Page 5 of My Three Mountain Men

Tears of terror filled my eyes, but they didn’t fall. I needed to keep it together. I had survived worse than this before.

CHAPTER3

Ryder

Isucked air in through my teeth, doing my best to keep my temper in check as my cousins flocked me on either side, the door slightly ajar behind Brooks as he exited.

“Close it,” I growled, pointing at the door.

He eyed me worriedly. “She’s freaked out,” he muttered, but quickly obeyed me when he read the murder in my expression.

I noted the way his gaze lingered inside the guest bedroom before turning back to me.

“What the fuck?” I hissed. “Do you know who she is?”

Brooks’ jaw gaped, and Knox snorted. “How would he? He’s been too busy swooning by her bedside.”

“I wasn’t swooning!” Brooks snapped, folding his arms over his broad chest, his vivid blue eyes glowing with irritation. “I was making sure she wasn’t dead!”

“And it’s a damn good thing she’s not!” I snapped. “Because the last fucking thing we need is a corpse on our hands out here.”

“What were you thinking, bringing her back here, Brooks?” Knox demanded, glancing toward the closed door, his shoulders tenser than usual. He hadn’t let them down since we’d snapped a picture of the frozen, battered blonde and piped it into the computer, hoping to get some intel on who she was and what she had been doing abandoned in the mountains as Brooks had described when he’d rolled her home in the back of his truck after checking traps up the road.

I still couldn’t believe it, a part of me thinking I was about to wake up from this nightmare any minute.

“Who is she?” Brooks squeaked, and I realized that we hadn’t informed him.

“Simone Summers!” Knox answered a little too gleefully for my liking.

Black moose eyes peered down at me judgmentally from the hallway wall, his massive horns lowered and ready for battle from his mount, but I was too distracted to acknowledge the slight intimidation that the animal gave me every time I chanced upon it. The thing had been Brooks’ kill when we’d first completed the cabin, his pride and joy. I hated it but kept my thoughts to myself.

“And despite her blonde good looks, she has no relationship to Suzanne Somers,” Knox added, his nervous ramble commencing.

“Who?” Brooks asked blankly, staring at his cousin, giving me a wary side-eye.

“Suzanne Somers? The Thighmaster Queen?” Knox pressed. “My mom loved her—well, actually, my grams loved her, and my mom had all her old videos on VHS. I converted them to digital—”

“Stop,” I interjected. “No one gives a shit about Shirley Somers.”

“Suzanne,” Knox muttered, his cheeks reddening in the dim upstairs lighting.

Flakes of snow began to fall over the skylight again, and I stifled a groan. More snow was not going to make this any easier.

“No, I mean… who is the girl?” Brooks sighed, turning his attention to me. “Who is Simone Summers?”

I ground my teeth together, certain they would turn to fine dust. “She’s a social media influencer,” I told him. “She has millions of followers.”

Brooks continued to stare at me.

“What?” I asked. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I don’t know. I never really thought those girls were flesh and blood.”

“Some of them are made up,” Knox agreed, bobbing his head. “Generated and controlled by—”

“Does this seem like the time to discuss computer interference?” I interrupted Knox rudely.

Again, Knox clamped his mouth closed. “Sorry,” he muttered. “But I’m not the one who brought her here. Don’t get mad at me.”

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