Page 22 of A Very Mountain Man Wooing

“Are you sure we shouldn’t do this in my truck?” I ask him, and he shakes his head.

“The wifi is stronger in here. Besides, I thought that you were pretending that everything is normal.”

“If it were normal, then wouldn’t you be outside Snips stalking your girlfriend,” I retort, and he laughs.

“Fair enough. I called Anson and Rhett for help. They’re already looking into the Blue Medal Church for us.”

“Have you found anything out yet?” I ask as I take the seat across from him and grab my coffee.

“No, the church and most of its members are pretty much off the grid. They have one website, but it’s so vague that it’s not any help.”

I sigh, dragging my hands down my face. I had a feeling that this wasn’t going to be easy, but that doesn’t mean that I wish Hunter would be able to figure it out.

“Hey guys,” Jonah says as he comes into the coffee shop. “What are you two up to today?”

Hunter looks to me to see if I’m going to tell him about Anise and her family. Jonah is a fellow military man, and I know he’s a good guy.

“We’re trying to do some recon,” I tell him, and his eyebrows raise.

“What’s the target?”

“Anise’s family and this cult.”

Jonah whistles, leaning back in his chair, and I gulp down half of my coffee.

“We should call Graham,” he says.

Graham is one of his friends that lives here in Fallen Peak. I don’t know much about him, but he seems like a solid guy.

“Was he in the military?” Hunter asks.

“CIA,” Jonah says quietly, and I nod.

“Call him.”

Jonah nods, stepping outside to call Graham, and I pull out my own laptop. We work silently for a few minutes, and Jonah comes back in. He buys us some more coffee, and we do our best to try to find anything while we wait for Graham.

“Hey,” he says, and I smile up at him.

“Thanks for coming,” I tell Graham as he drags over another chair to our table.

“I brought back up,” he says, and I look up to see Alder, Rhodes, Wells, and Ledger coming in the door next.

We spread out over two tables, and it’s silent for the first half an hour as everyone types away on their computers. It probably looks pretty strange for eight big burly men to be hunched over a table in this little coffee shop.

“I’ve got something,” Graham says, and my head snaps up as he continues. “The leader seems to be Richard. He took over from his father, Richard Senior when he passed close to thirty years ago.”

“How old is he?”

“Close to sixty now.”

“And he wants my Anise?” I snarl.

“She would be the great leader’s fifth wife,” Graham says drily as he scrolls on his laptop. “Anise’s dad, Joshua, is Richard’s right-hand man. It looks like her mom, Jolene, runs the church’s office, and her older brothers, Nicholas and Nathan, are enforcers, though I think their official job title is security.”

“Why would a church need security?” Alder asks with a frown.

“It’s a cult,” Ledger tells him, and his eyebrows almost hit his forehead.

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