2
SHELBY
The man walks away from me like I'm a weather report he's already checked and dismissed.
I watch him go. Broad shoulders, deliberate stride, not a single wasted movement. He moves through his own territory the way predators do, aware of every angle and completely unconcerned about being observed. His ice-blue eyes held mine for maybe fifteen seconds back there and my entire nervous system is still recalibrating.
Cory Matthews is not what I expected.
I expected gruff. Rhea warned me about gruff. "He's like Cal," she said during our call last week, "but without the Southern manners to sand down the edges. Brilliant, though. His program is the real deal."
What Rhea did not warn me about was the way his voice sounds like gravel over bedrock. Or the way his hands looked when he wiped them on his pants, scarred and capable and enormous. Or the way he looked at me like he was tryingto decide whether I was a problem or a threat and hadn't yet considered the third option: that I might be something he actually wanted on his mountain.
"Cabin Four's this way."
The kid next to me, Tuck, barely hides a grin. He's young, early twenties, with the compact build and easy confidence of someone who's seen real combat and come out the other side with his sense of humor intact. I like him immediately.
"Is he always like that?" I ask, falling into step beside him.
"Like what?"
"Like he's running a military installation and I just showed up without clearance."
Tuck laughs. "That's him being friendly. You should see him when he's actually annoyed."
We cross the equipment yard toward a row of four cabins tucked into the treeline. They're simple but solid, built from timber that matches the lodge, with metal roofs pitched steep enough to shed heavy snow. Cabin Four is at the end, slightly apart from the others, with a view of the valley that makes me reach instinctively for my camera.
"This one's separate from the student cabins, so you'll have privacy," Tuck says, pushing open the door. "Woodstove for heat, propane for the stove and hot water. Outhouse is thirty yards north, but there's also a bathroom in the lodge if you prefer plumbing. Satellite Wi-Fi works about sixty percent of the time, less if there's weather. And there's weather coming."
"I saw the forecast." I drop my duffel on the single bed, a sturdy frame with a thick mattress and what looks like a military-issue wool blanket. The cabin is small but clean. A desk under the window. A shelf with a kerosene lamp. A woodstove in the corner with a stack of split pine beside it. Everything functional. Nothing decorative.
It reminds me of every temporary home I've ever had, which is all of them.
"Dinner's at eighteen hundred in the lodge," Tuck continues. "Cory cooks for the staff. It's actually incredible, not that he'd ever admit he puts effort into it. Denver group eats at seventeen hundred and clears out before we sit down."
"Separate mealtimes?"
"Cory doesn't do small talk with clients over dinner. He says digestion and diplomacy don't mix."
I smile. "Sounds like a direct quote."
"Verbatim." Tuck heads for the door, then pauses. "Hey, for what it's worth? He wouldn't have agreed to this if he didn't think the piece was worth doing. He just needs to pretend he hates it for a while first."
The door closes behind him and I'm alone.
I unpack with the efficiency of someone who has done this in forty-seven countries across six continents. Everything has a place. Camera bodies and lenses in the padded case on the desk. Clothing in the duffel, organized by layer weight. Notebooks, pens, voice recorder, and the battered laptop that's survived being dropped into the Ganges, left on a bus in Patagonia, and used as a makeshift plate during a sandstorm in Morocco.
My life fits into two bags. That used to feel like freedom. Lately it just feels light.
I sit on the edge of the bed and pull out my phone. One bar of signal, flickering. Enough to send a text.
I open my thread with Rhea:
Arrived. Mountain is gorgeous. The mountain man is...
I stare at the cursor.
The mountain man is six foot two of ice-blue intensity who looked at me like I was simultaneously the most irritating and most interesting thing he'd seen all week.
