Page 8 of Her Mountain Man Protector

I pop the back window and listen. The yard drops toward the logging road where I left the truck. No muzzle flash that way. Front is loud. Back is a chance.

"Out," I say. "Stay on my left. If I stop, you stop. If I run, you run. Don't play hero with a camera."

"Wow. Chivalry's thriving."

"Chivalry keeps you breathing. Banter doesn't."

I go first. Boots hit wet ground. I pull her through and we cut low along the cabin wall while the porch takes another beating. The truck sits in a slice of yard I don't love, faded blue and dented and still the fastest way off this mountain.

Oakley keeps pace better than those boots deserve. She still manages to complain in a whisper that could start a fight.

"Most men buy a drink before they drag a girl through incoming fire."

"I'm not most men."

"No kidding. Most men don't come with a stack of burner phones and a stare that could strip paint."

"Head down, Vega."

That gets her. She glances at me mid-stride, curls stuck to her cheek. "I didn't give you my last name."

"The men shooting my cabin did. Unless this is still about fog, move."

She moves. She also mutters, "I liked you better when you were only rude."

"I liked you better when you were a stranger on a ridge."

"Liar. You liked the view. You hated the commentary."

I don't answer that. Answering it means admitting she scored, and I have a truck to reach before I start studying the way her lips press into a thin line.

We break from the wall and run. A shot cracks behind us, searching, too high. I wrench the passenger door open and fold her in.

"Seatbelt."

"You have a one track mind."

"Seatbelt, Oakley."

She clicks it. I throw her duffel in the floorboard, climb in, and the engine turns over on the first try like it knows this is the only trick I need from it today. I reverse hard, swing onto the rutted track, and put the cabin in the mirror.

A shape steps out of the trees near the porch. Dark jacket. Helix patch catching what little light the fog allows. I don't give him a second look. The truck bottoms out in a hole and then we're climbing away from the gunfire, pine slapping the sides, Oakley's camera bouncing against her ribs.

"You're going to blow a tire," she says.

"I'm going to blow this mountain off our back bumper. Hold on."

She holds the dash with one hand and her camera with the other. "Where exactly are we fleeing in style?"

"Off this road. Then into town. Woodbridge Falls has people, and people make it harder to open fire without witnesses."

"People also talk."

"Then we don't give them a story. We give them a truck rolling through and a woman who keeps her camera in her lap."

"My camera stays with me. That's nonnegotiable."

"Your mouth is also nonnegotiable. I'm noticing a pattern."