On the Mountain (Follow your Bliss #5) by Deirdre Riordan Hall Page A

burst forth as sure as the sun would rise. She
drifted off to sleep feeling something like hope.
     
     
     

 
    Chapter Six
     
    Baskia dreamed of dancing in a
sea of nameless faces, the music too loud and too fast, but she couldn’t stop
moving. No matter how hard she tried, her feet and legs and arms wouldn’t stay
still. In the dream, she closed her eyes and the music changed, no longer
sticking to a rhythm of drums and bass. A tense rumbling grew louder as if
coming closer. She started to panic, spinning dizzy circles in the dark vacuum
of sleep, then shot upright in the large bed.
    The thin tank she wore clung to
her sweating skin, and her pulse throbbed in her ears. For a split second, she
thought she heard something crash outside, but the noises of her dream stuck in
her mind.
    She lay back down in the bed,
kicking the sheet off, and smoothing her hair out of her face. After a few
moments, she got up, unable to go back to sleep. She trailed through the dark
to the kitchen, in need of a glass of water. She heard another sound, this time
closer, a scratching and then a brushing noise. Baskia stiffened, realizing
that something might be out there. If she screamed, no matter how loud, no one
would hear her in the remote cabin.
    She crept to the door, feeling
along the wall in the shadows for the lock, to make sure she’d bolted it
earlier. As she was about to turn it, the door swung open. She jumped back, a
shriek escaping, but then she slapped her hand to her lips and retreated
backwards in the dark. Terror made her skin chill despite the warm summer
night. As she neared the bedroom door, she fumbled for the light and flipped
on.
    There, standing in the shadow of
the doorway, stood a figure with chin length blond hair, blue jeans, and boots.
He wore a wicked grin.
    “Fancy meeting you here,” he
said. “You’re Three, uh I mean, Will’s sister, right? I remember you.”
    Baskia groped behind her for
something, anything, to use in self-defense if he came any closer. Finally, her
hand landed on an umbrella. She angled it at him. In her daze and still shaken
up from the dream she shouted, “How do you know who I am, and why are you
here?”
    “Relax,” he said, lifting his
palms in a sign of peace. “I’m not going to hurt you. Put the weapon down.”
    Disheveled, with red-rimmed eyes,
his hair was windblown, and the fuzzy scruff on his face suggested haste and
disdain. His broad shoulders hung slightly like an invisible weight pressed
down on him. Tattoos lined his arms all the way up to the snug hem on his
t-shirt.
    “Like what you see?” he asked,
pulling Baskia out of her trance. “How about you put the umbrella away? If it
opens, I hear that’s bad luck.”
    “Not until you tell me who you
are and then go back the way you came.”
    “I’m Will’s friend. His old
roommate actually. At Harvard.”
    “You went to Harvard?” she said,
unable to help herself. His haggard, just-rolled-out-of-bed appearance didn’t
suggest a shining example of higher education. And he was her kind of sexy, not
Harvard sexy.
    “Don’t sound so surprised. It was
freshman year. I uh, dropped out.” He took another step in her direction,
reaching for the end of the umbrella and lowering it. “Tracey Wolfe. Trace,” he
said.
    Slowly the memory of a guy with
blond facial hair and a snarling attitude—on the edge of trouble, which she
hadn’t quite become familiar with before her modeling career started—filtered
back into her memory. It was a sweltering August day in Boston. While they
toured the Harvard campus and got Will settled in, her father complained that
he had to get back to his office. He’d appraised the roommate, Trace,
whispering to Will, before they left, to be careful. 
    “Where’s Will?” Baskia asked,
crossing her arms in front of her chest. Despite her bad dream it was the
middle of the night, she was tired, and not at all interested in having a
houseguest, if she could call him that. 
    “I