Page 51 of Stubborn as a Shadow

Did that mean I wasn’t a complete fucking failure?

The nearest motel was about twenty minutes away in good weather, but this was not good weather. So it looked like we’d be going to Chinook Pines, a small recreational development a few miles up the road. It also meant a little B and E was in our near future.

With hectares of dense woods transected by picturesque brooks and boasting a mountainous backdrop, small recreational communities like Chinook Pines were everywhere along this stretch of road. In the summer, the area would be crawling with potential witnesses to our mad dash down the road. Luckily, this wasn’t summer. And ice fishing hadn’t startedyet. November was that in-between month where deciduous trees had shed their leaves, but the lakes hadn’t frozen over yet. So there wasn’t much to entice people out here.

In the few minutes we’d been traveling, the conditions had worsened. Snow shot toward us from every direction, but every now and again the hazy outline of headlights behind us or taillights ahead of us burned through the snow squalls.

But the constant fear of crashing wasn’t what made this ride so memorable. Nope. That was Morgan.

He hadn’t stopped laughing since he climbed onto the bike. He’d been laughing before I turned the key. When I told him to get closer and hold tight, he laughed some more. When he snuggled up behind me, he kept on laughing. And when I’d finally pulled the bike onto the road, I worried he’d hyperventilate he was laughing so hard.

Every chuckle, giggle, or chortle sent tiny iridescent bubbles fluttering into the air. He really was full of light and color, if even his laughter produced a fucking rainbow. But I couldn’t think about all that right now. I needed to get to Chinook Pines. I’d chosen the development in the event of an emergency, and this was shaping up to be one hell of an emergency.

Gage always said my need to be prepared was part of who I was as a shadow jumper. Maybe he was right. My need to know where I could land wasn’t something I could ignore. And that was going to pay off now.

I tightened my grip, wishing my fingers weren’t so numb with the cold. My entire body was freezing, but we’d be at the place I’d chosen soon. I could get warm then.

By the time we reached the turnoff to the small recreational community, snow covered every surface and was getting deeper by the minute. But I couldn’t begrudge the snow since I was depending on it to hide our tire tracks. Morgan’s weight shifted a little as he lifted his head from my back when I turned off ourlights and made the turn. The back tire wobbled, but I corrected it before I lost control.

Two concrete barriers sat across the entrance, a sign that the development was closed for the season. Perfect. With barriers in place, no one would be out here. The gap between the barricades might be narrow enough to keep out cars, but it couldn’t keep out my bike. I drove right between the two.

The trees were closer to the edge of the road within the development, sheltering us from the worst of the wind. But that didn’t keep out the snow. The drifts were deeper here than they had been on the open road. We blasted through the first snowdrift, and then the second. But the next was too big.

I glanced over my shoulder toward the highway and relaxed when I couldn’t see it. That was about all we could hope for at this point.

“You live here?” Morgan sounded skeptical when we stopped.

“No. I’ve never been here.” I blew on my fingers to warm them. “But we’ll never make it to Willow Lake in this storm.”

“Oh! Are we going to break the law?” He squealed and clapped his hands. “I’ve never done that before.”

“Hop off and I’ll move the bike further from the road.”

“This is all very sneaky,” he said. “I like it.”

At least he approved. I pushed the bike under an ancient pine tree and hoped I’d be able to dig it out when we had to leave. I turned to find Morgan holding out the helmet to me. His wig was askew, and his makeup was a bigger mess than it had been before. The inside of the helmet was also a mess of beige foundation and who knew what else. I didn’t think the liner would recover from something like that.

For now, I stowed it in the top case. I thought about taking the helmet inside with us so it could dry out, but the fewer things we had to grab on our way out the door, the better. Just in case.

I didn’t think anyone would find us here, but we couldn’t count on that.

“Let’s get out of this blizzard,” I said.

Morgan tried to walk beside me, but his feet kept slipping out from under him. I grabbed his arm to steady him before he fell on his ass. He smashed into my chest.

“Oops!” His gaze caught on mine, and he batted his eyelashes at me. No one had ever batted their eyelashes at me until I met Morgan.

“You okay?”

“My bum muscles are all jiggly like strawberry Jello.” He grinned at me. “That’s the wobbliest kind according to Violet, in case you didn’t know. Well, not that she’s run any tests lately, but when she was a kid, she did things like that all the time.”

His and Violet’s childhoods sounded nothing like mine—not that Jello had been around when I was a kid.

“Your shoes probably don’t have much traction either.”

He glanced down toward his feet, although his shoes were hidden in the deep snow. “Yeah. You’re probably right. I wasn’t expecting to go for a hike in the wilderness when I picked them out this morning.”

“Why don’t you follow me? That way you can step in my footprints.”