Hidden Mountain Man (Hot Mountain Nights 2)

Chapter 1

CLARK

The woman was going to be a problem.

She was dressed for boardrooms, not mountains.

Tailored coat, dark. Heels that were going to be useless in six hours.

Hair arranged in the specific way of someone who'd spent the day in front of cameras and hadn't had the time or the inclination to dismantle it afterward.

She was carrying a structured leather bag over one arm and rolling a hard-sided suitcase behind her with the brisk efficiency of a woman who traveled often and traveled well and did not, under any circumstances, allow delays.

She spotted the truck and came toward it without hesitation. I'll give her that.

I got out and moved to take the suitcase. She held on to it for a half second — involuntary, a reflex — and then released it.

"Clark Baxter," I said.

"Isla Montgomery." She looked at me with the direct assessment of someone accustomed to reading rooms fast. Whatever she concluded, she kept it to herself. "You're taking me to the cabin."

"Yes."

"How long is the drive?"

"Three hours."

She nodded once, got in on the passenger side, and settled her bag on her lap. Contained. Organized. Already running the logistics of the next twelve hours in her head.

I put the suitcase in the truck bed, got in, and pulled away from the curb.

We made it four blocks before she reached for her phone.

"I need to check in with my attorney," she said. "She'll want to know I'm en route."

"Your attorney already knows." I kept my eyes on the road. "Phone stays off."

A pause. "Excuse me?"

"Off or left behind. Your choice."

The silence that followed had a specific shape. It wasn't the silence of someone who'd heard me — it was the silence of someone deciding how to respond to something they found unreasonable.

"I understand there are protocols," she said, with the precision of someone managing their tone very carefully, "but I'm not in the habit of being completely unreachable."

"You need to get the habit."

Another pause. Longer.

"For how long?"

"Until I bring you back."

She looked at me. I could feel it from the corner of my eye — the full weight of someone who was used to having their objections addressed, explained, and negotiated with.

I didn't look at her.

After a moment, she powered the phone down and placed it in the cupholder between us. Not the bag. The cupholder. Where she could see it. The small power move of a woman who wanted me to know this was a concession, not a surrender.

I understood the distinction. I even respected it.

"You want safe," I said, "or you want comfortable?"

"I want both."

"Then this ends badly."

She looked out the window. The city lights caught the line of her jaw, the set of her shoulders — stiff, controlled. Not afraid. Adapting.

"You were assigned by Jax Mercer," she said. It wasn't a question.

"Yes."

"He came recommended."

"He usually does."

She turned back to the window. The city fell away behind us, the highway opening into a dark mountain corridor, and I drove through it the way I drove through everything — without hurry, without conversation, without anything wasted.

Jax had called me three days ago. Short brief, the way he always gave briefs — specific and without excess.

Witness. High-profile trial. Threats that had escalated past the manageable threshold.

Off-grid until testimony. He'd given me the cabin because I knew it better than anyone and because the woman needed someone who wouldn't ask questions she wasn't cleared to answer.

I didn't ask questions. It was one of the things Jax found useful about me.

The other thing was that I didn't lose people. In eight years of this work — extraction, protection, short-term disappearances — I'd never lost a client. Not once. I intended to keep that record with Isla Montgomery, even if she was going to be a problem about it.

I glanced at her once, briefly, somewhere past the last gas station before the mountain grades started.

She'd taken her shoes off. Had her feet tucked under her on the seat, and was looking at the darkness outside with the steady attention of someone who'd stopped trying to manage the situation and was simply observing it.

The tension in her shoulders was different now. Less about control. More about calculation.

She won't last the night, I thought. Then I watched her look out at the mountains and something in her expression — not softness exactly, more like recognition — made me revise the thought before it was finished.

Maybe she would.