Windrock Mountain Bear (Windrock Clan #1)

Chapter 1

ARDEN

“Are you sure this is the right place, Miss?”

As he handed Arden her overstuffed camping pack, the trucker peered down at her with such sincere concern that Arden felt guilty for worrying him.

Honestly, she was worried about herself.

For a moment, she indulged in the thought of having him go ahead and take her to the next town.

She could get a motel room for the night.

It would certainly be more comfortable than what she was planning.

But her money, what little she still had, was running out fast. She couldn’t afford to keep draining it. She needed a place where she could stop and collect herself. Make plans for something longer-term than where she was going to sleep tonight. Figure out what to do with her life.

“It’s fine,” she said, smiling at him. She shrugged into the backpack and fastened the waist strap. If nothing else, she was in better shape than she had been in years. “I have a friend who lives around here.”

The trucker looked doubtfully at the overgrown turn-off into the woods beside the two-lane country highway.

Arden had to admit that there was little here to make him—or her, for that matter—feel more optimistic about her plan.

They had driven through miles of farm country since the last town, slowly growing wilder and more remote-feeling.

Now mountains towered above them, and the trees were dense, showing patches of sunlight here and there, but no sign of houses.

“It’s okay, really,” Arden told him. She held up her cell phone. “I can call my friend. Look, I’m texting her now.”

“Service is pretty spotty out here, Miss. I wouldn’t count on it.”

“It’s fine,” Arden said. “I’m getting bars.”

“Well, good luck to you, Miss.” The trucker frowned as he started to close the door of the big-rig. “You know, I haven’t been able to put my finger on it, but I’ve been thinking for the last few miles that I know you from somewhere.”

“Nope, I’m a nobody,” Arden said firmly. She pulled her sun hat out of a pocket of the pack and clamped it firmly on her head, hoping to hide a little more of her appearance. “I guess I just have one of those faces.”

“Maybe.” He still looked doubtful, but Arden looked down at her phone pointedly and went on with the fake texting until he slammed the truck door. He waved to her, she looked up long enough to wave back, and the semi pulled away with a loud hiss of air brakes.

As the truck vanished around a bend in the road, Arden stopped her mimed texting and put her phone away. She figured his concern was genuine, but there was always the chance that it wasn’t. However, if he believed a friend was coming to meet her, he probably wouldn’t come back.

If only she did have someone to meet her.

Or anyone else in the world who cared at all.

Arden settled the pack more firmly on her shoulders and turned to look at the narrow dirt road in front of her.

It was just like the waitress had described to her at the truck stop in the last town, just before she’d hitched a ride.

Beside the road, there was a large boulder, the kind of old glacier deposit found all over this part of the country, splashed with a badly faded mile marker number in red paint.

Arden and the waitress, a chatty motherly type, had gotten friendly, and Arden had relaxed enough to let slip a little of her real situation—she was traveling, she had nowhere to stay, and she was running out of money for buses and motels.

“Gosh, there’s no shelter here, we’re just too small,” the waitress had told her. But there were places in the woods where she could camp.

There’s an abandoned ghost town out on the highway where you could stay for a while.

It’s private, and the buildings are still in good shape.

The waitress had frowned a little. I heard it got bought by a new owner, but as far as I know they haven’t done anything with it.

There’s nobody there. You’ll want to take the side road marked with a red-painted rock.

Just look for the mile number. She sketched a little map on a napkin.

Wouldn’t I be trespassing? Arden had asked.

Yeah, I guess, but no one ever goes out there. No one’s gonna know.

“No one’s going to know I’m here,” Arden said aloud.

She had gone from being recognized everywhere to an absolute nobody.

There was nobody to miss her. If she vanished here, it might be a long time before anyone found her.

She took a deep breath, tightened the pack straps, and started walking.

The old road curved gently into the trees.

Arden crossed a culvert where a small, fast-flowing stream rushed beneath her feet.

Near the highway, she had noticed a few driveways, but back here there was no one at all.

Grass and weeds grew up through the middle of the road.

There were no sounds except birdsong and an occasional distant car on the highway, now long out of sight behind her.

She felt as if she was walking off the edge of the world.

But when she came around a corner and saw the town itself, it turned out to be worth it.

The first thing that met her gaze was a sign, heavily weathered and mounted on two peeling log poles, framing the entrance to the town. The words WINDROCK CITY were just barely legible.

Beyond that, the town began. Old log houses, decades old if not a century or more, lined a narrow main street. Wildflowers spilled around the structures, blue and gold and pink. Behind the town, a mountainside rose steep and wild, covered in pine trees.

Arden walked slowly up the street, looking around her.

There was a falling-down boardwalk in front of the houses, and pieces of antique equipment here and there in the flower-filled grass.

For the first time in years, her fingers itched to hold a paintbrush and try to capture the picturesque scenery around her.

It didn’t look like the place had been too badly damaged by vandals and weather.

In fact, it seemed that someone had been here in the not too distant past. Car tires had mashed down grass in places, and in some places the grass appeared to have been trimmed.

The road was still in decent shape as well.

The buildings were the sorts of businesses that she would expect to see in a Wild West town in a movie.

There was a general store, a blacksmith’s shop, a couple of saloons, an old schoolhouse.

Small side roads bore weathered wooden signs with picturesque names: Bonanza Street, Prospector Place, Lucky Strike Avenue.

Arden peeked into a few of the buildings and found that many of them still had things inside them, furniture and old tools and antique dishes.

This place was like a time capsule. It felt magical to her. There was a sense of drowsy peace on this quiet, sunny afternoon, with no sounds except the drone of bees and the whisper of wind in the trees and somewhere not too far away, the burble of flowing water.

A sudden noise like a baby crying jolted her out of her peaceful thoughts.

Panicked, all she could think about was getting caught, and she fled between two of the buildings before she realized she was being ridiculous.

Half-laughing at herself, she straightened up from where she had crouched down behind an old wooden wheelbarrow.

She wasn’t doing anything wrong. There were no signs to indicate the place was off limits, and she hadn’t set up camp yet. At this point, she was just a hiker who was curious about the abandoned gold rush town in the mountains.

The sound came again, and she relaxed. That wasn’t a baby; it was some kind of animal. There might not be people here at all.

However, as she walked carefully down the street, looking around more alertly, she began to notice other things: a faint whiff of woodsmoke, a barnyard smell.

Some of the fun had gone out of her explorations. She didn’t want to get caught. If there was someone here who might tell her to leave, she would be right back to square one on finding a place to stay, with the extra problem of having to catch another ride on the highway.

Aha. She spotted a wooden structure, an old windmill behind what appeared to be a small schoolhouse. A series of ladders, handmade with thick wooden steps, went all the way to the top. Arden tested the steps with a cautious foot, then climbed part of the way up and looked around.

She was immediately able to identify the source of the noises and the farm smells.

There was a farm nearby, separated from the town by a wide strip of trees.

Arden was too far away to see it clearly, but the dots of white and brown animals in the pasture were probably sheep or goats.

And beyond that, she saw a narrow little road that was mostly likely one of the driveways she had passed on her way in.

The sound she had heard before came again, and this time she recognized it for what it was, the plaintive bleating of a goat.

She hadn’t realized that the solitude was bothering her a little, but she felt relief at the idea that there were a few people around. She’d have to keep a low profile, but it also meant that if she got in trouble, she had someone to call for help.

Arden climbed down carefully and made sure to keep the old buildings between her and the farm as much as possible.

She had reached the end of Main Street, which stopped at a falling-down old fence rail.

Trees, possibly a pasture, blocked the way in front of her, and the mountainside was shortly after that, looming above her.

With nowhere else to go in that direction, Arden turned down a side street with the charming name of Discovery Lane.

The old lane was short and narrow, just long enough for three or four ramshackle houses on each side. It ended at an overgrown meadow full of wildflowers soaking up the sunlight. Somewhere beyond the meadow, she could hear rushing water.

Most of the old houses here were in worse shape than those on the main street, with roofs caving in and windows broken out. But Arden spotted a small, solid-looking log cabin with its door standing slightly ajar. It was as if it had been left just for her.

She pushed open the door and peeked inside.

The single room contained a wooden bed frame, some plank furniture, and an old potbelly stove.

There was a single window above the table with small panes of glass, dirt-smudged and flyspecked, but intact and clean enough to let in some light.

The place smelled a little musty, but not too bad.

Arden propped the door open with a piece of wood from a small pile beside the door and set her pack on one of the two crudely made chairs.

She checked in corners for signs of vermin, found none, and stretched on tiptoe to examine the low ceiling and make sure nothing was going to fall on her.

Everything looked pretty solid. She could think of worse places to spend the night.

Leaving her pack in the cabin, she walked to the end of the lane where the grass and weeds in the overgrown road blended into the long grass of the meadow. The woods were absolutely quiet, except for some bird calls, the breeze, and another distant bleat of a goat or sheep.

For a moment she had the odd feeling she was being watched. Then it faded, and she felt a kind of peace seep into her soul that she hadn’t experienced in a long time.

Arden took off her sun hat. She ran her hand through her slightly sweaty hair, which was growing out from a bob—one of the first things she had done in her new life, after wearing her hair long all her life, to try to change the shape of her face and make her less likely to be recognized for who she really was.

Her hair was growing in from the roots with its natural light brown color, pushing out the blonde that she had worn since she was a teenager.

Clearly it didn’t help a lot, since the trucker had sort-of recognized her.

But here, alone, she had no need to worry about that.

First things first, she decided. She was sweaty and messy and hadn’t had a proper shower in two days, because she had slept last night in a bus depot to try to save money.

She could set up the little cabin to her liking later; she had plenty of daylight left.

First, she was going to find that stream she could hear rushing somewhere out of sight and enjoy a natural bath in the wilderness.

Then she would settle in, get unpacked, and relax into the feeling of being somewhere for more than just one night. Maybe she might even do some painting, using the limited art supplies she had with her.

She tried not to worry about what would come next. Having some time to think about things, and decide what to do with herself, was all she needed right now. She had next to no job skills, but maybe the farmer with the goats and sheep needed some work done on the farm.

And she tried not to think, also, about how lonely and dark it was going to be when night came down on the mountain.

She had been more alone when she was married than she ever could be by herself, or at least she tried to remind herself of that.

She was better off without Grant, she knew.

Whatever lay on the other side of her disastrous marriage had to be an improvement.

But first, a bath. At least she wouldn’t be disturbed. She shook off the earlier feeling of being watched as a product of her overactive, paranoid imagination.

I am alone, but I am not lonely, she told herself, a mantra she had chanted under her breath for years: in hotels, on private cross-country jet flights, in ballrooms where she seemed to stand alone in a whirl of beautiful people, none of whom saw her.

I am all I need. I am enough. I am going to be okay.