Page 69 of Shared By the Mountain Men Triplets

Across the room, Boone laughs, short and rough, but I don’t.

Wren steps closer to me. “You warned me as soon as you saw him. You pinned the man down, and you got me out.”

“He was twenty yards from you.”

“And he ended up screaming into a cloud of bear spray.”

“A detail I plan to enjoy later,” Boone says, “when I can feel anything except homicidal.”

A corner of Wren’s mouth lifts. It’s not fully a smile, but it’s enough to let me breathe.

There’s a sound outside, and every one of us freezes.

A vehicle, moving slowly on the road.

Rhett picks up a rifle, crosses to the front wall, andangles himself beside the curtain.

Tires crunch at the end of the drive, then stop.

I ease back the other side of the curtain and watch a man get out of an old pickup. His shoulders are hunched, and his face is hidden beneath a weathered ball cap. He opens the mailbox, shoves a white paper inside, then gets back in the truck and peels off.

“I’ll get it,” Boone says.

“No.” I’m already reaching for the door.

Late afternoon shadows stretch long between the pines, and the road is quiet except for the fading engine noise. I move off-angle, using the ditch and timber instead of the open drive, eyes sweeping my surroundings.

There’s a sealed envelope in the mailbox. No address, and no stamp.

I carry it back into the cabin between two fingers and set it on the table. Boone puts on gloves to slice open one end, then tips it until a photograph slides out.

For a long moment, my brain refuses to make sense of it.

It’s Wren, smiling, sitting at a table at the restaurant in town next to Kira Parker, who’s holding her baby in her lap. There’s a dark-haired woman sitting across from them, but we can’t see her face, because it’s not a posed shot. In fact, it appears to be taken from outside the front window.

“Fuck,” Boone whispers.

“Turn it over,” Rhett tells him.

One line is written in black marker:Back off, or you’ll pay.

Wren reaches for the chair behind her and grips the back of it. “That’s Kira and Elena.” Her face loses all color. “And Kira’s baby.”

Rhett picks up his phone and calls Atlas first, then Buck Brennan, telling them about the men on the trail this morning, and about the threat that involves their families. Boone stays close to Wren while Rhett tells the men to be on alert.

When he ends the second call, Wren says, “I can leave.”

My chest goes cold as she speaks faster. “Not because I want to. I know running doesn’t fix this, but if my being here brings danger to you, and to Kira and Elena and their children?—”

“No,” Boone says.

“No,” I repeat.

When she looks at me, there’s fear in her eyes, but it’s not for herself.

Rhett steps closer to the table. “We’re not handing over our mountain or our town because Turner’s trying to scare us.”

“This isn’t about pride,” Wren says.