Page 13 of Guarded By the Mountain Man

The lie comes out easier than it should.

I drive her to her shift, wrestling with the overwhelming desire to lock her in the cabin and stand guard over the door with my rifle. I spend the day on the mountain, trying to lose myself in my work. I’ve activated the tracker on Juliette’s phone, which I check every five minutes. I only relax once I’ve picked her up after work.

Hawk calls at nine from a number I don't know. I take it out on the porch.

“Your Vances are money people for an outfit called Rotmere. Lodge up in the hills past High Vale, spa-and-hunting operation on paper.” A drag on a cigarette. “It's not a spa, Holt. It's the kind of business where problems go into the forest and don't come out. Our MC have... an interest in investigating them. That's all you get over the phone, and you didn't get it from me. Don’t speak to anyone about this. I’ll drive up and tell you more as soon as I can.”

“So my somebody had a lucky escape.”

“Your somebody did. But they will now be a loose end with a paper trail. And Holt? You need bodies, you call me.”

He's gone.

I stand on my dark porch weighing up the options. Dane's people on one side, following the traffic cam lead. If I try and get her away somewhere, they’ll track us down. And inside my cabin, washing up our dinner plates and singing to Six, is the loose end herself. She told me tonight that Nora's teaching her latte art tomorrow, a huge smile on her face. I’ll give her one more day, then she needs to stay at home, where I can watch her.

One part of me wants to tell her what I know. To ask her about the things her family said. And the other knows she might try to run on her own, to keep me out of it. And if she manages to do that, she won’t have me to protect her. Leaving her in the dark keeps her here… and it keeps her alive.

The screen door creaks and she leans out into the cold, my flannel riding up those soft bare legs, dish towel over her shoulder.

“You've been out here twenty minutes,” she says. “Everything okay?”

Another lie. “Just liking the quiet.”

She comes out and fits herself under my arm, warm against the night, and looks at the stars twinkling above the mountains with me. I kiss the top of her head and say nothing. I’m going to watch her work from the truck all day tomorrow, just to be sure.

In my pocket, my phone buzzes. I read it later, in the bathroom, with the water running.

Dane: Client's pushing. You hear anything, I need it inside 24 hrs. After that all bets are off. You don't want trouble on your mountain, Holt. And neither do I.

Chapter Nine

JULIETTE

Holt is different this morning.

It's in the way he checks the road twice before pulling out of the gate and his careful pauses before answers that used to come easily.

“Stay in the back today,” he says, eyes on the road. “Let Nora take the counter. I need to speak to you later.”

“Why?” I watch the side of his face.

A muscle moves in his jaw. “I'd feel better.”

“That's not a reason. Something's happened. You're doing the thing where you decide what I get to know.”

“Juliette…”

“I'm working the counter today. If there's a real reason I shouldn't, tell me what it is, and I'll weigh it up. That's how this works now.”

He pulls up outside Latte Da! and looks at me, and for one second I think he's going to say it, whatever it is; his mouth opens. Then something in him closes like a stove door.

“See you at two.”

The morning rush saves me from stewing. I pull shots, I burn one batch of scones out of distraction and hide the evidence in the compost like a criminal, I get a latte rosette to come out looking like a rosette instead of a jellyfish. By early afternoon the rush thins to regulars and gossip, and I'm boxing an eclair for the pastor's wife when the bell over the door rings.

My body knows before I look up. Expensive orange and musk cologne, applied liberally.

Corbin looks like he stepped out of an expensive catalog. Camel coat, white shirt, the haircut that costs more than my week's wages. He surveys Latte Da! with the pleasant, delighted expression he wears in rooms he considers beneath him, and then his gaze arrives at me behind the counter. He smiles and my hands go cold around the pastry box.