Page 1 of Untouchable

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At the baseof the Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado sits a town that looks like something from an overly sentimental postcard: Mink Creek, population 6,362. At the height of the tourist season, though, the population nearly doubles—it’s a destination for hikers, mountaineers, and any vacationers wanting to bask in the majestic sight of America’s rocky backbone, jutting dramatically into view in every direction.

To get to Storm Mountain, population 1, from Mink Creek you must take Devil’s Gulch Road north down winding roads with almost half a dozen precipitous switchbacks, through “Cold Canyon,” a freezing stretch of the gulch that doesn’t get sun for two treacherously frozen months in the winter, and then onto dirt roads that spit gravel, dust, or mud depending on Colorado’s wild weather-du-jour.

It takes at least 45 minutes to get to Harp’s house on Storm Mountain—not a drive made casually—so when a little sedan pulls up on a sunny September afternoon while Harp is chopping firewood, he knows it’s someone from Mink Creek and he knows it’s not a welcomed visitor.

There’s no such thing as a welcomed visitor on Storm Mountain.

And Harp’s cabin isn’t exactly on the way to anything. He can’t imagine the person is lost.

The car goes slowly on the winding dirt road into the valley where Harp’s house sits and Harp only gets angrier as it approaches. It must be a city employee with some mandate to harass him today about building codes or agricultural standards or some other piece of bureaucratic effluvium meant to ruin his afternoon.

Harp frowns as the young guy parks and gets out of the car. Oh yeah. Definitely from the city. From the clipboard in his hand and the obnoxious windbreaker, he's a city employee all over.

Harp tilts the axe against his shoulder and strolls towards the car, making sure the stranger understands that Harp is in no hurry to talk. He stops a good distance off. "I assume you're here to waste my time?"

“I’m, uh, here for our appointment,” the stranger says, a plastic, professional smile plastered across his face. His teeth are just as perfectly white and straight as his shoulders are broad and his waist trim—the kind of guy who the powers that be at Mink Creek City Hall love to promote just because he’s good looking. Harp hates him.

Harp can already tell this conversation is going to last longer than he wants and now that he's not moving, the familiar ache will start creeping through his hip any minute now. He finds a stump the right height a few feet away from the front steps of the cabin, slings the axe around and brings it down into the stump with both hands. Harp leans on it and sighs.

"Looks like your bosses fucked up. Nobody called up here asking me for an appointment."

* * *

The last thingParker needs after spending two hours lost with no cell service in a canyon—and then up the side of a mountain—is to see his new client wielding an axe and a very unwelcoming expression. The man is leaning against the axe, his jeans covered in dirt and tiny bits of tree, and staring him down as though Parker is an outlaw who just rode into the wrong town in some black-and-white western movie.

Parker’s not an outlaw, though—he’s a massage therapist, and he’s going to be upset if he drove all this way only to get murdered. He makes a mental note to tell Mindy to do a better job of vetting clients for house calls next time.

By this point, he’s absolutely sure he’s got the right house—after being lost for nearly an hour, he’d driven all the way out of the canyon and made Mindy send him a screenshot of an aerial map of the area, which was the only way he’d made it there. This is the only house for miles. He knows he’s in the right place.

And even if he wasn’t sure, he can tell just by the stiff way the man is standing that there’s a whole host of issues with the man’s hip, just like Mindy said when she’d briefed Parker about the appointment. Part of Parker’s mind is already off and running, thinking about the muscles and their attachments, tendons and ligaments, making guesses about the root of what’s causing such obvious pain.

Parker glances down at his clipboard, double-checking the info he knows is correct. His smile is still plastered across his face. He knows the client would have gotten a courtesy call earlier that morning—a stilted, automated recording reminding him of the appointment—and he wonders if, perhaps, the axe-wielding routine is some sort of intimidation technique. It wouldn’t be the strangest thing a client has ever done.

“Are you Morton Harper?” Parker asks, trying to keep his voice from cracking. “You… have an appointment with Rocky Mountain Bodywork Center? Today—um, Thursday at two?” And even though he knows he’s in the right place, at the right time, his brain is whirring, trying to figure out a way that he’s inevitably messed this up.

* * *

"Goddamnit."

Harp lets his hands slip off the axe, realizing in that instant what an asshole he actually is. Shit like this happens often enough that he doesn't doubt for a second that it's his fault. He stops trying to posture up and prepares to apologize for being a disorganized mess. Goddamnit, he repeats to himself. This is what I get for doing anything that involves human beings.

"That's today, huh?" he asks, wincing and frowning and already knowing the answer.

“I think so, yes,” the massage therapist says, still keeping up his absurd smile as he glances down at the clipboard. “I’m a little late because I got lost. I… called the contact number we had on file for you but didn’t get a response.”

"Yeah it's uh... Not the easiest place to get to," Harp says, eyes focusing somewhere behind the man’s head as his internal panic sets in. “And I’ve been out here most of the day.”

Christ. It was today. It is today. I thought I had a goddamn week. The house is a mess inside—or at least, a mess by Harp's standards. And he hasn't showered. The dogs are all in the house and they'll come barking.

Goddamnit. What a day already.

The guy—and he's barely a kid, Harp finally notices—shifts the clipboard from under one well-muscled arm to the other and bites his lip, waiting for Harp’s cue on what to do next. What he mistook for a public works uniform is actually scrubs, Harp realizes now that he’s closer. Of course it’s the massage therapist and not somebody from town to antagonize him.

"Anyway,” Harp says. “You'd better come inside."

He gets halfway across the porch before he realizes the massage therapist isn't following him. When Harp turns, he's wrestling with something that appears to be stuck in the trunk of his car. He finally pries a big flat thing with a handle free and shuts the trunk with an elbow.

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