She shrugged. “They do that sometimes, go off together for time away from the stress of being new parents, enjoy back-to-nature kinds of meditation like they used to when they were dating. Yes, the timing seems coincidental, but the behavior is in keeping with something they would do.”
“And your brother, do you think he got a warning we were coming?”
“I sent that email,” she said carefully, resting a foot on a bike pedal, her red Converse high-tops as full of personality as she was. “He could have run, although I don’t believe he would have left his son behind.”
“And his wife went along too. I’m assuming she wouldn’t leave her child either. All the more reason to assume he hasn’t run. So why is he conveniently gone now? Something’s off.” He could sense it. “But still, I stick by my gut feeling that the wife—Astrid—isn’t on the run with her husband. Plenty of wives I know aren’t even willing to pack up and move to another state for even a job change. Your brother wouldn’t be offering a helluva lot of security.”
He knew he wasn’t talking about just her brother anymore. He’d seen more than his fair share of military relationships hit the skids because of a transfer. The crackle of connection snapping from Sunny to him said loud and clear that she was having the same thoughts, the same concerns.
He waited for her to answer, to give him some kind of indication where they could go from here. If they could. Tough to figure out when he knew so little about her and her family. He’d slept with her, faced death with her, and he didn’t even know the most fundamental things about her. And time was running out fast to learn.
Memories of the day and her brush with death came back to scare the hell out of him when he least expected it. He was pretty sure his insides were still a little numbed out about that.
“Where did you live before going off-the-grid?” Why hadn’t he thought to ask that before? Had he been holding back too?
“On a farm in Iowa.” She spun the bike pedal with her toe. “We grew corn and soybeans. The land was in the family for a couple hundred years. The farm barely paid for itself, but Dad had a store too, and Mom worked at a bank in town. They said moving here was the perfect way to get their priorities back in order.”
“And your brother?”
“They wanted to help him. I was twelve at the time and I didn’t ask a lot of questions.” She looked around the small business she’d managed to build in the middle of nowhere as if seeing it with new eyes. “Maybe I should have.”
They’d cut their two daughters off from the ability to ask questions or reach out for any help, any other way of thinking. The place might not call itself a cult, but unquestionably there had been a closed society, cultish mentality at play.
Was Sunny even able to just break away from that? Sure she’d been scared of him finding out about her brother when he first found her, but she hadn’t freaked out in the city when she was at his place. Looking back he knew now that she’d wanted to be at his apartment rather than base because of the intense proximity to the military. But she was comfortable enough there.
Seeing what she’d built here, with no help from the outside world, made him recognize how self-sufficient she was. What might she accomplish with the resources of the world he knew at hand?
He wasn’t ready to say all their obstacles were out of the way. But for tonight, it seemed he’d cleared away a few.
Above all, Sunny was alive. Thank God, she was still alive.
Wade extended an arm to her. “Let’s go up to your apartment.”
A spark lit in her eyes. “I can think of nothing better than forgetting about all the things we can’t change.” She placed her hand in his, her smile almost chasing away the shadows in her hazel eyes. “But I have a better idea than going to my apartment.”
Tugging him, she guided him toward the corridor, deeper down the hall, past the staircase leading to the second floor. Curious, he followed, his eyes gravitating to the sway of her hips, the swish of her ponytail, as she walked.
She unlocked and opened a door leading outside the log cabin. Turning, she clasped both his hands and pulled him out onto a huge deck overlooking… Holy crap.
The winding wood stairway with icicles led down to a bubbling pond of steaming waters. She’d told him the survival school sported a hot springs area, but he hadn’t envisioned anything like this. A privacy fence wrapped around, stopping at the slope of a mountain wall with a waterfall trickling down over two tiers of rock slab.
Sunny peeled off her sweater and tossed it over her shoulder onto the deck. Her ni**les went tight against her thin undershirt.>While she’d wanted to leave and resented some of the restrictions that came with living there, she’d never expected to be afraid of her own home. She’d been so close to Deputy Rand Smith on more than one occasion when she’d helped Sunny, or when he’d come farther up the trail to get someone. And she couldn’t help but wonder now if his trips all the way to the community had been for a different purpose, perhaps to touch base with an accomplice, someone who could be plotting new murders.
Tears stung her eyes every time she looked at Sunny. She hadn’t fully grasped until now how horrible it would have been never to see her again. Close on that thought followed the sting of grasping how deeply she’d felt betrayed over Sunny not returning to say good-bye.
Somewhere in the back of her mind she’d wondered if her sister had delayed returning on purpose, to keep her from leaving. Yet now that she looked back she saw what she should have known all along. Sunny wasn’t passive-aggressive. Sunny met life head-on. She’d been out there stranded in a snowstorm, with a mass murderer, and had come out alive.
With Flynn’s handsome face reflected in the rearview mirror, she could see from his jaw that he was still talking—even if she couldn’t hear him.
She nudged Sunny and signed for about the tenth time today. “What’s he saying?”
Sunny’s hands flew as she answered. “We need to check in with Flynn’s father, prepare him for the notifications about to come through.”
Misty kept her arms low, not wanting to draw attention to what they were discussing in case Flynn started watching in the rearview mirror. “What about Phoenix?”
Pain flashed across Sunny’s face. “We’ll talk to him. Then we have to wait and see. I think he probably always knew this day was coming. It’s up to him how to handle it.”
Nodding, Misty continued, “Do you trust this guy Wade?”