Page 5 of Sentinel of Talon Mountain
“You and my brother are friends..."
"Last time I checked so were we."
I nod. He has a point. "You wear a badge. People expect noise.”
He considers that. Nods once. “No calls. Yet.” He slides a topography map from a tube and spreads it across the table. “Show me your ingress. Mark the stamp.”
I trace the line with a finger that won’t quite stop shaking. He watches the tremor, says nothing. Respect beats pity by a mile, but it still makes my throat tight.
“Here. And here.”
“We’ll circle from the west,” he says. “I want brass, glass, footprints—anything they were sloppy about.”
“They weren’t.”
“You don't know that. People get lazy when they think they’re alone.” His tone is mild. The look isn’t. “Eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“That wasn’t a suggestion.” He sets down bread, venison, and an apple that probably cost him a favor. “Fuel up.”
“Is this your way of softening me up?” I ask, tearing bread because my hands need something to do that isn’t shaking.
“It’s my way of keeping you effective.” He taps the map. “What’s your read beyond pro shooter?”
“Patient,” I say, “which is worse than good.”
“Agreed.” He glances at the window as wind presses against the glass. “We wait fifteen. Then we move.”
“We?”
“You didn’t come here to go back out alone,” he says. “And even if you did, I wouldn’t let you.”
“You wouldn’t let me?” My eyebrow climbs on reflex.
He meets it without a blink. “Correct.”
The word shouldn’t settle me. But it does. Same way it did last winter when the shots were aimed at us and I wasn’t sure we’d make it out clean. He’d steadied me then, and his calm assurance does so again.
And just like that, I know I’m not walking back out of here until he has every answer he wants. A low metallic ping carries from the porch—small, unmistakable, not the house settling. Both our heads turn.
2
NATE
The sound hits first—metal on wood, a precise ping that cuts through the dark. Not wind, not settling timber. Wrong. Lights off. I move without thinking: two steps to kill the glow, three to the window, shoulder shielding glass while I peel the curtain with two fingers. Snow sifts sideways in the wind. Nothing moves.
“Down,” I tell Wren, voice low. She slides off the chair and into the blind angle by the table, hands steady around the mug like heat alone can anchor her. Good. She listens when survival is on the line. That’s more than most.
I crack the door and sweep the beam low beneath a hood. Another ping, lower step. Brass. I crouch, gloved fingers closing over the casing. Still warm.
“A .300 Blackout,” I murmur, identifying it as I bring it inside. The metal ticking as it cools on the table. Subsonic. Suppressed. Someone stood on my steps and wanted me to know it.
Her eyes meet mine. Neither of us says lucky. The word feels too flimsy, too small for what just happened—like calling a bullet grazing past your head a coincidence. I don’t believe in luck or coincidence out here.
“Gear up,” I say. “We make a west circle under the lip and check your ridge. Keep to my shoulder. If I say down, you drop.”
She bristles, chin angled. “I don’t need a babysitter.”
