Lily laughed. “I think both of those terms are a slight understatement. Honestly, is there anything anywhere around us at all?”

Chase’s gut tightened, this time for a different reason. What had she expected? Of course this place—hell, probably even her now that Lily could see what her life looked like—would seem foreign and unappealing to Lily. “Not for a good twenty-five miles to the nearest road. There’s plenty of wildlife out there—deer, of course, and bear, the occasional moose. All the small animals, and there’s been a few mountain lion sightings, but mostly the cats are bobcats. Sorry, but it’s perfectly safe here.”

Lily tilted her head and regarded her quizzically. “I wasn’t worried about safety. I was just marveling at how amazing it is to be standing in a place like this.”

“Oh,” Chase said, feeling as wrong-footed as she probably sounded.

“Sometimes in the city,” Lily went on as if she hadn’t noticed, her voice pensive, as if she was drifting in the memory, “I’d look around me and at all the buildings soaring so high above me, filled with thousands of people, and the streets packed with thousands more, and feel completely alone. My smallness was unsettling and disorienting.” She turned slightly to Chase, still holding her hand. “This is nothing like that. Out here, I don’t feel apart from all the life around me.”

Chase carefully clasped Lily’s waist and kissed her, as softly as she could manage and far more briefly than she wanted. “I had to do that. You’re not only beautiful, Lily, but you see what I love out here, and that makes me ache.”

Lily drew in a sharp breath and gently touched Chase’s cheek. “You, Chase, are the most beautiful thing that I see.”

Chase muttered a half-hearted curse. “I really didn’t bring you here to seduce you, but damn, I want to.”

Lily’s brow rose. “Oh?”

“I brought you here to get some sleep. That was tough, up there on the mountain, more for you, I imagine, than me.”

“Why?” Lily said. “Why me more than you?”

“I wanted that guy to live every bit as much as you did, I think,” Chase said. “I want all of the ones we find to live.”

“But?” Lily prodded.

“But…it’s not personal for me.”

“And it is for me,” Lily said distantly. “Or it’s all become personal, and maybe that’s part of the problem. Somewhere in the past few years, I’ve lost my professional shields. And that’s what’s made it so hard for me to do my job.”

“Lily,” Chase murmured. “Come inside. For tonight at least, forgive yourself.”

“Is that what you think I need to do?” Lily asked curiously, her tone still slightly distant, as if her mind was working on some other problem, somewhere else.