Page 2 of Ghost of Talon Mountain
Tate fires back, one-handed, still keeping pressure on my wound. His magazine runs dry with a hollow click. He releases me long enough to reload, and in that instant, a round catches him in the head.
His body falls across my legs, heavy and still.
No.
The word doesn't make it past my lips. Can't make it past the pain that's turning everything white at the edges. Tate's gone. Joel's gone. I'm bleeding from my side, and the shooters are still coming.
Voices now. Calling to each other in short, clipped phrases. They're converging on our position. Coming to confirm the kill. Coming to make sure no one survived to report what happened here.
Move. The command cuts through the pain with desperate clarity. Move or die. Stay here and join Joel and Tate in the white.
My hands find purchase on frozen ground. My legs don't want to work, but I force them under me anyway. Every movement sends new agony through my side. The world tilts and spins, but I'm moving. Crawling at first. Then crouched. Then running in a shambling, desperate stagger that probably tears the wound wider with each step.
Behind me, one of the shooters reaches Joel's body. "Martinez is down. Confirmed kill."
"Bishop too," another voice calls. "Where's the third?"
"Find him. He doesn't leave this mountain."
I keep on moving. Crashing through the snow-laden branches, keeping low, using every bit of terrain for cover. My lungs burn. My legs shake. The wound in my side screams with each jarring impact, but I don't stop. Can't stop. Some blood marks my trail through the snow, obvious as neon, but the trees are thick here and I'm moving fast despite the injury.
Behind me, voices fade. They're searching the immediate area first, assuming I couldn't have gotten far in this condition. They're wrong. Pain is a distant thing now, shoved aside by survival instinct and the image of Tate falling across my legs.
My team is dead. Joel and Tate—gone. Not wounded. Not captured. Dead while I run like a coward through trees that blur past like accusations.
The thought wants to stop me, to turn back, to go down fighting like honor demands. But honor won't expose the mole who set this up. Honor won't protect my sister Bryn from whoever decided three federal investigators needed to vanish into the Alaskan wilderness.
So I run.
For three miles. Maybe four. Distance becomes meaningless, measured only in the rhythm of pain and the growing weakness in my legs. Finally, I collapse behind a massive boulder, pressing my back against frozen stone. My hands shake as I open my jacket to assess the damage.
The wound is bad. The round went through, which means no bullet to dig out. But it tore things on the way through—things I need to keep functioning. Blood soaks my entire left side. My emergency medical kit holds gauze, pressure bandages, clotting powder. Enough to maybe keep me alive if I can get somewhere warm, somewhere I can actually treat this properly.
I pack the wound, gasping through clenched teeth as the clotting powder hits raw flesh. Wrap it tight with bandages that turn red almost immediately. My hands won't stop shaking. Shock, blood loss, cold—all of it catching up now that adrenaline is fading.
The radio crackles. I forgot I still have it clipped to my vest. A voice comes through, professional and cold: "Target three is wounded. Blood trail heading northeast. He won't last long in this condition. Maintain search pattern."
So they know. Know I'm hurt. Know I'm running on borrowed time. They'll track me until I drop, then confirm the kill like they did with Joel and Tate, which means Chris Calder can't survive. Not officially. Not in any way that creates a paper trail leading back to Bryn, to the investigation, or to whoever's running the trafficking network we got too close to exposing.
The decision cuts through the fog of pain, sharp and final. Disappear. Die on paper. Become a ghost the mountain swallows while the real work continues in the shadows. Because someone high up sold us out, and until I figure out who, everyone connected to me is a target.
I move again. Slower now. Each step deliberate, calculated to conserve what little strength remains. I shed my gear pieceby piece, bury it deep under snow and stone. Keep the rifle, the knife, the emergency supplies that will keep me alive while the official world decides I'm dead.
My federal badge goes into a crevasse where glacial melt will carry it away come spring. My radio I keep—they're using it to coordinate the search, which means I can use it to track them. Every piece of equipment that could identify Chris Calder, federal agent, disappears into the wilderness.
My body will never be found. Search and rescue will comb these peaks until weather shuts them down. Bryn will lead the effort—I know her well enough to know that. She'll search for her brother who came north for hiking and wilderness trekking, never understanding what really brought me here. She'll refuse to believe I'm gone until exhaustion and winter force her to accept what everyone else already knows.
The guilt wants to surface, but I shove it down. Later. Right now, there's only survival. Only the grim mathematics of staying alive long enough to finish what Joel and Tate died trying to expose.
Snow begins to fall, fat flakes that cover my blood trail, erase evidence that Chris Calder was ever here. By full dawn, the mountain will have claimed another victim. Three more names added to the list of people who came north seeking something and found only silence.
Behind me, Joel Martinez and Tate Bishop grow cold. Ahead, Bryn will grieve for a brother who never existed. Somewhere between, a traitor thinks the problem is solved. They're wrong.
The mountain will take me. Give me winter to heal. Time to learn who sold us out.
And when I come back, I won't be wearing a badge.
SIERRA
