Tracked (Off the Grid #1)

Chapter 1 Calder

Calder

“On the count of three,” Colby said, grinning just a little too wide. “Three.”

My younger sister scrambled up the rock face, her lean frame and braided brown hair moving up the cragged cliffside with the swift skill of a spider.

She had a half-second head start on me from her method of . . . counting. But that was Colby—always trying to outmaneuver, outsmart, and outperform the rest of us, her five older brothers. Maybe that was why her nickname, even now that she’s twenty-four, was the Dynamo.

Digging my hold into the practically sheer rock, I lunged after her, leaving a trail of chalk fingerprints in my wake.

There were higher, more treacherous cliffs buried in our family’s thousand-acre ranch, which was tucked away into the Wyoming Tetons, but this wall, dubbed Free Fall for its paralyzing vertical ascent and sparse holds along the way, was our litmus test. Part of our legacy.

My hands found their familiar rests, pulling me closer to Colby as my eyes scanned for my next hold; they always had to be one step ahead.

Rock climbing was both a physical and mental exercise. The combination of strength needed to hold yourself and a steady mind to calculate your next safest step made it one of the most important skills Cassius Stone had impressed on his children. And ascending Free Fall was graduation.

Cassius’s rule—one of many—was that his children were allowed to attempt the thirty-foot climb when we turned fifteen. None of us had waited that long, though Colby, of course, snuck out to summit Free Fall at the youngest age of thirteen.

The scar on Colby’s left brow marked her accomplishment; she’d lost her footing on the climb back down, gashing her head before she caught herself and landed on her feet.

The injury was nothing compared to the victory, which she’d worn with a wide smile and a slash of blood streaked like a laurel wreath across her forehead.

The Free Fall at Fifteen was one of the few rules Cassius was proud to see his children break.

“Your counting could use some work,” I taunted, my fingers sinking into my next hold as I pulled myself almost level with my sister. I had the natural advantage of height and strength, so my delayed start only attempted to even the playing field.

“Your climbing could use some work,” she countered, and made a quick scramble that put her back in the lead.

We’d all made the Free Fall summit countless times in the last decade—or almost two, in my case.

The cliff provided endless courses to the top as nature’s elements evolved the rock with every passing year.

The challenge of the topography was never as interesting to Colby as the competition for who could peak the fastest, a record I’d always held and she’d always wanted to claim.

She shifted and stretched above me, desperate to keep her lead. There was only about ten feet left to the top, and while she was moving quickly, I was still going to win.

“You sure about that, Dynamo?”

“Shit.” I heard her rough mutter and the scrape of her shoes as I rose beside her, then above her. There were a few more curses that followed me up the rock face; she’d chosen a shorter path, but the ledges were less reliable at the top, a risk she was now paying for.

Colby’s climbing was just as impulsive as the rest of her, always exploding toward the next step rather than evaluating the best step, which was why I caught up to her with fewer but more well-placed hooks. Climbing, like survival, was a chess game, necessitating thought before action.

I reached the top and hauled myself up over the edge of the cliff. Sitting on the ledge, I smiled down at Colby and wiped my hands together. “I think my technique is still working out pretty well.”

She reached the summit a few seconds later, taking a seat beside me and letting her head fall forward with a heavy groan.

“It was those last holds that screwed me,” she muttered, her irritation settled squarely between her bunched shoulders.

“They’re too shallow on that section of the wall.”

“I know, but it’s the fastest way to the top.”

“Only if it were reliable,” I rumbled and nudged my elbow to hers. “Maybe next time.”

Determination creased her expression; she was already plotting her next attempt, hopefully along a more thoughtful path.

The only way to counteract Colby’s instinct toward impulsiveness was to make her lose. She loathed losing to any of us, so it was the only thing that forced her to stop and proceed with a little more caution the next time around.

Rule #29: Train your siblings as if their lives depend on it, because someday, they might.

Cassius didn’t mince words when it came to his rules of survival, especially in this.

To go easy on Colby because she was smaller or because she was a girl or because she was our sister gave her an advantage the real world wouldn’t guarantee.

While I made sure the Dynamo didn’t get in over her head, none of us held back during any kind of challenge. If she lost, she learned. And when she learned, she got better.

“Calder!” a deep voice from below boomed.

Creed stood at the base of the wall, his arms crossed over his chest. Stone sibling number two was not unlike the cliff Colby and I sat on: extra large, inexorably hard, and naturally silent.

Drawing water from a stone was easier than drawing words from this Stone.

Though only a year younger than me, Creed was an inch taller than my six-foot-one frame and forty pounds of muscle broader, and he carried himself like he was still in the military police, ensuring he was consistently mistaken for the eldest of our clan.

“Be right down,” I called back.

Turning to Colby, I jerked my head toward the base. “Let’s go, Dynamo.”

She remained boldly still, her mouth pinching tight in a way that instantly reminded me of our mother.

Annie Stone was murdered when Colby was six, and her only daughter had inherited every last gene of defiance, boldness, and grit.

That, combined with being the youngest and the only girl, meant Colby got away with things that Cassius never let the rest of us do.

Even as adults, she was the only one who got to break his rules.

Case in point, the cell phone she quickly pulled out to snap a photo of the panorama in front of us: a horizon of mountain peaks married to meandering plains, our childhood home the single solitary structure for as far as the eye could see.

One of Cassius’s staunchest rules was no technology in the house.

Especially cell phones. Until he caved for Colby and her photography.

Granted, her cell was encrypted seven ways to Sunday, but still—Colby was allowed while the rest of us had to deposit ours, turned off, in a signal-jamming lockbox on the front porch.

Rule #10: Cell phones are tracking devices that happen to make calls.

Growing up Stone meant growing up survivalist. Even the name of Dad’s property, Stonewall Ranch, advertised both its literal and figurative meanings: surrounded by mountains, and outsiders weren’t welcome.

He wanted to live off-grid, so the house had its own sources of energy and water.

However, being completely cut off from the world was harder the older we got.

We descended Free Fall’s face, Colby’s feet landing on the ground with the first thud, followed by my own.

Thankfully, only Creed caught my grimace.

I might still beat her to the top, but at thirty-three, and with a knee injury from a wrestling match in college, my days of jumping the last ten feet to land were coming to a swift end.

“No luck?” Creed grunted, our sister’s disappointment as marked on her expression as the scar on her forehead.

Colby jutted out her chin. “Not yet.” Looking to me, she added, “Same time next month.” It wasn’t a question, and if it were up to Colby, we’d be out here again tomorrow for a rematch. But I’m not twenty-four anymore.

“Sure.” I chuckled and brushed some of the leftover chalk from my hands.

“All right, I’ll see you guys at the house.” She headed for the path back.

“Colby . . .” Creed stopped her. “What happened to Creighton’s tea?”

Her eyes flicked wide, the unmistakable sparkle of mischief—and merriment—lighting in them. “Why?”

I banded my arms over my chest, waiting to hear the newest torture our sister had inflicted on our grouchiest sibling.

Stone sibling number five was a doozy. At twenty-six, Creighton was the second youngest and was as surly as Creed was stoic.

He was the most . . . different from the rest of us.

A genius with an off-the-charts IQ, he was covered in self-inflicted tattoos and possessed the irritable demeanor of a septuagenarian.

He was more analytical than practical, but even that didn’t spare him Cassius’s survivalist training and having to summit Free Fall.

While the rest of us left Creighton to his solitary pursuits, Colby loved nothing more than to torment him with practical jokes, insisting that misery needed comedy, not company.

“He was aggravated. Looking for Donnie.”

Donnie was Colby’s pet duck. Her hobby of rescuing injured wildlife from every corner of our property meant we’d had an array of unusual pets over the years.

Donnie had had an injured wing when she found him three years ago, and after she’d nurtured him back to health, he became domesticated.

He roamed freely through our family home, much to Creighton’s dismay.

But the duck, like the cell phone, wasn’t something Cassius would forbid his youngest.

Colby shrugged far too nonchalantly and offered, “Maybe Donnie likes tea, too.” And then she disappeared down the path, a little extra pep in her step.

Creed looked back at me, his eyebrow cocked like a silent question mark.

I blew out an exhale and shook my head. “I absolutely think she trained Donnie to steal Creighton’s tea.”