Someone was jealous.
Cooper dropped his gaze to his boots and Skye filed away the fact he was clearly lower down the pecking order than Wade in their little group.
“Are the woman and the two friends that came to find her from south of the border too?” She regretted asking that when Karl scowled at her, his grey eyes glacial.
“Keep moving.” Karl looked ready to push her again so she started walking, following the trail. “You don’t need to know that information.”
“I’d like to get an idea of whether or not your friends are capable of surviving up in this valley or whether we’re just wasting time.” She shot him a black look over her shoulder.
He huffed. “They’re capable of surviving up here. The woman in particular.”
Skye found that interesting. Was the woman a local? If the woman was real that was. She still wasn’t one hundred percent convinced these men weren’t here looking for Knox. Why else would he have been out in the woods, miles from the nearest cabin, tracking the men?
She led Karl and his group closer to the mountain and stopped when the trail disappeared.
“What’s wrong?” Karl came up beside her and peered at the ground like she was. “Where’d the trail go?”
“I don’t know.” She looked around, scanning the gloom.
It was hard to make anything out as darkness rapidly approached. She shrugged out of her backpack and opened a side pocket and took out her flashlight, and slipped the pack back on. The beam was bright as she clicked the button, chasing back the shadows, and she swung it to her right and then her left, making a show of trying to find the boot prints when she knew exactly where they would be.
“There.” She directed her flashlight beam at the other side of the frozen stream to her left.
She glanced at Karl to make sure he had seen the prints too and then picked her way over the slippery rocks that dotted the ice. When she reached the other side, she waited for the men to join her.
Patrick was last and she tried to help him by shining the light on the stream so he could find his way across. He picked a different route to the one she had taken and bit out a ripe curse as his left boot slipped. His foot broke through the ice and plunged into the water.
“That’s cold!” he grumbled as he lifted his foot and made it across the rest of the boulders. He shook his left leg, shedding water onto the snow, and glared at it.
“Did any water get into your boot?” She gave him a concerned look, one that was genuine. With the temperatures so low, having a wet foot for an extended period of time would be dangerous. She had heard tales of people getting frostbite from having wet socks while on a winter hike. Mentioning it seemed like a perfect way of getting Karl to agree to taking a break for the night. “If it’s wet, I need to know. You could get frostbite from trekking in these temperatures with a wet sock. Do you want to lose your foot? We can make a fire and get it dried out for you. It’s probably best we make sure all our boots are dry and our socks too.”
Patrick paled as she said all that and threw a look at Karl. “My sock is wet. My foot feels cold.”
Everyone’s feet probably felt cold but she kept that to herself.
“We really should take a break, Karl.” She stared at him, unwilling to back down this time. “Everyone is cold. Tired. You want to screw up and get yourself killed? Because that’s how it happens. You get tired and too cold. Your mind gets sluggish. You make mistakes. One mistake up in these valleys and you’re dead. I’ve seen it happen.”
She snapped her mouth shut as hurt rolled through her, tried to steel herself against the memories that rushed into her mind, but knew she had failed when Wade looked as if he wanted to come to her and Karl looked as if he might back down.
Skye turned away from them and kept walking, not caring if they followed her. She needed a moment alone. She sucked down a breath and held it, clenched her fists and tried to purge the pain, tried to shut it down and shut out the memories that tormented her. She hadn’t thought about that day in over ten years, and she didn’t want to think about it now.
She breathed through the hurt, slowly vanquishing it as she focused on the present, denying the past. She needed to keep her head on straight, couldn’t afford to get swept up in her past and the pain that waited there, letting it distract her. She needed to heed her own advice.
One mistake and she would end up dead, not because of the valley, but because of the men. It would only take one error on her part and Karl or one of the others would kill her. Right now, she was valuable and she had to remain that way if she wanted to live.
And God, she wanted to live.
Chapter 7
Skye followed the boot prints Knox had left her, shutting out the weak part of her that wanted to feel his arms around her, ached for him to hold her as he had that stormy night in her bar.
She frowned as another beam of light crept up to meet hers, looked across at the man who fell into step beside her, and breathed a little sigh of relief when she saw it was Karl and not Wade.
“We will rest for the night. You’re right and the trail isn’t going anywhere.”
She nodded and returned her gaze to the snow as they entered a clearing, and her eyebrows knitted as she saw he was right.
The trail wasn’t going anywhere.
“I think it ends here.” She hurried to the final set of clear boot prints, ones that tracked north. “The wind must have blown snow over the rest of the trail.”
She looked at Karl. He scowled at the last set of prints, looking far from happy about that, and didn’t take his eyes off them as she shone her light around the rest of the clearing.
“The trail is still heading in the direction of the cabin I know.” She hoped that would ease his mood, because he looked ready to lash out at someone in a fit of anger, and she didn’t want it to be her. “This will be a good spot to rest for the night. Not as sheltered as I would like, but we can build a nice big fire and there’s a few logs we could drag around to use as seats.”
“What’s wrong?” Wade’s voice cut through the darkness and she swung to face him as her entire body tensed. He flinched as the beam of her flashlight hit him in the face.
“Sorry,” she muttered and lowered it. “Just a little jumpy. Thinking about wolves.”
His hard features softened at that and she looked away from him and busied herself with finding some dry wood under the trees that bordered the clearing.
“I’ll help.” Cooper came over to her and she thanked him with a smile, which set Wade off again.
“I’ll help her. You and Patrick clear the snow away so we can make a fire.” Wade stormed towards her.
She tensed again as he reached for her, might have flinched a little as he grabbed her backpack rather than touching her as she had expected, because he frowned at her, his dark eyes glittering with irritation. Because she was afraid of him and not the others? They had guns, sure, but none of them were giving her heated looks and none of them were looking for excuses to touch her.
He helped her out of her pack and set it down beside a tree on a clear patch of ground.
“Thanks,” she mumbled, not meaning it. “Can you look over there to see if there’s any dry wood?”