She snuck a glance at him. The man knew how to clean up, she realized. Another thing she was only just noticing. His beard was neatly trimmed, and she was growing more accustomed to his mountain-man vibe.
“What are we going to do about Josh?”
Grizz sat back in his chair.
She stared out over the landscape. “Are we safe here? Will those men find us?”
Grizz looked at her. “I have some security features that warn me if anyone gets too close to my property. So far, everything is quiet.”
She wrapped her palms around the warm mug, relishing the peace of the Alaskan mountains. “I saw your Bible on the shelf in your room. I thought you weren’t exactly the believing kind of man.”
He shrugged. “It was my grandfather’s. I kept it more for the memory of him, sitting in this chair every morning with a pen, marking up the pages. But I read it occasionally.”
He offered her a plaid fleece throw blanket, and she wrapped herself up in a cocoon.
“Do you actually believe that you can do anything with God’s help?”
Grizz looked at her, his dark-green eyes reflecting a depth of sorrow she hadn’t noticed before.
Then he looked away from her and rocked in his chair. “God and I aren’t on the best terms. I grew up going to church, but I’m not sure God is going to intervene when I need Him to. Or at least, He hasn’t yet.”
Hmm. Maybe she and the mountain man had more in common than she’d thought.
She sipped her coffee. “I grew up always having to make a way for myself. If I didn’t do it, no one else would. My father was my gymnastics coach when I was twelve, and we were heading to the Olympics. Second place wasn’t an option. I still hear his voice ringing through my ears. ‘Second place is last place. You still lost.’ So next time, I’d work twice as hard. Until an injury took me out of the competition for good.”
“Wow. That’s a lot for a young teenager to deal with. I can see why that makes you work twice as hard to track down your leads. It made you a great reporter. But at what cost?”
Exactly her sentiment. “It cost me time. Time with family, friends, building relationships. It’s lonely always having to work for that number-one spot. And then maintain it. There’s always someone younger and more skilled coming right up behind you. It’s exhausting.”
She closed her eyes, relishing the quiet Alaskan air, allowing the memories to flow. “My dad eventually left my mom, and I rarely speak to him. Yet I’m still trying to live up to his expectations.”
Grizz cleared his throat, obviously not used to dealing with emotions—his or other people’s. “We need to look at that SIM card. I didn’t push you earlier because I wanted to give you time to grieve the loss of your friend, but tell me more about your source. You said you trusted the person?”
She opened her eyes and burrowed deeper into the blanket. “I do trust them.” He probably knew Rio, since Grizz worked with Skye, but Dani had always kept confidentiality sacred and wasn’t about to reveal who had brought her here.
A memory hit her like a bolt of lightning. “There’s a building with a smokestack and white smoke puffing out of it. I—I must have seen their lab in the woods at that compound. There were armed men dragging someone into it. That has to be the location.”
Grizz nodded. “I saw that building in the middle of the compound. It stood out from the rest of them. Do you have the SIM card?”
“I left it on the nightstand. I’ll get it if you have a computer. Hopefully, seeing the images will jog my memories. Because I want to get to the bottom of what happened on that mountain.”
* * *
Grizz dug under his kitchen cabinet for his laptop, trying to shake the image of a sobbing Dani from his mind. The woman had been put through the wringer.
Would looking at these pictures help or hurt?
And when had Dani blown through the security checkpoint that guarded his heart? It scared him how much he cared.
But he’d do anything to take this pain away from her.
He set up the laptop on his kitchen table, and Dani returned with the SIM card. She dug the camera out of the backpack. “Do you have a USB cable? We can read the chip off the camera.”
“Maybe.” He dug around in the cabinet and pulled out a spider web of tangled cords. One of these had to be the right one.
She stood with her hands on her hips. “Just give me whatever cables you have.”
She huffed and muttered something under her breath to the effect of “At least you’re good-looking.”
