Page 35 of Rescued By the Mountain Man

She made a sound, half snort, half laugh. “Hardly. I wouldn’t have…” —she shot me a look. “—done that if I had someone in the city. I’m not that sort of girl. The truth is, the situation in New York was getting…complicated for me, so I left.”

“How complicated?” I asked.

She went tight-lipped, and I wondered if that was something she hadn’t wanted to tell me. I kept quiet, though, feeling that it was not a good time to push.

Eventually, she said, “I found something in my job’s files that I wasn’t supposed to find. Some dangerous people were all twisted up with the organization, so I felt it better, and safer, to find a better job.”

“Dangerous like…the mafia?” I asked. “Some gang extorting you?”

“Or a crooked politician,” she shrugged, gazing out the window. “Who knows? They are everywhere these days. All I know is that I saw some numbers that were not adding up and I did what was best for all involved and left. I know it sounds cowardly…”

“No,” I rushed to say while hitting the highway. “You probably did the right thing. There is no reason why you would jump into a pool and not know how deep that shit went. If it is any consolation, no one is crooked around here.”

“On the farm or in the town?”

“Both.”

“Do you ever think you’ll go back to city life?” I asked as we passed the fairgrounds. From the quick snapshots I got, the place looked like it would be up and running in a day’s time. “Work in a corporate building and put on a suit every day?”

“I dunno,” she said. “Country is starting to grow on me. I mean, the cowboys are pretty hot, and I have a very straight-laced boss that harps on me for drinking, quote, unquote, sacrilegious coffee, but yeah, I can give the country a good shake.”

We got to Silver Ridge, and instead of driving through the few streets I knew, I took another one that seemed to go to the end of the town. “We’re heading to the town’s mayor’s office. There are a couple of things here; the mayor’s office, the courthouse, and the chamber of commerce sit here, too. A lot of so-called big wigs walk through those halls.”

“Sounds like you don’t like a couple of them,” she said.

“There is this guy on the Chamber named Drayton, an older man in his sixties who professes to have worked in DC. He keeps bragging about how he made millions on his first hundred dollars he worked for at eight years old. Supercilious prick.”

She laughed. “Sounds like my aunt who said she had to run the restaurant floor, pour drinks at the bar, juggle balloons for kids while triaging geriatrics—and that was in high school.”

“Gird your loins if we run into Drayton,” I said. “He’s got a couple of sons I haven’t seen before, but he keeps bragging about.”

“Next time, remind me to pick up some earplugs at Hank's Store,” Zara replied, popping the handle and stepping out.

I tried not to stare at her ass—but I did.

“Get a grip, old boy,” I told myself while following her. “You already drew the line in the sand. You can’t cross it now.”

Chapter Twelve

Zoe

Standing on the sidewalk, I looked at the building and felt confused.

It seemed like the architect was going for a classic style with the wooden façade and sand-colored, hipped roof with slate roof tiles. But beyond that, the building looked like a clinical hospital, with its large, modern white structure and flat roof, the windows obscured by heavy concrete overhangs.

I wasn’t up on architecture terms, so I just called the first part homestyle, and the other part, ugly as shit.

The grounds weren’t bad, I had to admit. There were a lot of trees and bushes that were well-tended. As we went inside and up the stairs, I looked out and saw a pond snaking around the building with two ducks. One duck looked to be waging war with a balloon on the water.

I grabbed for Warrick, and he stopped as soon as my hand brushed his. “Look at this. Is that normal?”

“For Terry? Yep,” he said. “It’s a local legend that the Duck was a reincarnated truck driver with two minor felonies and a drinking habit.”

A laugh punched its way out of my chest, and I turned away. “Where are we going again?”

“To meet Gregory,” he replied, turning and heading down a hall. “And we need to hurry.”

We crossed the front part of the office building, and I could see where we crossed from the homestyle to the ugly as fuck building. The halls had changed from warm to austere and cold, with white plaster and gray tile.

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