Northern Exposure by Debra Lee Brown Page B

trees below him and the rock above him, he flipped the leather trigger guard open on his revolver. Just in case.
    The second time Joe caught up with her, she looked relieved.
    â€œYou’re back?” Wendy said.
    â€œYeah. Changed my mind. I’m going with you.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œSave it. This is my reserve, my turf. It’s like you said, each of us has as much right to be here as—”
    â€œI don’t need you to baby-sit me.” She did an about-face and continued up the trail.
    Joe figured three days in, snap a few pictures, three days out—if she could keep up the pace. He didn’t like it, not one bit, but he was resigned to it. As long as she was in his reserve, she was his responsibility.
    The small, U-shaped pass, a tiny chink in the saw-toothed armor of the mountain range, was just above them now. Wendy was moving fast, too fast, and reached it a split second before he did. She let out a strangled sort of squeak.
    Joe grabbed her to steady her, then eased her, backpack and all, down onto the impossibly small piece of real estate that was the pass. He sat cross-legged alongside her. “This is why it’s called a ‘gun-sight’.” There was barely enough space for two of them in the narrow notch. “Get it?”
    â€œYeah,” she breathed. “I do.” Together they looked out over the sheer drop-off, at the densely forested valley and majestic peaks on the other side. “I had no idea it was so beautiful.”
    â€œI had no idea you were thinking of taking another swan dive into thin air.” He nodded at the ground,a dizzying couple of hundred feet below them. “Lucky for you, I was here.”
    He expected a pithy comeback, and was surprised when her face softened. “Look, I really appreciate it, okay, but honestly, I don’t need your help. I don’t need anyone’s help. I have an assignment, I know what I’m doing and I’m going to do it. Period.”
    â€œDon’t let me stop you.”
    She made a huffy little sound in the back of her throat. “I don’t intend to.”
    â€œGood.”
    â€œSo…how do I get down?”
    â€œYou mean we. ” No way was he letting her go on alone. Not now. He was sure someone was following them, the same someone who had followed them yesterday, and who’d crept around outside the cabin last night.
    Maybe he was overreacting. Maybe it was just another hiker. No. Intuition told him otherwise. Damn! He didn’t need this. He didn’t need her lousing up the quiet week he’d planned for himself.
    Leashing his irritation, he pointed to a narrow cut in the rock to their left that angled down the cliff face to the forested valley below. “The footing’s good, but you have to watch out for slides. Lots of loose rock up here.” He nodded toward the craggy, snow-dusted ridge above the ledgelike trail.
    Wendy stared at it for a long time, as if she were deciding whether or not to go on. He was angry, but not surprised, when she pulled out her map, flattened it on her lap and positioned her compass directly over the pass on which they perched. She moved the bezel, drew a couple of transecting lines onto themap with a mechanical pencil she fished out of her pocket, then scribbled down a heading.
    Joe was impressed. “You didn’t learn that in Manhattan.”
    â€œNo,” she said. “I didn’t.” They stared at each other for a drawn-out moment, and he found himself wondering what she was wearing under that long-sleeved shirt. “Michigan,” she said, snapping him out of his momentary lapse into insanity. “The north woods. I was raised there.”
    On impulse he reached out and plucked a stray twig from her hair, his gaze fixed intently on hers. She didn’t flinch, nor did she break eye contact until he did.
    â€œYou’re full of surprises, aren’t you?”
    In a voice so soft,