Page 6 of Sentinel of Talon Mountain
“You don’t have one.” I hand her a rifle, dry jacket, spare radio, and light—no questions, no apologies. “You have a point man.”
A heartbeat of a stare-down. Then she shrugs into the jacket, clips the radio to her vest like she was always going to, and checks the rifle then swings it up behind her shoulder. Stubborn, but trained. I pocket the casing, sling my own rifle over my back, and we step into the cold.
The wind scrapes hard at the eaves, then softens as we drop below the porch and make our way to the lip of the bluff. I keep us in the dead ground, where the angle from the high ridge can’t reach. She reads terrain like she wrote the damn manual—weight on edges over blue ice, breath even, every line tight. Attraction rides shotgun with irritation. She’s a puzzle that resists being solved, even as she keeps handing you the missing pieces.
“Talk,” I say as we move. “Give me your route, every deviation.”
“Started on Coulee Cut. Crossed the Krummholz ribbon to avoid the cornice. Used the deer path to swing back toward the trail.”
“You left a sign.”
“False sign.” Her voice is clipped. “You saw the triangle.”
“Couldn’t miss it.” I scan through thermal; the world flares in whites and gray ghosts. “Smart placement.”
“Thanks,” she says, acknowledging the compliment. The problem is I don't mean it to be a compliment, it's just a fact.
We angle into thicker trees. The thermal shows a faint heat smear on a knee-high log where someone recently leaned—fades quick in this cold, but not gone yet. Six hundred yardsfrom my porch. Whoever stood here did it minutes ago. I lift a palm and Wren halts without even the faintest crunch of snow, unnervingly quiet. Sometimes I forget this mountain has been home to her for years. Like her brother, Caleb, she has the ability to move like a wraith.
“Two shooters,” I say quietly. “One spotter, one trigger. See the double stack?”
She peers, eyes narrowed. “That’s not Danner tread. Lug’s wrong for backcountry—tight chevrons, too shallow for grip, too clean for locals.”
“Not Danner,” I agree. Hex pattern, tight chevrons—contractor boots I’ve seen in Anchorage when private money wanted law with a looser leash. Organized people wear those when they want to be quiet and warm. Stealthy people hire those wearing them when they don’t want to be seen at all.
“Poachers?” she asks.
“Poachers don’t bring subsonic to make a point. They bring it to avoid game wardens.” I toe the edge of a shallow snow blind carved behind a deadfall. Clean. No brass catcher—pros with discipline police their mess. So why leave brass behind? Not a mistake. A calling card.We were here—and we could be again.
We work upslope in silence: I scan, she watches our six, smooth handoffs without wasted motion. My trust sits medium to low. Fieldcraft like hers looks solid until the muzzle flashes. I’ve seen cool hands go clumsy when the math turns lethal. Her temperament is a lightning strike; mine’s the ground it needs.
At the shoulder of the ridge, I flatten behind a granite knob and bring the scope up. The old survey cairn sits hunched in snow like a broken tooth. Her line’s solid—shallow bowl, perfect lane across our clearing. Clean angle. Too clean. Across the basin, a darker smudge where wind packs snow into a lip. That’s the perch I’d pick.
“Movement?” she whispers.
“Heat ghost only,” I say. “Whoever was here is gone.”
She exhales through her nose. Not relief. Confirmation of a thought she already had: patient shooter, deliberate bracketing. Alive by inches isn’t the same thing as safe.
I scan the area again. On the far side of the bowl, someone cached a foam mat to keep body heat off the snow. No mat now, just a rectangle of a softer surface where the snow hasn’t refrozen. Two sets of knee prints. One left dominant, one right. Team of two. I whisper the count and watch her jaw lock.
“You don’t get two-person teams for petty poaching,” she says.
“No,” I say. “You get them for money.”
The organ ring that bubbled up last year liked contractors who didn’t ask questions. It’s a long bow to draw from a casing and a boot lug, but the string’s there.
“What are you thinking?” she asks, quiet.
“I’m thinking someone with resources wants you rattled. They put rounds close, then stepped on my porch to make sure I knew they’d been close. They want us burning daylight looking the wrong way. One eye on the ridge, one hand off the trigger.”
“Or they wanted us outside,” she says, eyes on the dark line of trees. “Away from the cabin.”
She’s right. I check the time. Twelve minutes since the ping. If they wanted to pull us off the house, they’d set a second team to the rear. I key the radio on a whisper. “Channel check.”
She taps twice. Clear.
We cut west, hugging the lip. Another sign: a torn edge of duct tape snagged on alder, adhesive fresh. I take it with forceps and bag it. Tape matches the residue pattern I saw on a trail cam last winter on the outfitter case. The recognition flickers—Wren Knox’s incident report from the Denali avalanche four years ago is still in my head, crisp and spare. She catalogs like a pro—weather, wind, weight, and what she doesn’t say is as loud as what she does. Same writer, different night.
