The Vacation

Chapter 22

It had been over a week and Brenna hadn't seen Herrick again. In fact no one had. He hadn't shown up for several appointments and his one and only assistant said he wasn't answering his phone. Officers had been dispatched to his home only to find it full of his things with the door swinging in the wind but no sign of the owner. The neighbor advised she hadn't seen him in over a week.

Pete put out an attempt to locate on his truck but so far there hadn't been any hits. Brenna thought he might have skipped town to avoid capture but Mac didn't believe it. He was sure it was something more along the lines of laying low and waiting for the right moment.

Despite the constant tension he had to admit it had been the best couple of weeks of his life. He'd never had anyone but Reego to return home to at night. The intimacy of meeting her at her work and asking how her day was had turned out to be an unexpected treat. The way she smiled and stood on her tip toes to kiss him when it had been good or the way she rolled her eyes and blew her breath out in exasperation when it had been a bad day. It didn't matter what response he got, he was happy either way.

She'd laughed when he'd had to call and tell his housekeeper not to come in for the next couple of weeks.

"You have a housekeeper?"

"Yes. She comes in once a week and does a deep clean. I'm just not good at that stuff."

"Whatever!" She exclaimed incredulously. "You have helped me in the kitchen and done your own laundry the whole time you've been here. You even cut vegetables for me the other day and didn't lose a finger. You were just lazy is the real story." The waggled her eyes brows at him, daring him to deny it.

"Yep. I was lazy but in my defense, it is a lot less awful when you have someone to do the household stuff with." He threw the towel he had been folding in her direction. "As great as Reego is, he's useless at chores. The paws and all."

She'd put the kibosh on his takeout habits and started giving him shopping lists.

"No more junk, but if you simply must stop at the store after work, here are the couple of things we will need for dinner."

Everything she made was light years better than his usual junk anyway. She'd even tricked him into helping her a few times by giving him menial tasks she knew he couldn't mess up. It was just natural, he wanted to be where she was and if that was the kitchen or the laundry room then he figured he might as well be useful.

She had wanted to go away for the weekend to climb through the mountain trails in search of a natural hot spring. In light of all the occurrences he hadn't discouraged the idea and so he'd hauled out all his old backpacking supplies he hadn't touched since his early twenties and they'd set out on their adventure.

Reego walked the whole way with his nose to the ground in rapt attention. They hadn't had a lot of opportunities for him to wander the woods and there were millions of new smells for him to log.

Mac had been happy to stroll along behind Brenna; the view had been very nice. They'd eventually located the spring and were happy to find it deserted. He'd pitched the tent while she'd magically conjured food from boiling water and a bag of dried meat and vegetables.

"So you must have done a lot of backpacking in the past because you seem to know a lot more about this light weight, super fancy way of doing things than I do." He stated matter-of-factly as he ate.

"I was really into it during my college years. Haven't done it in a while though. You have all your Marine survival skills." She waved off his compliment.

"It's different though, they purposefully make your pack as heavy as possible I think." He chuckled in memory. "You have 70 lbs on your back and 20 lbs on your person and most days you are just hiking until you drop."