Page 39 of Her Mountain Man Protector

"Colt." I watch his profile. Sleep and sex and fear have all left marks. "I'll stay behind you. I won't chase a file into a dark corner. That's as good as you're getting."

His hands flex on the wheel. He hates the compromise, but he takes it.

Yard 4 comes up on the east side of the river after a chain-link stretch the snow has tried to bury. The sign is faded. NORTHLINE BONDED. STORAGE. A padlock hangs open on the main gate, which is worse than a lock that held. Tire tracks cut the lot in two dirty lines that don't belong to us. They belong to a vehicle that sat here after the storm started and left a crusted trough toward the biggest prefab on the lot.

Colt kills the engine behind a drift where the truck won't silhouette against the trees. He sits with the ticking quiet and watches glass. I watch him watch.

"Two buildings," he says. "Office shed. Warehouse. Tracks go to the warehouse. You on my left. You drop if I say drop. You run to the truck if I say run. You don't go through a door I haven't cleared."

"Copy," I whisper, because making a joke right now feels reckless.

He reaches across the cab and squeezes my knee once. The squeeze says last night and this morning and don't you dare die in a Northline box. Then his hand is gone and the cold is at the door.

Cold hits my face when we step out. The lot is a white plate scored by those tracks. Our boots punch through a crust that sounds too loud. He puts me on his left and we cross in a line that keeps the office shed between us and the road.

The office door is unlocked. He goes first. I wait with my back to the siding until his hand shows in the gap. Empty desk. A calendar two years out of date. Dust on the phone. No heat. A coffee mug with a dried ring sits under the window, which means someone used this room recently. He tips his chin and we leave it.

Between the shed and the warehouse the wind cuts sideways and throws ice grit against my cheek. I keep my eyes on his shoulder blades. The flannel I slept against is a dark mark moving through white. Last night he said losing me scared him. This morning he's walking me into the coordinates his father hid in my work, and I can feel that scare in the way he keeps checking the tree line.

The warehouse is a long metal box with a roll door cracked two feet off the concrete. That crack is how the tracks enter. He crouches, looks under, then lifts the slat another foot with his shoulder and waves me through after him.

Inside is dim and colder than the lot. Rows of empty racking run the length of the building, most of them stripped. A few sealed crates squat near the back with the helix mark stenciled small in the corner. My stomach drops. I know that mark in my sleep now. I also know the sound of a space that has been used recently. The dust on the floor is scuffed in lanes. A heat lamp hangs dark over the third bay. Someone ran power in here after the county account closed.

Colt's hand finds my coat and holds me still. He listens. I listen. The building ticks as metal contracts. Somewhere a drip hits a bucket in a rhythm that is almost a clock. My own pulse tries to match it and fails.

We wait through ten of those drips. Nothing else moves. He lets my coat go one finger at a time.

We move down the center aisle. My camera is in the bag and the bag is zipped and I still want it in my hands. At the third bay I see it. A folding table. A laptop I don't recognize. My drive sitting on a cloth, cable already jacked in, screen awake on a directory of my Chicago raws.

"That's mine," I say, too loud.

He swears under his breath. "Don't touch it."

I don't touch it. I take one step closer because the folder on the screen is labeled HAWTHORNE in the caps I typed in Alden's office, and seeing my own file name in this dead building makes my hands go numb.

That’s when the roll door slams.

Daylight dies. The crack we used becomes a seal. Boots hit concrete at both ends of the aisle. Colt shoves me between two racks and puts his body over mine as the first shot sparks off steel over our heads.

"Run," he says. "Office side. Truck. Now."

I run because he taught me that running is the assignment. I cut left down a cross-aisle toward a personnel door with a pale exit sticker. A man in a dark jacket is already there. Helix patch on the sleeve. He doesn't raise a gun. He opens his arms like he’s been waiting for me specifically.

I try the thumb turn Colt taught me when the man grabs my wrist. I almost make it. A second set of hands comes from behind and bands my arms. Cloth hits my mouth. I bite. Someone swears. The cloth comes back wetter and my vision narrows to the exit sticker getting smaller.

"Colt!"

His roar answers from the aisle we left. Another shot. Metal screams. I kick backward and connect with a knee and then the floor tilts because they’ve lifted me off it.

Cold air. White lot. A van with no windows in the cargo. I see the truck. I see the drift we hid behind. I don't see Colt come around the warehouse corner in time.

They throw me in. The doors bang. An engine is already running. I roll and hit the wheel well and come up onto my elbows as the van lurches. Through the front seats I catch a slice of Yard 4 falling away, the warehouse roll door still down, Colt's shape bursting into the lot with his pistol up and snow exploding at his boots.

He's too far.

Snow from my boots smears the metal floor. The van takes the gate on two wheels. I slam a shoulder into the rear doors. Locked. I scream his name until my throat shreds. A man in the passenger seat turns and looks at me without heat, without hurry.

"Miss Vega. We only needed the drive last night. This morning we need the woman who can swear to what was on it. Sit still. You'll see your mountain man again when Hawthorne senior decides to come collect."