22. Colt
Colt
The phone rings sharp and insistent, cutting through the quiet of the cabin like a gunshot.
I jolt awake, hand already reaching for the satellite phone on the nightstand before my eyes fully open.
The quilts feel heavy and tangled around my legs as I sit up, cool night air hitting my bare chest. Nora should be right here, curled warm against me.
The spot beside me is empty. Cold enough that she's been gone a while.
My heart gives one hard, ugly thud as I answer.
“Colt.” Mason's voice comes through tight and urgent, none of his usual easy rhythm in it. “Nora just called me from the Timber Creek diner. She's there right now.”
I blink, confusion cutting through the fog of sleep like a dull knife.
“What? Why the hell is Nora calling you from the diner?” My voice comes out rough as I swing my legs over the side of the bed, bare feet hitting cold wood.
I stand, scanning the room. The blankets are rumpled, but her side is too neat, tucked back like she made an effort not to wake me pulling herself out of it.
Her coat's gone. Her boots. The sketchbook's still open on the table to that drawing of the two of us, mountain adventurers, but she's nowhere in the cabin. “Mason, hold on.”
I move fast, bare feet slapping the floorboards as I check the bathroom, the kitchen, even the porch, some useless part of me hoping she just stepped out for air.
Empty. All of it. The realization lands like a fist to the gut.
She's gone. My free hand clenches so tight my knuckles crack.
Fear spikes hot and sharp through my veins, twisting my stomach into a knot I recognize from exactly one other night in my life.
She snuck out. To protect me. To fix this herself, the way she's been trying to fix everything since the moment I pulled her out of that wreck.
The thought makes my chest ache with something fierce enough to taste like copper.
I yank on my jeans, shove bare feet into boots without bothering with socks, zip my coat with jerky, furious movements. “Get to her fast, Mason. I'm already moving. Don't let her out of your sight once you find her.”
“We're already rolling,” Mason says, and something in the clipped efficiency of it tells me he'd already half suspected something like this might happen.
“Brock, Jax, Ryker, and Kane are with me.
We were staged near Timber Creek already for tomorrow's transfer operation, which means we're maybe ten minutes out instead of an hour.
We'll find her, Colt. Just drive safe getting down that mountain.”
I grab my rifle and extra ammunition off the wall, metal cool and solid in my hands, grounding in a way nothing else is right now.
I step outside, snow crunching loud under my boots.
The tarp's off the snowmobile. It's gone.
Tracks lead down the mountain, cutting straight and deliberate through fresh powder, and my breath comes faster, visible in ragged puffs in the freezing air.
She took that treacherous trail down alone, in the dark, on a machine she's ridden exactly once with somebody else steering half the time.
One wrong turn on that grade and she could have gone off the edge same as her car did that first night.
I picture her hands gripping those handlebars, her whole body fighting the machine down a mountain she doesn't actually know, and it makes my blood run properly cold.
“Snowmobile's gone,” I bark into the phone, already running for the truck. “She rode it down. I'm heading to the diner. Keep her there if you get to her before I do.”
“Copy.” A beat, then Mason again, steadier. “She's smart, Colt. Scared, but smart. She'll have a reason for whatever she's doing.”
I don't have room in me right now to find that comforting.
I slam the truck door hard enough the frame groans and crank the engine, the big diesel roaring to life, vibration running up through the seat into my bones.
I gun it down the mountain road, hands white knuckled on the wheel, tires biting snow and gravel, the truck fishtailing once on a sharp curve before I correct it without slowing down at all.
Trees whip past in dark blurred streaks against the headlights.
My heart pounds heavy and relentless against my ribs, every beat hammering the same fear.
She's out there alone because she loves me enough to risk everything for it, and I let her get far enough out that door for it to happen.
The drive feels endless, every rut and jolt jarring straight up through my teeth.
I push the truck harder than I should on these roads at this hour, the engine straining on the steep sections, snow spraying up from the tires and catching the headlights like static.
My mind keeps supplying worse and worse pictures, her crashed somewhere on that trail with nobody knowing where to look, her already standing in front of the men who killed Richard Rogers with nothing between her and them but whatever nerve she's got left.
My jaw aches from clenching it. She's mine to protect, and right now I'm failing at the one job that's ever actually mattered to me.
Finally the lights of Timber Creek appear ahead, glowing pale against the dark like something out of a story where the town shows up right when you need it to.
I skid into the diner parking lot, truck rocking hard on its shocks as it stops, and I'm out in a flash, rifle slung over my shoulder, cold air slapping my face without me feeling much of it at all.
Mason and the others are already there, vehicles parked at hard angles like nobody bothered with anything as civilized as a parking line.
Brock stands near the entrance, tall and unreadable, scanning the street with the kind of stillness that means he's already tracking something the rest of us haven't spotted yet.
Jax leans against his truck, arms crossed, coiled tight the way a man gets right before he goes through a door he expects trouble behind.
Ryker's got some handheld device out already, screen glowing blue against his face, pulling whatever data he can off the local network.
Kane checks his weapon a second time, jaw set, young enough that this still costs him something to keep his hands steady, old enough that he doesn't let it show past a flicker.
“Where is she?” My voice comes out rough as I stride up to Mason, boots hitting pavement hard enough to sting.
Mason shakes his head, jaw tight. “Not here. We got here minutes ago. Greta says she used the phone, then stepped outside to wait for whoever was picking her up. No sign of her since.”
My stomach drops like something physical. I push past all of them into the diner, the bell jingling too loud and cheerful for what's happening. Greta looks up from behind the counter, eyes wide. “She left just a bit ago. Looked scared but determined. Real polite, though. Said thank you twice.”
I step back outside into the cold. An older man in a thick jacket approaches from the sidewalk, hands shoved in his pockets against the chill.
“Saw a dark van peel out of here not long ago.
Two big guys got out first, grabbed something, then everybody piled back in fast. Didn't think much of it till I saw all you folks pull up looking like the cavalry.”
The word explodes out of me low and vicious before I can stop it.
They've got her. Those bastards have my Nora.
My vision narrows down to nothing but the empty stretch of curb where that van must have idled, fresh tire tracks pressed deep into the snow, already starting to fill back in at the edges.
“We move now.” My voice carries that flat, commanding edge I haven't used since my last deployment, the one that doesn't leave room for discussion.
“They can't have gone far on these roads tonight.
Spread out. Check the main roads and the back trails both.
I'm taking the north pass, it's the only route wide enough for a van that size to make good time in this snow.”
The others nod and fall into motion without a single wasted word, which is exactly why I trust this team with my life and now with hers.
Engines roar to life around me, headlights cutting hard lines through the dark.
I climb back into my truck, slam the door hard enough to rattle the frame, and peel out following the faint tracks still visible in the snow before the next flurry buries them for good.
My heart hammers loud enough to drown out everything except the single, narrow need to find her before anything worse happens than what's already happened.
The truck bounces over ruts, wheel vibrating hard under my grip, and I scan every shadow and side road, headlights sweeping snow and tree trunks in restless arcs.
Fear sits heavy in my gut like something solid, but it sharpens me instead of slowing me down, the way real fear always has out here, cutting everything down to exactly what matters.
I think about her laugh. The way she looks at me over coffee.
The sound of my own name in her mouth last night when neither of us was thinking about mountains or Marshals or Armenians at all.
She is not dying tonight. Not any night, not while I'm still breathing hard enough to do something about it.
Radio chatter crackles low from the others checking in one by one.
No sign yet, from any of them. I push the truck harder anyway, fishtailing around one more corner before I wrestle it straight, and the night stretches out ahead of me dark and full of every possible bad outcome, but I don't stop, because stopping isn't a real option tonight.
Nora needs me out here doing something, and I will burn this entire mountain range down to the granite underneath it if that's what it actually takes to get her back in one piece.