We had barely walked a few yards when Icarus shot out of the hut. “That’s the last straw!” He thundered down the steps angrily and stood with his legs apart at the foot of the stairs. He glared at Nathan, his face bright red. “You’re always talking about the group and big plans, but as soon as we’ve buried Stanton, you disappear with her. Going it alone sucks, man! Especially now! What if Isaac had shown up? Or caught you? I was worried, damn it!”
“You’re right,” Nathan replied calmly. He had stopped. “That was a mistake. We shouldn’t have left. But Isaac will never find this piece of land.”
“You say that! And how would we even know that you’re coming back and not hiding Willa somewhere else? You have no idea what I’ve been imagining!”
“I’m sorry, Ian. Honestly.”
Icarus shook his head in disbelief before disappearing back into the hut and slamming the door.
Then I spotted Pan. He was standing over a chopping block with an axe, but he had stopped and was staring at Nathan.
Something dark fluttered in my throat because, for the first time, there was jealousy burning in his eyes. Jealousy, anger, and pain. Raising my hand, I wanted to wave to him but he avoided my gaze. It seemed as if he would like to hit Nathan onthe head with the blunt side of the axe, but suddenly, he turned back to his work as if he sensed that I was looking at him.
The uneasy feeling inside me grew stronger. I wondered if one could see the love on my face, if my lips were red, and my eyes shining. Maybe my hair was tousled, but probably the most obvious thing was simply that they were putting two and two together. Why else would we have stayed away so long? And they must have noticed the tension between Nathan and me. Pan anyway, but Troy and Icarus too. It had been something of an open secret, the elephant in the room that everyone saw but no one mentioned.
I slowly followed Nathan, who was heading toward the hut when I heard Troy’s voice behind me.
“How are we going to continue?”
Nathan stopped without turning, so I almost ran into him. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“All this!” But Troy mainly meant Nathan and me, I was certain of that.
Nathan turned to him. “You already know. We’ll wait out the next week and a half. Then we’ll see.”
“What if Hampton is bluffing? Or if he’s hired a special unit and his special operations team just needs more time to track us down?”
I half turned to him. He didn’t look angry like Icarus, but he seemed worried, his hands on his hips.
“Nobody can find this place. Not even a special unit,” I heard Nathan say behind me.
“Who says?”
“Me.”
“And what about you and her?”
“Nothing,” Nathan replied coolly.
Nothing? Hello?
“Nothing that makes a difference,” he added.
Aha!
Troy narrowed his eyes. “Maybe not for you,” he said grimly looking at Pan. Then he came closer. “You should be careful, is all I have to say.”
All day, I wondered if Troy could be right about his concerns. Not about Pan, I trusted him, but could Dad be lying? What if a special unit was actually sent after the men and, for some reason that I could not fathom, showed up here? I could picture the dark SWAT team ambushing Nathan and the others without asking questions. And if it wasn’t a SWAT team, maybe hired specialists or mercenaries. Dad could pay anyone. I was sure he would accept or even encourage the death of the kidnappers. Dad was a man who had better be on your side when there was trouble, I had always known that.
Days passed. Nathan and I met secretly in the huts on the small island, but never returned to the lonely wooden shack by the lily pond. There was something forbidden about our meetings because the others didn’t approve and that made it even more thrilling. And, strangely enough, I was happy. Every time I was alone with Nathan, we entered another world. It soon felt as if we hadn’t been apart for a single day since Rosewood Manor. Nevertheless, everything was so new and exciting it was as if we had met for the first time yesterday.
Today too, we lay there, intoxicated by each other. We were in a remote cabin, one with an entrance door and useless junk, which was near the cabin with the chest. As always, I had gone ahead, supposedly to search for usable little things in the cabins, and Nathan had followed with the excuse that he needed to look after me. Now we were lying stark naked on the weathered wooden floor. I was floating in the sweet feeling of our love,smelling the scent of rain, approaching autumn, and Nathan. In the dim twilight that fell through the only window, his skin shimmered in gold. He was now lying on his stomach. After a while, I sat up and ran my index finger over his artfully penned back. It was a game we played. I chose a name and he told me about that person. Or persons. So that none of them would be forgotten and so that Nathan’s story would be connected to mine.
This time, I landed on Hazel Lynn Porter. “Who was she?” I asked after reading the name aloud.
Nathan rested his chin on his clasped hands as he stared at the wall in front of him. “Hazel Lynn. She was the daughter of one of my mother’s friends. Almost twenty-one. A beautiful girl with almost black eyes. Her grandmother was Chipewyan.”
His words left me with a pang of jealousy, which was completely stupid. “What did she like? Who was she?”
