“Get back here!” Jack shouted.

She turned to see that he was stopped halfway out to his sled, his arms full of the fir boughs from their bed. Had he just shouted an order at her?

“Excuse me?” she shouted back.

“I don’t need you wandering off and getting lost. Get back here and help me.”

She propped her hands on her hips. Oh, she was sooo glad she’d teased him this morning. “I never get lost!” she hollered. “And I don’t respond well to orders being shouted at me, either.”

He dropped the boughs. “O-kay then,” he said, his voice turning dangerously low—just like her father’s did when he was nearing the end of his patience. Somehow, no matter how softly her papa spoke, his voice carried an unreasonable distance, just as Jack’s did now. “Would you please come back here and help me get this sled out?”

Megan eyed the tracks leading out onto the lake, heaved a heavy sigh, and started trudging back to his snowmobile. He was mad at the sled, not her, and now was not the time to push him over the edge. Besides, the sooner they got home, the sooner she could ask Kenzie about the creature she’d seen.

But someday soon, she would have to find out what happened when a self-professed pacifist exploded. He could deny it until the cows came home, but Jack Stone was a warrior, and when warriors exploded…they rarely took prisoners. That’s why a smart woman learned the consequences of going too far before she found herself married to one.

Megan stopped to pick up some of the boughs he’d dropped, and tossed them down with the others when she reached his sled. “Do we have something we can use to chisel the ice?” she asked, deciding to defuse the tension with a show of cooperation.

Good Lord, she was turning into her mother!

He took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves—even though it was likely only ten degrees out—then pulled a small hatchet from his belt. He got down on his knees and started chopping the ice along the running boards.

“Great. Do we have another hatchet I can use? Wasn’t there one in your saddlebag and one in the dry sack?

“I’ll chop, you watch for planes.”

Wow, a whole sentence. She was making progress. She plopped down on the fir boughs with a sigh. Since he seemed to be more in the mood for listening than talking, Megan decided to broach the subject of how they’d gotten into this mess in the first place.

“Um…about what we saw last night,” she said.

He stopped chopping.

“I think we should keep it to ourselves.”

He straightened to his knees, studying her. “Why?”

“Well…in the first place, nobody would believe us.”

“And in the second?”

“If they did believe us, then everyone in town would likely get all scared. And when people get scared, they sometimes do foolish things.”

“Like?”

Megan sighed. This wasn’t going at all well. “Like they might decide to hunt it down and kill it.”

“It,” he repeated. “Exactly what is it, Megan?”

She lifted her shoulders. “How would I know? I saw exactly what you did, and I swear, I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

“Exactly what did we see?”

Okay, if he wanted her to spell it out, she would. “We saw what must be a long-lost descendant of a dinosaur. You know, like they think the Loch Ness monster is? Only our creature seems to be a cross between a ptero-dactyl and a…a large lizard of some sort. It can fly, so maybe it’s a winged reptile…or something or other.”

Oh, that had sounded intelligent. But she’d be damned if she would say what it really looked like.

Jack apparently had no such reservations. “You don’t think it looked like a dragon?”

“Dragons are mythological. And what we saw was definitely real, so it’s likely reptilian.”

“And the slime I found at the break-ins? Was that from a reptile?”

“It couldn’t be. Reptiles have scales and they’re dry. Amphibians are slimy.”

He sat back on his heels. “So we’re talking about two different creatures, then? Is that what you’re suggesting?”

“I have no idea who or what broke into those shops. Maybe the kids concocted some sort of slimy goo to throw you off their trail.”

“Forensics can’t break it down to any known substance in their data banks.”

They were getting off track here. “You’re assuming one thing has to do with the other, Jack. Just because we saw something last night that we can’t identify doesn’t mean it’s responsible for your break-ins.”

He studied her in silence for several seconds, then started chopping again.

“I’m just saying we should keep this our little secret,” she said through gritted teeth. “What would be the point of telling anyone?”

He stopped chopping and looked at her. “So you don’t think I should ask Kenzie Gregor what the creature is?”

Megan couldn’t stifle her gasp of surprise, and she wanted to kick herself when Jack’s eyes narrowed at her response. She quickly tried backpedaling. “What makes you think Kenzie would know anything about this? Have you even met him?”

He started chopping again.

“Jack,” she growled, just as a fast-moving plane crested the mountain to their east, diving toward the lake and swooping over their heads with a high-pitched roar.

Megan scrambled to her feet and started waving and shouting. The plane nosed up into a steep turn, circled around, and roared past them again, this time not a hundred feet above the lake a few hundred yards away.

“It’s Matt!” she yelped, watching it circle a nearby island before finally setting down on its skis and taxiing toward them.

“You’re not riding back with him. He flies like a maniac,” Jack said, coming to stand beside her.

“He won’t fly like that with a pregnant woman on board,” she called back, running toward the four-seater Cessna that had come to a stop a hundred yards out on the lake. But she skidded to a halt, her excitement turning to dread when she saw Kenzie climb out the passenger door.

Instead of rushing to her, Kenzie stood hunched over beside the plane, his hands braced on his knees as he sucked in large gulps of air. He looked so sick, Megan realized this was probably his first plane ride. She turned her attention to Matt, who was speaking into his radio mike. He finally climbed out his side, focused not on her but somewhere over her shoulder.

“Did you radio Dad to tell him you found us?” she asked Matt, drawing him to a stop in front of her. She finally got his attention, his expression fierce as he gave her an assessing, visual inspection.

“I just spoke with your mother, and she’s calling him now. Grey and Robbie headed out on snowmobiles around midnight last night to look for you. Why in hell haven’t you been answering your satellite phone?”

“Because it’s at the bottom of the lake,” Jack said, walking up beside her. “Along with her sled.”

Matt snapped his gaze to Jack. “What happened?”

Megan stepped between them. “I got ahead of my headlights and ran into open water,” she said. “Jack fished me out.”

She heard a heavy sigh behind her, just before Jack took hold of her shoulders and moved her off to the side. “My sled’s frozen in the slush,” he told Matt, who was suddenly looking amused. “We were chopping it out while waiting for someone to show up. Why don’t you take Megan back with you, and I’ll finish getting it free.”

“And if you can’t get it free?” Matt asked.

“Then I’ll walk back.”

Matt eyed him in silence, then nodded.

“I’ll stay and help,” Kenzie said, finally joining them, though he looked as if a soft breeze might knock him over. He extended his hand. “Kenzie Gregor.”

Jack shook it. “Jack Stone. And I’d appreciate the help, if you don’t mind riding back on a sled designed for only one rider.”

“I’d just as soon walk back, thank ye.”

“I think we should all fly home,” Megan said, not wanting Jack and Kenzie to spend any time together. She looked at Jack. “Dad or Robbie will come back with you tomorrow to get your sled and see about pulling mine out. We can’t leave it in the water for more than a week without getting fined by Inland Fisheries.”