Sheltered By the Fearless Mountain Man (Silver Ridge Blue Collar Men #5)

Chapter 1 Willa

one

Willa

The storm damage in Silver Ridge looks worse from the ground than it did in the photos.

I'm standing on the main street of a logging town in the interior of BC, three days after a system the weather service classed as Exceptional came through and took the top off a dozen structures.

The light is flat grey. The sky still hasn't decided whether it's done.

Tarps everywhere: blue ones, orange ones, one improvised from what looks like a pool liner someone dragged up from somewhere and nailed to a porch roof with more ambition than precision.

Gutters hanging. A section of cedar shake in the middle of the road that no one's moved yet.

I've assessed countless storm claims in my career.

I can read a damaged streetscape the way some people read a face.

What I'm reading here is: this was real, this was significant, and several of these claims are going to be bigger than my regional contact's preliminary estimates.

Which is why they called me instead of handling it themselves.

I'm contracted to six claims simultaneously.

The largest is the boutique hotel on the east side of the main street— Brooks Boutique Hotel, three-storey Victorian, newly renovated.

In the preliminary file it says the owner has held the property for two years and the renovation was recent.

I remember the previous claim. She was thorough and organized and the file was clean.

The hotel's roof is not currently clean.

From the street I can see the east slope has lost roughly forty percent of its original material, with the cedar shakes gone, the underlying decking exposed, and someone has tarped the most vulnerable section.

There's a truck parked in the hotel's side lot. High Mountain Roofing, the magnetic sign on the door says, and below it a Silver Ridge number. The truck is a heavy-duty pickup, dark, work-used. Someone has left a coffee cup on the dash and a clipboard on the seat.

I hear him before I see him.

I look up.

My first thought, before the professional brain kicks in, is: oh, lawd.

My second thought is to start photographing.

There's a man on the hotel roof, working along the ridge line.

He moves like he grew up there, every step placed with the certainty of someone who's spent years in places where a wrong foot costs something irreversible.

He's at least 6'2", lean, moving along the pitch in work boots like it's flat ground.

He has a coil of rope over one shoulder and a tool belt and the set of his body says he is entirely unbothered by being at height in wind.

I tell myself I'm noting this professionally.

I'm noting it professionally in the same way I'm noting that he has very good hands.

I pull out my file folder and my camera.

The beefy mountain man of a roofer looks down. His eyes go to the logo on my folder, then to my face. He doesn't say anything.

He comes down.

He reaches the ladder by moving along the soffit line with one hand trailing the fascia, not looking at his feet.

He descends without hurrying. When he reaches the ground he steps away from the ladder and turns and looks at me and I wish, briefly and uselessly, that I'd had another cup of coffee before driving out here.

Close up, he's sun-darkened skin, dark eyes, the scar on his left forearm visible below his rolled sleeve.

Late thirties. He's looking at me the way I'd expect someone to look at me if they'd decided in advance what category I belonged to.

His eyes are sharp and his face is bent into a slight scowl, framed by his beard.

I know that look. I've been on the receiving end of it more times than I'd like. It doesn't make it any less irritating when the person doing it has eyes like that.

"Willa Frost," I say. "Frost Independent Adjusting. I have the Brooks Boutique Hotel claim and five others in Silver Ridge."

"Atlas McKay." His voice is unhurried. Like he has nowhere to be and nothing to prove. "I own High Mountain.”

"What do you need from me?" Straight to business.

"To document the existing damage. Your professional assessment of the scope of work required." I'm already angling my camera up at the east slope. "If you have preliminary numbers, we can talk through them."

"I don't do preliminary numbers for adjusters."

I lower the camera. "What do you do for adjusters?"

"Depends on the adjuster."

I've been dismissed before, I've built a career in rooms where I'm not wanted, it bounces off me. It's the accuracy of it. He's already put me in a category and turned the key, and there's a small, stupid part of me that wants to stand outside that door and knock until he opens it.

"Fair enough," I say, and go back to photographing.

He watches me work with the same focused attention I'm giving the building, turned back on me.

I do the south face first, document the undamaged sections for comparison, move to the east elevation and work methodically along it.

I note the batten pattern on the tarp, the overlap, the sealing at the joints.

I note the chimney flashing has held and the valley is intact, which tells me the damage is wind-driven rather than structural.

I say some of it out loud when it's relevant, write the rest down.

"You're reading it right," he says, at some point.

I don't look up. "I usually do."

"Usually."

"Forty-seven storm claims. Twelve commercial roofing assessments.

" I straighten and look at the roofline.

"I've been wrong twice. Once I missed a secondary failure point under intact decking.

Once an owner had pre-existing damage he hadn't disclosed.

" I close the folder. "Neither miss came from bad judgment.

Both came from incomplete information. I don't like incomplete information. "

He's quiet a moment. "You're telling me this why?"

"So you know where I stand." I look at him directly for the first time since he came off the roof and I immediately understand why I'd been avoiding it.

"I'll be back tomorrow with the ladder system for the roof inspection.

The policy requires on-site contractor verification for commercial claims at this value threshold. I'll need someone up there with me."

A pause. "What time?"

"Eight, if you're available."

"I'm on-site at six."

"Eight," I say. "I don't climb ladders before coffee."

Something crosses his face that might, in another context, be the beginning of a smile. It doesn't arrive. "Eight," he says.

I drive to the end of the block and sit in my car and open my notes app, because I always capture my first impressions before they fade.

In the side mirror, I can see the hotel roof. He's back on the ridge line.

I put the car in drive.

Eight o'clock tomorrow. Coffee first. Then the roof.

I'm already thinking about tomorrow.