Chapter 14

Nero – Saturday

Mumbling quietly aboutcaffeine addicts but working quickly, Forrest got the coffee machine going before disappearing into the other room for a few minutes. Nero heard the murmur of Forrest's voice but couldn't make out if he was on the phone or talking to himself. It was kind of cute that he talked to himself, but Nero wasn't going to comment. He mumbled too.

Forrest was worried about what they might find; that much was clear.

"I had to leave a message for Kit to call me back," Forrest said when he returned to the kitchen. "I told her it was important. Hopefully, Chief Dear or someone from the police already talked to her."

Forrest poured them both coffee and then tried to pretend he wasn't lurking around trying to see what Nero was doing. Nero wasn't fooled at all. While Forrest had been on the phone, Nero had hopped onto his laptop, planning to see if there was more information online about the Coopers or the off-the-grid group. He wondered if Witt and Dina had been preppers too. If so, that gave even more credence to the possibility of them still being alive up there.

"If you keep hovering over my shoulder, I'm going back to my cabin. Track Rufus down. Maybe he knows the other names," Nero ordered.

"Maybe my grandpa did," Forrest remarked, moving away to lean in a distractingly sexy way against the counter. "He always kept a diary. I read a couple after he passed away, but most of the entries were centered around ‘I don't know if Forrest will live to be twenty-five' kind of stuff. I never read the older ones."

Nero spun around in his chair, pressing his lips together in a vain attempt not to express his extreme frustration by growling—loudly.

"Your grandfather. Kept a diary. And, not only that, but you still have it?"

His mind boggled. A fucking diary, and Forrest just forgot? He lasered him with a look that he hoped Forrest translated as What. The. Actual. Fuck.

"Diaries. And yes. I just don't think about them much."

"Your job now is to read through them, and the book report is due by the end of the day." He made a shooing motion, encouraging him to get a move on already.

"Fine." Forrest huffed, stomping out of the kitchen. "I never have been good at homework!" he said over his shoulder.

Nero snickered as he listened to Forrest move around in the living room and mutter to himself while he searched for the diaries. When he returned for the second time, he held a stack of Moleskine journals in his hands. He plopped down across the table from Nero.

"Shh, no talking or we'll get in trouble."

"Pffft, I bet you never got in trouble," Forrest shot back.

"You think not?"

He hadn't, but how did Forrest know that?

Forrest's narrow gaze pinned Nero to his seat, assessing him, causing a shot of lust to spark up his spine. Now was not the time, he told himself.

Finally, Forrest said, "I think you could've been the mastermind behind the trouble but as an expert in raising hell, I don't see you doing it. I bet you never had study hall or were made to stay after school and clean up trash around the grounds."

"You're right," Nero admitted. "I even graduated early. Mostly so I could get away from the assholes I went to school with. Now, get to work."

* * *

His coffee had chilledby the time Nero shifted and straightened, then settled back in his chair to stare at the screen. Much of what he'd come across he'd already known. Some facts he hadn't. Now there was even more to speculate about.

"What?" Forrest asked impatiently. "Did you find something?"

Nero quickly scanned through his notes again.

"First and foremost, I want to know what kind of people would choose to live in the deepest, darkest part of a forest, far away from any humans. No running water. No easy way to communicate if something went wrong. How the hell did they survive for eight years or longer?" He looked over at Forrest. "I'm using eight years only because you say you were around seven when you came to live here."

Dina Paulsen had even given birth to both children out there, far from any medical help. Another mind-boggling fact.

"I can relate to the need to escape the rat race, but what your parents chose to do was extreme."

"Yeah, I know. They had to take the sovereign citizen movement to eleven."

"Did they consider themselves sovereign citizens?"

Sovereign citizens—if they were serious—could be scary, unyielding people. The family involved in the FBI standoff in Oregon ten or so years past were sovereigns.

"I don't know if it was official, but they sure didn't believe that laws applied to them. They didn't pay taxes, they lived where they wanted—this is hearsay, obviously, because no one talked to me about this kind of stuff. Why?"

"I covered a couple of sovereign stories in my career as a journalist. It doesn't really change much of anything except that, if the group was made up of people who believed in the anti-government survivalist aspect of the movement and those people are still alive, we'll need to be very careful. I'm not saying all SCs are dangerous, but one of their creeds is to always be prepared. They stock food, guns, and fuel in preparation for the failure of society. Not to be fucked with."

"From what I remember, it wasn't a huge compound," Forrest said thoughtfully. "I think they used the natural area as much as possible, caves and protected places that already existed. Could they have gotten all that stuff up there? My memories are so weird that I really can't judge."

"Yes, it's possible. But okay, we'll put that idea in our back pockets for now and keep going. I've found one more article about your ‘rescue' but nothing else. Just basic information. Thinking about it, your grandfather must still have had a lot of clout in the region at the time. He was a Cooper, after all—only, what, two generations away from the town's founder? Still powerful enough to block a lot of publicity about children raised in the woods with wolves."

"I don't remember wolves, thank fuck."

There was no mention of the children's parents, Witt and Dina, in the piece. The article was written almost as if the Cooper siblings had merely been missing for a few days before being rescued by their worried grandfather. Unfortunately, since it'd been pre-internet and had happened in a relatively isolated small town, the story hadn't been picked up by other news sources.

Nero growled his frustration at the lack of information and clicked further into the search results.

"Oh, check this out." Nero pointed at the screen and Forrest came to stand next to him. "The World did a human-interest series on modern pioneers in 1979. Like the ones in the 1800s who traveled by wagon train, lived in log houses, and died of dysentery. Did you ever play that game? No? Moving right along. One of the stories mentions that Witt Cooper handfasted with his beloved, Dina Paulsen, and they planned to homestead, joining a growing movement of people who wanted to go back to the land. So, possibly SCs, but maybe just their own brand of antisocial. I still want to know the names of the rest of the group."

"Handfasted?" Forrest repeated. "That's so eighteenth century. What the hell."

"I think that was the point. Okay, so." Nero clicked over to another tab. "Back in that era. See there? There were acres of what's now the Olympic National Forest that existed only nebulously officially. These woods weren't actually part of the national forest. Not yet anyway. They weren't protected from timber companies or anyone else—for example, wannabe pioneers. I bet Witt and Dina weren't the only ones who'd had the idea to live off that land."

Nero stood up to stretch his legs and spotted the two stacks of diaries sitting on the table. Forrest had set the ones he'd scanned through off to one side.

"Have you learned anything from those?"

"Nothing. No names so far. Could be they had a pact of silence or something. Wouldn't surprise me."

Nero's cellphone vibrated, and he grudgingly tugged it out of his jeans pocket. Mom stared back at him from the screen.

"I should answer this. It's my mom."

"Be my guest." Forrest nodded.

Nero stepped to the patio door and looked outside where Forrest's dormant lavender fields lay.

"Hi, Mom. How's it going?" He infused his voice with extra cheer.

"Oh, hi," she said after a weird pause. "I didn't expect you to answer."

He hated talking on the phone, something his mother did not understand, but he refused to apologize for it. Answering phones was not a requirement for modern life—that's why texting was invented. He shuddered, starting to feel a bit sympathetic toward Witt and Dina for wanting to get away from it all.

"Well, here I am." Was he being too hearty? "What's up?"

"I don't have too much to tell you, really. Just checking in."

Nero pulled his phone away from his ear and glared at it. See? That right there was why he hated phone calls. Always so awkward.

"Any plans for spring?" he asked. "Are you going on a cruise or anything?"

A few years ago, his mom had discovered she loved the cruise life. Nero sometimes wondered if they were related—but all he had to do was look in a mirror, and yes, they were. Nero, however, was not a cruise person. The idea of being trapped on a ship on the open sea with a whole bunch of people he didn't know sounded terrifying. But hey, the trips seemed to make his mom happy.

He wandered away from the window and back into the kitchen where Forrest was flipping through another Moleskine. An email pinged Nero's inbox. He leaned in to see who it was from: R. Fernsby from Cooper Springs Library. Nero really wanted to know what the R stood for.

"—so you might not be able to get a hold of me for a few weeks. I've heard the internet isn't reliable," his mom said.

He'd totally missed hearing where she was heading. Hopefully, it was on a cruise and not a road trip.

"Okay, Mom, no worries," he assured her. "I'll try to get out there when you get back." Did he feel bad insinuating he was somewhere other than Washington? Yes. When he did finally see her, Nero would come clean with his mom. And maybe he'd have news to share.

"Love you, honey."

"Love you too," he said quickly, eager to get off the phone and back to his laptop.

"Sorry," he said to Forrest. "That was my mom. I haven't talked to her recently."

"You get along?"

"Yeah, she's great. Honest. I'm just the loser son who's been laid off and broke up with his boyfriend."

He clicked open the email. Fernsby was merely notifying Nero that his library card had been sent out. Nice of him. The library card that he'd paid four hundred dollars for and now couldn't use for the purpose he'd wanted it for in the first place. The fire had likely destroyed any documents stored in the mansion. If it was possible that some of the documents and old newspapers would end up salvaged, it would be months before Nero might be able to see them.

At the tail end of the email, Fernsby had added, "Regarding our conversation, I may have some information for you, but it could be nothing. I'm at the library today—Saturday—until five."

Huh. But okay. They could use all the help they could get. Maybe R. Fernsby had remembered something after the two of them talked earlier in the week.

"Why loser?" Forrest asked. "Not the laid-off part. I get that, the economy is shit."

"Oh, Austin," Nero groused, taking his seat again and pondering how best to describe his ex. "Now that I look back, Austin was a mistake. Hindsight and all that. We are very different people. In the beginning, I enjoyed his utter solidness. Reliable. Safe. I should have known better since I've always been attracted to bad boys before. I thought it was a sign of personal growth or some nonsense. But I've come to realize I don't actually care for his brand of reliability or safety." Nero glanced across the table at Forrest. "And I'm still drawn to broody types. Austin didn't like change, didn't enjoy adventure. He hated that I wanted to hop in my car and just drive somewhere. He didn't even like to go out to eat without picking the place before we left the house."

"What about the podcast stuff?"

"Oh, you mean my ‘obsession' with dead people? Supposedly that was the last straw for him, but in reality it was over already. What about you? Any skeletons in your closet?"

He was curious to know if Forrest had had a boyfriend or long-term partner at some point. He was so utterly single that Nero doubted it. Definitely just the wrong kind of person for him to be drawn to. Moth to flame and all that.

"Skeletons?" Forrest grimaced, probably wishing now that he hadn't raised the subject. "I'm not good at relationships, so I don't really do them." He waved his hand vaguely. "In the past, I just hooked up with guys who have no connection with Cooper Springs. I've never been ashamed of my sexuality and anyway, most people around here seem to not care. It's a me thing. A Forrest thing."

"My mom would say you haven't met the right person yet," Nero said. "She's a huge fan of romance books as well as the old detective novels. I haven't told her about me and Austin yet."

"Surely your mom wouldn't want you to stay with someone who doesn't make you happy?"

"No, of course not. She wants me to be happy. It's a Nero thing, feeling like a failure."

A half smile played on Forrest's lips. "If it's any help, I don't think you're a failure. I think you're brave. You just picked up your life and moved forward."

The compliment felt good but made Nero squirm a bit. "Enough about me. What do you think about going into town and seeing what Rufus might know? Looks like there's not much in the diaries, so I don't know if finishing them is worth it."

"Sure, let's do that. I'll drive."

"I'd like to stop by the library too. It closes at five."