6. Dev

The next day dawned bright and cold, the perfect morning to chop some wood. I rose before anyone else and made sure I was quiet in the kitchen as I prepped a pot of coffee. Hallie was burritoed in a blanket on the couch but didn't so much as stir at the noises I couldn't avoid making. I'd offered to take the couch last night, so she could sleep in my bed, but she'd scrunched up her nose and flopped on the sofa in answer.

Once the coffee was finished, I filled a mug and carried it outside. I wore only my thickest flannel shirt and a pair of flannel-lined jeans paired with my steel-toed winter boots. The cold bit at my nose, and my breath plumed from my lips, but there was something about the brilliance of a sunny winter day that never failed to lift my spirits. I reveled in the crispness of the air, the scent of the snow, and the calls of the blue jays that echoed through the forest.

Then I got to work.

As usual, I got so caught up in the rhythm of setting up a log and bringing my axe down on it that I didn't even notice the time passing. It was meditative, the rhythm of it. I'd shed my shirt about five logs ago, though, so I'd probably been going at it for about forty-five minutes when a deep grumbly voice demanded, "What the fuck are you doing?"

"Shh," Hallie said. "He was in the zone."

I had been deep in the zone if I hadn't noticed I had an audience. Hallie was wrapped up in the blanket that had been her tortilla, cradling a steaming mug in front of her face as she watched me. In contrast, Ward was wearing his jacket and his perpetual scowl.

"I don't care," Ward shot back. "He should be wearing a fuckin' jacket. And are you filming yourself?"

I swung my axe into the chopping block to hold it and reached out to stop my phone from recording. Then I pulled on my flannel shirt, since as soon as I'd stopped, I'd felt the cold. So had my nipples. I had a fairly hairy chest, so neither of my onlookers could probably tell they were hard enough to cut glass, but I knew.

"Don't tell me you don't know who he is," Hallie chided. "He's, like, famous."

I grimaced, buttoning up my shirt. "I don't know if I'd go that far."

"It's true! Everyone I know has heard of ‘Bearded and Buff.'"

"What the fuck is that?"

I rolled my eyes at Ward. "You should watch your language around her."

"She's seventeen. I'm sure she's heard worse at school."

"Way worse," Hallie agreed. "‘Bearded and Buff' is his social media handle. He posts all sorts of videos of him in nature, but his most popular ones are where he's chopping wood while shirtless."

Ward took that in, his confusion obvious. "But why?"

"Because it makes money?" I shrugged. "I mean, my pay from SPAM is decent, but my advertising income is way better."

"Advertising?"

I gestured at my axe. "Product placement." I waved a hand at my jeans. "Also a product placement."

"Jesus, are you serious?"

Hallie smirked. "You're just jealous he makes more money than you do."

"No, I simply can't believe we live in a society that wants to see a half-naked guy chop wood."

Hallie snorted and ducked her head.

Ward's scowl deepened. "Get your head out of the gutter."

"Too late."

"You shouldn't even know that slang."

"I probably know more than you do, old man."

"How are you feeling today?" I asked as I tucked my phone into my pocket and started stacking the wood I'd chopped.

Ward grunted, his scowl deepening.

"He's grumpy he can't have any coffee," Hallie said.

I grinned at her. "You'll soon find Ward doesn't need an excuse to be grumpy."

"It's Sullivan."

She considered him for a few seconds, her eyes narrowing. "Is that true? Are you an asshole twenty-four seven?"

Ward grunted again, but otherwise ignored her questions. "Like caffeine withdrawal will be any better for my system."

"Doctor's orders," I reminded him. He'd left the hospital with a list of dos and don'ts. No caffeine was one of them, along with no air travel. Which reminded me… "Did you get the email from April?"

Ward swiped at one of the steps with his boot-covered foot, clearing the bit of snow that had accumulated overnight, and sat down. Unlike Hallie, who looked cozy in her blanket with her steaming mug, Ward looked…grumpy. As usual. "Yeah."

"And?" Hallie prompted. "Am I free?"

"That's going to take a few more days. But," I added as her expression fell, "you've been officially remanded into SPAM custody until then."

"Is that good? That doesn't sound good." She wrinkled her nose.

"Better than being remanded into normal custody," Ward said. "At least with us, we're not likely to shoot you if a fire starts accidentally nearby."

Hallie's face went pale under the rosiness brought out by the chill in the air, and I glared at my temporary partner. "Ward."

He glanced at her and grunted—an acknowledgement that maybe he shouldn't have said that, if not an apology. "So I guess I'll pack up and head over to the hotel? The conference should be over by now. They'll have rooms available."

I frowned and paused in stacking the wood. "Why would you do that?"

"Because you'll be gone, taking Hallie…wherever, and I need to wait a week before I can fly back to DC."

I swiped a flannel-covered arm over my brow and adjusted my glasses. "You saw April's email, but you didn't read it, did you?"

He held my gaze, neither confirming nor denying, but I knew the truth. I knew Ward had been a good hero—a great one, given his reputation and renown—but I was getting the impression that he rarely troubled himself with details. Even important ones.

"Hallie and I will be driving to Ottawa," I confirmed. "And you'll be coming with us. April's orders."

"Fuckin' why," he whined. "I hate road trips."

"Because"—I held up my index finger—"one, you've got the experience to give Hallie some initial training on the way to help ensure she's not a danger before she crosses the border into the States and accidentally causes an international incident. Two, you can't fly for a week, and the agency doesn't see the point in footing the bill for a hotel and a flight if we're driving to DC anyway. And three, April wanted you to call her for additional instructions."

"I'll get right on that," Ward grumbled under his breath.

"We'll take today to rest up and leave in the morning."

"Great." He sounded like he was heading to his execution and not a fifteen-hour road trip. To Ottawa, anyway. It would be another nine hours on the road after that to DC.

"You can make up a playlist," I offered.

He met my smile with what I could only call a flat stare. "Great," he said again.

Right then and there, I decided this road trip would be great. It would be epic.

I'd make Ward smile. Somehow.

Normally, editing my videos was a relaxing experience. Almost as meditative as the activity of chopping wood itself. Every evening, I'd sit down at my desk with a cup of decaf and spend a few hours piecing together the best bits of footage into a quality video that my followers and subscribers had come to expect.

Not tonight, though. Tonight, I felt rushed. I didn't know when I'd get another chance to film myself, let alone edit it into something usable, so I was pushing myself to get this piece done and posted tonight. I couldn't even sit at my desk, since it was in the guest room, so instead I was holed up in my bedroom, laptop perched on my crossed legs. My back ached, but I wanted to get this video done.

I'd already sent a rough cut to my best friend, Nadine, who lived in British Columbia. We'd never actually met in person—probably a good thing—but she had a similar blog to mine. She also did the lumberjack thing, but with a sword, which was a popular schtick, given her steadily increasing amount of followers.

"It looks good," she said, her tinny voice rising from my phone's speaker from where it rested on the bedspread beside me. "But why do you need my feedback so quickly?"

"Ugh." I let my head fall back as I grimaced, knowing she wasn't going to let me get away with fobbing her off. "I told you about the—"

"Famous superhero dude from the States? Yeah. How's that going?"

I gave her a brief rundown of events over the past couple of days. "So now we need to drive her to Ottawa before we can head down to Washington. Get her paperwork and such all settled."

"In winter? That's going to be a terrible drive."

"We'll be in the truck."

"Even so. Four-wheel drive only gets you so far."

She wasn't wrong. "I'm less concerned about the drive and more concerned about Ward's…" How did I say this politely? "…attitude."

"You think he'll be, what, mean to—what's her name again?"

"Hallie. And no, not exactly. But I worry that he won't have any patience for her."

She made a noise of understanding. "All you can do is try to rein him in if you get the sense he's not doing right by her."

"But can I make that call? I don't know what he needs to teach her." A noise from outside caught my attention, and I cut off Nadine's response with, "Shh. One sec."

"What?"

I ignored her and got out of bed, absently setting my laptop on the comforter, my eyes on the slightly open window next to me. It wasn't too cold tonight, only about ten below, so I'd cracked the window a few centimeters to let in fresh air. I was used to hearing the soft sounds of the night—rustles in the dry undergrowth as some small creature sought food, or the shushing of the bare tree branches as an owl took flight. But what I'd heard was out of place. The distinct sound of a foot crunching through brittle snow.

I didn't have any curtains on my windows—there was no one around, I had no neighbors to peek into my little log cabin, and I preferred to have as much natural light as possible. It meant I was completely visible to anyone out there, but that had never been a concern before.

Now, though…now I was concerned.

Unless I'd misidentified the noise I thought I'd heard?

"Dev, you're freaking me out." Nadine's worried voice brought my attention back to her.

"Sorry. I thought I heard something outside."

"You've got your window open again?" Her tone clearly informed me how crazy I was.

"Yeah," I said, distracted by trying to see anything in the pitch blackness of the forest. "Look, I'm gonna go."

"Don't go outside," Nadine growled. "Don't do it. It was probably a deer."

"Yeah."

"I mean it, Dev."

"I'll call you when I'm back from the trip."

"Dev—"

I turned off my phone and tucked it into the pocket of my flannel pj pants. I hadn't heard a repeat of the footstep noise, but I likely wouldn't have with Nadine yammering in one ear. All I could see outside was my reflection, which was less than helpful. Then I had a sudden thought—what if the footstep had been made by Hallie?

I scrambled around the bed and flung open the door to the hall, barely noticing that it slammed into the wall. I sprinted down the carpeted hall in my stocking feet, fully prepared to race into the snow to chase her down—

Except she was sitting up on the couch, blinking at me in the light of her phone's screen. Behind me, Ward's door was yanked open, and he snarled, "What the fuck is going on?"

I slumped against the wall. "You're both still inside."

"Where the fuck else would we be? It's fucking freezing outside."

Mental note: Ward's language was not improved by being woken up in the middle of the night. And that's clearly what had happened—his face bore creases from his pillowcase and his hair was adorably rumpled. He looked like a toddler who'd woken up from a nap, grumpy and perturbed.

"I thought I heard something." But the more I thought about it, the less likely it seemed that it had been a footstep. Impossible, even. No one would be tromping through the woods at this hour. It had to have been a deer, like Nadine suggested. Or a rabbit, maybe. "Sorry. I overreacted."

Ward grunted. "Do we need to go out and have a look?"

It was at that moment I decided I liked Ward Sullivan. He was an asshole, yes, but I realized my fears about how he might treat Hallie were unfounded. He wasn't cruel, or mean. Under the grumpy crust was a good man. Buried deep, but there.

"Nah. There's no one out there. I'm just tired." Unbidden, I yawned, punctuating my claim.

"As are we all," Ward deadpanned. "Go to sleep. We've got a long drive ahead of us tomorrow."

Meekly, I nodded.

Then I double-checked the lock on the front door. Just in case.