Page 20 of Growly Trapper Daddy
We venture outside that afternoon to check the perimeter, snow crunching under our boots, his hand never leaving mine or the small of my back. We're most of the way through the circuit when the satellite phone buzzes in his coat pocket. He answers it standing close enough that I catch most of both sides.
“Mason.” A pause. “Go ahead.”
I watch his jaw work while he listens. “Still nothing solid on Levon,” he tells me once he hangs up, tucking the phone away. “Roads are supposed to be passable by tomorrow afternoon, which means the office is going to start pushing hard on timelines. Mason's buying us what time he can, but he can't buy forever.”
“Tomorrow,” I repeat, the word landing heavier than I want it to. “That's fast.”
“It is.” He doesn't soften it, which I've come to trust more than false comfort. “Which means today's worth making count.”
Back inside, we stoke the fire higher, and something in the air between us shifts toward that same fever pitch that's been building all day, unhurried but unmistakable, neither of us willing to let tomorrow's deadline steal today from us before it has to.
“I want to try something,” I say later, my cheeks going warm, straddling his hips on the bed with my hands flat on his chest,feeling his heart pound under my palms. “I want to feel you deeper. Can we try that. I trust you completely.”
Whatever answer he gives me, and he gives it without a shred of hesitation, the two of us spend the rest of that golden afternoon exactly where we want to be, learning each other with a confidence that wasn't there two days ago, laughter tangled up with everything else, the two of us finding out exactly how much trust can turn into pleasure when neither person's holding anything back anymore.
Later, wrapped together and slow to catch our breath, he presses his lips to my forehead, my eyelids, the tip of my nose.
“Mine,” he murmurs against my skin, voice rough but carrying something deeper underneath it, almost unguarded. “No matter where they take you, you're mine, darlin'. I'll find my way back to you. I don't let go of what's mine, not for a badge, not for a folder full of paperwork, not for anybody.”
I snuggle closer, tracing lazy shapes on his chest, the worry about witness protection still there but pushed further off by the warmth of him, the steady beat of his heart, the certainty in his voice. In this moment, wrapped in quilts and Colt Rivers, the future feels a little less like an anvil and a little more like something worth fighting for. Tomorrow the roads open. Tomorrow the world starts finding its way back to us, ready or not. But the sun's still dipping low outside for now, painting the cabin in soft orange and pink, and we stay tangled together, savoring every second of this stolen time while it's still ours to keep.
18
Colt
I lie in the big bed with Nora curled tight against my chest, her body pressed into me like she was made to fit right here and nowhere else. The fire's burned down to glowing embers, casting warm orange light across the cabin walls and her sleeping face. She's out deep now, breathing slow and even, lashes fanned dark against her cheeks. Every rise and fall of her chest brushes against my side, and I feel that pull in my gut stronger than any trap I've ever set in my life. I'm in love with this woman. It's fast, faster than anything I've ever let myself feel for anybody, and I don't care. One minute I'm pulling a wrecked car out of a snowbank. The next I can't picture this mountain without her on it. I don't want to let her go. Not to witness protection. Not to anybody.
I stroke her hair careful not to wake her, my fingers catching slightly in the strands. She makes a small, contented sound in her sleep and snuggles closer, one leg sliding over mine, and I lie there memorizing the shape of her against me, the way her hip curves out under the quilt, the soft give of her thigh, the faint marks I left on her skin earlier that I have no intentionof apologizing for. She's mine. My responsibility now, in every sense of that word, and the thought of handing her over to some safe house I can't follow her into twists something fierce and ugly in my chest. I've lived alone out here for years, content enough with my traps and my rifle and the particular silence of the Steel Mountains. Now the idea of a single day without her laughter, without her quirky drawings scattered across my kitchen table, without the sound of my own name in her voice, feels like something closer to a wound than a loss.
I ease out of bed slow and quiet, cool air hitting my skin as I pull on jeans and a flannel shirt. The floorboards creak under my weight, but Nora doesn't stir. Good. She's earned the rest. I grab the satellite phone off the shelf by the door and slip outside onto the porch, snow crunching bright and fresh under my boots in the late afternoon sun. The cold bites at my face, but it clears my head, and I lean against the rough log wall and dial Mason before I can talk myself into waiting one more day to say any of this out loud.
The line clicks after two rings. “Colt. You good up there?”
I keep my voice low, though the cabin's far enough back that it wouldn't matter much either way. “Yeah. Roads are clearing. We've got a problem, though.”
Mason pauses, and I catch the background hum of whatever office or safe spot he's holed up in. “She okay? The witness?”
“Nora.” I say her name like it's a fact that needs stating plainly. “She's more than okay. Mason, I've gone and fallen for her. All the way. It happened fast and I don't give a damn how that sounds. She's it for me.”
Silence stretches a beat, then Mason lets out a low whistle. “Damn, brother. You sure that's not just the isolation talking, or the fact you've been snowed in alone with a beautiful woman for the better part of a week?”
I grip the phone tighter, jaw set. “I'm sure. Dead sure. She makes this place feel like a home instead of a cabin I sleep in between trap lines. I'm not letting her disappear into WITSEC, Mason. I can't lose her. Look at you and Riley.”
The name lands heavier than I mean it to, and Mason goes quiet on the other end for a second before he answers, his voice lower than before. “Low blow, using her against me.”
“Wasn't trying to score a point. Just telling you I understand exactly what it costs to keep somebody that way, because I watched it happen to you, and I want that.” I let that sit a second. Riley was the witness Mason protected a few months back. They fell in love and Mason risked everything to keep her. It was ugly and dangerous, but now they get to be together. Always.
Mason exhales long. “If you're sure you love her, then we need another plan. She can't go into the program, not if you're claiming her like this. It means no contact, cutting every tie, disappearing so completely that even you might not find your way back to her without blowing the whole operation wide open. You understand what you're asking for.”
Relief floods through me, mixed with that hard, familiar edge of purpose I remember from my years in uniform. “Good. Because I'm not handing her over. I'll draw the Armenians out myself. Finish this on our terms instead of theirs. No more running. No more hiding her away in some stranger's file cabinet.”
We talk strategy for a long while after that, the sun dipping lower and painting the snow pink and purple through the trees. Mason lays out everything he's pulled together on the crew chasing her, ruthless, well organized, methodical in a way that tells him this isn't the Pertrosyans' first time cleaning up a loose end. I pace the length of the porch, boots leaving deep tracks in the snow, listening and adding pieces of my own. The remote trails I know better than my own hands. The old trap lines that can be rigged for more than animals if it comes to that. A false trail we could lay, making it look like she's being moved through a specific pass, drawing them in close enough to end this permanently instead of running from it indefinitely.
“I can pull in a couple of the others,” Mason says, voice gone steady and tactical in the way it does whenever he stops being my friend for a minute and starts being the man who runs this team. “Jax and Kane are already in the area, finishing up a warrant out of Missoula. We stage it like a standard transfer. Unmarked vehicle, normal route on paper, but we control every inch of the actual ground. Draw them in close enough that there's no clean way out for them.”
I nod even though he can't see it, my mind already walking the terrain. “We use the old logging road near the ridge, the one that funnels down to a single lane past the rock cut. I can rig it so any vehicle coming through slows to a crawl whether they want to or not. Non lethal first, disable the vehicles, box them in before anybody gets a shot off. I want them alive for the feds if it's possible. Won't lose sleep if it isn't.”
Mason agrees on most of it, but then he pushes, the way I knew he eventually would. “We still need bait, Colt. Something that makes them certain it's actually her in the vehicle and not a decoy they'll see through in about four seconds. Nora could ridepartway, just far enough to be seen, then we swap her out before the pass.”
