LITMIR.BIZ

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you find missing people?” The intense look was back, telling him she definitely wasn’t an admirer.

      “Yes,” he replied. “You didn’t lose someone in the park recently, did you?”

      “No.”

      The tension that had suddenly built up in his body drained away at her denial, leaving him feeling half relieved that there wasn’t a lost hiker in need of rescue and half disappointed that he wasn’t going to get called in on a search this morning.

      But though he waited, she didn’t volunteer any further information, instead becoming strangely preoccupied with tracing the square toe of her impractical, clunky black boot along a crack in the sidewalk. Living in the mountains and doing what he did for a living, he’d made it a habit never to go out without a pair of shoes he could run and climb in. With that gigantic heel on hers, he wondered how she could even walk.

      “Okay, do I know you?” he tried again.

      “No. Not even slightly,” she said to her shoe.

      “Thennnnnnn, can you tell me what this is about?” This was like trying to get his ex-girlfriend Trina to tell him what he’d done to make her angry—on way too many occasions. Hence the whole ex-girlfriend thing. This woman didn’t look like a drama queen like Trina, but you just never knew….

      “There’s a trail you’ll be on today,” she blurted out suddenly. “It’s beautiful—runs by a two-tiered waterfall with a small fence at the bottom where the water pools and a really tall pine tree on the far side.” She finally made eye contact with him, making circular motions with her hands. “The path there makes a loop.”

      Her eyes were pretty, a deep, dark blue, not brown as he’d originally thought, which reminded him of the ocea—Focus, dude. “Sounds like Dungeness Falls.” He cleared his throat and focused.

      “Okay.” Her eyes flicked to the ground and back up at him. “Don’t take the kids to the far side of the water.”

      “What?”

      “Don’t take the kids to the far side of the water.” She ducked her head again and mumbled, “Don’t ask me how I know that.” After imparting that strange bit of wisdom, she pivoted back toward the coffee shop, obviously wanting to make a quick escape. He stopped her by grabbing her elbow—gently, so as not to scare her, but firmly enough to keep her from bolting.

      “What does that mean?” he asked. “What kids?”

      “Generally speaking, all of this will make sense later.” The strange half smile was back. “Unless I’m wrong, and then it’ll just be embarrassing. But right now, that’s all I can tell you.”

      “I don’t have kids.” Frustration and confusion warred for dominance inside him, and he tightened his grip on her arm. She probably was a drama queen after all, what with the cryptic messages and the big, pretty, I’m-so-lonely-come-save-me eyes. And all he knew was that he needed to stay far, far away from that type. History showed that he didn’t do well with drama queens. “And could you please make sense for maybe five minutes? How do you know who I am? What kind of message is that?”

      Now the smile was gone, replaced with the look of someone who’d had her puppy kicked too many times, which made him feel like a huge jerk. But then again, that was what drama queens did. They manipulated you into feeling sorry for them, and then—BAM! They hit you while you were vulnerable, just so they could fight and make up.

      But instead of hitting him, literally or figuratively, she reached down and calmly peeled his hand off her elbow. “Trust me, you don’t want to know.” With that, she headed back inside the coffee shop, leaving him to wonder at her bizarro-world way of holding a conversation. Pulling his Mariners ball cap out of one of his jacket’s oversize pockets, he jammed it backward over his head and turned toward his truck, hoping that getting her out of his sight would exorcise her from his brain.

      But, of course, he had no such luck. As he slogged across the parking lot to where Sabrina was waiting for him, he found that any attempt to turn his thoughts away from the woman, her strange words and her cartoon-character eyes proved futile. She’d gotten stuck in his craw, and he wanted her out of his craw and as far, far away from it as possible.

      Sabrina reached over and opened the driver’s-side door for him, making a big show of shivering and chattering her teeth once he’d gotten inside.

      “Sorry. I know you’re cold.” He got in and started the truck, cranking the defrost to clear the windows, which were nearly covered by a thin layer of moisture.

      “I thought you might be a while, so I got your coffee.” As soon as she’d handed him the small paper cup she’d been holding, she rubbed her bare hands vigorously together, then replaced her gloves. “By the way, you are so going to hate me.”

      “Okay, enough with the mysterious commentary. Just tell me straight what’s going on.” It took a major effort not to snap at her after she’d been nice enough to get the drink he’d forgotten, but his words still came out sharper than he’d intended.

      Sabrina reared back in surprise. “Whoa, Mr. Grumpy Pants, who tied your boxers in a knot this morning?”

      He sighed, leaning back in his seat and taking a sip of his coffee, which was already lukewarm from waiting in the frozen truck. Of course, Sabrina had also probably sucked all the heat out of it with her perpetually icy hands while he’d entertained the crazy woman in the parking lot. “Nothing.” He made an effort to bring his voice back to a normal conversational tone. “So why am I going to hate you?”

      She tried to smile at him, but it quickly turned to a toothy grimace, as if she expected him to start shouting at her once he figured out what the hell she was talking about. “Because I forgot to tell you that we have a bunch of fifth graders coming out to the park today to learn about tracking, and you get to take them on a hike.”

      “Excuse me, your what hurts?” he asked calmly.

      Sabrina completely ignored the sarcastic non sequitur. “I’m sorry, Al, but Jessie is mapping out the road closures for the winter with Skylar, and I promised Aaron I’d take Rosie in to the doctor today. She has a virus she can’t shake.” Aaron was Sabrina’s new husband of six months, and Rosie was his teenaged daughter—who, come to think of it, hadn’t been coming around to watch her stepmother work as often as usual lately. The girl was fascinated with tracking.

      “She okay?”

      “Yeah, just a fever and a nasty cough. We think it might be bronchitis, but I don’t want to put off taking her in.”

      The truck finally warmed up, and he took that as a cue to turn on the windshield wipers to finish clearing the windshield. “No, don’t do that. I can take the kids around, no problem.”

      That earned him a real smile from Sabrina as she clicked her seat belt into place. “You are fabulous, and I adore you.”

      “I know, but we must never speak of this again. Aaron would be mad at me, and I might have to kick his ass to defend myself,” he said, referring to her husband, a police detective and good friend.

      “Right.” Sabrina laughed, holding her gloved hands in front of the heater vent. “Poor kids, they probably didn’t expect snow today. Well, as you know, they’ll want a demonstration from the big, bad search-and-rescue tracker, so I left some footprints last night down by Dungeness Falls for you to read for them.”

      He froze, his coffee cup floating a couple of millimeters from his mouth. “Say that again.”

      “I left some tracks down by Dungeness Falls.” Narrowing her eyes, Sabrina pivoted in her seat to face him, reaching back to pull her long black ponytail over her shoulder so she could finger the ends. “Alex, you’ve been acting really stran—”

      He didn’t wait to hear the rest of her sentence, instead bolting out of the truck and heading for the shop. His breath coming out in heavy puffs from the cold, he

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