Page 1 of Protector of Talon Mountain

PROLOGUE

SADIE

Anchorage, Alaska

Four Years Ago

I leave with sixty-three dollars, a cracked phone, and one boot.

I don’t even realize I’m missing the other one until I’m in my Jeep, hands shaking on the wheel, gasping for air like it’s rationed. My cheek is swelling, and my lip’s split open. I keep telling myself that it wasn’t that bad. That he didn’t mean it. That I’ve stayed this long, so maybe I deserve… No.

I glance at my face in the rearview mirror and slam my hands against the steering wheel. Hard. Once, then again. It stings. No. It hurts. But it silences the voice in my head that still wants to scream.

I’m done. This—whatever it is with Brent—is over.

I drive until the gas tank dips below empty, and when the engine coughs and dies, I coast to a stop outside a diner with a sign that reads

Vacancy Upstairs. Café Hiring Below.

Somewhere off the highway between Anchorage and nowhere. I don’t remember making the turn. Don’t remember blinking. But I’m here, and my legs work, so I use them.

The bell over the door jingles when I walk in. Warm light spills onto the floor. It smells like cinnamon and coffee and something deeper—like a place that holds its breath between strangers.

Behind the counter is a woman in her sixties with steel-gray hair twisted into a knot and eyes like she’s seen it all and dares you to lie, anyway. She clocks my split lip, the bruises on my wrist, the way my right foot has a warm boot and the left has a plastic shoe I found under the seat.

“You cook?” she asks.

“I can, but mostly I bake.”

She eyes me. Not like I’m broken. Like she’s measuring. Nodding, she asks, “You got a name?”

“Sadie.”

The corners of her mouth lift. “Maggie.”

And that’s how I meet the woman who saves my life without ever once calling herself a hero.

Maggie doesn’t ask questions. Doesn’t push. She shows me the stairs that lead to the studio apartment above the café and says, “You can stay ‘til you figure it out.”

She has more faith in me than I do in myself. At this point I don’t even know what ‘it’ is. The first night, I cry into the pillow and whisper ‘thank you’ to no one.

The second day, I wake up, get myself dressed and head downstairs to make cinnamon rolls from scratch. I leave them cooling on the counter before dawn. I don’t expect anything.

When I come down an hour later, there’s a note next to the empty tray.

Not bad. Next time, double the filling.The signature reads,Maggie.

The weeks blur into months, and the months into a year.

I bake. I scrub. I learn the register and the rhythms of life here at The Hollow Hearth—which locals drink their coffee black and which ones need two sugars and a shot of whiskey before noon. Maggie teaches by doing. She doesn’t offer praise, but she never hides pride, either.

She tells me stories in pieces. About her husband, gone ten years. About how she bought the café with nothing but a war widow’s pension and a backbone made of steel. About the town, too—Glacier Hollow, nestled against the base of Talon Mountain, where snow hits in October and doesn’t quit until May.

It’s remote. Rugged. The kind of place people come to disappear or begin again. For me, it’s both. I get stronger here.

Brent stops calling after the first month. I block his number, delete his name, erase the photos I was once too scared to look at but too scared to throw away. I start wearing color again. I start laughing again. I start seeing myself not as someone who escaped—but someone who survived.

Maggie teaches me how to shoot a rifle. “Because bears are dumb,” she says, handing me a box of ammo. “And men can be dumber and far more destructive.”

---