href="#ulink_d528e101-655b-5305-8860-cd429e14f9ad">ONE
Rebecca Miles dug her toes into the narrow crags of the Northern Ontario rock face, braced her legs against the granite and raised the lens of her video camera up to where jagged rock brushed against sky. Wind tugged her dark, shoulder-length hair free from its ponytail and sent it flying around her face. Something rustled in the trees far below her, but the quiver on the back of her neck told her not to look down. It was probably just the wind. Maybe an animal. But she couldn’t imagine there’d be another person around for miles. She grabbed hold of a stubborn pine growing out of the rock to her right and focused on searching for the falcon’s nest.
The climb up the embankment had turned out to be a whole lot steeper than she’d expected when she’d been standing safely on the ground, watching a pair of peregrines soar above. The narrow road got so little traffic, she could come and go for days without seeing another vehicle. It cut straight through a hill not far from the tiny patch of land she’d inherited from her mother. She’d left her camper and truck there, and hiked over. Now about fifty feet of steeply slanted rock and trees lay between her and the road below.
Something rumbled in the distance. It sounded like approaching thunder, but judging by the endless blue above, it was more likely a vehicle of some sort. Hopefully it wouldn’t frighten off the birds. Falcons mated for life and at this time of year a circling pair often meant a nest. Good clear footage of fluffy white babies would cover both gas for her truck and basic groceries for a month or more. If she actually managed to catch a falcon family portrait, she’d have a solid chunk to put toward her next overseas trip.
Lord, You know I have a list a mile long of charity projects I’m hoping to film. But until then, help me just be thankful for everything I’ve got.
Freedom. Independence.
The ability to go where she wanted, film what interested her and have adventures on her own terms.
As a teenager, her happiest moments had been when she’d managed to slip away from her claustrophobic home life, to wander aimlessly around the now decommissioned military base at Remi Lake, a few hours north from where she now stood. Her mother had spent the first several years of Rebecca’s life anxiously waiting for word from Rebecca’s father—an absent man whom Rebecca had never met and wasn’t supposed to ask about. Then, at thirteen, her mother had suddenly married General Arthur Miles—a decorated and larger-than-life hero in Canada’s small, tight-knit military community, who’d encouraged Rebecca to call him “the General” and never “Dad.” They’d moved onto the base, where she’d found herself with a twelve-year-old stepbrother named Seth, who’d never missed an opportunity to tell his gangly, awkward stepsister just how little he thought of her. She’d moved out at eighteen and hadn’t seen the General since her mother’s funeral, two years later, from a prescription meds overdose. But distancing herself from Seth had been more challenging.
She hadn’t seen him in person for years, but that hadn’t stopped him from bugging her online. The final straw had been when she’d set up a social media account and Seth had filled it with sarcastic comments. She’d blocked him instantly, only to have the computer engineer hack his way right back in. So she’d deleted the whole thing. Now, she could easily go days without checking her email, catching up on the news or even seeing another person.
Life was just simpler off the grid.
Her feet shifted. Pebbles cascaded down the hill beneath her. She tightened her grip and focused on searching for the nest. She’d started thinking about a falcon family and here her brain had rambled right on down the rabbit hole to thoughts of her own family life. Then she saw it. Three speckled eggs were nestled on a thin stone ledge. Rebecca smiled. She could use the winch on the back of her truck to raise a camera up here and monitor the feed through the video equipment in her camper. Her camera lens rose to the sky as she followed the adult falcons’ flight. In falcon pairings both the male and female hunted. Both the male and female soared.
Instead of leaving one of them huddled at home in the nest.
She let out a long breath. This was the problem with camping and filming up here: it was all too easy to get stuck in the past, as memories of life on the Remi Lake military base nipped at the edges of her mind.
Why couldn’t she let go of those years? Five years on base was enough to convince her that no matter how much she was drawn to the strength and courage of a man in uniform, she’d never put herself through the pain her mother had lived by falling for one. But there’d only ever been one young man on base to really tug on Rebecca’s heartstrings. Zack Biggs. Orphaned when both of his parents had died in combat, he’d been living at Remi Lake with his aunt and uncle, who’d also served. Zack had been sweet, sensitive and every bit as introverted as she was. The exact opposite of big personalities like the General and Seth. She’d been the only teenage girl in the base’s mixed martial arts class and clumsy to boot. Zack’d been husky and very overweight, but determined to get into shape, and with secret dreams of one day joining the special forces. They’d stuck together, as sparring partners and outsiders in a class full of confident jocks, like Seth. Zack was the closest she’d ever come to both a best friend and a high school crush. Closest she’d ever come to a date, too. When she’d been the surprise winner of a trophy for top student in the class, Zack had asked her to the formal sports banquet. She’d said yes. But he’d stood her up, only to then show up outside the hall, hours later in the pouring rain, to tell her that he’d just enlisted.
And she’d realized just how close she’d come to being in love with a military man.
The sound of the engine grew louder. The camera’s volume meter was jumping. Her microphone was picking up the sound. She stopped recording and spun the camera’s gaze toward the road, using the zoom function like a pair of binoculars. It was a motorcycle. Very nice machine, too. Harley-Davidson, maybe? If her memory of the General’s collection was accurate. The bigger question was what it was even doing up here on this road to nowhere. She was hardly expecting company. He leaned into a skid and she caught a glimpse of an emblem with a red circle and a gold crown on the side of the bike. Canadian military. Infantry to be specific. Someone in the area on leave? Someone who’d gotten lost looking for the remains of the Remi Lake base?
The microphone picked up more rustling beneath her and this time her gaze followed the noise. A man in blue jeans and a toque had stepped out of the tree line, carrying what looked like a black softball. He was tall, but scrawny. Like a coyote who hadn’t eaten in days. He tucked the black ball in a crag in the rocks beneath her, then went back for another two balls. Then he pulled out what looked like the remains of a cell phone. Her heart stopped as things she’d learned filming in war zones suddenly caught up to what her eyes were seeing now.
IEDs. Improvised explosive devices.
A terrorist’s explosive weapon of choice.
And somebody was now planting them in the Ontario rock beneath her.
Questions shot rapid-fire through her mind, but she didn’t give them time to form into words.
Thanks to the tree cover, the scrawny man might not even know she was standing on the rock above him. The man on the motorcycle probably had no idea the road was about to explode. All that mattered now was warning them both.
Adrenaline ran cold through her veins. The motorcycle rushed closer, the driver blind to the danger ahead. She prayed. I’m the only hope he has, Lord. Please, show me what to do! Her mind spun through the contents of her utility belt. She had a canister of bug spray, a small pocket knife, an air horn...
The motorcycle reached the final curve.
She
