12. Colt
Colt
I wake up with Nora tucked against my side, her body warm and soft under the blankets, and for a few seconds before my brain fully catches up with the morning I let myself just exist inside that fact without examining it too hard.
She is healing well. Better color in her cheeks, easier movement when she shifts in her sleep, no wincing even when she rolls half against my chest. The bump on her head has gone from tender to barely there.
The wrap around her ribs is holding firm under my palm where my arm rests across her.
I watch her for a long moment, the fire burned low in the hearth, the first gray light of morning finding its way through the window glass.
The storm is finally breaking. The wind has dropped from a howl to something closer to an ordinary mountain breeze, the snow falling lighter against the pane than it has in three days.
That should be good news. Instead it sits in my gut like a stone I swallowed wrong.
Once the storm clears fully, the world comes back.
The Marshals move her into protection. Her whole life gets rewritten by strangers with clipboards, somewhere flat and gray and far from here.
Away from this cabin. Away from me. I do not want that.
I want her here, and wanting something that plainly is a new experience for a man who has spent years wanting very little beyond a quiet mountain and a full trap line.
I slide out of bed careful not to wake her, my bare feet cold on the floorboards, and pull on boots and a coat before stepping out into the quieter morning.
The snow is still deep but the wind has died to a steady breeze, the kind that barely stirs the treetops.
I check the traps around the cabin first, boots sinking into fresh powder with every step, cold biting at my face and hands.
No disturbances. No fresh prints besides my own from yesterday.
I reset one trap that shifted overnight, the metal cold and familiar in my gloved hands, and then I push further out toward the road than I usually bother going this early, because a clearing storm means a clearing road, and a clearing road means whoever left that print near Nora's car has a much easier trip up here than they did three days ago.
I find nothing new at the road itself, but standing there in the thin gray light I hear it.
Faint. An engine, somewhere down the grade, running low and slow the way a vehicle runs when whoever is driving it is not in any hurry and does not want to be noticed doing whatever they are doing.
I stand still long enough to place the direction, but the sound fades out before I can pin down more than that, swallowed by distance and trees.
Could be a plow. Could be a local checking on a cabin of their own.
Could be exactly what my gut has been telling me it is since I saw that light on the logging road days ago.
I head back inside, filing it away instead of letting it show on my face, stomping snow off my boots at the door.
Nora is awake, sitting up in bed with the blankets pooled around her waist. She smiles when she sees me, small and soft, and something in my chest loosens despite everything I just heard on that road. “Morning. You were out checking things?”
“Perimeter's clear. Storm's easing.” Both true, as far as it goes. I do not mention the engine. Not yet. Not until I know more than a sound and a bad feeling.
She nods and stands, moving easier today than yesterday, easier than the day before that.
We spend the morning quiet and unhurried, her drawing in the notebook while I fix a hinge that has been sticking on the woodbox and check the edge on my good knife.
By afternoon the light outside has gone brighter, the snow falling in occasional lazy flakes instead of the driving sideways kind.
We start dinner together as the day winds down, the small kitchen filling up with both of us at once, elbows nearly bumping in a space built for exactly one person who never expected to need more room than that.
I pull venison from the cold box while she chops vegetables at the table, the knife moving in careful, deliberate strokes that get more confident with every cut.
The sound of the blade on the board mixes with the crackle of the fire and the low hum of wind outside that no longer sounds like it wants to tear the roof off.
“You any good at this?” I ask, seasoning the meat before it hits the pan, the oil already starting to shimmer with heat.
She laughs, light and easy in a way that fills the whole cabin up. “I am significantly better at drawing cartoons of people cooking than I am at actually cooking. But I can chop. Look. Perfect cubes. Or reasonably close to perfect.”
I glance over at her work, the vegetables uneven but earnest, more enthusiasm than precision behind every cut. “Close enough works out here. Better than burned, anyway, which is where most of my early attempts at cooking ended up.”
She bumps my hip with hers on her way past to bring the cutting board over, and I let the small contact land instead of flinching away from it, some quiet decision made without me consciously making it.
I want her here, in this kitchen, in these clothes, for longer than the storm is going to give us.
That want does not go anywhere no matter how many times I remind myself what is coming once the roads clear.
I do not chase the thought past that point.
Tonight is still ours. I focus on the pan instead, flipping the meat with the spatula.
She leans against the counter while I work, arms crossed loose under her chest. “Tell me more about those lures you were making yesterday. You make it look easy.”
I show her the process as I go, my hands moving through motions worn smooth by years of repetition.
“Simple hook, thread, a bit of feather. Fish like the movement it makes in the water more than the color, most people get that backward. Learned it from my dad out on the river when I was maybe eight.”
“What if the fish are grumpy, like my moose cartoons? Do they need a special lure for that?”
I chuckle low, the sound surprising me a little with how easy it comes now. “Grumpy fish get the extra feather. Makes them think it is a party they were not invited to yet.”
That gets a real laugh out of her, the sound filling up corners of the cabin that have been quiet a long time, and we move around each other through the rest of the cooking, her handing me spices before I ask for them, me stirring the pan while she sets the table with the same two mismatched plates I have owned for a decade.
Her shoulder catches my arm reaching for a bowl.
I let that land too. The food comes together slow and easy, meat tender, vegetables soft, the whole cabin smelling like something a person could build a life around instead of just survive inside.
We sit down to eat, plates warm under our hands, fire crackling low as the evening settles outside the window. “This is good,” she says around a bite, sounding genuinely surprised. “Better than my usual takeout while I draw deadlines.”
“You asked about the team earlier,” I say, mostly to keep the conversation somewhere safer than the two of us in a quiet room with witness protection sitting unspoken between every sentence. “On the phone. Wanted to know who the others are.”
Her eyes light up, curious in the way they get right before she asks a question she has clearly been saving up. “You sound close to them. Like actual family, not just coworkers.”
“Closer than most family, some days.” I lean back, the chair solid under me, and let myself actually talk instead of just summarizing.
“Mason you have heard on the phone. He runs the team, and he is better at it than he lets on, mostly because he plays it loose and funny until the second something goes sideways, and then there is not a calmer voice in a crisis anywhere in the state. Jax is next. Big guy, first through every door we have ever hit, which sounds like a compliment until you learn he once kicked in the wrong apartment on a warrant because he misread the unit number, and the actual suspect two doors down heard the commotion and just walked out the front and surrendered out of pure secondhand embarrassment for him. He has got a three legged rescue dog named Biscuit that he is somehow gentler with than he is with anybody on the team, carries treats for that dog in every jacket he owns.”
She laughs, delighted. “I already love Jax.”
“Everybody does, eventually, once they stop being scared of him. Then there is Brock.” Something in my voice shifts, quieter, more careful, the way it does whenever Brock comes up in conversation.
“Tracker. Best I have ever worked with, better than me if I am honest about it, which does not happen often. Quiet, though. Lost somebody a few years back, never talks about it, and none of us push. He just goes further into himself every winter around a certain date, and the rest of us make sure somebody is around him without making it a whole conversation. He will come back around eventually. I think he is closer to it than he has been in a while, actually.”
“That is a lot of story for one dinner,” she says softly, watching my face.
“You asked.” I take a bite to give myself a second, then keep going, because something about telling her all of this feels like handing her a key to a part of my life I do not usually let anybody look at this closely.
“Ryker handles the tech side, anything electronic, anything that needs hacking or tracing or pulling off a server somewhere it should not have been sitting unprotected in the first place. Man can get into systems that should be impossible to touch, and cannot make a pot of coffee without setting off the smoke detector. It is a running joke on the team at this point, somebody always volunteers to handle the coffee the second Ryker reaches for the machine.”
“And the last one? Kane, was it?”
“Kane. Newest, youngest, prior military like most of us, still trying to prove himself even though he proved plenty the first week he showed up. Eager in a way that used to remind me of myself before the mountain wore some of that off. The rest of the guys give him grief about it constantly. He takes it well. Good sign, that. Man who cannot take a joke does not usually last on this team.”
She listens through all of it, her fork resting forgotten on her plate. “That sounds nice. Having that. A whole group of people who would show up for you no matter what. I have never really had that. Just me, and my notebook, and a lot of deadlines nobody was checking up on but me.”
Her words land somewhere quiet in my chest. She is alone in her own way, same as I was before that team became something closer to brothers than coworkers, and something about hearing her say it plain like that, no self pity in it, just fact, makes me want to fix it immediately and permanently.
I reach across the table and cover her hand with mine.
“You have got it now,” I tell her. “With me. And once this is over, with them too, if you want it. They will love you. Jax especially. He is going to try to give you his dog within about five minutes of meeting you.”
She smiles at that, small and real, and something loosens further in my chest, the good kind of ache instead of the tight worried kind I have been carrying around since I heard that engine on the road this morning.
We finish the meal slower than we need to, talking about smaller things now, her childhood, the mountain, the particular loneliness of growing up the funny one in a family that never quite knew what to do with a kid who saw the world in panels and punchlines instead of straight lines.
I tell her a little about my own before the badge, before the cabin, the version of me that existed in a life I do not talk about much because there is not a version of that story that ends anywhere good.
She does not push past what I offer. I notice that about her too, and add it to the list.
When the plates are empty and the fire has burned down to something low and orange, I get up to check the door is barred and glance once, just once, out toward the dark tree line where I heard that engine hours ago.
Nothing moves out there now but wind. I tell myself that is enough for tonight, and I mostly believe it.
She catches me at it anyway, watching from the table. “Everything okay?”
“Everything's fine.” I cross back to her, and for tonight, with her hand still warm from mine and the fire holding steady in the hearth, I let that be true.