lot of calories today. A steak and loaded baked potato would be amazing, thank you.
