Page 6 of My Three Mountain Men

Brooks paled slightly. “Honestly, what was I supposed to do, Ryder? She was already half buried in the snow. Someone left her out there to die. I can’t think of the last time I’ve even seen another human soul in that area. It was planned. She didn’t just find herself out there.”

I grunted. “These influencer types are always doing stupid ass things for clout. Did you check her phone and see what she was recording?”

Brooks was appalled by the suggestion. “No. Is that really important now?”

He had a point. It didn’t matter what she’d been doing. All that mattered was that she was our problem now, and damn, what a problem she was.

“Hello?” Simone called out weakly from the other room. “Is Aimee here?”

Startled, my head jerked back, and I looked at Brooks, aghast.

“Are you sure she was alone out there?” I asked, suddenly very worried.

Brooks and Knox appeared equally concerned.

“There weren’t any tracks around her,” Brooks replied slowly. “Not even hers.”

“Shit,” I mumbled. “Does that mean that there’s another one of them out there somewhere?”

“Oh, this is not good,” Knox growled. “How are we going to play this?”

My mind raced, resentment toward Brooks growing. This one was always bringing me messes to clean up. I shouldn’t have been surprised.

“Hello?” the woman called out again.

Brooks moved toward the door, but my hand whipped out at lightning speed to stop him.

“Where the fuck are you going?” I snarled.

“She’s freaking out, Ryder!”

“Let her freak out. We need to figure out how to deal with her,” I retorted. “She can’t know who we are.”

“Hell no,” Knox agreed. “I’m not willing to let a nosy brat piss away a decade of our commitment.”

“You really think that’s what this is?” Brooks demanded, his eyes widening in disbelief. “Can’t you see that she’s in bad shape?”

“Maybe she’s in bad shape now, but who knows why she came up here to begin with,” Knox insisted, siding with me.

I exhaled, relieved that I didn’t have to convince them both that this woman was a terrible addition to our household. He had been just as shocked as I had when we’d done the search on her face.

It was only a matter of convincing Brooks that his damsel in distress was probably an idiot social media star who had gotten in over her head trying to befriend grizzlies.

“We need to find out about her friend,” Brooks insisted. “If there’s another woman out there still, and we can help her…”

My insides twisted. As much as I wanted to refuse, as much as I wanted to insist that they had both reaped what they sowed, I couldn’t. And damn Brooks for knowing that about me.

“Fine,” I rasped. “The weather is getting worse, though, so you’d better hurry. And most importantly, don’t tell her anything about us.”

“She probably already knows who we are,” Knox said tersely. “That’s why they’re here in the first place.”

I didn’t tell my cousin not to jump to conclusions because I honestly believed he was right, but if we could prevent a death, we didn’t have a choice.

“You let her do all the talking,” I told my two younger cousins. “Don’t give her anything, and find her damn phone. The last thing we need is our location posted on the internet or a video. Knox has shut down the internet for now, but just in case she’s sneaking data somehow.”

“I doubt that she’s getting much reception without our internet login, anyway,” Knox added with a shrug. “But you never know. I try to stay current, but it’s not always easy when I’m not… well…” He shrugged. “You know what I mean.”

“She didn’t have a phone or anything else with her,” Brooks promised. “I checked the area where I found her, but I didn’t find anything.”

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