Page 10 of Her Mountain Man Protector

Keys click on his end. "Oakley Vega. Yeah. I see her. Don't sit still in that town. It's small enough to watch."

"I'm not sitting. I'm passing through long enough to change the picture."

"Crewe's north if you need a hole."

“I’m gonna see Alden first.”

“Copy. Later."

I hang up.

Oakley watches the road like it might confess something. "Another brother?"

"Banks. He lives in screens. Crewe lives closer. You're not meeting either of them until I know this town isn't already hosting a welcoming committee."

"You make family sound like a tactical accessory."

"Family's the only accessory that shoots back."

"Romantic."

"Practical."

She huffs. "You keep using those words like they don't overlap when you shove me behind a stove."

"They don't. One keeps you breathing. The other one sells books."

"Wow. Do you practice that line in the mirror?"

"I practice staying alive. The lines come free with the job."

The first buildings of Woodbridge Falls slide out of the fog. A diner with a flickering OPEN sign. A hardware store with a handwritten hours card taped to the glass. A sheriff's office that looks like it closes when the coffee runs out. Main Street is two lanes and a handful of parked trucks, nobody moving fast, everybody looking twice because that's what small towns do when a dented blue pickup comes in hot from the mountain road.

Oakley sits forward. "This is it?"

"This is it."

"I expected more gunfire and less pie advertising."

"Keep expecting. Helix doesn't need a skyline to work. They need a quiet street and a woman who thinks a camera makes her invisible."

"I never thought I was invisible. I thought I was far enough. There's a difference."

"There isn't. Far enough ended when they stitched that bead in your jacket."

I take the first right off Main and roll past the diner, then the empty lot behind the hardware store. I don't park under a light. I don't park where the mountain road can see us. I let the truck idle at the curb across from a faded mural of the falls, engine ticking, wipers smearing what's left of the fog.

Oakley looks from the mural to me. "So what's the plan, mountain man? We hide in plain sight? We steal pie? We wait for your brother to text us a gold star?"

"We get you off this street before somebody recognizes the yellow. Then we figure out who in this town sold your name up the mountain."

"I didn't tell anyone my name."

"You didn't have to. The jacket did the talking."

She unbuckles and reaches for the door.

"Don't," I say.