Chapter 3
GARRETT
Three days in and I've got a problem.
The problem is sleeping on my couch with her braid undone across the pillow and one bare foot stuck out from under the quilt because she runs hot.
The problem has a laugh like someone who hasn't used it in a while and is surprised to find it still works.
The problem asked me this morning if I always stare at people when I'm thinking or if it was a her-specific policy.
I told her it was a her-specific policy.
She'd gone pink at the edges of her ears and ducked behind her coffee.
I'd walked outside and split wood for forty minutes I didn't need to split.
Now it's past dinner and I'm at the kitchen counter cleaning my rifle because my hands need something to do, and Delilah is in the armchair by the fire with her ankle propped on an ottoman, notebook open in her lap, pen between her teeth.
She pulls the pen out. "Can I ask you something that's not about rocks."
"Go."
"How long have you lived up here?"
"Alone in this cabin? About four years. Station job started six years ago."
"Before that?"
"Army. Fifteen years. Three deployments."
She doesn't do what most people do, which is follow up with questions about the deployments. She just nods and writes something down like I've given her a data point she needed.
"What are you writing?"
"A list."
"Of?"
"None of your business."
I huff. She grins at her notebook without looking up.
The grin's going to be a problem too.
I set the rifle down. Ghost is at her feet. He's been at her feet for three days. He's supposed to be my dog. Traitor.
"Sheriff called while you were asleep this afternoon."
Her head comes up. Pen stops.
"And?"
"Crestview Resource Partners filed the original claim under a parent LLC registered in Delaware. Parent LLC is a shell. Board members are all corporate aliases. Parker pushed it to the state AG. They opened a file."
"That's fast."
"Parker's good. He hears mining and fake he starts calling people. Too many bodies come off these mountains every year already. He doesn't want one more."
She closes the notebook slowly. "Any movement at the site?"
"Two trucks in and out yesterday. One last night. Parker's got a deputy running plates from a distance. Nobody's knocking on any doors yet."
"Do they know I'm alive?"
"They know you're not dead on that slope. Rifleman came back down. I had eyes on him from the truck. He didn't find a body. He didn't find your pack. He knows you got picked up. He doesn't know by who or where."
"How can you be sure?"
"Because if he knew where, he'd already be here, and he isn't."
She lets out a breath she'd been holding. Shoulders drop half an inch. It's small. It's the first time in three days I've watched her body stop bracing.
And something in my chest does something stupid.
I go back to the rifle so I don't have to look at her.
"Can I make dinner tomorrow."
"No."
"Why."
"You can't stand."
"I can stand if I lean."
"You can't lean on a stove, Delilah."
"You underestimate me."
"I've watched you hop to the bathroom three times today. I am not underestimating you. I am correctly estimating you."
She laughs. Real laugh. Low and surprised like it caught her off guard.
I look up before I can stop myself.
Firelight is doing something to her face.
Bruise at her temple healing yellow now, not purple.
Freckles across her nose. Dark hair half up, half down.
The field vest is gone. She's in one of my Henleys because her shirt was torn and bloody and Parker hasn't been able to drop supplies yet.
The Henley swallows her shoulders and ends mid-thigh and she's got bare legs tucked under the quilt and I'm staring again.
She catches me.
Doesn't duck this time.
Just looks back.
My pulse goes somewhere it doesn't belong.
I stand up. "Going to check the perimeter."
"It's dark."
"That's why I check it."
"Hawk."
I stop at the door with my hand on my jacket.
"I wasn't laughing at you."
"I know."
"I was laughing because you're funny. You don't know you're funny. That's the best kind."
"I'll add it to the list of things you're wrong about."
"Number one was what."
"Being able to cook on one foot."
"Noted."
I pull the door shut behind me before I say something else.
The air outside is sharp cold and the sky above the ridge is the kind of black you only get this far from anything. I walk the tree line with a flashlight and my rifle and a head full of things that aren't perimeter checks.
Four years I've lived up here without wanting a single thing I didn't already have.
Four years.
And a geologist with a broken ankle and a notebook full of evidence has me splitting wood I don't need and staring at her mouth when she talks.
I do the full loop. South side clear. East clear. Ghost would be with me if I'd let him but I left him inside with her. He's the better early warning system anyway. Anything comes close to that cabin he'll tell us before any motion sensor does.
I come back in stamping my boots on the mat.
She's asleep.
Head tipped against the side of the armchair, notebook slid off her lap to the floor. Pen on her chest. Quilt kicked half off.
I cross to her quietly. Pick up the notebook. Set it on the side table. Reach for the quilt to pull it back up.
She stirs.
Opens her eyes.
"I fell asleep."
"You needed to."
She doesn't sit up. Just looks up at me from under heavy lids, hair messier than it was an hour ago, and my hand is still on the edge of the quilt an inch from her thigh.
"You were gone a long time."
"Checked twice."
"Was there anything to see?"
"No."
She keeps looking at me.
I should step back.
I don't.
Her hand comes up slow. She catches two of my fingers. Doesn't grip. Just rests her fingertips against mine where my hand is braced on the arm of the chair.
"Stay a minute."
I crouch. Get eye level. Her eyes are the brown you see in river stones when the sun hits them right.
"Delilah."
"Mm."
"You're concussed and you just woke up."
"I'm not concussed anymore. Cade looked at me yesterday. You were there. You heard him."
I heard him. I also heard him tell her to rest.
"You're on pain meds."
"Ibuprofen. Hawk."
The way she says my name every time does something to me that isn't smart and isn't fair.
I'm forty years into a life where women don't say my name at all and now this one does, and it sounds like a joke and a prayer at the same time, and my chest is cracking open a little bit every time she uses it.
Her thumb brushes the side of my index finger.
Light.
Deliberate.
My breath catches.
I lift my free hand, slow enough to give her time, and I tuck a piece of her hair back behind her ear. My knuckle grazes her cheekbone. Her eyes fall half closed.
I lean in.
I'm going to kiss her. I know it in my bones a second before my brain catches up and starts filing objections. She's a witness. She's injured. She's under my protection. I am a man who classifies the world in threat matrices and there are sixteen reasons I shouldn't close this distance.
My mouth is two inches from hers.
Ghost bolts up off the rug and barks.
Once. Sharp.
I'm on my feet with the rifle in my hand before I've decided to move. Delilah sits up, every trace of sleep gone.
"Hawk."
"Quiet."
I'm at the window. Porch light off. I killed the lamp on the way to the window without thinking. Ghost is at the door now, hackles up, low growl in his chest.
I scan the tree line.
Headlights. Half a mile down the fire road. Coming up.
One vehicle. Moving slow. No badge lights, no emergency lights, no reason to be on this road after dark unless you were invited.
I wasn't inviting anyone.
I turn.
Delilah's already swinging her legs off the chair, reaching for her notebook, face gone pale.
"Back bedroom," I say. "Floor behind the bed. Don't make a sound."
"Hawk."
"Now, Delilah."
She goes.
I chamber a round and wait.