Page 1 of Wounded Mountain Man

1

JESSALYN

This was a bad, bad, bad idea.

I glanced at the screen of my phone, which was mounted to my dash. According to the screen, I was still a half mile back. I was supposed to turn on one of these roads to get to a campground, but now I had no idea which one.

It was on the right. I knew that much. Surely, there’d be a sign.Campground this way.

Nope. No such luck. I passed a street but didn’t turn. I thought about it, but I didn’t want to go down the wrong way. This definitely seemed too soon.

Another road came right after. Then nothing.

It was one of those two roads. Sighing, I glanced in my rearview mirror and confirmed nobody was behind me. Then I pulled into the driveway of a cabin on the left. I backed out, re-routing to pick one of those two roads.

Speaking of re-routing, it sure would be nice if my app would start doing that spinny thing it did when I went the wrong way. This wasn’t my usual GPS. It was the one I’d loaded when I started driving for a rideshare company. Someone said there was plenty of work here in this mountain town, but in the past threeweeks, I’d spent the entirety of my time at the bottom of the mountain where the shops, restaurants, and bars now stood. The farthest I’d come up this mountain was the ski lodge.

This was well beyond that. Someone was camping out and had decided they needed to go to town for supplies. I was the person for the job.

Except this didn’t feel right. I turned on the second of the two roads and found it dark and spooky. There wouldn’t be a campground at the end of this. There wouldn’t be anything at the end of this.

Thunk, thunk, thunk.

The road didn’t seem rough. What was making that noise? It sounded like I was going over speed bumps. Did I have a flat tire? No, that couldn’t happen. Not here. Not now. Not without cell phone service so I could call for help.

Thunk, thunk, thunk.

That couldn’t be good, whatever it was. It didn’t feel like I had a flat tire. That had happened to me once. And there was no mistaking the way my car leaned. Maybe that didn’t always happen, though.

Thunk, thunk, thunk. Hiss.

I slammed on my brakes at that last sound, staring straight ahead. Suddenly, steam appeared in front of me. Was it foggy outside? Was something on fire up ahead?

No, this was directly in front of me. My brain just couldn’t register it. My car was smoking and hissing and thunking even now with my foot on the brake.

I shifted into park and hit the button to shut off the ignition. This car was only a few years old. How was it possible it was breaking down here in the middle of nowhere?

I pulled on the door handle and climbed out, moving around to the front of the car. Definitely smoke, but no flames. Still, I probably should stand back a little. What if it caught on fire?

Crap, my stuff was in there. My purse, my phone…my life. Well, the part of my life that wasn’t back at the room I rented in an older woman’s house in Adairsville.

I walked around to the driver’s side and climbed in, grabbing my phone and purse, as well as the lipstick I kept in the console. It was a weird thing to rescue, but I was a little addicted to the soothing moisture.

I managed to get back in front of the car without anything exploding, but that was when I realized my heart was racing. Some part of me had fully expected things to gowaywrong.

I glanced at my phone.No service, the tiny words in the upper-right corner screamed at me. It may as well read,You are totally, completely fucked.

I turned in a circle and weighed my options. I could head back toward the main road, take a left, and try to find that campground. But what if the campground was down this road? I’d go all the way back in that direction only to find nothing.

I looked at the road ahead. It was paved. It had to lead somewhere. Nobody would pave a road for no good reason.

I reflexively glanced at my phone screen, preparing to search the map around me, and then I realized that wasn’t an option. I had to do things the old-fashioned way. I had to explore on foot.

I started walking, but the farther I went, the more discouraged I felt. Nothing but trees. Spooky, spooky trees. No cars whizzed by. No streetlights lit the way. Just me, relying on the moon.

I was probably a good quarter mile into my walk when I saw smoke up ahead. For a moment, I wondered if I’d somehow managed to circle around, and my car was what I was seeing. No, I’d gone in a straight line. There was no way.

Either something was on fire or someone had built a campfire. I was hoping for the latter, because if a person wasn’t with the fire, I was still screwed.

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