2. Colt
Colt
I stand in the snow with my boots planted on ground that's mostly ice under the fresh powder, and I look at her through the cracked windshield.
She's curled into the seat like she's trying to disappear into the upholstery, wide eyes locked on me, dark blood running slow from a split lip.
The airbag hangs deflated in front of her, and she's not moving beyond the thin shake running through her shoulders.
I heard the crash from the cabin — a quarter mile back through the trees, sound tearing through the quiet like something breaking that was never meant to break.
I'd been off the clock all week, just me and the river and the traps I keep along the bank, no calls and no reports and nobody to answer to but the mountain.
Then metal met tree loud enough to reach me anyway, and I dropped the axe mid-swing and started running before I'd decided to.
She's hurt. I can tell that much without touching her — the stillness, the way her breath comes shallow and fast. Her door's crumpled flush against the trunk; there's no getting her out that side without tools I don't have on me.
I circle to the passenger side instead, moving slow, each boot-fall deliberate.
Spook her and she'll fight me even if fighting is the last thing her body has left to give.
“Easy now.” My voice comes out rough — days of not using it will do that. “I'm not here to hurt you.”
Her eyes drop to the glint at my hip. I unclip the badge and hold it where she can see it clean. “US Marshal. Colt Rivers. You're safe.”
She doesn't relax, exactly. Smart woman.
But something shifts behind her eyes — the arithmetic of deciding whether to trust the shield or the man holding it.
I clip it back on and pull the door open.
Cold air and old wet leather. I need her out of the wreck before shock and the dropping temperature finish what the tree started.
“Door on your side's no good. I'm coming in from here.” I ease the seatbelt loose, my knuckles brushing her coat.
She flinches but doesn't pull away. The belt's left a red welt across her chest. I press two fingers light along her ribs and she sucks air through her teeth when I find the tender spot.
“Hurts there?”
A short nod. Lips pressed white.
“Bruised at least. Maybe cracked. We'll sort it inside.”
I get an arm under her knees and one behind her back and lift her clear of the seat like she weighs nothing — years of hauling deer carcasses and running down men who didn't want to be caught, finally good for something soft.
She gasps at the movement, goes rigid a half-second, then sags into me like her body's simply run out of other options.
“I've got you. My cabin's close. Fire's already going.”
She doesn't fight it. Her head finds my chest and stays there, and the shake running through her gets worse before it gets better, the cold working into both of us at once.
I pull my coat wider and tuck her in against it, and something in my chest that hasn't had cause to move in a long while sits up and pays attention.
The walk back is short but slow with her weight against me, wind dragging fresh powder across both our faces. “Almost there,” I tell her, mostly so she'll keep hearing a voice and not just the wind. “Fire's been going since morning. It'll be warm.”
She makes a sound that isn't quite a word, fingers curling into my shirt like she means to hold on regardless of what I decide to do about it. Good sign. Means some part of her's already choosing to trust this instead of running from it.
The cabin comes up out of the trees, low and gray-logged, smoke threading up from the chimney.
I kick the door open and carry her straight to the big chair by the hearth — the one I carved myself, some winter years back when the silence out here needed filling with something.
She sinks into it, eyes half shut from the heat and the crash both.
I feed the fire until it climbs, throwing enough light to work by.
I kneel down in front of her, knees cracking from the cold. “Look at me, darlin'.”
Her eyes find mine. Scared, still, but there's something stubborn underneath it too — a spark I like the look of. Means she'll fight if it comes to that.
I check her skull first, careful fingers through her hair, and find a bump already rising, no blood under it. “Took a good knock. Stomach turning? Vision blurry?”
“No. Just — hurts.”
“We'll watch it. No sleeping yet.”
Her ribs next. I ease her coat open, push the layers up enough to see skin gone pale from cold, and press along her side testing for anything shifted wrong. She winces hard at the bruise but doesn't make a sound about it. Tougher than she looks.
“Breathe deep for me.”
She tries. It catches halfway. “Hurts when I do.”
“Figured. Bruised, maybe cracked. Can't set it out here, but we'll wrap you tight and keep you still. You'll mend.”
I get the kit down from the shelf and blankets from the chest at the foot of the bed — a bed built wide enough for two, though nobody's slept in it but me.
I wrap her ribs firm, not tight, my hands moving careful over skin that's cold under my palms and warming slow.
She watches every motion like she's still deciding whether any of this is real.
Then I bundle her into wool until only her face shows, drape my flannel over her shoulders for the extra warmth, and something low in me goes quiet and certain in a way it hasn't in years.
Not want, exactly. Older than that — the kind of thing that doesn't ask permission before it decides what it's going to protect.
“What's your name?”
“Nora.”
I don't ask anything else yet. Not why she was driving Steel Mountain with a storm coming in, not who put that particular kind of fear in her eyes. That'll keep.
I clean the split in her lip with antiseptic and a clean cloth, careful not to let my thumb linger on her mouth the way some part of me wants to. She flinches at the sting and holds still through it anyway.
“You're safe here,” I tell her, and mean every word of it. “Nobody gets through that door while I'm standing on this side of it. Rest. Warm up. I'll watch.”
Some of the tension goes out of her shoulders under the blankets. The fire pops low and even. Wind works at the logs outside, snow ticking against the one window, and in here it's just the two of us and the heat pushing back everything trying to get in.
I sit back on my heels and watch her instead of the door for a while.
She's a wreck in every sense of the word right now — banged up, exhausted, scared half out of her mind — and none of that changes the fact that something in me has already decided this one's worth keeping whole.
She doesn't know it yet. I only half know it myself.
But I felt it the second I got her clear of that car, plain and simple as gravity: she's mine to look after now, whatever that ends up meaning once the sun's up and the world finds its way back onto this mountain.
For tonight, that's enough. I bank the fire higher, settle into the chair across from hers, and let the cabin do what cabins are for — keep two people warm, and keep everything else outside where it belongs.