Page 12 of Battle Mountain

Like Nate, Geronimo was a dedicated master falconer with a Special Forces background. Unlike Nate, he was closely tied to like-minded loners throughout the country via encrypted apps and message boards. The network was composed of falconers who respected their calling and who’d pledged to follow their own unwritten code. Members respected each other’s territory—Nate was associated with northern Wyoming and Geronimo’s territory included the city of Denver and the nearby mountain towns—and they spread the word about falconers who encroached on their sense of order or demeaned their collective honor.

It was through this network that Geronimo had first heard of a man named Axel Soledad, and allied himself with a warrior named Romanowski and a game warden named Pickett to hunt him down. They thought they’d been successful in neutralizinghim after a firefight that’d left Soledad bleeding out on the streets of Portland.

Unfortunately, they’d been wrong.

—

“I should havefigured that an outlaw like you would chose an outlaw canyon,” Geronimo said.

Nate shrugged.

“I couldn’t help but notice that there aren’t a lot of Black folks around here.”

“Nope. There aren’t a lot of folks of any hue, in fact.”

Geronimo had soft brown eyes and they swept slowly over Nate, who was illuminated by the fire. “Damn, you look pretty raggedy-assed,” he said. “When’s the last time you shaved?”

“It’s been a while.”

“You look like you’ve lost weight.”

“Probably.”

“Maybe I should hole up in a cave and eat nothing but what I can catch or kill like you,” Geronimo said, patting his belly. “Jacinda is a hell of a cook and she keeps me fat and happy, unfortunately. And the little one, Pearl…”

Nate sharply looked away.

“Sorry,” Geronimo said. “I didn’t mean to bring back memories.”

—

The previous year,Nate had lost Liv when she’d been brutally murdered at their home in front of their daughter, Kestrel. He’d taken revenge on three of the four murderers, but Axel Soledadwas still out there, his trail gone cold. It ate at him, his failure to track Soledad down.

God, he missed Liv.

—

Nate had realizedtoo late that his years of normalcy on the grid with a wife, a daughter, and a successful business had dulled his primal instincts and abilities. Where he had once been able to intuit the direction of his quarry by entering into a state of what falconers referred to asyarak, he’d found himself lost and fumbling and feeling like a vagabond in a strange world instead of being part of it. His predatory nature had receded, to be replaced by guilt, regret, and anger at his own bad decisions the night Liv was murdered.

So he’d abandoned the hunt and retreated to Hole in the Wall, which was familiar territory.

There, with only his two falcons to keep him company, Nate had tried to strip himself down to his core—to once again tune in to the natural world around him and become a part of it, not an observer. To once again see, hear, smell, and touch with alarming sharpness.

This vision quest was designed to once again enter the state ofyarak, where his actions were swift and brutal and amoral and instinctual.

He couldn’t bring Liv back or fix what had been taken. He felt nothing but shame when he realized recently that a day had gone by and he hadn’t thought of her. Was he healing or becoming even more self-absorbed?

Nate wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure about anything anymore.

—

After a long,uncomfortable silence, Geronimo asked Nate how long he’d been living in the Hole in the Wall Canyon.

“Seven months, two days,” Nate said.

“Jesus, that’s a crazy long time to be off the grid.”

“Not long enough,” Nate said.

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