18. Colt
Colt
I lie in the big bed with Nora curled tight against my chest, her body pressed into me like she was made to fit right here and nowhere else.
The fire's burned down to glowing embers, casting warm orange light across the cabin walls and her sleeping face.
She's out deep now, breathing slow and even, lashes fanned dark against her cheeks.
Every rise and fall of her chest brushes against my side, and I feel that pull in my gut stronger than any trap I've ever set in my life.
I'm in love with this woman. It's fast, faster than anything I've ever let myself feel for anybody, and I don't care.
One minute I'm pulling a wrecked car out of a snowbank.
The next I can't picture this mountain without her on it.
I don't want to let her go. Not to witness protection. Not to anybody.
I stroke her hair careful not to wake her, my fingers catching slightly in the strands.
She makes a small, contented sound in her sleep and snuggles closer, one leg sliding over mine, and I lie there memorizing the shape of her against me, the way her hip curves out under the quilt, the soft give of her thigh, the faint marks I left on her skin earlier that I have no intention of apologizing for.
She's mine. My responsibility now, in every sense of that word, and the thought of handing her over to some safe house I can't follow her into twists something fierce and ugly in my chest. I've lived alone out here for years, content enough with my traps and my rifle and the particular silence of the Steel Mountains.
Now the idea of a single day without her laughter, without her quirky drawings scattered across my kitchen table, without the sound of my own name in her voice, feels like something closer to a wound than a loss.
I ease out of bed slow and quiet, cool air hitting my skin as I pull on jeans and a flannel shirt.
The floorboards creak under my weight, but Nora doesn't stir.
Good. She's earned the rest. I grab the satellite phone off the shelf by the door and slip outside onto the porch, snow crunching bright and fresh under my boots in the late afternoon sun.
The cold bites at my face, but it clears my head, and I lean against the rough log wall and dial Mason before I can talk myself into waiting one more day to say any of this out loud.
The line clicks after two rings. “Colt. You good up there?”
I keep my voice low, though the cabin's far enough back that it wouldn't matter much either way. “Yeah. Roads are clearing. We've got a problem, though.”
Mason pauses, and I catch the background hum of whatever office or safe spot he's holed up in. “She okay? The witness?”
“Nora.” I say her name like it's a fact that needs stating plainly. “She's more than okay. Mason, I've gone and fallen for her. All the way. It happened fast and I don't give a damn how that sounds. She's it for me.”
Silence stretches a beat, then Mason lets out a low whistle. “Damn, brother. You sure that's not just the isolation talking, or the fact you've been snowed in alone with a beautiful woman for the better part of a week?”
I grip the phone tighter, jaw set. “I'm sure. Dead sure. She makes this place feel like a home instead of a cabin I sleep in between trap lines. I'm not letting her disappear into WITSEC, Mason. I can't lose her. Look at you and Riley.”
The name lands heavier than I mean it to, and Mason goes quiet on the other end for a second before he answers, his voice lower than before. “Low blow, using her against me.”
“Wasn't trying to score a point. Just telling you I understand exactly what it costs to keep somebody that way, because I watched it happen to you, and I want that.” I let that sit a second.
Riley was the witness Mason protected a few months back.
They fell in love and Mason risked everything to keep her.
It was ugly and dangerous, but now they get to be together. Always.
Mason exhales long. “If you're sure you love her, then we need another plan.
She can't go into the program, not if you're claiming her like this.
It means no contact, cutting every tie, disappearing so completely that even you might not find your way back to her without blowing the whole operation wide open. You understand what you're asking for.”
Relief floods through me, mixed with that hard, familiar edge of purpose I remember from my years in uniform.
“Good. Because I'm not handing her over.
I'll draw the Armenians out myself. Finish this on our terms instead of theirs.
No more running. No more hiding her away in some stranger's file cabinet.”
We talk strategy for a long while after that, the sun dipping lower and painting the snow pink and purple through the trees.
Mason lays out everything he's pulled together on the crew chasing her, ruthless, well organized, methodical in a way that tells him this isn't the Pertrosyans' first time cleaning up a loose end.
I pace the length of the porch, boots leaving deep tracks in the snow, listening and adding pieces of my own.
The remote trails I know better than my own hands.
The old trap lines that can be rigged for more than animals if it comes to that.
A false trail we could lay, making it look like she's being moved through a specific pass, drawing them in close enough to end this permanently instead of running from it indefinitely.
“I can pull in a couple of the others,” Mason says, voice gone steady and tactical in the way it does whenever he stops being my friend for a minute and starts being the man who runs this team.
“Jax and Kane are already in the area, finishing up a warrant out of Missoula.
We stage it like a standard transfer. Unmarked vehicle, normal route on paper, but we control every inch of the actual ground.
Draw them in close enough that there's no clean way out for them.”
I nod even though he can't see it, my mind already walking the terrain.
“We use the old logging road near the ridge, the one that funnels down to a single lane past the rock cut.
I can rig it so any vehicle coming through slows to a crawl whether they want to or not.
Non lethal first, disable the vehicles, box them in before anybody gets a shot off.
I want them alive for the feds if it's possible. Won't lose sleep if it isn't.”
Mason agrees on most of it, but then he pushes, the way I knew he eventually would.
“We still need bait, Colt. Something that makes them certain it's actually her in the vehicle and not a decoy they'll see through in about four seconds. Nora could ride partway, just far enough to be seen, then we swap her out before the pass.”
“No.” The word comes out lower than I mean it to, a growl that echoes flat off the trees around the porch.
“She's not bait. Not for four seconds, not for four feet.
She stays here where I can put my body between her and anything that comes up this mountain, or she moves to my backup place two ridges over where nobody but you and I have ever set foot.
You want a decoy, use me. I'll ride the route myself if it draws them in. But Nora stays out of the line of fire completely, or this whole plan is off the table and I find another way.”
“Colt, she's already in danger just by existing right now, whether she's in that vehicle or sitting in your cabin.” Mason counters, but I hear the understanding underneath the argument.
He knows me well enough to know I'm not bending on this one, not an inch.
“If we don't control when and where this happens, they pick the time instead of us, and that's a version of this I like even less than the one I just proposed.”
I stare out at the snow heavy pines, branches dripping meltwater bright in the last of the sun.
“Then we make damn sure we're ready enough that it doesn't matter who picks the time.
I won't risk her, Mason. She watched a man die and lost her whole life over it in the space of one afternoon.
I'm her shield now. That's not up for negotiation, not even with you.”
He's quiet a moment, and when he speaks again some of the fight's gone out of his voice, replaced by something closer to respect.
“Copy that. We'll build the plan around keeping her clear entirely.
I'll use one of the junior agents as the decoy instead, somebody roughly her build, and we run the transfer far enough from the cabin that nobody comes looking up here at all.”
We hammer out the rest of it over another twenty minutes, refining the timeline, who covers which approach, the signals we'll use if something goes wrong faster than expected.
Mason will coordinate his end, pulling Jax and Kane in fully once the warrant in Missoula clears, while I prep the ground here, every trap and trail and choke point this mountain has to offer.
By the time we hang up, the plan feels solid enough to bet a life on.
Which I am. Hers, and mine right alongside it if it comes to that.
I slip back inside, warmth wrapping around me like a welcome after the cold porch air.
Nora's still asleep, but she's shifted onto her side, one arm stretched out across the empty space where I was lying a few minutes ago, reaching for something that isn't there yet.
I shed my clothes and slide back under the blankets, pulling her close again.
She murmurs something soft and presses her face into my neck, breath warm against my skin, and my hand settles on her hip like it was always going to end up there.
“I've got you, darlin'.” I whisper it into her hair, voice rough with everything I'm not saying out loud yet. “Nobody's taking you from me. Not the Armenians. Not the feds. Not a folder full of new names. You're mine, and I'm keeping you right here.”
She doesn't wake, but she smiles in her sleep, fingers curling against my chest like she heard some part of it anyway.
I lie there holding her, listening to the fire pop low and the distant drip of snow melting somewhere outside, my heart beating steady now with actual purpose instead of just want.
I fell fast, but it feels right, like the mountain itself pushed the two of us together on purpose and I'd be a fool to argue with that kind of math.
I'll end this threat. Draw the Pertrosyans out on my own ground, my own terms, and then I'll build whatever life she wants with me, here in this cabin or somewhere else entirely, as long as I get to wake up next to her every morning after.
I don't care how it sounds. Love like this doesn't wait around for good timing.
It grabs you by the throat and dares you to fight for it anyway.
So I will. With every trap, every plan, every ounce of whatever's left of this heart I've got. Nora's not going anywhere except deeper into my life, right where she belongs.