Consumed By The Grumpy Mountain Man (Mountain Man Summer 2026 #11)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

BECK

Six days.

Six days of silence, black coffee, splitting wood until my shoulders scream, then doing it again because screaming shoulders are easier to manage than the noise in my head.

Six days since I drove my truck up this mountain with a dog I don't particularly like, a duffel bag of clothes I don't particularly care about, and nothing resembling a plan.

It's working. Whatever "working" means when you're a thirty eight year old man who quit the career he spent fifteen years building, stopped answering his mother's calls, and now talks to a dog who refuses to acknowledge his existence.

Duke lifts his head from the porch. Studies me with that look he's been perfecting since I pulled him out of the shelter three years ago. Part contempt, part boredom, all judgment.

"Don't start with me."

He puts his head back down. Classic Duke.

The cabin came with the land. Eighty acres of nothing in the Kootenay Rockies, purchased sight unseen from an online listing I found at two in the morning while sitting in a Holiday Inn outside of Kamloops, drinking whiskey from a paper cup.

The listing said "rustic mountain retreat" and the photos showed a structure that had clearly been abandoned by humans and claimed by raccoons.

I wired the money before the sun came up.

That was three weeks ago. Two of those weeks, I spent gutting the interior, rebuilding the porch, replacing the plumbing that looked like it hadn't been touched since the Cold War. The work felt good. Physical, mindless, productive. A thing I could finish that wouldn't collapse on anyone.

My hands tighten around the coffee mug.

Don't.

I take a long drink. The coffee is too hot. Burns my tongue, my throat, all the way down. Good. That's something to feel that doesn't require a therapist or a liquor store.

The morning is quiet in a way cities never manage.

No traffic, no construction noise, no phones ringing with calls from lawyers or insurance adjusters or journalists who want a quote about the Halston Tower collapse.

Up here there's wind. Birds. The occasional crack of a branch when something moves through the trees. Duke's breathing.

That's it. That's all I need.

My phone sits on the kitchen counter inside, powered off.

Hasn't been on since I crossed the border from Alberta.

My mother has probably called fourteen times.

My brother has probably sent a carefully worded text about "just checking in" that actually means "are you alive and should we be worried.

" My former business partner Theo has probably left a voicemail that starts with "Beck, listen" because every conversation Theo has ever had with me starts with those words.

They can all wait. They can wait until the anger that lives in my chest like a second heartbeat finally burns down to something manageable. Something I can look at without wanting to put my fist through drywall.

Fourteen months. Fourteen months since Halston Tower cracked down the center of the east facade and three floors pancaked onto the parking structure below.

Fourteen months since the news anchors said my name next to the word "negligence.

" Fourteen months since I sat in a room full of lawyers who explained, in their calm, measured way, that the developer had substituted the steel specifications I'd designed to save money, that the concrete mixtures were wrong, that the project manager had signed off on changes I never authorized.

Cleared. I was cleared. Every investigation, every independent review, every structural analysis confirmed what I already knew. Garrison Development cut corners to save money on a building I designed to be safe.

Three people died.

Cleared doesn't undo that.

I drain the coffee. Set the mug on the porch railing.

Look out at eighty acres of pine trees, granite outcrops, and absolutely no human beings.

The nearest neighbor is eight miles down a logging road that barely qualifies as a road.

The nearest town, Crimson Hollow, is forty minutes of winding mountain driving.

I've been there once, for groceries. Didn't talk to anyone. Filled my cart, paid in cash, left.

Perfection.

Duke groans, stretches, and repositions himself on the porch boards so he can ignore me from a different angle.

He's an eighty pound mutt with the disposition of a retired dictator.

Short brown fur, one torn ear, and a permanent expression that says he's deeply disappointed in everything he surveys.

The shelter said he'd been returned twice.

"Doesn't bond well," the intake form noted.

Made two of us.

I stand up. Grab the axe. Walk to the splitting stump where I've already stacked a dozen rounds of pine.

The physical rhythm of it is the closest thing to meditation I've ever managed.

Lift, swing, crack. Lift, swing, crack. The wood separates clean when I hit it right.

When I don't, it takes two swings, and that's fine too. More work. More time not thinking.

I used to love building things. That's the part nobody talks about when they write their articles about the architect who walked away.

The actual love of it. The first time I saw a building I designed standing in real space, steel and glass and concrete doing exactly what I told it to do.

I was twenty six. I stood across the street and watched people walk through the front doors like it was nothing.

Like the building had always been there.

Seven minutes I stood on that sidewalk, grinning like a kid at Christmas.

Now I build nothing. I chop wood, make coffee, occasionally read a book of poetry I found in the cabin's one bookshelf. Mary Oliver. Rilke. Somebody left their college collection up here. The pages are warped from humidity but the words still work.

The afternoon passes slowly. Quietly. I eat a sandwich. Fix a loose board on the back steps. Heat canned soup for dinner while Duke sits at the kitchen door and pretends he's not hoping for the chunk of beef I always toss his way.

"You're welcome."

Nothing. Not even a tail wag.

I go to bed at nine. Read until ten. Sleep until something between three and four, when I wake up, like always with my heart racing. Hands gripping the sheets. The sound of concrete breaking playing in my head like a film reel stuck on the same terrible frame.

I get up. Make coffee. Sit on the porch in the dark. Wait for the sun to come up like it owes me something.

Day seven starts the same as the other six. Coffee. Wood. Silence. Duke positioned on the porch like a furry gargoyle, guarding against threats he has no intention of actually engaging with.

Around noon, I hear tires on the gravel. Distant at first, then closer. Getting stuck in the rut about a quarter mile down the drive where the road washes out. The engine revs. Catches. Keeps coming.

Nobody comes up here. There's no reason to come up here. The road dead ends at my property line.

Duke lifts his head. His ears go forward. A low growl starts in his chest.

"Easy."

A dusty blue Subaru crawls into the clearing. Parks crooked next to my truck. The engine coughs twice before shutting off, and there's a pause. The kind of pause that means whoever's inside is looking at my cabin and reconsidering their life choices.

Good.

The driver's door opens.

Hiking boots hit the dirt first. Then bare brown legs.

Then a sundress in a shade of orange so aggressive it should come with a warning label.

Then the rest of her. Curves. Braids piled on top of her head.

Sunglasses pushed up like a headband. A smile that has no business being that wide on a stranger's face at the end of a road that goes nowhere.

She stands there, hands on her hips, surveying my cabin. My porch. My dog. My entire life reduced to lumber and solitude.

Then she walks straight up to the bottom step, looks me dead in the face, and says, "Hi. My GPS lied to me, my gas light's been on for twelve miles, and I'm pretty sure your porch needs sanding."

Duke rolls onto his back.

Traitor.