Ryan
I've been staring at the same page in this book without actually reading any of it for the last fifteen minutes. I hear her quiet footsteps approach. I look up to find Ana watching me. Suddenly I wish she'd go back to avoiding me, as unnerving as that was.
"You said you have stuff delivered." Her voice is quiet and devoid of her earlier cheerfulness.
"Yes," I say, noticing she looks agitated. Is my presence that unpleasant for her?
"So other people come here? Do people know you're out here?"
"A few," I say, confused until I realize how to make my problem go away. How to make her go away. She can't have recognized me, so there's no good reason to keep her here anyway. The solution is beautiful in its simplicity. "The next delivery will be soon. I'll arrange for you to be picked up and you can get back to your life. Just please don't go telling people about me. I came here for peace, like you said, and I don't want to lose that."
"No," she says quickly, and I look back up at Ana, surprised to see she looks near panic. She rushes toward me and sinks to the floor. "Please, don't make me go."
"What?" She's literally kneeling before me. Now I'm even more uncomfortable.
"Please don't make me leave. I can't leave. I have nowhere to go."
Someone else, particularly an attractive someone else, telling me they have nowhere to go is a little bit grating.
"No boyfriend?" I say, hearing the derision in my own voice.
She shakes her head.
"Family?"
"They're dead," she says, and I finally see the tears gathering in her eyes. "Please, I don't have anywhere to go, and I don't have anyone I can trust. This is the only place I feel safe," she says as tears begin to roll down her face. I realize she's trembling with fear. "Please don't make me go," she says, her voice breaking as she begins to sob. She covers her face with her hands and cries into them.
I am frozen for a moment, surprised and dismayed by this sudden display of emotion, and clueless how to make it stop. I lean forward and hesitantly reach for her shoulder, unsure if touching her will make it better or worse. Since doing nothing certainly isn't working, I lay my hand gently on her quivering shoulder.
"You can stay, for a little bit," I say.
The crying continues as though she hasn't heard me.
"Ana? You don't have to leave yet."
Still no change. This approach isn't working. I sigh quietly and regard the distraught girl in front of me. Her family is dead, she claims she doesn't have anyone else in her life, and she's convinced someone is trying to kill her. I suppose I can relate to some of that. My friends, my real family, are dead.
"I don't have anyone either, not really. The explosion killed my best friend. Our squad was patrolling a town, looking for stolen weapons, when we were ambushed. Jeremy and I were running for cover when he stepped on an IED and died instantly. Half our squad died that day. The rest of them died in the attacks that followed."
Ana's sobbing abates, but doesn't stop completely. I decide to allay her fears.
"I moved up here after that. Every month I get a delivery, but I've never seen the man who brings it. Until you showed up, I'd never seen another person since I first set foot in this cabin. No one's going to find you here. No one knows you're here, almost no one even knows I'm here. This place is about as remote as it gets."
Ana scrubs her tears away with her hands and I drop my hand from her shoulder, leaning back. She wipes her hands on her pants - my pants - hugs her arms around herself, not looking at me. I avoid making eye contact as well.
"What about your family?" she asks.
I feel anger tense my muscles. "They're -" I stop. I can't say they're dead. That feels disrespectful, considering her situation. But I can't tell her the truth, either. "It's complicated," I finish.
"Complicated how?" she asks.
"Leave it," I say gruffly.
She looks up at me, her brow furrowed in bewilderment. I avoid her gaze.
"You can't tell anyone I'm here," she says, her voice husky. "Not just for my sake, they'd kill you too."
"I won't," I say.
I return to the couch and the book I'd been staring at earlier. I'm surprised when Ana joins me on the couch. At first I'm afraid she'll want to make conversation again or ask more questions, but she curls up into a ball at the opposite end of the couch and closes her eyes.
After a few minutes, I look up at Ana. Her eyes are closed and she seems almost asleep. Suddenly her eyes open and immediately look at me. I return my attention to the book instantly. I can't concentrate on it, though. I can feel her gaze fixated on me. When I finally can't take it anymore, I look back up at her. Now she seems to realize she's been staring. She quickly turns her eyes on the front window. My gaze follows hers.
"Did you move out here to get away from them?" she asks abruptly.
I slowly look back up at her. "What?" I ask, my voice flat.
"Your family," she says, staring me down and not buying my farce that I didn't understand her the first time.
"Among others," I reply, looking away from her intense gaze.
"What -" she begins.
"I told you to leave it alone," I cut her off. She narrows her eyes and tilts her head to the side. I give her a short, warning glance, and this time she's the one who breaks eye contact.
After several minutes of tension-filled silence, she speaks again. "Why do you chop down trees? You said you don't need the wood."
"Something to do," I say, not wanting to invite any more opportunities for her to analyze me.
"What do you do out here all day?"
"I read. I have new books delivered and send old ones back. I hunt and fish. I go hiking. Sometimes in the summer I go camping."
"You have a gun?" she asks abruptly.
I study her face until she looks at me, trying to discern why she's so interested in my firearms.
"Yes," I say with trepidation.
"Good," she says.
I can feel my eyebrows lower. Her attitude is somewhat disturbing. It's as though she expects we'll need a gun for protection. I wonder how seriously I need to consider the danger she seems to think she's in.
"Why don't you want anyone knowing that you live here?"
I feel myself tense again.
"How do you figure that?" I ask, hearing the edge in my voice.
"You told me not to tell anyone that you live up here. Who would I tell? Why would they care?"
I ignore her, hoping maybe she'll give up with this line of questioning.
"Did you kill someone?"
I look up sharply at that.
"Is that what you think? That I murdered someone and I'm hiding from the law?" This accusation is borderline offensive. Does she think that because I'm ex-military? Now she's definitely going to talk about me when she leaves.
"Maybe," she says with a noncommittal shrug, like she's trying to piss me off. It's working.
"I have never killed anyone outside of the line of duty," I say in a slightly raised voice. "I just want to be left alone."
Her expression loses the aloofness, but there's still some curiosity there. I can't think of a better excuse that doesn't sound like an outright lie, so I hazard a bit of truth. "There was a lot of media coverage around the attack. It was the worst incident in months. I was the only survivor. You probably saw my picture in the news."
"So what, you're like a celebrity, or something? Hiding from the paparazzi?" she asks, her sarcasm apparent.
I cringe at how close she is to the truth. "Something like that," I say. I return to determinedly ignoring her. Thankfully she doesn't ask any more questions. After what seems an infinite silence, I chance a quick look at her. She's gone to sleep at the other end of the couch.
I find myself watching her. Her calm, peaceful face reminds me of the smile she gave me when I walked in to find her making pancakes. I feel some of the tension in my shoulders relax. Despite how intensely irritating she can be, I like her smile. When I came out of the bathroom to find her wearing my clothes and smiling at me, it took my breath away for a moment. Up to this point, I'd only ever seen her near-death and sickly. I'd thought of her as a sad, pallid girl. I was not expecting to see a pretty, cheerful woman. And she is lovely. I don't know if it's that she's clean, recovered from her illness, or even just that she smiled at me the way she did, looking pleased and with no traces of the darkness I've seen behind her eyes before. Maybe it was the combination of all three.
Whatever it was, I suddenly realized that she is beautiful. Not in the same way that Saph was beautiful. Saph was a knockout. She knew she was stunning and she knew how to use that to her advantage. Saph had plenty of smiles for me, but those smiles were just another tool she used to manipulate people. Even in our engagement photos, there was something ingenuine about her expression. She knew by that point that being associated with my family meant permanent fame. I just wish I'd realized her motivations before I got myself blown up.
But for all Saph's smiles, not one of them looked like Ana's.
TayjaSometime later I wake to find a sandwich sitting on a plate on the coffee table in front of me. Ryan is nowhere to be seen. I sit up and see a note sitting next to the plate. It reads:went fishingback after sunsetThe handwriting is atrocious and his note looks as though a child wrote it. I wonder if he wrote this with his stiff, injured right or his non-dominant left. Either way, I have the cabin to myself for the rest of the day. I look around for a clock and find a small one hanging on the wall opposite the kitchen. 1:34. I don't know what time the sun sets this far north at this time of year. I might have six or seven hours until he comes back.My gaze snaps over to the door. That could be six or seven hours that I'm alone. Icy fear creeps into my mind. Bad things happen when I'm left alone and unprotected. I stand warily and step slowly over to the door. I reach out cautiously and try the knob. It turns. I pull. The door opens.I slam
RyanTwo weeks have passed since I carried Ana's unconscious body into the cabin. Ever since she mentioned the helicopter crash, I've been spending all the daylight hours out looking for it under the guise of hunting or fishing. I take the key to the cabin and the key to my desk drawer with me. There are things in that drawer that I'd rather no one saw, myself included.As I head out on my ATV for the fourth day in a row, I again try to figure out which direction she came from. My last three days of searching turned up nothing. She was in pretty bad shape when I found her, but I have no idea how mobile and healthy she was right after the crash. How far could she have walked in the snow, in these temperatures, in the clothing she was wearing?Sometimes I wish I still had access to the internet to answer obscure questions such as these, but otherwise I don't miss the internet much at all. When I moved up here, the equipment and services required to establish an inter
TayjaThe next morning after breakfast, Ryan asks me to come outside with him. I frown as I remember my last experience leaving the cabin. I haven't gone outside since that day almost a week ago and I don't plan on doing so again in the foreseeable future."Just for a minute. I want to show you how to use the rifle.""Why?" I ask, moving closer to the door. If this makes him more likely to let me keep the gun with me, it's definitely worth it."I'm going to let you hold onto it today.""What about the bears?" I ask, remember his earlier reason for taking the gun with him."I'll be fine," he says, leading me to the edge of the porch. "This is a Mosin Nagant. It's Russian. They were designed over a century ago and were used by the Russian military through World War II. They are very reliable."He shows me how to load the gun, how to use the safety, and how to fire it. He makes me repeat everything he did, then he produces two earplugs from a p
RyanAfter breakfast, I stand outside in the spot where the reception on my sat phone is the best, holding Ana's list in my hand. I've been dreading this call even more than I usually dread calling Joe. Just as I'm about to dial his number, I hear the sound of a helicopter approaching. I duck behind the cabin as the chopper flies over, heading in the direction of the crash.Despite my resolution not to leave Ana alone in the cabin again, I went back to the crash site again yesterday morning to see if there was anything I missed or anything she left behind. But as I was driving up, I heard noises indicating human activity. I killed the engine in my ATV and crept up to the site as quietly as someone with a crippling limp can. The crash had been discovered. Police officers, US Marshals, Mountain Rescue, and even news station employees were swarming all over. I quietly returned to my ATV and drove home as fast as I could.I punch Joe's number in and call.
TayjaI wake to hear a helicopter hovering above the cabin. Terrified that I've been found, I jump off the bed and hide in the first spot I can think of: under the bed. In retrospect, this definitely wasn't a very original hiding spot nor was it a particularly good spot to wedge myself, as it had very limited egress options. Never underestimate the idiocy of blind panic.After a few terrifying moments, the whirring of the helicopter grows louder, then the sound becomes more distant as it flies away. I remain huddled under the bed until I hear a knock on the door."Ana?"I'm still unused to hearing that name. Ever since my little sister started talking, everyone's been calling me Tayja. That's what she said when she tried to pronounce Anastasia. It sort of stuck. I'd been spelling it Tasia at first, but soon discovered I could use the more exotic letters y and j to achieve the same pronunciation with a sp
Ryan"You what?" Ana breathes. Her eyes are saucers.I hadn't planned to tell her about the scene I found in the woods, but I also couldn't come up with an explanation for the firearms that would satisfy her."It was last week. I found a helicopter about fifteen miles from here. I think it's the one you came from. You had a bump on your head when I found you. Somehow you escaped the crash with just that injury and made it here."Telling Ana this bold-faced lie is much harder than I would have expected it to be. I hate deceiving her. She deserves the truth. But if I've learned anything about Ana over the last three weeks, it's that she can't handle this truth. It's a blessing she doesn't remember the incident on her own."Why did it crash?" she asks."It's hard to tell. The news said it was probably bad weather." Another blatant lie.Ana's face goes from pale to white
TayjaI open my eyes the next morning to find my pillow wet with tears. I dreamed of Johnston's final moments as he died protecting me. For some reason, we were back in my living room, where this whole nightmare started in the first place. He was trying to defend me from my family's murderers. I was back in my hiding place where I'd been when my whole family died. Just like with my family, all I could do was watch as yet another important person in my life died in front of me. I didn't know Johnston for very long, but he'd been like a surrogate father to me after I'd lost my own.I remember the Glock Ryan gave me yesterday. It reminded me of the weapon I'd seen Johnston carry and use. The sight of the pistol reminded me of him and of feeling safe, that there was someone always looking out for me. My hand itches to hold it again.I hear the water in the bathroom turn on. Ryan must be taking a shower. Ryan Burke. The son of the famous Burke
RyanAna frowns when her first shot doesn't hit the intended target, a piece of the crate delivered yesterday propped up against a tree fifty yards away from the ATV. She takes aim and fires again. This time she nicks the corner. Still frowning in concentration, she continues shooting without a word until she needs to reload."Any more advice?" she asks as she prepares to fire again."Don't pull on the trigger, squeeze it," I say. "If you jerk on the trigger instead of using smooth movements, you'll move the barrel to the right and your shot will go wide.""Huh," she grunts. Her next shot is slower but closer to the center of the target. She narrows her eyes at it, appraising it. "Hmm," she hums in the back of her throat, sounding thoughtful. She lines up the shot again and continues firing until she needs to reload again.She's not bad. She's not excellent, but she's not bad. Maybe I'll take her hunti