Chapter Six
Nadine woke to the sound of hammering.
For one disoriented moment, she was back in her apartment above the hardware store, listening to old Mr. Garrett fix something that didn't need fixing because he couldn't stand being idle.
Then the unfamiliar ceiling came into focus, the rough-hewn beams and the woodstove warmth, and everything from the night before crashed back in.
The parking lot. The men. The crack of breaking bone.
Pitfall.
She pushed out of bed—still dressed, she'd been too exhausted to do more than kick off her boots—and followed the hammering to the front of the cabin. Through the window, she could see him on the porch, driving nails into something she couldn't quite make out from this angle.
He looked different in daylight. Younger, maybe. Less like a weapon and more like a man. Though the way he moved still carried that coiled readiness, like violence was just one wrong word away.
Nadine unlocked the door and stepped onto the porch.
"Morning." He didn't look up from his work. "Coffee's on the stove. Should still be hot."
"What are you doing?"
"Reinforcing." He finished the nail, moved to the next one. "These windows are good, but the frames could use some work. Anyone tries to pry them open, they'll have a harder time now."
She looked at what he'd built—metal brackets anchoring the window frames, angled to make removal nearly impossible without serious tools. Simple but effective.
"You do this a lot? Turn cabins into fortresses?"
"When it's needed." He straightened, wiped his hands on his jeans. Finally met her eyes. "How'd you sleep?"
"Better than I expected." It was true. Something about the isolation, the locked door, the knowledge that he'd be back—she'd slept deeper than she had in weeks. "You?"
"I don't sleep much."
He said it like a fact, not a complaint. Like sleep was a luxury he'd learned to do without.
"Grit got what he needed from our friend with the broken arm." Pitfall gathered his tools, moved toward the next window. "Guy's name is Darrell Sizemore. Works for a man named Boyd Maggard—runs counterfeit goods through half of coal country. Been at it for years."
Nadine leaned against the porch railing, arms crossed. "Never heard of him."
"Most people haven't. That's how he likes it." Pitfall started on the next frame, movements economical and precise. "He uses legitimate businesses as fronts. Pressures owners into stocking his product, takes a cut of everything that moves. Anyone who refuses..."
"Gets bricks through their windows."
"Or worse." He drove a nail home with more force than necessary. "Sizemore wasn't specific about what 'worse' looks like, but his tone suggested we wouldn't like it."
"And Maggard? Where is he?"
"Working on that. Sizemore gave up some locations, some names. Club's running them down." Another nail. Another bracket secured. "Until we know more, you stay here."
The command in his voice should have irritated her. Would have, from anyone else. But there was something underneath it—not condescension, not dismissal. Concern. The kind that came from actually giving a damn whether she lived or died.
"What about my shop?"
"Brothers are watching it. Anyone shows up looking for trouble, they'll find it." He moved to the third window, started measuring. "Your artisans have been contacted. Told them you're dealing with a family emergency, that the shop's closed for a few days."
"You contacted my artisans?"
"Grit did. Figured you'd want them to know you hadn't abandoned them."
Something loosened in Nadine's chest. She'd been trying not to think about Mabel, Clara, Douglas—all of them wondering why she'd disappeared, whether she'd given up on them the way everyone else had.
"Thank you," she said. "That was... thoughtful."
Pitfall shrugged like thoughtfulness was nothing special. "They matter to you. That means they matter."
He kept working. She kept watching.
There was something hypnotic about the way he moved—no wasted motion, no hesitation.
Every action served a purpose. He explained what he was doing as he went, pointing out sight lines through the windows, fallback positions if someone breached the door, the best angles for defense if it came to that.
He didn't talk down to her. Didn't assume she couldn't handle the information or wouldn't understand the tactics. Just laid it out plain, like she was a partner instead of a package to be protected.
"You've done this before," she said. "Prepared places for... whatever this is."
"Few times." He finished the last window, stepped back to survey his work.
"Club's got enemies. Sometimes those enemies go after people who aren't patched.
Families, friends, anyone they think is vulnerable.
" His jaw tightened. "We learned the hard way that vulnerable doesn't mean defenseless. Not if you prepare."
"Learned the hard way how?"
He was quiet for a moment. Then: "Story for another time."
Fair enough. Everyone had their walls.
The day passed in a strange kind of intimacy.
They didn't talk constantly—Pitfall wasn't the type to fill silence with chatter, and Nadine appreciated the space to think. But when they did talk, it meant something. No small talk. No pleasantries for the sake of pleasantries.
He asked about her artisans, and she told him everything.
About Mabel Hensley, who'd survived the Depression by selling baskets door to door and still woke at dawn to weave because her hands didn't know how to be still.
About how the patterns she used were older than the state of West Virginia, passed down through generations of women who'd never written anything down but remembered everything.
About Clara Osborne, whose husband had died in a mine collapse thirty years ago and who'd thrown herself into pottery because grief needed somewhere to go. Her vases weren't just beautiful—they were memorials. Every curve and color a conversation with a man who'd never come home.
About Douglas Fenton, ninety-one years old with hands that trembled but never slipped, who carved walking sticks from wood he'd harvested himself and refused to sell to anyone who wouldn't appreciate the work.
He'd been cheated so many times he'd almost stopped carving entirely, until Nadine convinced him to trust her with his pieces.
"Why does it matter so much?" Pitfall asked. They were sitting on the porch by then, afternoon sun slanting through the trees. "The preservation. The fair prices. You could make more money selling tourist crap."
"Probably." Nadine pulled her knees up, wrapped her arms around them. "But those people—Mabel, Clara, Douglas—they're not just making objects. They're keeping something alive. Skills that took generations to develop, traditions that'll disappear when they're gone. Someone has to care about that."
"And that someone's you."
"I came back." She stared out at the hollow, the trees, the mountains rising in the distance.
"After college, I mean. Everyone said I was crazy—why would you leave the city to come back to a dying coal town?
But the city felt... hollow. Like everyone was just going through motions that didn't mean anything.
Here, the things people make with their hands actually matter.
The work connects them to something bigger than themselves. "
"And you wanted to be part of that."
"I wanted to protect it." She turned to look at him. "Does that make sense?"
Pitfall was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was different. Rougher. Like the words were coming from somewhere deep.
"When I was sixteen, I fell into an abandoned mine shaft."
Nadine went still. She hadn't expected him to share anything—he'd deflected every personal question so far, kept his walls high and solid. But something in her story had cracked them open.
"Fifty feet down," he continued. "No rope, no light, no one who knew where I was. The shaft had been sealed for decades, but the cover had rotted through. I was just walking through the woods, and then I wasn't."
"God." The word came out hushed. "How did you—"
"Three days." His eyes were fixed on the distance, seeing something that wasn't there.
"Three days of climbing with fingers that wouldn't stop bleeding.
Drinking seep water because it was that or die of thirst. Sleeping in crevices barely wide enough to hold me, waking up not sure which way was up. "
"How did you get out?"
"Kept climbing." He said it simply, like it was obvious. "Every time I slipped, I found another handhold. Every time I wanted to quit, I remembered that quitting meant dying in the dark. So I didn't quit."
"That's..." Nadine shook her head. "I don't know if that's inspiring or terrifying."
"Both, probably." His mouth quirked—not quite a smile, but close. "Point is, I learned something down there. Panic doesn't help. It just burns energy you can't afford to lose. The only thing that gets you out is putting one hand above the other and not stopping until you reach daylight."
"And that's how you approach everything now."
"Pretty much." He finally looked at her, and something in his expression made her breath catch. "You remind me of that. The way you talk about your artisans, your shop. You're not panicking. You're climbing."
"I don't feel like I'm climbing. I feel like I'm falling and hoping someone catches me."
"That's the same thing." He stood, stretched, moved toward the door. "Falling's just climbing in the wrong direction. You adjust, you find a new grip, you keep going."
Nadine watched him disappear inside, heard him moving around the kitchen, starting dinner. Her heart was doing something strange—beating too fast, too aware of the man in the next room and everything he'd just trusted her with.
He'd been in the dark for three days. Alone. Bleeding. And he'd climbed out meaner than he went in.
She understood him now, in a way she hadn't before. The calm that wasn't really calm—it was control. The readiness that lived in his body—it was preparation. He'd learned in that mine shaft that the world could swallow you whole if you let it, and he'd decided never to let it again.
When she went inside, he was at the stove, stirring something that smelled like actual food. He didn't turn around, but she saw his shoulders relax when she entered. Like he'd been listening for her footsteps, waiting to know she was close.
"Hungry?" he asked.
"Starving."
"Good. Sit down. It's almost ready."
She sat. He cooked. And somehow, in the silence that wrapped around them both, they understood each other perfectly.
No words needed. Just presence. Just the space between two people who'd learned the hard way that some fights you couldn't win alone.
The evening settled around the cabin like a blanket, and Nadine realized she'd stopped being afraid.
Not because the danger was gone. But because she wasn't facing it by herself anymore.