Forbidden Ground (Cold Creek #2)(55)
“Complicated.”
“By feelings? His, I hope, and not yours.”
She couldn’t figure out what to say. What did she feel for Grant, for this town, for her new friends here, for those darling McCollum boys? Carson plunged on. “Oh, by the way, I have your faux Beastmaster mask to return to you, now that my best grad assistant’s made a copy, so I’ll drive down this evening. Dinner? Maybe with you and Grant to chat about the mound?”
She hesitated. “I want the mask back, but—”
“Don’t want me back?”
“I didn’t say that. Grant and I are helping out with the kids of a friend of his who took a bad fall from a high tree.”
“When the mill’s loggers were cutting it down? Or something like that old tree of Grant’s you mentioned that was taken?”
“Oh, did I tell you about that? No, this guy climbs for a hobby and was up high giving Brad Mason a climbing lesson. He fell—Todd, not Brad—was gravely injured and is now in OSU Hospital, as a matter of fact.”
“That’s terrible. So you’re babysitting kids? Ha, that’s a good one.”
“It isn’t, not the way you mean. I helped raise my younger sisters, you know. But yes, it is a good thing to do.”
“All right, if I’m persona non grata there for now, I’ll send my grad student Kaitlyn Blake down with it late tomorrow—and with a copy of my latest article. But I hope you can find a space soon on your backwoods calendar for your mentor—who wants to be much more to you. But, Kate, I’m trusting you to get us into that mound, get yourself into that mound at the very least. If it’s complicated, you’re good at finding your way through the maze. Call me for an update when you can see the—sorry for putting it this way—the forest for the trees.”
“I hear you, Professor.”
But the truth was, for the first time in the twelve years she’d known Carson Cantrell, she was going to do things—though things he wanted—her way.
*
The minute Kate joined Grant in the kitchen for lunch, he had news for her. “I think I’ve got a lead on how you can check on Grace Lockwood and what she might have meant by drawing a star on her chest when you saw her in Bright Star’s inner sanctum.”
Despite the fact the weather was gloomy and threatened rain, they were planning a ride up Shadow Mountain to search for the team of draft horses there—and who owned them and why in such a rocky, gravelly area. But her stomach flip-flopped to hear he had a lead on how to get to Grace.
“Tell me. Can we go today?”
“Not so fast. On the Sabbath, you just try to talk to a Hear Ye convert about anything but what Bright Star’s preaching. No, Keith Simons, who works for me at the mill, may be our missing link.”
“The big guy who also doubles as your bodyguard when needed?”
“The same. He’s become a friend.” He put the plate of bread, cold cuts and cheese on the table where the two of them sat across from each other. “I remembered he told me last week he’s having a fence repaired on his property, and your cousin Lee’s doing the work. So if you dropped in around lunchtime tomorrow—with me—at the Simons place, maybe you could talk to Lee at least, find out about what Grace was trying to say.”
“Great, though I’d rather talk to Grace. Lee seems to be really closed up, whereas she— I don’t know. Is he working there without another Hear Ye member? I’d want to talk to him alone. Can you set it up for tomorrow?”
“Whoa! We’ll have to play it partly by ear, but I’ll call Keith, and we’ll see.”
“And please tell his wife I’ll bring lunch from somewhere uptown. She shouldn’t have to feed us over this. Isn’t Keith the brother of the police dispatcher Gabe used to date? Tess told me Gabe arrested one of their brothers, a guy who worked for you.”
“True, but despite his siblings’ hating Gabe’s guts and evidently blaming me, too, Keith’s been my right-hand man after Todd. Keith stuck with me loyally when Jonas was sent to prison and Ned, another brother, quit the mill. Keith may seem like a man of few words, but the guy’s ambitious and sees everything. If I have Brad fill in for Todd—and it looks like I’ll have to do that—Keith will be a big help to him. As for his wife, Velma, in true Appalachian style, I’m sure she won’t take to guests bringing their own vittles, so you’d better just take her a present afterward—not right then if we go there for lunch. Speaking of which, eat up right now. So much has happened I haven’t been able to track my tree any more than you’ve been able to get to Grace alone, so let’s hustle here.”
He winked at her, which made her spirits soar. Despite all he and they had been through, Grant had a solid core of strength that emanated from him. Like a tall tree with deep roots, one, hopefully, that could not be cut down as two of his best friends had been.
*
On the half-hour drive up Shadow Mountain, Grant and Kate discussed Todd’s accident again. As upsetting as that was, Grant thought, it was better than the topic of his wanting to keep Mason Mound untouched.
Jace Miller had retrieved Todd’s harness from the hospital and checked it over. He’d said a thorough examination didn’t reveal if the snags, two large tears and several cuts had occurred before or during his fall. To complicate things, the emergency-room team didn’t recall how many of those they had made when they’d cut it off Todd. According to Brad, Todd had seen some problem and had tried to shift himself onto another rope, but something just gave way. That something had been Todd’s harness, not the rope, as Jace had first suspected. Though Todd had regained consciousness in the hospital after his surgery, he couldn’t recall any details about the climb or his fall. His last memory was walking up to the tree with everyone.