Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
DANE
She's on the porch at four fifty-eight.
Boots laced. Hair pulled back. One of those brand-new flannels buttoned wrong, the collar sitting crooked against her jaw. Coffee mug in both hands, steam curling up around her chin in the pre-dawn cold.
"You're early," I say from the barn doorway.
"You said five."
"Most people hear five and show up at five thirty."
"Most people haven't been billing in six-minute increments for seven years." She takes a sip. "Punctuality is a reflex."
Hatchet brays from inside the barn. She looks past me toward the sound, and the controlled smile from yesterday softens into something closer to real.
"He's loud for five in the morning."
"He's loud for any time of day. Come on."
The feeding routine takes thirty minutes. Hatchet gets oats, fresh water, a hoof check. She watches everything, asks practical questions. How much does he eat. How often do I shoe him. What's the weight limit on a pack frame. Lawyer brain cataloging data, filing it away.
By the time we finish, the sun is cresting the ridge. Golden light pours down the east face of the mountain, turning the tree line amber. She stands in the barn doorway watching it with her mouth slightly open, and something in my chest does a thing I'm choosing to ignore.
"Trail work," I tell her. "North route. Grab the saw from the hook by the door."
She grabs the saw.
We hike for forty minutes before we hit the first blowdown. A ponderosa came down in last week's wind, blocking the trail at chest height. Too big to step over, too low to duck. The corporate group next week will need this cleared.
"You cut. I'll haul." I pull on work gloves and hand her a pair. They swallow her hands. She rolls the cuffs back without comment.
For the next two hours, we work. She's slower than me with the bow saw, her strokes uneven at first, but she figures out the rhythm within twenty minutes.
Doesn't complain about the blisters forming on her palms. Doesn't ask for breaks.
When a branch snaps back toward her face, she ducks and says a word that makes me cough to hide the laugh.
"Former corporate attorney," I say.
"Current trail worker with a mouth." She wipes her forehead with the back of her wrist. "Is this what your clients do? Cut trees and haul logs?"
"They pay me four thousand dollars to cut trees and haul logs. They also pay me to yell at them about their footwear."
"What's wrong with my boots?"
Her boots are fine. Stiff, new, but decent quality. "Nothing. You're the first person in six months who showed up wearing actual hiking boots."
That gets me a grin. An honest one. Gone before she can calibrate it, and all the better for it.
We break for water at the creek crossing.
She crouches on a flat rock, fills her bottle from the filter I showed her, drinks deep.
Her flannel is unbuttoned now, sleeves pushed to her elbows.
Underneath is a white tank top damp with sweat.
The fabric clings to her in ways I'm working very hard not to catalog.
"Can I ask you something?"
My body goes still. "Go ahead."
"Why'd you sign up for Mountain Match? You don't seem like a man who needs help meeting people."
"Mace dared me."
"Your friend dared you to sign up for a matchmaking service."
"He said I'd forgotten how to talk to women."
"Have you?"
The creek moves between us, clear and fast. She's watching me with those gray-green eyes, water bottle loose in her hand, knees drawn up. The morning light catches the sweat on her collarbone. Her hair is coming loose from the tie, curling around her temples from humidity.
"Apparently not."
Her mouth twitches. "That was almost a compliment."
"Don't get used to it."
We hike back to the cabin for lunch. She makes sandwiches while I check the weather on the satellite phone. Storm coming in tomorrow, maybe the day after. Need to get the north route cleared before the corporate group arrives.
Over sandwiches at the kitchen table, she tells me about law school. Top of her class. Fast track to partner. Eighty-hour weeks she convinced herself were normal because everyone around her worked the same hours.
"When did you know it was wrong?" I ask. "The firm. The fraud."
Her sandwich pauses halfway to her mouth. "Month four. The numbers on a client filing didn't match the underlying documentation. Small discrepancy. The senior partner said it was a clerical error."
"It wasn't."
"It was a hundred and forty-seven pages of not being a clerical error." She sets the sandwich down. "I spent three months documenting everything before I resigned. They expected me to stay quiet."
"Someone sent you a message."
Her eyes snap to mine. Sharp. Assessing. "How did you know that?"
"You put N/A on your emergency contact line. You left your previous address blank. You don't flinch at thunderstorms or bears, but you checked the rearview mirror six times on the drive up the mountain." The satellite phone sits between us on the table. "Someone threatened you."
Silence. Her jaw tightens. For a long moment she just looks at me, running calculations behind those careful eyes.
"A man showed up at my apartment building at two in the morning. He told the doorman he had a delivery. Then he waited in the lobby until I came down to get it."
My hand closes around my water glass. "What was the delivery?"
"A note. One sentence." She picks up her sandwich again. Takes a bite. Chews. Swallows. "Stay quiet or we'll make sure you can't talk at all."
The glass in my hand has developed a crack. Or my grip has. Hard to tell.
"That's why you're here."
"Yep, pretty much."
"Do they know where you are?"
"No. Mountain Match operates on paper. No digital records. No GPS tracking. That's why I chose it."
Smart. Methodical. The work of a woman who spent three months building a federal case before anyone knew she was building one.
"Noelle."
"Dane."
"Nobody's getting to you up here. No cell service, no road past mile marker twelve, one access trail that I can see from my porch. You understand?"
Her eyes hold mine. Something moves behind them, fast and complicated. Relief. Gratitude. The sharp awareness that a man she met yesterday is promising her safety and she has no reason to trust it except instinct.
"I understand."
"Good."
We spend the afternoon on the south fence line.
She holds posts while I reset them, handing me tools before I ask because she's been watching my system all morning.
The woman learns fast. By three o'clock she's anticipating my next move, already reaching for the wire stretcher when I finish the post.
"You're good at this," I tell her.
"You sound surprised."
"I'm not. You reorganized my toolbox during lunch."
"Your wrenches were sorted by size but your pliers were in with the screwdrivers. It was chaos."
"It was my system."
"It was wrong."
Hatchet brays his agreement from the paddock. She laughs. Full, real, her head tipping back. The sound rolls through the empty valley, and I realize it's the first time I've heard genuine laughter on this property that wasn't my own.
We're walking back toward the cabins when it happens. The trail narrows along the creek bank. She steps on a wet root, her boot slips. My arm goes around her waist before I think about it, pulling her into me before she hits the mud.
Her hands land on my chest. Both of them. Flat, fingers spread. My arm is around her waist, her body pressed against mine. Every point of contact fires through me at once.
She's breathing fast. So am I. Her face is six inches from mine, those gray-green eyes wide open. No controlled smile. No calibration. Just her, raw and startled and warm against me.
"Thank you." Barely a whisper.
My hand is on the small of her back. Her fingers curl into my shirt. The creek runs beside us. A bird calls from somewhere up the ridge. The world contracts to her mouth, slightly parted, and the weight of her body against mine.
I kiss her.
Slow. Deliberate. My hand slides up her back to the nape of her neck, fingers threading into the hair coming loose from her tie.
Her lips are soft, and when they part for me, I pull her closer.
She tastes like creek water and the peanut butter from lunch.
Her fist tightens in my shirt, pulling me down.
A sound escapes her throat, quiet, involuntary. My other hand finds her hip.
When I pull back, we're both breathing hard. Her pupils are blown wide. My hand is still on her neck.
"That wasn't in the Mountain Match brochure," she says.
"They operate on paper. Probably should've included a waiver."
She laughs against my mouth. Then her expression changes. The walls come back up, slower this time. With effort.
"Dane. I have a target on my back. You don't know what you're getting into."
My thumb traces her jaw. "I spent eight years in the Army. I know exactly what I'm getting into."
She searches my face. Whatever she's looking for, she must find it, because her fingers loosen in my shirt. She takes a breath. Steps back. My arm lets her go, reluctantly.
"Five a.m. tomorrow?"
"Four fifty-eight," I say. "Since you're an overachiever."
The smile she gives me as she walks toward her cabin is the first one that reaches her eyes.
I stand by the creek for a long time after she's gone, listening to the water, touching my mouth.
Hatchet brays from the paddock.
"Yeah," I tell him. "I know."