North Fork Wilderness Shadows

Chapter One

The Carry

He had tracked the rogue crew for three days. Men who took hostages on remote trails for ransom. One of them had taken a woman near a trailhead. Blonde. Civilian. Jake found a scrap of blue fabric caught on a huckleberry bush and closed the distance without hurry or noise.

He hit their camp at dusk.

Four men. He put three down with the kind of efficient violence that left no room for negotiation. The fourth ran. Jake let him go. The man would return with more. That was expected.

The woman was tied to a pine, wrists raw, a shallow cut on her forearm, a dark bruise across her ribs.

Blue eyes. Tangled blonde hair. Even bound and bruised she was striking—large, full breasts straining against her torn shirt, a flat athletic stomach, full hips, and long legs that seemed to go on forever. Thirty-five.

“Name,” Jake said as he cut her free.

“Lucy. Lucy Brennan.” Her voice shook, but she met his gaze. “You’re not one of them.”

“No, ma’am.” He checked the cut, pressed a clean dressing to it, then carefully assessed her ribs.

She could not walk the distance. He turned, crouched, and guided her onto his back.

Her long legs wrapped around his waist, arms locked around his neck, the soft weight of her large breasts pressed against his shoulders.

Heat from her body soaked into his jacket.

He felt it and filed it away. Rescue first. Want later.

“I’m carrying you to my place. You’ll rest there. They’ll come again. I’ll be ready.”

He carried her the entire way like that—miles of steep trail and shadowed canyon floor, her body warm against his back, breath soft near his ear.

Night had fully settled when the narrow side canyon opened and the reinforced cabin came into view.

Old miner’s bones strengthened with timber and steel.

A spring-fed creek. A stocked cellar. Clear sight lines on every approach.

He set her gently on the cot, cleaned the cut properly, wrapped her ribs, and gave her water and a clean shirt that still could not hide the heavy curve of her breasts or the full swell of her hips.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “I didn’t think anyone would come. And you carried me the whole way.”

He only nodded. “Rest. They’ll try again.”

The anxiety came the next morning. She watched him work—checking weapons, calling old numbers on an encrypted radio, mapping the ground with the same quiet focus he had used on the camp.

Large. Older. Controlled. She wondered whether the man who had pulled her out of hell was any safer than the ones who had put her there.

“Are you any better than them?” she asked.

Jake paused and looked at her fully. That brief light touched his hazel eyes, then vanished. “I don’t take what isn’t offered. I don’t hurt what I claim. I don’t leave my people behind. Decide if that’s enough, ma’am.”