Page 52 of Hard Knock Hero

So long as Jessi wasn’t alone. “Good. I’ll hurry back.” I sneaked in for one last kiss before dashing to the door.

“Not fair,” I heard Scarlett say as I left. “Is there a rescue shelter for sexy, stranded men, and where can I sign up to foster one of my own?”

* * *

“Where to?” Owen asked, arm slung casually over the steering wheel like he was a cabbie. But if he thought his sarcastic tone bothered me, he was wrong.

I settled into the passenger seat of his Hartley Sheriff’s Department truck and buckled my seatbelt. I glanced around at Main Street. Already, it looked like the numbers were thinning out. I had no doubt a lot of those stranded tourists were back on the road, eager to get where they were going. But Hartley residents were bound to be watching us right now. It wouldn’t be good to linger.

“I hear there are access roads into the national forest on the north side of Refuge Mountain.”

“There are. Why?”

“Because that’s where we need to go for this show and tell.”

Owen put the truck in gear. “Fine. You can show me when we get there, but the telling needs to start right now. I want to know what’s going on.”

“There’s a lot. I’m not sure where to start.”

“How about with the part that I’ll hate the most. I’m a bad-news-first kind of guy.”

He was going to hate all of this. “That doesn’t help.”

“Jeez, the universe is determined to ruin my day, huh?” he muttered. “Start anywhere. We’ll go from there.”

“I’ll start with my real name. It’s Aiden Shelborne.”

He punched the brakes, bringing the truck to a shuddering halt in the middle of the road. Glared at me. “No wonder I couldn’t find anything in the databases. ‘Trace Novo’ has fake name written all over it. Would have been smarter to go with something generic.”

“Nah, he’s a real guy. Jessi’s brother is on his way, like she said. But he’s not me.”

“Then who the hell are you? ‘Aiden Shelborne’ doesn’t tell me much.”

I dove right in. Started with my arrival in Hartley the night of the storm. Just a guy from California, passing through on his way to other parts of Colorado. How I stopped at Jessi’s Diner and got mixed up with Chester, Mitch, and Theo. Then Jessi’s impulsive claim that I was her brother.

“You can’t blame her,” I said. “She was freaked out.”

He waved a hand dismissively, pressing the gas. “I’m not mad at her. Keep going to the rest of the stuff I’m going to hate.”

Get ready, I thought.

I told him about what we’d seen on Refuge Mountain yesterday. How it had started as an innocent hike. I left out the kissing, though my pulse kicked as I remembered Jessi’s cold hand and how I warmed her skin with my mouth. And back in her apartment afterward, her hands on my naked body in the bathroom…

Nope. Couldn’t let my mind stray to that.

I moved on to the loud noise and the rumbling of the mountain. Then the camera monitoring the trail into the national forest and Mitch patrolling by ATV with a rifle slung over his back. Owen kept his eyes on the snow-packed road ahead of us, but I could tell he was hanging on every word.

“Mitch spotted us. Took a few shots. We fought, and he and I ended up rolling downhill. I stopped before I reached the edge of a ravine. He didn’t.” That was close enough to what had happened. He didn’t need the blow-by-blow.

“Did you leave him down there? It wouldn’t have been easy to climb up with all the ice. Or…”

“He broke his neck. It was obvious. There wouldn’t have been any point in sending a rescue mission.”

“Fuck,” Owen whispered. “I see why Chester’s upset this morning. Either his brother is missing, or they found Mitch’s body.”

“I assume so. After that, I got Jessi out of there. There were more ATVs on patrol. I didn’t want to run into them. And we didn’t come to you because I had no idea if Chester or somebody else was going to come after us. I figured our silence was the only leverage we had. Whatever the Rigsbys are doing on Refuge Mountain, they’re trying very hard to keep it quiet.”

Owen pulled the truck over, stopping again. He kept the engine idling, but rubbed a hand over his jaw like he was thinking. “You’re right. I do hate all of this.”

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