Page 6 of Her Mountain Man Protector

Chills skate over my skin.

“Job?”

I blink. “What?”

He looks annoyed. “Do you have one?”

“No, I’m a freelancer. Nobody will come looking for me if that’s what you mean. My parents retired to Florida last year. I came up here for the fog.”

“Phone.” He holds out his hand like he expects me to hand over my most precious commodity.

I blink again. “What?”

“Give me your phone.”

I could fight, but right now I’m worried. If the men with guns find my car, then they’ll find my registration and probably already have my name. I grab my phone from my pocket and place it in his open hand. “Here.”

He deposits my phone into a bag without a word.

“You’re welcome,” I say with a little flair. “Seriously someone needs to teach you manners.”

“This is me being nice.”

I laugh, and it comes out shaky. "You're terrible at nice."

"I'm excellent at keeping people breathing."

I stand, because sitting still makes my knee bounce. I wander the small kitchen, open a cupboard, find instant coffee and a bag of trail mix that looks older than my car. "Do you live here, or do you haunt it between missions?"

"I use it when I don't want to be found."

"How's that working?"

He looks at the door. "Ask me at dark."

I pick up my camera again and scroll past the ranger station frames. There's one I almost deleted. A black SUV parked behind the station, plate half hidden by brush. I pinch zoom. The helix mark sits small on the rear window decal.

"Colt."

He's beside me in two steps. He sees it. His whole body goes quieter. "They weren't hunting fog," I say. "They were parked there before I even hiked in."

"Which means they were waiting for him," he says. "Or for me."

"Or they followed me."

His gaze snaps to mine. "Why would they follow you?"

I swallow. "Because I didn't only shoot the campus last spring. I shot a loading dock after hours. A crate stencil. A name I wasn't supposed to see. The magazine killed the story. Two weeks later my apartment lock looked wrong and my editor stopped answering. I left Chicago with a duffel and a camera bag and I told myself Upstate fog was a palate cleanser."

"You ran."

"I relocated with style."

He studies me like I'm a map with missing contour lines. "You kept the dock photos."

"On a drive in my bag. Encrypted. I'm reckless. I'm not stupid."

"Good. Because stupid gets people buried."