Page 62 of Tormented Hearts
He looked up, his hands freezing on her body.
“Do you see what I see?” she finally managed.
The ceiling had carvings that, upon first glance, might appear to be gouges of a tool or the miscut of a saw, but from this angle—which they never would have discovered if not for their stolen moment—revealed so much more.
A grin spread over her face. “New rule. All future roadblocks must be solved with sex.”
He gave her a crooked smile, eyelids dipping over his smoldering green eyes. “Obviously. I should have led with that strategy days ago.”
They dressed in a hurry and snapped a dozen or so photos of the ceiling. The light inside the cabin was dim, and the space shifted with shadows as the sun moved across the sky, so they went outside to work.
She settled cross-legged on the ground in the small clearing with her phone in her lap, leaning over the screen to see the markings on the photo.
Hawk dropped to the ground next to her. He set an energy bar beside her, and she thanked him absentmindedly.
“I wish we could clean up these photos on a computer.” She zoomed in on a section and traced the carved line with her fingertip. Hawk looked over her shoulder but didn’t interrupt her stream of thought.
The longer she studied it, the more certain she became that this wasn’t decorative. It wasn’t idle whittling to pass a long winter, like some pioneer’s version of the painting in the Sistine Chapel.
Certain lines were cut deeper than others, as if deliberately placing emphasis on that portion of the carving. Small dots separated sections, deep nicks in the wood created by the point of a knife. And tiny symbols repeated at regular intervals, spaced too evenly to be accidental.
“Whoever carved this expected someone else to read it someday.” She set her phone aside and jumped up, striding to the tent to grab her pack. When she returned with it in hand, she caught sight of Hawk from the corner of her eye. On his feet, hand along his spine within reach of his weapon, ready to defend her.
Her heart gave a soft lurch as she returned to his side. They sank to the ground again, sitting close, and she pulled out the journal from a pocket where she tucked it for safekeeping.
She pulled up a file on her phone with photos of old survey papers of her father’s land here in Wyoming.
“Here. You need this.” Hawk passed her a small rectangle attached to a cord, offering the battery pack they’d been using to charge their phones for days.
She plugged the battery pack into her phone, providing more time to work on the newest piece of the puzzle.
She should be angry with her father for giving her so little to go on, but she was still riding the high of hot cabin sex and the new discovery of the ceiling carving.
She enlarged the first section of the carving until the pixels began to blur. The knife marks were rough in places but cleaner in others. Someone had spent hours—days, maybe—looking up to carve those beams.
She rested her fingertip over one symbol, then shifted to the right, to the same symbol. “This represents something.”
“The spacing between them is identical too.”
She looked again. He was right. Each cluster occupied nearly the same amount of space.
“That can’t be an accident.”
“No.” She opened another photo from a different angle. The same pattern, same intervals. Her heartbeat picked up, and she opened the journal. The brittle pages fluttered in the breeze, and Hawk pinned them down so she could read.
She glanced over at him and caught his stare on her, his expression tender.
She touched the back of his hand and smiled. Then she turned her attention to the entries.
Most were ordinary observations. Snow came early and the mare favored her left leg. Supplies were running low.
She frowned. “Nothing.”
“Keep going.”
She turned another page and another. Then an entry made her stop.
“Booth Ridge.” Her finger hovered over the page.
