Mark gave the picture one last glance. “Thank you again, doctor.”
“You’re welcome,” Dr. Swift said, his eyes remaining on the battle in front of him.
He didn’t look away as Mark turned and left the room.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Harper let go of the locket, and it dropped onto Lucas’s shirt. Her heart was racing. Her skin felt prickly, and she was having trouble swallowing as shock waves rolled through her. “How?” she croaked. “Where?” She shook her head, attempting to clear the ringing that had started sounding in her ears the moment she’d seen the picture inside. It was her mother’s locket, the one she’d been wearing when she died.
Dizziness rolled through her, and her teeth began chattering. Lucas turned and opened the door to his house, stepping inside and then looking back at her questioningly. She noticed his feet were still bare and despite her own state of shock, she grimaced. They must be freezing. She followed him inside and closed the door, but didn’t move into the room. She leaned her rifle on the wall next to where she stood. “Please tell me,” she said, and this time her voice sounded steadier, though her heart was beating wildly.
“I found this necklace in a car at the bottom of a canyon. It had a different chain then but it broke.” Her eyes roved over his face, his expression so intensely serious, she couldn’t move her eyes away. He glanced downward to where the locket lay on his chest. “Do you . . . know these people?” He seemed to be holding his breath as he stared at her, his fingers finding the locket and rubbing it between them as if he’d made the same movement a hundred times before and did it now out of habit.
“Yes. They’re my family,” she whispered. “The baby, it’s me.”
His brow furrowed and he opened his mouth, closed it, and then finally said, “You.” He stared at her again, his fingers grasping the locket as he looked at it, then at her as though trying to merge the tiny picture of the baby inside with the grown woman standing before him.
“We were in a car wreck when I was very young. I somehow wandered away from the crash and was found, but they never were.”
His eyes roamed her face for a moment, something softening in his gaze. Understanding. “I can take you to them if you want.”
Harper reached back, holding on to the doorframe so she wouldn’t fall over. God, she couldn’t believe it. The car. The car. He found the car. Her parents final resting place, the thing she’d been searching relentlessly for since she was old enough to go out in this wilderness alone. She nodded, tears burning at the backs of her eyes. But she refused to let them fall, didn’t want to share her grief with this man, this stranger. Truth be told, she didn’t want to share her grief with anyone. She wondered if she even knew how.
“When?” she asked. “How long ago did you find it?”
“Five winters ago.” He flinched very subtly and cleared his throat. “Five years ago,” he amended as though he realized he’d answered incorrectly the second it’d rolled off his tongue. Only . . . God, if I lived out here, I’d probably calculate time by how many winters I survived too. But, she couldn’t think about that right then, not with the knowledge that her parents’ car was so close and this man could take her to it. To them.
“Can you take me there now?”
Lucas glanced out the window. “No, it’s too late. I can take you there in the morning. It’s dark and icy now, and we’ll have to climb down.”
Climb down?
She started to argue, to beg him to reconsider, but she knew he was right. Night had fallen, the temperature had dropped, and going out now would be foolish when simply waiting until daybreak lowered any risks significantly. She’d waited this long. She could wait one more night.
“Can I ask you why you wear it?”
He glanced at the necklace on his dark shirt and then reached up and untied it, walking to where she stood, stopping when he was several feet away. He extended his hand and held it out to her and she took it from him, clasping it in her fist. “It’s yours,” he said. He hadn’t answered her question, but there was a lump in her throat now, so instead of repeating it, she simply nodded and tied it around her own neck. As his gaze lingered on it, there was such unmistakable sadness in his eyes. He’d just given up something of great value to him, she realized. Handing it over to her had cost him. Not a monetary cost, but something more important to him. Emotional connection? Whatever the answer to that question, he’d given it to her anyway.
“Thank you,” she whispered, laying her hand over it. The small piece of metal was still warm from his body. “How’
d you find it? What were you doing?”
Something skated over his expression, but he quickly schooled it. “Just saw it one day. The sun shined on the metal and it called to me.” He looked briefly confused like maybe he hadn’t said what he wanted to say. She understood him though. The glinting metal had caught his attention.
“I see,” she said, to reassure him she did. She sighed. “Well, I’m glad. I mean, it’s very fortunate that I met you and . . . well . . .” He’d been wearing a picture of her around his neck for the past five years. It made her feel . . . she didn’t know how it made her feel, but the feeling wasn’t negative. It was as though he’d been protecting her family for her. Always together, never apart.
He regarded her for another moment and then turned, walking to the wood stove and feeding it a few logs. It was then that she finally took in the room. There were four metal beds lined up on the wall to her right, though three of the beds were barren of mattresses or blankets. The fourth was obviously the one Lucas slept on, a dark gray wool blanket pulled to the top of the mattress and a single pillow. They reminded Harper of beds she’d seen in prison movies, and she frowned.
“Do other people live here?” she asked, nodding to the beds.
He looked at the empty cots from where he was squatting in front of the fire, poking the logs inside with a long stick. “This was going to be a summer camp cabin but . . . someone ran out of money. Or something like that. It was empty when Driscoll came to this land.” He paused. “That’s what he told me anyway. It’s all I know.”
Harper tilted her head. He’d phrased it strangely. “Do you think he was lying?”
Lucas came to his full height, the door of the stove swinging shut with a dull click. “I don’t know.”
Harper opened her mouth to ask him another question, but she wasn’t sure what. It was just . . . the way he’d said that’s what he told me anyway, and the tone in his voice when he’d said it, made her think he questioned Driscoll’s truthfulness in general. And it made her curious. You’re not an investigator, Harper. Stop acting like one.