Backcountry Escape
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Nicole Helm
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21
Chapter One
Felicity Harrison had learned two things since coming to live with Duke and Eva Knight when she’d been just four years old, with a broken arm and black eye courtesy of her father.
First, she loved the outdoors. She could hike for days and sleep under the stars every night given the chance. Didn’t matter the season or the weather. In her mind the winds of the South Dakota Badlands had made her, and she was part of that stark, awe-inspiring landscape.
The second thing had taken her a little longer to figure out, but once she’d hit puberty she’d been sure.
She was desperately, irrevocably in love with Brady Wyatt.
Despite the fact she was nearing thirty and he’d never shown any interest in her that he didn’t show all of her foster sisters, Felicity hadn’t fully given up on the prospect that Brady might notice her at some point.
It was possible. She had made changes in her life the past few years. Between her epic shyness and intermittent stutter, high school and college had been a bit of a disaster but she’d found her passion in parks and recreation—as much as people would laugh at her zeal for nature.
In finding her passion at an early age, and making it her career, parks and rec had ended up being the thing that gave her some confidence. The drive to succeed had helped—or maybe forced—her to overcome some of her issues and bumps in the road.
After years of seasonal work in the national park system, she’d finally landed her dream job as a park ranger at Badlands National Park, her home. The job had been hard and challenging, and it had changed her.
She wasn’t the same Felicity she’d been.
Brady hadn’t noticed yet because he was so busy. Being a police officer and EMT in Valiant County took up a lot of his time. Plus, he lived a good hour away and spent free time at his grandmother’s ranch even farther out.
She just needed the opportunity to show him who she’d become, and surely he’d fall for her the way she’d fallen for him all those years ago.
She daydreamed about that opportunity while she took her normal morning hike. Summer was inching its way into the mornings so she didn’t need her park jacket over her sweatshirt. It was her favorite time of year, and that put a smile on her face and pep in her step.
The sky was a moody gray. Likely they’d have storms by afternoon, but she imagined the sky was a bright summer blue and Brady was hiking with her. He’d hold her hand and they’d talk about what birds they were hearing.
Her fantasies about Brady were always just like that. Soft, sweet, relaxing. Brady was steady. Calm. His five brothers were wilder or edgier, even Jamison. As the oldest, Jamison was serious, and seriously noble, but there was a sharpness to him that had taken Felicity time to grow accustomed to.
But Brady? He was even-keeled. He didn’t shout or swear. He believed in right and wrong, and he appreciated the importance of his duties as an EMT. He took care of people. Healed people.
Calm and good and healing were definitely things she wanted in her life.
She was so caught up in her fantasy she almost tripped over the boot in the middle of the path.
She regained her footing and looked down at the brown boot. It was unlaced, and the soles were caked with dirt.
Felicity stared at it as the slow roll of cold shock spread out through her body. For a second her vision blurred and sound disappeared. She couldn’t suck in a breath. She could only stand and look at the boot.
She’d seen this before, done this before. It was happening again.
No.
Her mind rejected the possibility and she managed to breathe in, let it slowly out. It was just a boot. People lost weird things on the trail all the time. Maybe it had gotten too heavy. Maybe it was broken.
There were a million reasons. A million. Besides, it wasn’t even the same kind of boot as...the last time. This one was clearly a woman’s, if the bright pink laces were anything to go by. It was an accident. A coincidence.
You have to check.
She nodded to herself as if that would make her move. Make this okay. As if she could will away all the similarities to last year.
There wouldn’t be a body this time. Couldn’t be.
Just keep walking.
You can’t just keep walking!
Her mind turned over and over, reminding herself of a Felicity she didn’t like very much. She stepped purposefully away from the boot. It wouldn’t be like last year. She would turn to the right and look off the path. She would see nothing but rocks and the stray scrubby flora.
First she looked left. Because...because she had to work up to it. There was nothing but mixed grass prairie that existed on that side of the trail. It was fine.
The right side was where the last body had been. There wouldn’t be one. There couldn’t be one. She forced herself to turn, to take the few steps to the very edge of the trail.
This side was rock, geological deposits that brought people to the Badlands in droves every summer. There wouldn’t be a body. Couldn’t be.
But there was.
She stared at the mess of limbs all at wrong angles. She stared, frozen, willing the image to disappear. The canyon to the side of the trail was narrow and deep, but you’d have to be sincerely not paying attention to fall down it, or...
Or.
She finally managed to squeeze her eyes shut, last year’s memories rushing back like a movie in her head. Unseeing eyes and a black beard then. Now, a woman facedown in the rock, hair moving in the wind.
Nausea rolled through her, but she swallowed it down and tried to think. Tried to remember where and what she was.
Don’t touch anything. Don’t touch. Don’t touch.
She took a few stumbling steps back on the trail.
Last time, she’d checked the body with a thought to help. Last time, she’d compromised the crime scene trying to identify the person while waiting for the cops. Last time, she’d made so many mistakes.
Not this time.
She nodded to herself again. This time she’d do it right. Not mess with anything. Not ruin anything.
How could it be happening again?
“One step at a time, Felicity. One step at a time.”
She was calmed by the sound of her own voice, even if there was no one around she was talking to. She pulled out her phone, called the local police department and radioed her boss so he could get someone out to seal off the area.
Then she called Brady. She couldn’t help it. When she was in trouble—when she or any of her foster sisters were in trouble—they always turned to the Wyatt boys.
They always came, and they always helped. Because they were good men, and Brady was the best of them, in her estimation.
When he answered, she managed to tell him what had happened, though she felt detached and as if she was speaking through dense fog. He promised she wouldn’t have to be alone.
She tried to allow that reassurance to soothe her, but mostly she settled in to wait, hoping she wouldn’t throw up.
“SHE CALLED YOU,” Gage Wyatt grumbled at his brother through the phone receiver tucked between his ear and shoulder as he navigated the highway in front of him.
Summer had turned the hills green, and the tall grass waved in the wind. Gage had always gotten a kick out of the fact that’s exactly what his ancestors would have seen when they’d arrived here by cart and horse.
He couldn’t find amusement today as his twin brother tasked him with something he most especially did not want to do.
“I can’t make it,” Brady lectured. “I called Tuck, but he didn’t answer. He’s likely on a case. You’re closer than Jamison, Cody and Dev—not that I’d send Dev. She needs someone there ASAP, Gage.”
Gage swore inwardly, not sure how out of the six Wyatt brothers he was the only one available. He kept his voice light and offhanded, the Gage Wyatt special. “She’s moon-eyed over you. That’s why she called you.”
There was only the briefest of pauses in return. “She found a body.” Brady’s tone was flat, the kind of flat his voice got when no amount of coaxing, arguing or nonchalance was going to irritate him into caving. “Another body.”
“All right, all right,” Gage muttered. “I’m not too far off.” At least in the grand scheme of things in South Dakota. An hour, tops. “Same place?”
“No.” Brady related where exactly in the park Felicity had stumbled across a body. Not too far from her park ranger cabin.
She’d found another body. The same thing had happened to Felicity last year, and it was horrible, to say the least, that she was dealing with that again. Gage listened as Brady explained where he’d need to go to get to Felicity. He turned his truck around and started heading for the park while Brady spoke.
“Be gentle with her,” Brady said. “You know Felicity.”
“Yeah.” He did, he thought grimly as he hung up and tossed his cell phone onto the passenger seat. He knew her better than his brother did apparently.
Felicity wasn’t the same shy wallflower she’d been growing up. Ever since she’d gotten that job at Badlands and moved home—well, closer to home—she’d been more sure of herself, more...something. He didn’t like to dwell on that considering she was so hung up on Brady.
Who apparently didn’t even notice she’d grown up, no matter how long it had taken her.
She’d held up really well last year when she’d found the body. It had seemed like a freak accident, and she had seemed able to handle it, especially admirable since she wasn’t used to dealing with dead bodies. As a police officer, he had dealt with quite a few, not always violent or tragic. Sometimes as simple as someone going to sleep and not waking up.
It was part of the job, and even if it wasn’t, he’d grown up in a biker gang until his oldest brother had gotten him and Brady out when they’d been eleven. He’d seen worse there living among the Sons of the Badlands those eleven years, especially considering his father ran the group. Ace Wyatt didn’t deal in mercy—he dealt in his own warped version of justice.
Thanks to his oldest brother, Jamison, Gage had never believed in his father’s justice. But he’d had to survive it, and the body count, before he’d had the maturity or the badge to cope with it.
Now he had both, but no matter how much Felicity had come into her own lately, she wasn’t supposed to have to deal with dead bodies.
Plural. The pattern here made him uneasy. It was rare park rangers found bodies when not part of a search for missing people. Rarer still to have it happen to the same ranger twice.
She did need someone, but Gage didn’t know why Brady hadn’t called one of her foster sisters. Most of them would do better with the whole soothing and reassuring task ahead of him.
Likely Brady had called him because he knew some of the police officers with Pennington County, and none of the Knight fosters would. They might soothe, but Gage would be able to get some answers.
Gage would get those answers for Felicity. It was the soothing and reassuring part he wasn’t so keen on. He tended to keep a hands-off policy as much as possible when it came to her.
“Grown woman,” Gage muttered to himself, tapping his agitated fingers against the wheel as he drove. “Did this before. She’ll do it again.”
He pressed the gas pedal a little hard.
“Didn’t she just help save Cody and Nina’s butts?” he demanded in an imaginary argument with Brady. “She’s capable. More than.” Wasn’t that half the reason he kept his distance? Capable Felicity in love with his twin brother was dangerous to his well-being.
He muttered to himself on the long, empty drive to the Badlands. Usually he’d marvel at the scenery. Even living here his whole life, he didn’t take for granted the rolling grassland that turned into buttes and the grand rock formations that made up the park and its surrounding areas. But he was working up a good irritated steam—mostly as a defense mechanism against Felicity in particular.
She was moon-eyed over Brady. So it made sense that since she’d grown a spine and begun showing it off, Gage had started having a little more than friendly thoughts about her. What didn’t make sense was harboring those more-than-friendly feelings knowing full well she worshipped the ground Brady walked on.
Who could blame her? His brothers were saints as far as he was concerned. Oh, Cody and Dev had a bit of an edge to them, but at the heart of it they were all good men.
Then there was Brady, something better than a good man. Smartest of all of them, honorable without being hard about it. By the book and serious, yet affable enough that everyone loved Brady. He never said the wrong thing, never offered an inappropriate joke to ease the tension. If all his brothers were saints, Brady was the king saint.
On the other hand Gage was the one who said the wrong thing for a laugh. Who didn’t take anything as earnestly as his brothers took their breakfast choices.
Of course Felicity had a thing for Brady, and it seemed inevitable that Gage had the bad luck to be hung up on someone in love with his perfect twin.
He rolled his shoulders as he pulled into the parking lot for the trail Felicity had been hiking. This wasn’t about him, his issues or even his stupid feelings.
This was about Felicity. Helping her with a sad coincidence. Coming across her second dead body in as many years.
He ignored a tingly this is all wrong feeling between his shoulder blades and flashed a broad grin to the cop stationed at the blocked-off trailhead.
He pulled out his badge, did some sweet-talking and was heading toward Felicity in a few minutes.
Once he reached the area where the cops and park rangers were huddled, he stopped short and took a minute to observe Felicity. She sat on a rock away from the circle of people. She was deathly pale, her fingers twisted together, and she stared hard at them.
His heart ached, very much against his will. As a sheriff’s deputy for Valiant County, he’d dealt with his share of victims and innocent bystanders of awful things. He knew how to deal with the walking wounded.
But he actually knew Felicity, and had since he’d escaped to Grandma’s ranch. He’d been eleven to her nine. He’d witnessed her nearly mute elementary years, an awkward-at-best adolescence and then eventually this change in her. Now, in front of him sat a woman who was not falling apart though she had every right to.
That twisting feeling dug deeper so he pushed himself forward. “Hey.”
She looked up slowly, her eyebrows drawing together in dawning confusion. “I called Brady.”
The twist grew teeth, and he might have grinned negligently in a different situation. But she’d just found a body, so Gage shrugged instead and didn’t let the burn of her disappointment settle inside of him. “He sent me. I was closest.”
She stared at him for a few seconds before she finally jerked her chin in some approximation of a nod. “They already—” she swallowed, a slight tremor going through her body “—moved the body out.”
“Any ID?”
Felicity shook her head. “Nothing on her.”
“Her. So, this is different than...” He winced at how insensitive he sounded. Sure, it worked when you were a cop. Not so much when you were here as a friend.
She paused. “Yes,” she said finally, in a way that was not convincing at all. “Different.”
“Let’s get you back to your place, huh?”
She gestured helplessly at the team of cops and park officials. “I have to...”
“They know where to find you if they need more information. Come on. You probably haven’t eaten since breakfast.” He pulled her to her feet and easily slid his arm around her shoulders since he knew she’d balk at moving if he didn’t give her a physical push.
She smelled like flowers and summer. Quite the opposite of the situation they were dealing with.
She pressed a hand to her stomach, her heels all but digging in where she stood. “I couldn’t eat. I can’t.”
“We’ll see. You want to walk back?”
She looked around, dismay clear as day on her face. “No, but I need to.”
He understood that. If she didn’t walk back the way she’d come, she’d be afraid of returning this way even when her job necessitated it.
Still, he had to give her a push, and he tried not to feel a bit sick over the fact he was forcing her to do something she didn’t want to do. Even if she needed to. He followed the trail back toward her cabin, keeping a tight grip on her shoulders as they walked.
A cold drizzle began to fall, but neither of them commented on it or hurried their pace. It felt like a slow trudge through chilled molasses, and Gage didn’t have the heart to speed her up even as she began to shiver.
When they got to the authorized-user-only trail, Gage took it without qualm. It would lead to her park housing, and he’d get some food in her. Encourage her to rest.
Then, when she wasn’t so pale, he’d head back to the ranch. Felicity wouldn’t want him to stay anyway. She’d either handle it on her own, or he’d call one of her sisters for her.
Her little cabin was situated in a small grove of trees. It was old, but she’d infused it with a kind of hominess, though he couldn’t identify how. Just that it looked like a nice place.
He reached the door and waited for her to pull out her keys. She unlocked the door and stepped inside.
He’d hoped the walk would have helped put some color back in her cheeks, but she still looked pale as death and like a stray wind might knock her over. Her red hair was damp, and the tendrils that had escaped her braid stuck to her ashen skin.
“Go change into something dry.”
She looked up at him, her green eyes lost and sad. She didn’t say anything, just stood there looking at him.
“Go on. I’ll fix you something to eat while you change.”
She shook her head. “I’ll just throw it up.”
“We’ll see. Go on now.” He shooed her toward where he figured her bedroom was, down a short, narrow hallway.
He went to the cramped kitchen and poked around for something to make that would go down easy. He found an unreasonable amount of tea and picked one that looked particularly soothing. He followed the instructions, trying not to feel claustrophobic in her closet of a kitchen.
When she returned she didn’t look any less lost, but she was in dry sweatpants and a long-sleeved T-shirt for Mammoth Cave National Park. She stood at the entrance to the kitchen taking in her surroundings like it was somewhere she’d never been before.
“Sit,” he ordered, uncomfortable with how fragile she seemed.
She nodded after a time and then took a seat at her tiny table. He set the mug of tea in front of her. “You’ll drink all of that,” he said, trying to sound as commanding as his grandmother did when she was forcing food on someone.
She didn’t drink, just stared at the mug. “They think I have something to do with it,” she said, her voice so quiet he almost couldn’t make out the words. “I can tell.”
“No. You’ve been through this before. You know how it goes.” He found a loaf of bread and dropped a slice in the toaster. “They have questions they have to ask just to make sure, but—”
“It’s the second time.” She lifted her gaze to meet his, and there was nothing timid or uncertain about her, as there had been in the past. No, she was in complete control, even lost and scared. “The questions were different. And they’re right. It does. It has something to do with me. I know it does.”
