Page 20 of Mountain Mens' Curvy Obsession

I was the first man to lose himself inside this wonderful woman. What a privilege.

“It wasn’t just a car accident,” Nico grimly reminds us. “There were flashing lights, two of them in rapid succession.”

“That’s all dark,” Chance says with a slow nod. “Not that I’m questioning your judgment, but you’re right about one thing. We do need to check Anya’s car. Where is she?”

“Sleeping, which is good,” Nico says. “I poked my head in her room earlier. One of us should stay with her. One of you, specifically. I want to check her car.”

I agree and glance back at the hallway, where water still drips from my snow boots. “Whoever we saw take off that night might be around,” I mutter, “though I’m pretty sure they headed back into town before the heavy snow.”

“They would’ve died, otherwise. Temperatures dropped well below zero, and I haven’t seen or heard anything out there,” Nico says.

“I’ll stay with her,” Chance replies.

“Maybe she’ll start remembering what she was doing here in the first place,” I say.

Nico exhales sharply, then downs the rest of his coffee and leaves the mug in the sink. “It’s been two years. I thought she was dead.”

“We all thought she was dead,” Chance sighs. “I would kill to find out what happened that day at the Dalton Festival.”

“I think Anya would, too,” I mutter. “What’s the last we heard about what went down over there?”

Chance takes his phone out, going through saved photos and screenshots. We may not have cell reception, but we can still access whatever we have stored on our phones, and I know Chance has been keeping an eye on any news bits coming out of New York since Dalton. I notice that ever since Anya came to us, the light has returned to my brother’s eyes.

“The Feds are still investigating, but there haven’t been any new leads for more than a year,” he says, giving me a curious look. “All the information we had pointed to Anya having died that day with her family.”

“Clearly, she didn’t,” Nico replies. “I wonder how she got out.”

“And where she’s been for the past couple of years,” I add. “Alright, Nico, I’ll join you. We need to comb through her car before anyone else gets to it.”

Nico nods in agreement. “Let’s get one thing clear here. The minute they figure out she’s not down there, dead, they might come after her again. We need to prepare for that possibility.”

“They can fucking try,” Chance replies with newfound determination. “There’s no way I’m letting Anya out of our sight ever again. No fucking way.”

“Good to have you back, brother,” I chuckle softly.

He looks at me with slight confusion. “What do you mean?”

“Come on, isn’t it obvious? You’ve been so gloomy and morose since we first heard about Dalton. And now, look at you. Ready to go all gung-ho on anybody who tries to take her away from us. Don’t get me wrong, I’m loving the vibe.”

“You’re laughing again,” Nico tells him. Nico noticed, too.

And Chance is realizing it, too. The light in his eyes shines brighter as he puts his phone away and heads upstairs. “Take a shotgun with you,” he says as he walks out of the kitchen. “Fire two rounds if you need help. I’ll hear them from up here.”

“Light a flare on the roof,” Nico replies. “We’ll be back in a jiff if we see it.”

“Roger that.”

Once we both hear Chance’s footsteps upstairs, Nico and I head back into the hallway to get our snow gear on. Heavily equipped, we step out into the endless white blanketing our otherwise quiet side of the mountain.

“Damn, it’s brutal but so beautiful out here,” I say.

“See those plumes of smoke?” Nico points to a couple of faint grey lines working their way across a clear blue sky, the sun rising somewhere behind us. “The town’s still alive.”

“Good. We invested too much in the local businesses to lose it all to a frickin’ blizzard.” I chuckle dryly and follow him down the porch steps. “Hey, do you think Anya might’ve had it with her?”

“Had what?”

“The USB drive,” I say. “Aleks said he was going to have Anya hold on to it before Dalton happened. He was going to put her on a train and send her to us.”

---