Reckoning of Talon Mountain (Men of Talon Mountain #9)

Chapter 1

HELENA

Liam Stoddard crashes through my clinic door with blood soaking through the flannel shirt wrapped around his forearm.

"Doc." His voice comes tight, controlled in the way that means he has pain he's not admitting. "Had a disagreement with my chainsaw."

Blood drips steadily onto my waiting room floor—cherry red, which means arterial risk if the wound is deep enough.

At least twenty minutes since this happened, based on the saturation pattern.

I'm already moving, guiding him toward exam room one while my brain catalogs details: amount of bleeding significant but not spurting, skin tone pale but not shocky, breathing elevated but steady.

"Sit." I unwrap the flannel, and the smell hits immediately, chainsaw oil mixed with blood and the distinctive scent of wood splinters embedded in tissue. "When did this happen?"

"Maybe half an hour ago. I was cutting firewood up at the north property line."

"Alone?"

"Yeah."

He was alone. Half hour drive to get here, which means he field-dressed this himself and drove one-handed while bleeding. Stupid and efficient in equal measure, which describes most of my patients.

I peel back the makeshift bandage. A deep laceration runs diagonally across his forearm, several inches long, gaping wide enough to show muscle fascia.

Wood debris packed into the wound edges.

Close to the radial artery; close enough that a couple inches left and I'd be dealing with arterial spray instead of venous bleeding.

"Hold still." My voice stays level as I apply pressure with fresh gauze. "You're lucky. Another inch or two to the left and you'd have hit the radial artery, and we'd be having a very different conversation."

Liam grunts. "Chainsaw kicked back. Happens."

"It happens when you're running equipment that needs maintenance." I apply lidocaine, allowing the area to become somewhat numb before I irrigate the wound, watching the way tissue responds, checking for nerve damage or tendon involvement. "This needs more than a dozen stitches."

"Figured."

My clinic in Glacier Hollow operates out of a building on Main Street that used to be the general store before I converted it.

Two exam rooms, a proper office with filing cabinets and a desk that actually locks, a small waiting area with decent chairs, a storage room for supplies, and a surgical suite that's saved more than a few lives when the weather makes helicopter transport impossible.

The town provides electricity, but I've got dual diesel generators with automatic failover as backup—power loss during surgery isn't an option when your nearest hospital is hours away by helicopter.

Most of my supplies come through standard medical distributors.

Some of it doesn't. Trauma dressings rated for battlefield injuries, IV antibiotics most rural clinics wouldn't stock, suture kits in sizes designed for everything from facial lacerations to abdominal closures—I've acquired those through medical surplus auctions and supply chains that don't ask too many questions about remote practitioners treating gunshot wounds at odd hours.

Some of it came from Zeke MacAllister after I patched up one of his people who'd taken a bullet meant for a trafficking witness.

Word spreads in certain circles when you're willing to treat people the system's failed, when you understand that paperwork can be a death sentence for someone running from the wrong kind of attention.

I like it that way.

Liam watches me pick up the suture needle. "You ever think about places that are warmer or have better facilities, Doc?"

"No. This town and the people suit me fine and I don’t like the heat." I start the first stitch, working with the precision born from long practice.

Silence settles while I work. Liam knows better than to push.

Everyone in Glacier Hollow knows better.

Years ago I moved here from Anchorage with exactly two suitcases and a medical license that still carried my married name.

Dr. Helena Sage, widow, looking for somewhere quiet to disappear into work.

The locals accepted it the way they accept most things: don't ask questions, don't expect answers, and appreciate that someone with actual medical training decided to set up shop in a town hours from the nearest hospital.

I finish the last stitch and bandage the arm. "Keep it clean and dry. I'm prescribing antibiotics—take the full course, don't stop when it feels better. And come back in a week so I can check for infection and remove the stitches."

"What do I owe you?"

"Two cords of firewood. Split and stacked."

"Deal." Liam stands, testing the range of motion in his arm. "You're a hell of a doctor, Helena."

"I know."

He leaves through the waiting room, letting in a blast of November cold that rattles the windows. I watch through the exam room window as Liam's truck disappears down the main road, then turn back to close up.

Mountains are visible beyond town, dark against the gray sky. Beautiful and unforgiving.

David would've loved it here. Open sky, mountains cutting sharp lines against the horizon, wilderness that demands respect and gives nothing for free.

We used to hike the backcountry around Anchorage every weekend, mapping trails and testing our endurance against terrain that didn't care if you were prepared.

He died on a trail in the Chugach foothills on a Saturday in June.

Clear sky, perfect temperature, the kind of day that made you believe Alaska summer would last forever.

We were a few miles in when he stopped, grabbed my shoulder.

Said my name once. Just "Helena," but I heard everything wrong in that single word. Then he went down.

I caught him before he hit the ground, lowered him carefully while my hands were already checking carotid pulse.

Weak, irregular. Pupils dilating. Skin going gray in the specific way that meant his heart wasn't pumping enough oxygen to his brain.

I started compressions immediately, counting out loud, thirty compressions to two rescue breaths.

CPR on a mountain trail, counting compressions while my husband died under my hands.

I knew after the first round. Knew from the way his chest didn't rise properly during rescue breathing, from the absence of respiratory effort, from the fixed dilation of his pupils when I checked again.

He had a massive and catastrophic heart attack.

No warning, no genetic markers in his family history, just gone between one breath and the next.

I kept doing CPR until the rescue helicopter arrived. Kept doing it because stopping meant admitting what I already knew but wasn't ready to admit. The flight medics took over, ran their own assessment, looked at me with that expression—the one that means bad news.

I moved to Glacier Hollow a year later.

My phone buzzes. Unknown number, Anchorage area code.

"Dr. Sage."

"Dr. Sage, this is Jennifer Brooks with Alaska Child and Family Services." Professional voice, worn thin by bureaucracy and impossible caseloads. "We have a seventeen-year-old in foster care who needs medical evaluation. Trafficking survivor. Federal victim services referred us."

Federal victim services means law enforcement involvement. I've worked with enough survivors to recognize the careful language social workers use when they can't give details over the phone.

"What's the timeline?"

"We'd like to bring her to your clinic tomorrow if possible. She's placed in Anchorage, but we heard you work with trauma survivors. And that you keep things confidential."

My clinic doesn't report to databases that might leak information to the wrong people. Zeke probably gave them my name. Or Rhys. Or any of the Talon Mountain crew who've learned that sometimes victims need medical care without federal paperwork creating trails for traffickers to follow.

"I can see her tomorrow. Two o'clock?"

"That works. Her name is Traci Vance. Seventeen years old. She's not speaking, so the examination will need to be conducted with that in mind."

Not speaking. Selective mutism brought on by trauma, or physical damage, or a psychological break that happens when reality becomes too overwhelming to process. I've seen all three.

"I'll be ready. Anything else I should know?"

Jennifer hesitates—the pause that means complications. "We're trying to locate family. There's an emergency contact listing from five years ago. Uncle, former military, but he's been off-grid for several years. We're working with federal marshals to track him down."

"Understood. I'll see you tomorrow at two."

I end the call and stand there for a moment, phone still in my hand.

Seventeen years old. Not speaking. Then I pull up my schedule.

Cancel the afternoon supply run to Palmer, push the equipment maintenance to next week, make sure exam room two is set up for a patient who's going to need gentle handling and zero pressure.

A trafficking survivor who isn't speaking. The details paint a picture I've seen too many times, and every time it makes me want to burn the entire system down and start over with something that actually protects the people it's supposed to protect.

But burning things down doesn't help the survivors who need immediate care. So I do the work. Clean the exam rooms, sterilize instruments, prepare a medical sanctuary that tells patients they're safe even when their nervous system is screaming otherwise.

My clinic closes at six. I lock up, check the perimeter sensors Zeke installed last year after a particularly determined trafficker tried to retrieve a witness I'd been treating, and drive home.