Page 12 of Sentinel of Talon Mountain
The breath leaves my body in a single, furious rush.
Beside me, Nate’s voice is a quiet verdict. “Message received.”
“Yeah,” I whisper, heat burning the back of my eyes. “They were inside my head, twisting my own words... and weapons against me.”
“Not anymore.” He lowers the curtain, jaw a hard line.
The strip of birch peel swings from the shaft like a pendulum, each sway a reminder of how little time we have. Outside, the storm claws harder at the walls, but for now the house stands firm against it.
For the first time tonight, it’s not the storm outside that feels lethal. It’s the shadows I dragged in with me.
4
NATE
The arrow still quivers in the doorframe, humming with the ghost of impact—as if the shot itself is still echoing through the wood. Not just a threat. Not even a warning. This is personal. Calculated.
The birch peel tied beneath the fletching swings. Wren’s mark—stolen, defaced, and nailed to my door like a taunt.
I press the bolt home and step back, scanning the perimeter out the nearest window, eyes narrowing as the snow thickens under the beam of the motion sensor’s outer ring. Nothing moves out there. But that doesn’t mean we’re alone.
Inside, the silence thickens, layered with tension that doesn’t break just because the door is shut.
Neither of us speaks. She braces against the wall, still as stone, holding herself together like movement might shatter her. There’s a pressure in the room that hasn’t lifted since I spotted that red dot tracking the map. A hunter’s signal. A message. Now we’ve got a second one, inverted and personal. Not just a threat—an insult.
Wren drops into the nearest chair, jaw tight, eyes still on the window like she’s memorizing the angles. She doesn’t flinch,doesn’t look away. Not even as I step in front of her to recheck the bolts and bracket rods, my boots silent on the wood.
I leave her the silence because it’s the only thing she has left to grip right now. For her, control isn’t comfort—it’s oxygen. Ritual. The wall that keeps panic from breaking through. I’ve seen it in soldiers before: the ones who survived because they learned how to box their panic and shelve it. That’s what she’s doing now. Not freezing. Not stalling. Calculating. Refusing to bleed where anyone can see it.
She doesn’t need me to ask if she’s okay. She needs space to breathe through the quake, to pretend there’s still solid ground beneath her boots. Questions would only draw blood. What she needs right now is silence that doesn’t demand anything from her, and the room to reforge her armor without anyone watching her weld the seams.
I cross the room to the tall gear cabinet tucked in the corner—built deep into the wall and shielded behind a false back of stacked storage bins. Inside, a hardened Pelican case holds my encrypted sat-link, hardwired to a buried antenna line that runs out through the rock behind the fireplace. I crack the lid, flip up the mini terminal screen, and boot the secure channel with a fingerprint scan and an alphanumeric cipher. Only then do I enter the code that routes directly back to my superior, Director Meadows.
It takes a beat—one I use to surreptitiously glance at Wren. Then his voice crackles through—low, clipped, no nonsense.
"Barrett? Talk."
"We’ve got a two-man team on my cottage—silenced rifles, close range. They’ve got Wren Knox in their sights from both sides. They’re trained, and they’re patient. They left a calling card—arrow with a marker she uses. Inverted."
A pause. I hear the weight of it through the line. "Knox is the wildlife medic out near Glacier Hollow?"
"The one from the Denali incident, yeah."
"You think this is retaliation?"
"Not personal. Strategic. They’re rattling her for a reason. And someone tagged her gear with a tracker."
A quick exhale. "You think it’s related to last year’s organ smuggling op?"
“Could be. We found the same kind of tape we pulled off a poacher’s trail cam last year. Same grid code too. That tells me the supply lines didn’t break—they just shifted. Somebody with funding is still ensuring they have top-of-the line and untraceable gear."
"Has she flagged something?"
"She didn’t say it outright, but her route data, notes on gear inconsistencies, and traffic patterns pointed to deliberate logistical support. It wasn’t just poachers out there. It was money. Clean gear. Transport coordination. Someone was treating the operation like a business model."
Meadows grunts. That’s his way of admitting I’m not wrong.
"Shit. We’ve been hearing whispers," he says. "Chatter out of Juneau says the supply side’s getting restless. We assumed it was bluff—big talk from low-tier muscle—but if they're back in your sector, they’ve either regrouped or didn’t lose as much ground as we thought."
