She watched the jet set down on the tarmac, its engine reversing with deafening power to slow it down, and Winter decided she didn’t dare discount the negatives. There was still that unknown energy that appeared determined to punish her husband for a thousand-year-old mistake. Not that Matt hadn’t already been punished enough by having to live with the knowledge that Kenzie had suffered for centuries because of him. And then there was Winter’s worry that nine weeks of marriage wasn’t quite long enough for Matt to realize that he didlove her just as much as she loved him.
But the optimism she’d inherited from both of her parents, Winter decided as the jet taxied back down the narrow runway, still put the odds in her and Matt’s favor. Two people of like minds, with their two hearts beating as one, had the strength of a legion of warriors.
The jet came to a halt by the tiny hangar and the engine whined down to a stop. Winter started running toward the jet just as the side door opened and a set of stairs dropped onto the tarmac. Matt emerged first and ran toward her, catching Winter in his arms long before she reached the jet.
“What is it?” he asked, holding her against him. “What’s wrong?”
“My pine is dead,” she said, looking up at him. “Somebody dug a hole down to its roots and killed it.”
He took hold of her shoulders and held her facing him, his golden eyes dark with concern. “You
’re sure it’s dead? You couldn’t feel anything? Not even a spark of life?”
She shook her head. “I couldn’t even feel TarStone’s energy. It’s all gone. Except for my staff,”
she said, reaching into her pocket and pulling out her pencil. “It still has power.”
He frowned. “It shouldn’t. Not if your tree is dead.” His hands on her shoulders tightened.
“You said the hole was dug down to the roots?” His frown deepened. “Then he must have been after the tap root, and that means at least part of your tree is still alive.”
“Woo-wee, that was one hell of a ride,” Tom said, walking up to them.
Matt turned and slid his arm around Winter, anchoring her to his side. “I’m glad you enjoyed it,” he told Tom as he gave the old hermit a tight smile. “But next time we go up, I’m wearing a G-force suit. Within five minutes of taking the controls, you pretty near had us turned inside out.”
Tom chuckled in delight. “Aw,” he scoffed, waving Matt’s concern away, “that was just a little maneuver I learned from my grandfather years ago.”
Winter eyed him curiously. “You have a grandfather?”
“Don’t we all?” Tom said with a laugh. “Oh, by the way, happy birthday.”
“That’s right,” Winter said. “You’re supposed to tell me your life story today.” She stepped away from her husband, slipped her arm through Tom’s, and started leading him toward Matt’s truck parked beside the hangar. “So, Mr. no-last-name Tom, who are you?”
“It’s not your official birthday yet,” Tom said with another laugh, lifting his free arm to pull back his sleeve. “You told me you were born at the exact time of the winter solstice, and that doesn’t occur for another six hours and…and twenty-three minutes,” he said, squinting at his watch. “Which means,” he added, covering her hand with his, “twenty-five years ago from right now, you weren’t even born yet.”
Winter rolled her eyes and started them walking again. “You’re doing it on purpose, making me wait just because you know it drives me crazy. So does that mean I don’t get my gift when we take you home this morning?” She pouted up at him when they stopped beside Matt’s truck. “You’re not really going to make me wait until the party this afternoon, are you?”
Tom ran his hand down her hair, pushing it back over her shoulder. “You’ll get your gift in exactly six hours and twenty-two minutes.”
Matt chuckled seeing Winter’s frown as he opened the back passenger door and took hold of her arm. “We’ll come back and get your Suburban later,” he told her, helping her climb in and handing her the seat belt before softly closing the door.
He opened the front passenger door. “Thank God there’s not a steering wheel on this side,” he said as Tom climbed in the front seat. “Or you’d be trying to pull another triple loop.”
“Did you really do loops in Matt’s jet?” Winter asked when Matt closed the door and walked around the front of the truck, which now had an eight-foot snowplow attached.
“Just one triple,” Tom said with a chuckle. “But I quit when your husband started to turn green.”
“So you used to fly jets, did you?”
“Six hours and twenty-one minutes, Miss Impatience.”
Winter fell silent once Matt got in and started the truck, letting her husband carry the conversation with Tom as they headed toward Bear Mountain. Tom had arrived at their cottage in the wee hours before dawn, having snowshoed the mile down the shoreline to meet Matt for their jet ride.
Winter had waited until they’d left before she’d thrown back the covers and gotten dressed to head out to greet the sunrise with her pine. Her poor tree, she thought sadly as she looked out the side window. For all of its towering size, it hadn’t even been three years old when someone—or something—
had come along and lopped off its top, then finished it off by digging up its roots.
The closer to home they got, the more impatient Winter became to get up to that cliff, and the madder she got when she thought about her murdered tree. But it seemed to take forever to navigate the road down to their cottage. Matt hadn’t wanted to build a new road along the shore, and had carefully engineered this spur off the old road so it didn’t intrude on the meadow or Bear Brook. The results were a very narrow and winding path that followed the contour of the rugged land, and the foot of new snow that Matt had only minimally plowed on his way out this morning added even more precious minutes to the arduous journey.
They reached home around ten in the morning, and Tom used up another twenty minutes telling Matt what a beautiful job he’d done on the cottage as they stood outside looking at the log and stone structure. It was ten-thirty before Tom finally strapped on his snowshoes to head down the shore toward his own cabin.
“If you come back by one o’clock,” Matt called after him, “you can ride to Gù Brath with us.”
Tom stopped and looked back. “No need. I’ll get there on my own. But thanks.”
Winter waited beside Matt as they both watched Tom disappear into the dense woods, then turned and grabbed Matt’s sleeve and started dragging him back toward his truck. “Come on, let’s get going.”
“Where?” he asked, pulling them to a stop.
“To the meadow. We are getting inside that cliff today if we have to blow the entire mountain to hell.”
He lifted a brow. “When did you decide violence was the answer? I thought you were convinced love and compassion and hope was enough to keep the world spinning.”
“I decided it when someone tortured and murdered our tree of life. And he’s in that cliff with our tap root, and we’re damn well going to blow him to hell if we have to, to get it back.”
Matt lifted a brow at her cussing. “So it’s ourtree now, and the energy in the cliff is a him?”he said calmly. He took hold of her shoulders and shook his head. “We wait, Winter. We go to Gù Brath this afternoon and attend your birthday party, and then we’ll go to the cliff tonight.”
“But why wait?”
“Because of Kenzie,” he softly reminded her. “He’ll become himself on the solstice in another few hours, and you still have enough power to make him stay that way this time. And I want it done before we try to penetrate the cliff because I don’t know what we’ll find inside. But even if it all goes to hell in a handbasket, my brother will at least have the dignity of dying human.”
Winter stared up at her husband, then suddenly threw herself against his chest and wrapped her arms around him in a fierce hug. “Oh, Matt, I’m sorry,” she whispered past the lump in her throat. “I wasn’t thinking. Of course we’ll help Kenzie first.” She leaned away and blinked through her tears to smile at him. “Is…is he as handsome as you are?”