Page 24 of Ghost of Talon Mountain
Sierra absorbs this, her analytical mind already working through implications and connections. "The same network that killed Joel and Tate is the one destroying evidence now. And if they're willing to kill federal agents?—"
"They won't hesitate to kill anyone." I finish the thought she doesn't want to speak aloud. "Especially one who's already exposed networks like this before."
The wind rattles the tarp. Snow accumulates at the edge of our shelter, building a wall between us and the world.
"How did you know?" Sierra asks. "About the cabin being sabotaged."
"Heard the sound of a snowmobile headed your way. Followed it. Saw someone watching then smelled gas. It has a distinct odor even in freezing temperatures.” I refill my coffee, more for something to do with my hands than because I wantmore. "Took me about thirty seconds to find the cut line. Clean work. Professional. Meant to look like equipment failure if you didn't know what to look for."
"But you knew what to look for."
"Military training. Then federal training. Then survival training the hard way." I meet her eyes across the fire. "I know what it looks like when someone wants you dead but needs it to look like an accident."
She looks at me in the firelight, and the calculation happens: weighing risks, measuring trust, deciding how much to reveal. Finally, she says, "The documents I've been reviewing. The patterns I'm seeing. It's not just poaching, Chris. It's a full commercial operation with government protection. Permits that shouldn't exist, oversight that doesn't happen, money flowing through accounts that trace back to—" She stops, shakes her head. "I'm not ready to say yet. Not until I'm certain."
"But you're close."
"Close enough that someone's worried." She looks at the radio again. "Close enough to kill for."
The pieces click together in my head. Nate and now Sierra are investigating the same network that killed Joel and Tate. Someone on the inside feeding information to the wrong people. An escalating pattern of violence meant to look like accidents or natural causes. And now Sierra, trapped on a mountain with a ghost who's supposed to be dead.
"You can't go back to that cabin," I say quietly.
She looks at me, fire reflected in her dark eyes. There's fear there, buried under layers of determination and professional distance. But there's also something else. Resolve.
"Then I guess I'm staying with you," she replies.
The words hang between us, loaded with implications neither of us is ready to examine. Staying together means shared risk. Shared vulnerability. It means I can't disappear into themountains anymore, can't maintain the isolation that's kept me alive. And it means Sierra can't go back to being just an observer, documenting from a safe distance.
We're in this together now. Whether I like it or not.
The fire crackles between us, casting dancing shadows on the rock wall. Outside, the storm rages with no sign of letting up. We're stuck here until dawn at least, possibly longer if the weather doesn't break.
I look at Sierra. Firelight catches her profile, the determined set of her jaw. She's not backing down. Not running. Even after the sabotage, after learning what happened to Joel and Tate, after seeing exactly what kind of danger she's walked into. She's settling in, pulling that thermal blanket tighter, like she plans to see this through.
Eleven months I've kept everyone at arm's length. Eleven months of no names, no connections, no one close enough to bleed when the bullets start flying again. But Sierra's here now, in my camp, drinking my coffee, sharing my fire. I brought her here. Made that choice when I could have walked away.
7
SIERRA
Two days snowed in with a man who barely speaks, and somehow the silence is louder than any interrogation room I've ever sat in.
The storm rages outside Chris's shelter, wind screaming across the mountain like it's trying to tear the world apart. We exist in a bubble of warmth and forced proximity. The fire crackles, smoke dispersing up along the rock overhang in lazy curls. Beyond the tarp walls, snow falls so thick I can't see more than five feet into the whiteout.
Chris moves through his routine like clockwork. Tends the fire, checks his perimeter alarms every two hours despite the conditions, melts snow for water in a battered pot. He works with military precision, every motion economical and practiced. Wastes nothing—not energy, not words, not space.
I help where I can. Split kindling with his hatchet, organize the gear he brings in from outside checks, boil water for the instant coffee that tastes like dirt but warms from the inside out. Mostly, though, I watch. Study the way he moves, catalog the small tells he can't quite hide.
He favors his left side when he lifts wood. Winces when the temperature drops and old injuries stiffen in the cold. The scarsare visible on his hands and his forearms from wounds that never healed quite right. When he sheds his outer layers to dry them by the fire, I see more—a patchwork of damage across his torso, evidence of a life lived on the edge of survival.
This man should be dead. The fact that he's not is luck, sheer stubborn will, or both.
"You stare at people like that in your other life?" Chris asks without looking up from the wood he's arranging.
Heat crawls up my neck. "Analyst habit. Observation is part of the job."
"Observing or cataloging?"
