I believe him, or I let myself, which might be the same thing tonight. The fire's finally winning the argument with the coldstill living in my bones. My eyelids go heavy. The ache in my ribs settles into something duller, something I can sleep through.
He stays where he is, watching the fire and the door in slow rotation, solid in a way that should probably scare me more than it does. Outside the wind keeps at the logs and the snow keeps falling, and in here I'm wrapped in wool and woodsmoke with a Marshal who already feels like the only safe thing left standing between me and the rest of my life.
I let my eyes close, just for a second, and let myself believe I might actually make it to morning.
4
Colt
She's finally started to settle in the chair, blankets pooled loose around her, but I watch her eyes cut to the door every time the wind finds a new way to complain against the logs, and I know that chair isn't going to give her what she needs tonight. Hard wood. Every creak in this cabin telegraphed straight into a body that's already primed to expect the worst. She needs something that doesn't creak when a person shifts their weight.
I push up out of my seat. “Come on, darlin'. Bed'll treat you better than that chair will.”
She looks up, and there's still enough fear banked behind her eyes to put a small ache low in my chest, the kind I haven't felt in longer than I want to think about. I don't give her room to argue — she doesn't look like she's got the energy for it anyway — just slide one arm under her knees and the other behind her back and lift her clear of the chair in one motion. She makes a small sound, more surprise than protest, and her hand fists in my shirt on reflex before she catches herself and lets it go slack again.
She's lighter than she looks and heavier than nothing, all soft weight settling into the crook of my arm like it was built for exactly this. I carry her across the cabin to the bed — pine frame, thick furs, built with my own hands one winter when I decided a man ought to have somewhere better than a cot to sleep through six months of snow. Nobody's used it for anything but sleeping. Until tonight, nobody's used it at all but me.
I lay her down slow, careful of the ribs, and she sinks into the bedding with an exhale that goes straight through me like it had somewhere specific to land. I draw the blankets up and tuck them firm along her sides.
“Rest,” I tell her. “I've got the door. I've got you. Nothing's getting through either one tonight.”
Her eyes are already losing the fight against sleep, lashes dropping heavy, but she nods like she believes me, or wants to. I smooth the blanket at her shoulder, my knuckles catching bare skin where her sleeve's ridden up, and something in me settles into place the way a trap does when the jaws lock — quiet, certain, done deciding. She's in my bed. That's not a small thing to a man who's slept alone in it on purpose for six years running.
I don't examine that thought too hard tonight. There's work to do first.
I pull my coat back on and step outside before I make the call, because a man doesn't report a situation secure until he's actually confirmed it is one. The wind's picked up since I carried her in, driving snow sideways hard enough to sting any skin left uncovered. I walk the perimeter the way I've walked it a thousand times, boots finding the packed line under the fresh powder without needing to look for it, eyes doing the real work— scanning tree line, scanning snowbank, scanning for anything that doesn't belong to weather or wildlife.
Halfway around, I find it.
A print. Half-filled already, edges softening under the new snow, but the tread's wrong for anything that walks on four legs, and it's wrong for mine too — bigger stride, a heavier boot than what I've got on, coming up from the direction of the road and stopping dead about forty yards out from the cabin before doubling back the way it came. Somebody stood right here. Recent enough the storm hasn't buried it yet. Recent enough it could've been an hour ago. Could've been while I had my back turned, carrying her through the trees.
I crouch and study it longer than the cold has any patience for, running through what I know about tracking men instead of animals — the two skills aren't as far apart as most people assume. Whoever left this wasn't in a hurry. Didn't come charging. Came slow, careful, the way a person moves when they're not sure yet whether they want to be caught doing it.
Scouting. That's my best read. Somebody came up far enough to get a look at smoke rising from a chimney that isn't supposed to have anyone home in it this week, and then thought better of finishing the walk.
I don't like any version of that story.
I finish the loop anyway, calm on the outside because panic doesn't track anything worth tracking, and I don't find a second print anywhere close. One man. One pass. Gone before the snow closed the door behind him. Could be nothing — a hunter who got turned around, curious about the smoke, spooked by something and left. Could be exactly what it looks like.
I go back inside anyway with my jaw tighter than it was when I walked out.
Nora's asleep, or close enough to it that her breathing's gone slow and even under the blankets. I keep my voice down and grab the satellite phone off the mantel, dialing Mason from memory. He picks up on the second ring, background noise on his end suggesting he's nowhere near off the clock either.
“Colt. Miss us already? You're supposed to be a ghost this week.”
“Had an incident.” I keep it flat, professional, the way the job trained into me a long time before the mountain did. “Woman crashed her car a quarter mile from my place. Witnessed a murder right before she went off the road — two men, dark coats, armed, one victim down in the snow. I pulled her out of the wreck. She's banged up. Ribs, head, split lip. Wrapped what I could with what's on hand.”
Mason's whistle carries clean through the line. “Course you did. Man can't even take a week off without a woman crashing into his life, and I mean that literally.” A beat, and then the humor drops out of his voice, replaced with the tone he uses when he's already working the problem. “She see faces? Plates? Anything?”
“Not much yet. She's still shaking too hard to get details straight. I'll get more once she's steadier.” I glance at the bed, at the shape of her under the blankets, small and still. “There's something else. Did a perimeter check before I called you. Found a print about forty yards out. One set. Came up from the road, stood a while, went back the way it came.”
The silence on his end lasts a beat longer than I like.
“You thinking they tracked her up the mountain already?”
“Don't know yet. Storm's covering most of it fast, so I can't read it much further than that. Could be nothing. Could be somebody confirming which cabin the smoke's coming from.” I keep my voice level even though the thought sits in my gut like a stone. “Run the storm reports. If it's socked in as bad as they're saying, nobody's driving up here tonight regardless of who wants to. But I want eyes on this the second the roads clear. And get Jax started quiet on any mafia types cycling through Timber Creek lately — vacationers, new faces, anybody who doesn't fit the town. This doesn't smell like two guys who got into it over a poker debt.”
“Copy that.” I hear him moving, a chair scraping somewhere on his end, papers shifting. “I'll get it started tonight even with the storm. You sit tight up there and keep her breathing. That's the job till the roads open.”
