Page 27 of My Mountain Man Stalker
I nod because I know the rules by now. I know the cadence of his orders. He lifts his hand at the door like he wants to touch me one more time and doesn’t, and the breath I’ve been holding for the last few days leaks out of me in a hot, stupid little sound.
“You’ll come back,” I tell him, the wish riding the edge of a question.
He slides his hand into mine in a brutal, possessive squeeze. “I always come back.”
He turns, shoulders squared, and walks to the truck. He doesn’t look back when the tailpipe coughs to life.
The driveway crunches under tires. For a beat after the sound of the truck fades, the cabin is a hard, ringing silence. I stand in thedoorway until the last echo of Hale’s engine dies somewhere in the trees, then pad back inside and lock the deadbolt with fingers that feel foreign and clumsy.
Everything in me wants to run after him. To throw myself into the cab and refuse to let him go hunting ghosts without me. But he’s right—he’s the hunter. He has men calling in leads. I’m the thing he’s protecting, and tonight that has to be enough.
I try to busy myself. I wash yesterday’s dishes, fold the flannel he left on the chair, re-stack the firewood until my arms burn. I tidy the medicine cabinet like there’s some married version of me waiting to emerge from the clutter. I tell myself that if I make the cabin look lived-in and ordinary, maybe the world will behave and the dark will keep to the trees.
Once, I check my phone. No bars. Of course not—the towers are thin out here; Hale told me that. He said the satellite would ping him if I texted, but he took the sat phone with him. I feel naked without it, like I’m operating on instinct.
Time moves wrong when he isn’t here. Minutes stretch into elastic. Every small sound—owl, wind, a branch scratching a window—makes my nipples tighten and my stomach go cold. I rehearse my safety plan like a prayer: lock the doors, check the windows, stay in the room with the deadbolt, keep the light off if anyone comes near.
I light a candle anyway because the lamp’s light is too clean. Candlelight blurs the edges of everything. It makes the cabin look soft and forgiving and very, very small.
I’m sitting cross-legged on the bed, hands wrapped around the ceramic mug Hale insisted would warm my fingers, when it happens.
A crash, like someone tearing a wooden table across the porch. The sound is too close to be an animal. My mug slips from my hands and shatters against the floor, hot tea spraying across the quilt. Heat blooms up my shins and I drop to my knees because my body knows what danger sounds like before my brain does.
Adrenaline opens a path under my skin. I move without thinking—grab the flashlight from the nightstand, fling the candle into a metal tray, and slide to the bathroom. The vanity door is already half closed from when Hale left; I shove it all the way and pull the latch. The closet door clicks. The bathroom is small, cramped, a good hiding place. There’s a bathtub, a shower curtain, a low window that’s bolted and frosted. The toilet is tall and the sink cramped. My chest hammers. My breath comes in gasps that sound too loud in the tiny room.
I lock the bathroom door. I crouch on the edge of the tub, flashlight in my lap, everything in me sharpened to a point. My phone is in my back pocket, screen dark. I pull it out like a talisman. One bar. No signal. Of course. Of course.
I whisper Hale’s name like a talisman, because I don’t know what else to do. “Hale,” I breathe, “Hale, where are you?”
No answer. Nothing but my own pulse and the hollow howl of the wind through the trees.
Then—footsteps. Heavy. Close. Deliberate. Someone stomps on the porch as if they own it, as if they’ve practiced the sound to make it sound like authority.
My mouth goes dry. I press my back flat to the cool tile and try to make myself small, to disappear into the smell of bleach and lavender soap. I picture all the places he could be hiding;I picture my father’s hollow cheekbones and the promise Hale made. I picture Hale’s warning look—don’t open the door.
A boot thuds against the outside of the bathroom wall. The vibration makes the mirror tremble. I suck in a breath so fast I almost choke.
“Wren!” A voice, close and jagged. Not Hale. Not Nate. Not Micah. Liam.
My stomach drops to somewhere cold and raw. Panic spikes hot and bitter. He’s inside the perimeter.
“Hello?” His tone is mock-pleasant, like it's only a neighbor on the porch. “I know you’re in there. Come out. Let’s talk.”
I don’t move. I can’t. I keep imagining the SD card in my pocket, tiny and stupid and terrible. He wants it. He’s hunted me for it. If he finds me with it…
My hands clam up on the flashlight. The metal is cold. I think of the gun on Hale’s nightstand, where he keeps it in that locked cabinet. He told me not to touch it unless I had to. If I run, I’ll get it. If I run, he’ll see me.
There’s a new sound now—kicking. A hard, practiced heel against wood. The outer door takes the first blows like a man testing skin. Then the porch rail splits under a boot. My knees want to quake out from under me.
“Come on, sweetheart,” Liam calls. “You don’t want to make this hard.”
The lock splinters.
The door buckles like a body forced open. I hear wood screaming. My breath is a ragged little animal in my throat. Thisis not a scene in a movie where the hero finds a way out. There is nowhere to go. The latch gives with a long, ugly crack.
The bathroom door—someone slams into the wall, so close the tiles shiver.
My mind is blank for a second, and then I’m running on pure animal instincts. I shove the medicine cabinet open, wrench out the first thing my fingers touch—an extra roll of gauze, a stub of antiseptic. This feels stupid, inadequate. But I tie the gauze around my wrist like some small sacrament.
