Chapter 8: The Rain Hut

The second leg started in rain.

By the end of the first day, the trail had turned into a stream, and the cameras had been pulled back to the ridge for the night.

For three hours the only people on the slope were the cast and the one guide who walked it with them.

Tegan found the hut by accident.

It was a collapsed ranger's lean-to wedged under an overhang, with half a tin roof and a floor of dry pine needles.

She dragged the loose roof sheet back into place and cut her palm on its edge.

"Stop," Cal said behind her.

"It's nothing."

"It's open to the bone. Sit."

She sat on a flat rock under the overhang.

He knelt in front of her and pulled the first-aid kit out of his pack.

Rain ran off the tin in a steady line a yard from his shoulder.

He took her wrist in his left hand.

Her pulse jumped under his thumb, and she knew he felt it.

She watched the top of his head while he worked.

Sandy hair, wet at the ends. A pale scar behind his right ear.

He cleaned the cut with a saline wipe, and she did not flinch.

"You don't make noise when it hurts," he said.

"I learned not to."

"Who taught you?"

"Nobody taught me. I just stopped getting anything for it."

His hands paused.

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