Page 36 of Protector of Talon Mountain

I huff a breath, but there’s a smile tugging at the corner of my mouth. It’s small. Fragile. But real.

“Okay,” I say, turning back to the dough. “You can stay.”

His voice is lower when he answers. “I wasn’t asking for permission.”

My heart skips, then settles in my chest like it’s committing his words to memory.

We work in silence for a little while. I mix dough. He sips the coffee I hand him without asking. And the air between us hums with something heavy and hot and growing by the second.

There’s no music playing. No customers filtering in yet. Just the quiet clatter of bowls and the scratch of metal against ceramic as I shape the rolls. And Zeke’s presence, always there. Always steady.

When Jenny finally bursts through the front, late as usual and muttering something about a flat tire and a missing shoe, I almost jump. Zeke straightens and gives me a look before heading toward the back, probably to check the locks again even though I already told him I’d done it twice.

But just before he disappears through the door, he looks back. And what’s in his eyes is not the look of a man passing time.

It’s a warning. It’s a promise. It’s the storm before the wildfire, and for the first time since I arrived in Glacier Hollow, I think I might be ready to let it burn.

9

ZEKE

The knock at the café’s back door is deliberate—three quick raps, evenly spaced, quiet enough not to wake anyone who’s not listening. I was expecting it. Caleb Knox doesn’t show up anywhere uninvited unless he has a reason. And when he has a reason, you answer.

I open the door and find him exactly where I knew he’d be—on the top step, arms crossed, dressed in camo and oil-stained wool, looking like he just walked out of a survival manual and dared it to keep up. Tall, broad, and built like the mountain behind him, Caleb is still as stone, his eyes scanning the street before they settle on me.

“Took you long enough,” I say, stepping back to let him in.

He doesn’t smile. Doesn’t say much, ever. Just ducks inside, the low creak of the floor the only sound he brings with him. I lead him up the stairs to my studio apartment. His beard’s longer than the last time I saw him, streaked with early frost, and there’s a fresh scar near his temple I don’t ask about. I never do.

“I parked in the brush,” he says finally, voice low and dry as gravel. “Didn’t want to spook the wrong eyes.”

Smart. Glacier Hollow’s too quiet lately. The kind of quiet that feels like a setup. I gesture to the small kitchen table and drop the packet of evidence I pulled from the burn site—phones, beacon, encrypted field log, all carefully bagged and labeled.

“Found these two days ago. Back behind the shack. Hidden panel, clean drop. Didn’t smell like local work.”

Caleb sits, eyes narrowing as he pulls the GPS unit from the bag and turns it in his hand. “This is military-spec. Modified, but not cheap. Not the kind of gear you leave behind unless you’re planning to come back.”

He says it like a fact. Like it’s already proven. He’s not wrong.

“Any activity near the site?” he asks, flipping open the field log. “You run the boot prints?”

“Matched them to Joe Hanley. Gas station. But he’s not smart enough to be running this. At most, he’s a runner. Maybe a watcher. The kind of guy who sells fuel to whoever’s passing through and doesn’t ask questions as long as his tank stays full.”

Caleb scans the coded shorthand on the page, his brow furrowing slightly—an expression that, for him, might as well be a shout. “This is a courier log. Routes, weights, dates. No names. But this symbol—” he taps the corner of the page “—I’ve seen that before. In a cartel drop zone outside Sitka.”

My jaw tightens. “You think they’re using this town?”

“I think they’re testing it,” he replies. “Smaller population. Fewer patrols. High tree cover. Ideal for ATV runs and short-range flights.”

I nod. It lines up. The fresh tire tracks. The staggered drop patterns. The camera blackouts. “Any chance they’re tied to Anchorage?”

Caleb hesitates. “Possible. But I doubt it. Anchorage runs bigger ops. Too visible. This is backdoor work. Move it through the trees, load it on small planes, then vanish. Your girl…”

“Careful,” I warn.

He meets my eyes without flinching. “Sadie,” he corrects, slowly, like he knows exactly what line he just stepped up to. “She’s a variable. Either she saw something, or someone’s using her café as a test point.”

My jaw ticks. “She knows nothing.”

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