“Calder!” a deep voice from below boomed.
Creed stood at the base of the wall, his arms crossed over his chest. Stone sibling number two was not unlike the cliff Colby and I sat on:extra large, inexorably hard, and naturally silent. Drawing water from a stone was easier than drawing words fromthisStone. Though only a year younger than me, Creed was an inch taller than my six-foot-one frame and forty pounds of muscle broader, and he carried himself like he was still in the military police, ensuring he was consistently mistaken for the eldest of our clan.
“Be right down,” I called back.
Turning to Colby, I jerked my head toward the base. “Let’s go, Dynamo.”
She remained boldly still, her mouth pinching tight in a way that instantly reminded me of our mother. Annie Stone was murdered when Colby was six, and her only daughter had inherited every last gene of defiance, boldness, and grit. That, combined with being the youngest and the only girl, meant Colby got away with things that Cassius never let the rest of us do. Even as adults, she was the only one who got to break his rules.
Case in point, the cell phone she quickly pulled out to snap a photo of the panorama in front of us: a horizon of mountain peaks married to meandering plains, our childhood home the single solitary structure for as far as the eye could see. One of Cassius’s staunchest rules was no technology in the house. Especially cell phones. Until he caved for Colby and her photography.
Granted, her cell was encrypted seven ways to Sunday, but still—Colby was allowed while the rest of us had to deposit ours, turned off, in a signal-jamming lockbox on the front porch.
Rule #10: Cell phones are tracking devices that happen to make calls.
Growing up Stone meant growing up survivalist. Even the name of Dad’s property, Stonewall Ranch, advertised both its literal and figurative meanings: surrounded by mountains, and outsiders weren’t welcome. He wanted to live off-grid, so the house had its own sources of energy and water. However, being completely cut off from the world was harder the older we got.
We descended Free Fall’s face, Colby’s feet landing on the ground with the first thud, followed by my own. Thankfully, only Creed caught my grimace. I might still beat her to the top, but at thirty-three, and with a knee injury from a wrestling match in college, my days of jumping the last ten feet to land were coming to a swift end.
“No luck?” Creed grunted, our sister’s disappointment as marked on her expression as the scar on her forehead.
Colby jutted out her chin. “Not yet.” Looking to me, she added, “Same time next month.” It wasn’t a question, and if it were up to Colby, we’d be out here again tomorrow for a rematch.But I’m not twenty-four anymore.
“Sure.” I chuckled and brushed some of the leftover chalk from my hands.
“All right, I’ll see you guys at the house.” She headed for the path back.
“Colby ...” Creed stopped her. “What happened to Creighton’s tea?”
Her eyes flicked wide, the unmistakable sparkle of mischief—and merriment—lighting in them. “Why?”
I banded my arms over my chest, waiting to hear the newest torture our sister had inflicted on our grouchiest sibling.
Stone sibling number five was a doozy. At twenty-six, Creighton was the second youngest and was as surly as Creed was stoic. He was the most ... different from the rest of us. A genius with an off-the-charts IQ, he was covered in self-inflicted tattoos and possessed the irritable demeanor of a septuagenarian. He was more analytical than practical, but even that didn’t spare him Cassius’s survivalist training and having to summit Free Fall.
While the rest of us left Creighton to his solitary pursuits, Colby loved nothing more than to torment him with practical jokes, insisting that misery needed comedy, not company.
“He was aggravated. Looking for Donnie.”
Donnie was Colby’s pet duck. Her hobby of rescuing injured wildlife from every corner of our property meant we’d had an array of unusual pets over the years. Donnie had had an injured wing when she found him three years ago, and after she’d nurtured him back to health, he became domesticated. He roamed freely through our family home, much to Creighton’s dismay. But the duck, like the cell phone, wasn’t something Cassius would forbid his youngest.
Colby shrugged far too nonchalantly and offered, “Maybe Donnie likes tea, too.” And then she disappeared down the path, a little extra pep in her step.
Creed looked back at me, his eyebrow cocked like a silent question mark.
I blew out an exhale and shook my head. “I absolutely think she trained Donnie to steal Creighton’s tea.”
Creighton was a character of extremes. A disorganized disaster in some lights, a savant of specifics in others. One of his extremes was his obsession with exotic teas. Some he grew. Some he imported. And none he shared. Especially with a duck.
“What’s up?” I asked, and went over to the large boulder where I’d set my cell before attempting the climb.
“New case,” he grunted, staring expectantly at me as I opened my phone and scanned the details.
A $20,000 reward for an Alabama State college student who’d gone missing on vacation with friends in Florida. “How long has she been gone?”
“Four days.”
We hadn’t grown up thinking our unusual upbringing would equip us for anything more than being experts at survival. Cassius certainly hadn’t anticipated we’d someday monetize our abilities to track people or prey in the wilderness, hunt as well as the most expert marksmen, or survive for days in the harshest of elements. However, just as my interest in law school had waned, Creed was injured overseas. When he came back, circumstance and happenstance collided, and I’d realized therewas a market for our shared, specialized skill set. And so, Stone Tracking Services was born. Over the course of the last decade, our other three brothers joined our business venture for one reason or another.
