7
CORY
The road opens on day four, and everything starts to unravel.
Not immediately. Not obviously. It starts with something small, which is how most avalanches begin. A single crack in an otherwise stable snowpack, invisible until the whole mountainside is moving.
The crack is an email.
I'm in the equipment shed running inventory when Shelby comes through the door with her phone in her hand and a look on her face I haven't seen before. Not fear exactly. Something harder. Resignation.
"My editor needs the article draft by Friday," she says. "She's pushing for publication in the May issue, which means the piece goes to layout next week."
"That's good. You said the article was nearly finished."
"It is. That's not the problem." She holds up her phone. "Rhea just called. Cal's cyber team traced Garrett's email routing. He's not in Portland anymore. He's in Denver."
Denver. Four hours from Grizzly Ridge. Five from Mountain Ready.
The tactical part of my brain shifts from standby to active. Denver means he's mobile. Denver means he's moving in a direction that narrows the distance between him and Shelby.
"When did he move?"
"Rhea estimates sometime in the last forty-eight hours based on the routing data. The most recent email he sent pinged a Denver IP. It could be a VPN, but Cal's team says the pattern is consistent with a physical relocation."
"Has he sent anything new?"
She shows me the phone. The email is three lines.
Colorado is beautiful this time of year. I can see why you'd want to spend time in the mountains. Be safe out there.
Colorado. He knows she's in Colorado. The Instagram story she deleted gave him a state. The blizzard coverage on weather channels would have narrowed the region. And if he's resourceful enough to track her movements through published work, he's resourceful enough to cross-reference a blizzard advisory with her known professional contacts and arrive at Mountain Ready.
"Pack your bag," I say.
"What?"
"We're going down to Grizzly Ridge. I'm not keeping you at elevation with a single access road when there's a potential threat approaching from a known vector. Grizzly Ridge has infrastructure, law enforcement, and a community network. Up here, we're isolated."
"Cory, I can't just leave. The article..."
"You can write the article anywhere. You can't be protected on a mountain with one road in and one road out. We go to Grizzly Ridge, we meet with Sawyer, and we coordinate with Cal's team from a defensible position."
She stares at me. I can see the resistance forming. Not to the logic, because the logic is sound and she's smart enough to know it. To the implication. That she needs protection. That the situation has escalated beyond what she can manage alone.
"I've been handling this for four months," she says quietly.
"And now you have people who handle it professionally. Let them."
She's quiet for a long time. Then she nods.
We're packed and in my truck within the hour. The access road is plowed but still treacherous, and I take the switchbacks at a pace that prioritizes safety over speed. Shelby is quiet in the passenger seat, her camera bag between her feet, her phone in her lap. She's watching the mountains through the window and I can feel her pulling inward. Building walls that I spent three days taking down.
I reach across the console and take her hand. She squeezes. Doesn't look at me. But she holds on.
Grizzly Ridge appears in the valley below after forty minutes of descending. The town is small and snow-covered and beautiful in the way that places built by people who care about where they live tend to be. The main street is cleared, storefronts shoveled, and smoke rises from chimneys in lazy columns.
I park in front of Maggie's Diner because that's where Sawyer said to meet. The diner is warm and smells like coffee and pie, and Maggie herself, a sturdy woman in her sixties with eyes that miss nothing, nods at me from behind the counter like she already knows why I'm here.
