Mountain Man Redford (Cedar Spring Lake Mountain Man #11)

ONE

Aspen

I never imagined craving this kind of stillness.

With an entire lake separating us from civilization, the wind gently rustling the trees is all I hear. I never thought silence could be so magical.

When we’d spend the summers out here at Meredith’s camp, we were looking for ways to escape the small island two weeks in.

The novelty wore off quickly. Any chance to venture onto the mainland, we took it.

Turns out, spending the day on the beach wasn’t nearly as fun if there weren’t any boys to flirt with.

Now our priorities have shifted and solitude is all I’m after.

This time around, we loaded up the boat with so many essentials we may not need to set foot in the lakeside village of Cedar Spring for another week. I’m sure the guys are just as cute as ever but there’ll be time to break hearts later, we’ve got a business to get off the ground.

“Oh my god, Aspen, that fairy is amazing,” Meredith squeals over my shoulder as I put the finishing touches on the hand drawing.

“I was thinking we could leave the book she’s reading blank, so we can add whatever title we want later and change it up. Maybe you could match the color scheme to the different book titles.”

“Love it. We could call one ‘How To Politely Tell Your Boss To Fuck Off’. Oooh, or ‘How To Cast A Flaccidity Spell On Your Ex’. Look at that sinister smile you gave her, she’s totally researching ways to give her cheating boyfriend a case of limp dick-itis.”

I laugh it off like that isn’t exactly what I was envisioning.

The sting transformed to a dull ache and eventually a sigh of relief.

If everything happens for a reason, this moment is that reason.

Being out here on her family’s island, two besties doing what we love and making a career out of it, no more working for the man, or answering to a man, life can’t get much better.

Okay, so, the cabin could use some updating. Maybe a few more solar panels, you’d be surprised how much electricity two girls go through. I’m fine with the composting toilet, I am, but would it be too much to ask to have it inside and not in a standalone outhouse?

It’s all a far cry from what we’re used to, yet exactly what we need.

One of the local girlies we met ages ago has her own shop downtown now, so when she said she needed to sell some of our artwork there, we jumped at the opportunity. One major problem, we didn’t have any artwork. For years, anything creative has been for whatever design companies we’re working for.

Screw that, we’re good, and worth more than a pitiful salary where Brad tells us it’s too girly or too intricate.

To be fair, my boss was a hipster with rainbow hair named Izzy but I think Meredith had a Brad once, you get the point.

It feels good working for ourselves, creating what we want for the first time in years.

Honestly, since about the last time we were here.

“Mer, did we close the door after our last pee break?”

Yes, we go together, even out here. I don’t care if we’re the only two people on the island, it’s creepy walking through the woods at night.

“I think so,” she shrugs, running her brush over the canvas in effortless strokes. We’ve been digital for so long it took us a full week to remember how to do any of this by hand but it’s like riding a bike. Without the potential crashing and the ass-assaulting seat.

“Why does it sound like the door keeps opening? There’s barely any wind,” I say, watching the curtains in the loft sway gently in the breeze off the water, just enough to keep the temperature bearable up here.

“Shit, Aspen, are those voices? Someone’s down there.”

Before I can tell her she’s crazy, the storm door bangs shut, accompanied by heavy footsteps and creaking floorboards.

The sound of their gruff voices ricochet off the outdated wood paneling.

I want to think it’s nothing more than some local kids rowing out here to party but they don’t sound like kids, they sound like grown men, with footsteps so loud they might actually be a herd of elephants.

“What do we do?” I whisper, instinctually grabbing for the phone that takes up permanent residence in my pocket. At least, it did, until arriving on the island, where disconnecting from the world didn’t seem as nerve-racking as it once did.

“Our phones are down there.”

My eyes follow Meredith’s manicured finger to the ladder as we slowly back away from the banister, cowering against the bed where we can’t be spotted from downstairs.

Sleeping up here the first couple nights made us feel like full-fledged adults, instead of playing pretend like we have been since college.

Meredith’s parents always took the loft, leaving us downstairs in the bunkbeds.

There’s nothing more kid-like than sleeping one on top of another but we’ve been down there since the novelty wore off, using this gorgeous open layout loft as our workspace.

How long before one of them notices our stuff and realizes someone is here?

“Wait, Mer, could it be your family, that creepy uncle? Maybe he doesn’t know we’re here.”

“No, Mom said Uncle Mike’s in jail. No one but my parents has used it in years. It’s usually vacant.”

The muddy footprints we cleaned up when we got here make a lot more sense now.

There was no way her dad made that much of a mess when he checked on the place this spring.

We’re talking about a man who doesn’t wear shoes inside because of germs, we just figured he was in a rush.

Whoever’s down there, they’ve been here before.

This isn’t the first time they’ve committed a B&E on this island.

“Hey, Ace, someone’s here.” The hushed grumble from below us turns every hair on my body to ice. Somone named Ace can’t be anything other than a shady character. You might as well be named Criminal Carl or Bad Guy Bob.

They’ve seen our stuff.

They’re men, they wouldn’t notice the dirty dishes in the sink, but they’ll sure see our phones on the counter and our clearly slept in bunkbeds, the same ones we slept in as kids, me on top because Meredith still has a knack for rolling out of bed, even at 27.

“Son of a bitch. Find them and handle it, we’ll get the shit out of here.”

“Handle it?” my best friend squeaks, her tiny voice shrinking smaller than ever when the rungs on the loft’s ladder begin to creak. “What does he mean, handle it? Aspen, what do we do?”

“I called the cops,” I shout down, wishing I hadn’t said it the second the words have left my mouth. Would we have been better off hiding up here, hoping they look for us about as well as men look for items in the fridge that are somehow invisible to them?

“God dammit. Hurry, get it out of there!”

Multiple sets of footsteps bang around downstairs, almost loud enough to overpower the boots on the ladder. Are they robbing us? I swear to god, they better not touch our laptops, we can’t lose everything we’ve been working on.

That doesn’t make sense, they didn’t even realize we were here. They must be after something else. But what?

We need something to protect ourselves, there’s no telling what these guys are capable of, but we don’t have anything useful up here. It’s been our painting studio the last two weeks, brushes and dirty water aren’t exactly menacing weapons against a home invasion.

“Mer, the curtain rod!” I stammer, envisioning using it like a joust to knock the intruder off the ladder.

She races to the window as I peer over the banister, making eye contact with the kind of man you pretend not to hear when he shouts inappropriate things at you from across the street. He pauses for a moment before quickening his pace up the wooden rungs.

Meredith’s not going to make it in time. She’s taller than me but can still barely reach the rod from the bed. I can’t wait, he’ll be up here in a matter of seconds.

Think, Aspen, what would Kevin McAllister do? You watch those damn Home Alone movies every Christmas. He’s twenty years younger than you and he figured it out.

On autopilot, I grab a tube of paint from Meredith’s easel, spin around and squeeze it in the general direction of the ominous mass moving towards me. It’s not as effective as my jousting idea but when he looks up at me, two rungs from the top, he eats a face full of evergreen acrylic.

“Ah, fuck!” His words are garbled by a stream of paint flooding his mouth, blinding his eyes as he tries in vain to wipe it away, only smearing it more.

One more step you son of a bitch. Grab the next rung and I’ll be able to step on your fingers hard enough to break every knuckle. I’m not violent by nature but how dare you invade our piece of paradise.

His tattooed and gnarled hand fumbles around, searching for a safe place to land, no clue what’s in store for him. My flip flops won’t cause as much damage as the spike heels I deemed unnecessary for the trip, but they’ll have to do.

Meredith’s at my side with the curtain rod before I stomp on Shrek’s hand, moose printed valance still attached to the wooden pole. I can tell by the way it trembles in her hands that she’s as scared as I am but when I grab hold of it too, it’s steady enough to knock any green knight off his horse.

We jam it into his face with everything we have, sending the intruder sailing from the ladder, crashing on the knotted pine floor below with a sickening thud.

It worked!

But what now? I didn’t think this far ahead.

The guys downstairs are shouting but I can’t make out their words, they’re all yelling over each other. It sounds eerily like every holiday party my family has ever thrown.

Are they escaping through the floorboards?

The trap door in the kitchen, root cellar I think, where Meredith’s brothers used to scare us with ghost stories.

They’re pulling stuff out of the hole. I don’t remember anything being down there other than bags of onions and potatoes, the creepy kind with shoots popping out of them like swamp creature tentacles.

At least that’s how they appeared to my teen brain.

Before my mind can piece together what I’m seeing, one of the men pulls something shiny from the back of his waistline. I don’t need to have ever seen a gun in real life to know exactly what it is being aimed in my direction.

Instincts take the wheel and I find myself tackling Meredith to the floor, knocking her easel over on top of us, hoping for a scrap of cover. I’ve never been more scared in my life but I go into survival mode, doing everything I have to in order to protect my best friend and save both our lives.

A loud bang blows away the silence we came here for, the kind of sound you can never unhear. A bullet meant for us tears through the loft railing, sending splinters of wood flying everywhere. He must be able to tell by our yelps that he missed because the shouting grows more frantic.

“What do we do? What do we do?” Meredith repeats over and over as I shield her body with mine, thankful that even though we’re both curvy, I’m more than capable of providing her cover. I wish she’d shut up for a second so I could think, but I’m not willing to let go of her.

What’s that smell? We don’t have the fireplace going, do we? It wasn’t cool enough tonight. Is that left over from last night?

Smoke! Shit, I see smoke rising from the first floor.

No. No no no, the ladder!

They lit the ladder on fire.

We’re trapped in the loft of a burning cabin with no way out.

And no intentions of this being the end.