Page 24 of Mountain Storm
He doesn’t move. Just breathes against my neck.Eventually, he raises his head and whispers, "You didn’t have to do that."
"I know," I murmur. "But I wanted to."
He scans my face, and I see something new in his eyes. Something softer. Scarier.I think it might be regret.
But before I can ask, a knock rattles the front door. My blood goes cold. Every instinct sharpens, my limbs freezing for a beat as if the sound triggered something primal in my spine.
Zeb slides from my body, reaching for his jeans and a shotgun under the bed as my eyes flick to the window, then the door, body tensed and bare. I reach instinctively for the sheet, heart racing—not from modesty, but from an ancient, cellular awareness that danger rarely knocks politely.
Not out here. Not now.
Another knock shudders through the silence, louder this time. My breath stalls. The primal part of me—the same one that flinches at sudden thunder or the snap of a twig in the woods—flares to life. Every muscle locks, frozen and bare, as if stillness might somehow make us invisible.
Zeb’s already moving, jeans half-fastened, moving toward the rack of guns. He glances back, eyes sharp and dark with warning.
Whatever’s on the other side of that door doesn’t sound like a neighbor dropping by. A cold shiver snakes down my spine. Whoever’s out there didn’t come by chance.
10
ZEB
The knock isn't loud. It doesn't need to be. Just three raps against the cabin door, deliberate and wrong.
I'm on my feet before the last one lands. Caryn freezes, blanket slipping from her shoulders as she turns toward me. Her eyes widen, instinct warning her the same thing mine already knows.
We don't get knocks up here. My pulse flattens. No fear. Just the deep, clenched stillness that settles in the bones of a man who's lived too long with death stalking the borders of his every breath. A twitch jumps in my right hand, the one that used to squeeze a trigger without hesitation. Every nerve goes quiet, waiting.
The storm hasn't lifted. Snow churns outside in blinding sheets. No one should be on this ridge but us.
Or the kind of man who thinks he can challenge me.
"Get behind the bathroom door and lock it," I say, my voice cold and flat. "Don't come out unless I say so."
She hesitates for a second too long.
"Now, Caryn."
The cold precision in my voice makes her pause, spine taut and breath shallow. Then she moves, quietly and deliberately,disappearing behind the bathroom door without a word. A moment later, the bolt clicks softly into place, slicing through the tension with the clean finality of a period at the end of a command. Good girl.
She listens better than most men I've commanded. In the field, obedience meant survival. It was fast, detached, and stripped of anything personal. Men followed my orders because their lives depended on it, because mine did too. No connection. No satisfaction. Just execution.
But Caryn... when she moves on my word, it's not fear nor blind obedience. It's something else. And that feels different. Potent. Dangerous. Like I've claimed something I didn't realize I needed. Not that I should enjoy it, but something in me settles when she obeys. Like the world's spinning in the right direction again.
I cross the room and lift the rifle from the rack beside the hearth. Not to use. Not yet. Just to remind whoever's on the other side that they knocked on the wrong goddamn door.
When I open the door, the wind knifes through the cabin, shrieking like a wounded animal. Cold slices across my skin, sharp enough to sting, but it's not the chill that holds my focus. My eyes lock on the two silhouettes standing just beyond the threshold, shapes cut from shadow and steel. The storm claws at them, but they don't flinch. It's not the weather that brought them here. And it sure as hell isn't the weather that makes my spine go tight and my fingers itch for blood.
Two men. One stands with false ease, shoulders relaxed and stance spread like he owns the ground he's standing on. The other lingers behind, deliberate in every careful step, eyes scanning the cabin like he's already mapping exits. There's nothing casual about him. He's a predator watching another predator, and he knows it's not a bluff on either side.
They're military or they used to be. It's there in the scuffed boots laced with muscle memory, in the way their shoulders hold tension like armor, in the discipline baked into every step. They don't just carry themselves like soldiers. They embody it completely, the life etched into their posture and presence like a brand that never faded. But only one of them I recognize, and that recognition lands like a bullet between my ribs.
My blood goes quiet. Just like it did in the Hindu Kush, the night everything turned. Snow falling like ash, my rifle gone, Brenner's silhouette blotting out the stars above me. That smirk. The betrayal in his eyes. It crashes into me now, cold and sharp, threading ice through my veins. Last I saw him, he was standing over my half-frozen body.
"Zebulon Cross?" the first one asks.
I don't answer.
"We're looking for a missing journalist. Caryn Stevens. Went off-grid a few days ago. Word is she was headed toward Solace Ridge. Folks in Hollow Ridge said if anyone could help find her, it'd be you."
