Page 30 of Following Their Heart

“All right,” he says, and I expect him to crawl out of bed and get dressed. Instead, he crawls over me. And he kisses me. Deep and long. And while he does that, his hand wanders down to tease at my curls. “Time to get to work on round two.”

Chapter 12

Cora

Sex with Jud is…athletic.After two rounds in the bomb shelter, my legs are limp as overcooked linguini. I lean so heavily on him on the way out of the mines, it probably would have been faster to just let him carry me. Weirdly, though, he respects my wishes and lets me wobble along when I say I want to walk. I can’t deny I’m majorly relieved when we emerge from the tunnels, and I get to ride on the four-wheeler up to the summit to check on Scrap’s progress.

As our elevation climbs, the temperature drops, and before long, the thick growth of pines gives way to bare rock. Above, the sky is as blue as a never-ending swimming pool, and all around us are white-tipped peaks.

There’s no snow on this mountain, but the temperature is downright arctic. “It’s windy!” I shout over the growl of the four-wheeler. Even sitting in front of Jud with his arms around me, I feel the air currents biting through my flannel and trying to sweep our ride off the trail.

“I’ve got you,” Jud says, and I know it’s true. He won’t let us be tossed off the packed-dirt ribbon of trail skirting the ridge.

We reach a steep patch of trail and make a hairpin turn, and the four-wheeler complains at the climb. Then a weathered hut with a tin roof comes into view. It looks lonely and sad up here with nothing for company but neighboring mountain tops.

“This whole thing is the Bridger Range,” Jud tells me after cutting the engine. We dismount, and he sweeps his arm out in the direction of the ridge snaking to the north. We appear to be on the very top of a lesser mountain with larger ones all around.

“We’re at the southern end, near Bozeman—” Jud thumbs back over his shoulder. I glance that way and am amazed at how different the land looks. To the south, there are mountains in the far distance, but between here and there are what look to be hundreds of miles of yellow and taupe plains. “The range runs all the way to Maudlow.” Jud’s looking to the north, so I match my gaze to his. He points to one of the tallest snowcapped mountains. “That one’s Sacagawea Peak. Those two that look like brothers.” His hand shifts to the left. “Those are Saddle and Ross. That smaller one’s Baldy.” It doesn’t look that small to me. It’s higher than the peak we’re on. “There was a popular ski resort there.”

“What’s this one called?” I want to know the name of my home.

“Doesn’t have a name that I could find. Just barely squeaks in over sixty-five hundred feet. We’re surrounded by eight-, nine-thousand footers, so no one bothered to name this one.”

I blink at him. “You should name it.”

He scratches his neck. “Tell you what. You finally name what’s yours, and I’ll name this little rock we’re standing on.”

I bite my lip. Should I tell him now, or wait until tonight? I don’t think I can handle any more energetic sex—I’m still getting my health and muscle tone back after being underfed and chained up for so long—but I definitely want to spend more time with this softened version of Jud (well, not soft everywhere). Tonight, I decide. I’ll tell him the name I came up with when we’re alone in my cabin and I can worship its namesake properly.

“Deal,” I say, and I can’t wait until bedtime. Then a strong gust of wind makes me hug myself against the cold.

Jud chuckles. “C’mere, kitten. Let’s get you inside and warmed up.” Arm around me, he guides me to the hut. It’s a bit of a climb over rocky, gravelly terrain. My legs feel slightly stronger than when we left the mines, but they’re still wobbly enough to remind me of being so recently beneath Jud with our bodies striving together to reach a different kind of peak.

The hut is basically a one-room box with a sloped roof. Directly behind it, a big radio antenna reaches to the sky. There’s also a platform with a cropped dish thing on it. It makes me think of military radar stuff. It’s stationary, but I can imagine it rotating, searching for incoming.

As we close in on the hut, I hear a generator chugging along, and underneath is the thumping music Scrap always has blaring while he works. Jud pushes open the door and hollers for him to turn it down.

I don’t see Scrap immediately, but at our interruption, he emerges from beneath a bench covered in computers and control panels. He has an open toolbox at his side.

“Hey, boss! Hey, Cora! Wasn’t expecting company.” He clicks a button on his boombox to turn it off and brushes his hands off on low-slung, grease-stained jeans. Then he’s pulling me in for a hug. It’s warm and tight. The hoodie he has on is worn to the point of having holes in the elbows, and it’s incredibly soft.

I hug him back for a long time and give Jud the side-eye when Scrap kisses the side of my head. The big guy doesn’t seem perturbed in the least. He even winks at me before turning his attention to Scrap’s equipment. What’s gotten into him? He’s being so…rational. I could get used to this, but I’m afraid to. The second I take Jud’s new easy-going manner for granted, it’ll bite me in the butt.

“How’s it comin’ along?” Jud asks. “You get the radar tested with Doc, yet?”

“Got it running,” Scrap says. “But haven’t set up a time for Doc to take a chopper up. We’ll figure it out tomorrow.”

“Good. It’ll work,” Jud says, nodding with confidence. “Everything you build works.”

“Staahp. You’re makin’ me blush.”

Scrap brings me to the table with all the panels and shows off the system he installed that’s linked to that dish outside. “It’s super complex, but the software takes care of itself. The point is, when it’s active, it’ll tell us when anything from a Cessna to a chopper to a friggin’ seven-forty-seven comes within five hundred miles. I can get a wider range, like, up to a thousand, but that takes crazy amounts of power. A single gennie can’t handle it.”

“Plus, your average chopper doesn’t have that kind of range,” Jud puts in. “They won’t launch an air attack from that far out. Still, better safe than sorry. If you wind up with time to spare, you can get another gennie up here and widen the range.”

“Roger that,” Scrap says. “Working knows we can use all the warning we can get.” He squeezes my shoulder. He and Jud exchange a look, and I know they’re thinking about using that time to get me into the shelter.

“What about the SAMs?” Jud asks. “You managing to bring one truck a day online?” I know from the meeting las night that “SAMs” refer to surface to air missiles. When my guys are threatened, they don’t mess around.

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