Chapter 5
In the light of a new day, I’m more convinced than ever that nothing is as it seems when it comes to The Beast.
The entire morning has melted away with me drifting from room to room, examining the architecture, the furniture, opening drawers and cupboards, trying to find anything that might shed light on the enigmatic man.
But after hours, I have yet to find a single photograph or anything personal.
No pictures with his sister, the Governor of Montana.
None with his living extended family, the numerous cousins who are front and center in Helena and state politics.
Not even a snapshot with his father, who rumor has it ran the Barkers before his death.
Yet everything is shockingly beautiful—in that deadly alarming way that warns a person looking to stay on their toes, to keep an eye over their shoulder.
And here, something is almost always looking back.
The heads of various animals mounted on the walls I saw in the upstairs hallway were only the tip of the iceberg. They fill almost every room—the way I’d always imagined The Beast would have the heads of his human victims mounted before I met him.
No doubt the man is a killer.
Of these animals? Of humans?
That isn’t so clear anymore.
But this house feels impersonal, like it’s just a place for him to lay his head, rather than a family home that’s belonged to generations of Barkers.
Did a young Weston sit by this fireplace, reading with his father, mother, and sister the way I did with Dad?
Were games played at that huge dining table that surely hadn’t been used in decades before I arrived?
It’s hard to imagine a family ever lived here. More museum than home, the place is almost too perfect.
I run my fingers along the bookcase that stands to one side of the massive fireplace in the living room, holding a set of old encyclopedias.
No dust.
As huge as this place is, it’s also immaculately maintained.
By whom?
The longer I’m here without seeing or hearing any evidence of staff, not even signs of a chef who might work in the kitchen preparing the meals I eat three times a day, the more likely it starts to look like The Beast does it all.
Cooking my food. Cleaning and maintaining this massive house and property. Buying and bringing me the luxury items that seem to show up in my room every time I drift off to sleep or step into the bathroom to shower.
It’s like magic, the way he seems to know—both what I might need or want and when I won’t be able to pepper him with questions. Almost as if the dead, marble eyes of the mounted heads are watching my every move, giving him the information he needs to keep me guessing and twisted up, wanting to know more.
Which is why I’m slowly hobbling to the door toward the back of the house, tucked behind the stairwell. Easily missed, it’s the only one that has been locked each time I’ve tried it and the only place I haven’t explored—save for the off-limits third floor.
What the hell could be up there?
Maybe his bedroom, since I have yet to find any evidence of where he actually sleeps. But something tells me it’s more important than that. That the answers I seek may lie at the top of that flight of stairs I’ve been warned to stay away from.
Definitely my next stop.
First, I try the handle on the room under the stairs. Unlike my other two tries, this time, it turns without resistance, and I hold my breath as I push it inward.
Holy shit…
A wall of monitors lights up the room in front of a long, low wooden desk and leather office chair that’s currently pushed back, as if it’s only recently been vacated.
I step in slowly, careful not to put my full weight on my right foot, my eyes bouncing over each screen, trying to take in all that I’m seeing.
The base of the mountain and the county highway that leads up to it.
The entrance to the gravel road I turned on to get up here.
The towering front of the house.
The porch where The Beast first confronted me.
My car still sitting in the same spot on the drive, almost like a taunt. It’s there, but I can’t really leave—my keys and phone suspiciously absent from the purse he returned to me that first morning.
Other screens hold miles and miles of endless forest.
A deer stands beside a river on one screen, while on the one right next to it, what looks to be a red fox scurries between thick bushes and disappears as quickly as it appeared.
The beauty and splendor of Barker Mountain spreads out in front of me, like watching a live movie about the Montana peak unfold before my very eyes.
He has cameras on the whole property.
He can see everything.
My gaze finally dips to the lowest level of screens, and my spine stiffens, my gut twisting and threatening to unload the delicious lunch I ate alone in the dining room only a few hours ago.
No. No. No.
My bedroom.
The space has become familiar over the last several days—where I spend my time trying to relax and forget about my predicament by losing myself in another world on the page. Reading has always been my greatest love and escape, and if I can’t be at home in my own bed with a great book, at least I can do it here while simultaneously resting the still-healing injury to my foot.
But I won’t be able to relax there anymore or find comfort in the soft mattress and silky sheets and heavy scent of The Beast that lingers on everything.
Anger heats my veins as I stare at the screen that shows every inch of the bedroom except the bathroom and closet.
That’s how he knew when to bring things, when to leave them.
The Beast has been watching me.
Heat floods my cheeks at the knowledge of what he might have seen—how many times I stripped naked and changed. The nights I’ve let myself fall apart and break down, crying myself to sleep.
He’s seen it all.
That rat bastard!
A floorboard creaks behind me, and the hairs on the back of my neck rise.
I spin toward the door and find The Beast standing between the jambs, his broad shoulders nearly brushing each side. Sweat glistens on his bare chest, like he’s just come in from working hard, manual labor on the property, and his large hands bunch and flex at his sides.
His lips twist into a sneer. “What the hell are you doing in here?”
Annoyance crackles through me at the anger in his words. If anyone should be pissed off right now, it should be me, not him.
All those tiny, lingering reservations about wrongly judging the man standing before me have vanished, replaced with a rage I haven’t felt toward him before, despite likely having reason to.
I spread out my hand, motioning toward the cameras. “What the fuck is this?”
He scowls. “My security system.”
Raising a brow at him, I let my mouth fall open. “Your security system requires you to spy on me?”
The Beast recoils slightly, a muscle ticcing in his clenched jaw beneath his beard. “Every room in this house has a camera, Callista. I can’t be too careful with security.”
“Bullshit!” I throw up my hands. “No one dares to come up here, and you and I both know it. This”—I jab my finger into the screen with my bedroom on it—“is a complete violation.”
One of his silvery brows rises.
He takes a step toward me, his intimidating size more evident the closer he gets. That same scent that permeates the air in my bedroom now fills each breath I take, and his tension vibrates every muscle in his solid body. “You want to talk about a violation? How about you showing up here on my fucking property, inserting yourself into my life, fucking up everything?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I throw up my hands. “You demanded my father send me here.”
But even as the words leave my mouth, the truth sparks in the back of my brain.
Unless he didn’t…
Though he doesn’t say anything, the shift in his stance, the slight alteration in the set of his bare shoulders is all it takes to tell me I’m right.
Holy shit.
It would certainly explain why he doesn’t seem to want me up here and why he was so surprised at my arrival. He isn’t the one who sent that message, and for some reason, he’s not only protecting whomever it was, but he’s also going along with whatever that person wants to happen.
But why would The Beast bow to anyone?
No good answer comes—either in my head or from him.
He stalks past me and flips something that shuts off all the screens that display the rooms in the house.
I thrust a finger toward them. “You can’t just turn that off and pretend you haven’t been spying on me.”
Though that seems like exactly what he’s doing.
His back still to me, he takes several deep inhales, resting his palms flat on the desk, head dropped low over the keyboard.
A few tense, silent moments pass before he finally shakes his head. “No, I don’t…” He raises it and turns back to me. “I monitored you that first day and night because I was worried about your foot and that you’d try to do something stupid, like climb out of the damn window. I only check it to make sure you’re asleep or in the bathroom before I bring anything in for you. Otherwise, it’s always off.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better? That you only spy on me sometimes? That you skulk around in the only space that’s actually mine in this house while I’m likely naked in the connecting room?”
He flinches, his shoulders tensing, then turns away again, staring at the screens showing the rest of the property. “I wouldn’t—”
I offer a disbelieving huff before he can complete his objection. “Bullshit. You really are a beast, you know that?”
It happens so fast that I don’t have time to prepare.
He whirls toward me, his nostrils flaring, normally gray eyes a deep black, and leans in so close I can smell the sun and the sweat and the anger rolling off him. “If you want to see the kind of beast I really am, I’ll show you.”
Beauty doesn’t understand.
She needs to.
I’ve tried to protect her from the reality of Barker Mountain, but Callista is far too comfortable pushing boundaries and demanding things I can’t give her.
The only way to put a stop to it is to show her what no one else has ever seen—the reason this peak spells death for anyone who sets foot on it.
She needs to truly see me as The Beast so she won’t fight me on stupid shit like the damn surveillance system.
I wrap my hand around her bicep and tug her toward the door.
“Hey!” Callista tries to plant her feet to keep me from moving her forward but yelps in pain, tugging her bad foot up with a wince. “Ow, fuck!”
Her distress and my role in it almost give me pause, but I can’t let any dangerous feelings for her stop me from doing what’s necessary in this moment.
Bringing my lips to her ear, her soft hair brushes against my upper cheek, and I inhale her honey scent, willing my body not to react the way it wants to. “Don’t make this any more difficult than it has to be, Beauty. It’s clear to me you’re under the impression you can do and say anything you want while you’re here. Like you are somehow the one in control. I don’t think you have a fucking clue who I really am, but you need to see it.”
She recoils and tries to take a half-limped step back, gritting her teeth when her sole hits the wood plank floor. “Fuck.”
There’s no way she’s walking where I need to take her.
Which only leaves one option.
I lower my shoulder and toss her up over it.
She yelps. “What the hell are you doing?”
Her fists smacks my bare back, but I stride toward the back door, arm locked down over the back of her thighs to keep her in place.
“I am showing you who I am, so you’ll stop questioning everything and digging into affairs that aren’t any of your concern. You should have stayed out of this, Callista. You should have let your father and the Barkers deal with things on our own, but now that you’re trapped in the middle of it, it’s time you understood the ramifications.”
I should have shown her earlier, the very first time I got a taste of her rebellious attitude and knew she wouldn’t be a pushover.
Hindsight is always twenty-twenty, though.
A reality about so many damn things.
She sucks in a sharp little breath and stops fighting for a second, long enough for me to open the back door and step out into the cooling evening air.
I stalk toward the woods, careful to take the well-worn path this time instead of barreling through the thickest parts. I’ve used this trail too many times to count over the years, often with similar weight thrown over my shoulder.
But with a much different purpose.
Normally, I fight those memories, try to keep them dead and buried, but tonight, I open the floodgates, allowing all the blood and violence and anguish to invade my brain to help me get in the mindset for what I need to do tonight.
Terrify Beauty.
A strange dichotomy—to want to protect the very thing I’m about to scare intentionally. But I can’t have her look at me like she did yesterday ever again—like I might be something, someone more than The Beast. It’s far too dangerous, and it’s far from true.
I don’t bother trying to be quiet as I march through the woods. Twigs and leaves crunch and break underneath my boots, alerting anything living on the mountain of our location. But with the don’t-fuck-with-me vibes rolling off me right now, nothing would dare approach.
We finally reach the clearing, allowing more of the fading light to hit us.
I feel her lift her head. “Where are we?”
“None of your concern.”
I stalk through the bright-yellow buttercups, past where I do my log splitting and my workshop, toward the far side, where the second trail winds down the back side of the mountain and toward the gorge.
“Where are we going?”
“You ask too many questions, Beauty.”
She blows out an annoyed sound, twisting to try to see better, but my strong grip on her keeps her tipped over. “It’s what I do. I’m a librarian, for Christ’s sake. I’m all about exploring knowledge and learning, and all you are doing is giving me bullshit.”
I fight the laugh that tries to bubble up my throat.
This isn’t the time nor place for any kind of levity, even if her feistiness always manages to annoy me as much as it delights a part of me that I didn’t know could exist anymore.
Her frustration grows the longer I don’t react to her statement. She releases little irritated huffs and tries to see where we are as I maneuver down the zigzagging path until I finally reach the spot where I intended to bring her.
I flip her up onto her feet, setting her down, and she wobbles slightly, blinking rapidly as she digs her hands into my biceps, steading herself primarily on her good foot.
No doubt her head is spinning after being tipped upside down for so long, but I break free of her grip as soon as I’m confident she can stand on her own.
She twists her head, examining everything around us in the fading light. “Where are we?”
I grab her arm again and march her to the edge of the cliff, then point out across it to the vast wilderness that makes up the backside of Barker Mountain.
The wild side.
“What do you see?”
Her eyes narrow, and she peers down to the darkness of the bottom of the trench, then out across the endless trees. “I don’t know. More forest?”
“Do you want to know what’s at the bottom of that gorge?”
A shudder rolls through her, and true fear flashes in her gaze as she peeks up at me out of the corner of her eye—either unable or unwilling to look at me fully.
I lean in, so she can feel my words, not just hear them. “My family’s enemies. And no one would dare come looking for them, even if they could find them down there. Nature takes care of almost everything, but to really ensure our dirty deeds stay buried, I collect the bones and put them ten feet under out there.” I spread my hand wide across the vista to make my point, and she tenses again. “No one sets foot on this property, Beauty, and we have hundreds and hundreds of miles of land they’d have to search, if they wanted to try.”
No one ever would.
My body starts to tremble, thinking about how many are buried out there.
“You want to know what Barker Mountain is, Callista? It’s a goddamn cemetery for our enemies. Some who came to me still breathing…”
It doesn’t matter that I haven’t taken a life with my own hands in three decades. The years I did the truly dirty work left enough blood on them for a thousand lifetimes.
Tears pool in Callista’s eyes. “Why are you showing me this?”
I release a frustrated growl. “So that you’ll understand that you do not fuck with the Barkers, and you certainly don’t come up here making demands. You are here because you have to be. I’m keeping you here because I have to.”
Her brow furrows. “What do you mean, you have to?”
“Things aren’t always what they appear, Callista.” That’s as much of an answer as I can give her. “Your father made a shitty choice and created a big enemy, and now, we both have to face the consequences.”
She shakes her head, her blond hair practically glowing in the last rays of sunlight peeking over the horizon. “I don’t understand.”
“You’re not meant to. Just stop asking questions. Eat, wander around the house, do whatever the fuck you want to occupy your time, but stay out of my business and stay away from me.”
That should be a strong enough warning for her.
That should make her understand without fully unraveling everything that’s going on, but she stares up at me with her wide green eyes, her bottom lip trembling.
“Am I ever going to see my father again?” She motions to the gorge. “Or is he going to end up down there?”
I take a step back from her, then another, but it isn’t enough space to keep me from wanting to comfort and appease the woman who has uprooted the life I thought I understood in only a matter of a few days. “That isn’t up to me.”
“What if he can’t fix it? What if…”
I clench my jaw.
It might be easier if she knew everything, if she truly understood, but getting her involved in Barker business would only put a larger target on her back when she’s already on the radar.
“Just stay out of it, please.”
That might be the first time I’ve said that word in thirty years.
The last time I did flashes through my head vividly.
Begging never worked, nor did pleading. The only way to get things done was by a show of force—something I learned far too young.
I close the distance between us until I can feel the heat of her body radiating into mine. The only comfort I can offer her—plus a little sage advice. “The only way we get through this is if you stay quiet and compliant. Do you understand me?”
Her bottom lip continues to quiver as she stares up at me, looking far too beautiful for this world and definitely for this place. “Yes, sir.”
I flinch at the word. “Don’t call me that.”
“Then what should I call you?” She raises a pale brow. “Beast?”
I snarl at her. “I don’t give a fuck, but you don’t ever call me ‘sir’ again. Do you understand?”
There was only one man who ever bore that honorific, and he’s one I’ve tried to outrun my entire life. He turned me into this monster I’ve become, and for that, I’ll never forgive him.
Callista retreats one step, then another, wincing as she sets down her injured foot. “Fuck…”
The worry that sparks in my chest is more troublesome than the woman who caused it. I shouldn’t care if she’s uncomfortable, shouldn’t give a shit that she’s hurt and still feeling it, or that it was, in some way, my fault that she got injured in the first place.
I shouldn’t care, but I do.
And that’s the most dangerous part of all of this.