Page 2 of Saved By the Mountain Man Ranger

"Ma'am."

She spins. Dark brown eyes, wide with surprise, then narrowing with something that looks a lot like irritation.

"You can't be out here," I say.

"Excuse me?"

"There's a blizzard warning. This trail isn't maintained past the fork. You're two miles from your vehicle in boots that aren't rated for snow, and your jacket's going to be useless in about forty minutes." I nod toward the sky. "You need to come with me. Now."

She stares at me like I just spoke a different language. Then she looks back down at whatever's in her hands. A map. Not a trail map. Something older, hand drawn, with markings I can't read from this distance.

"I'm looking for a specific location," she says. Her voice is steady despite the shivering. "A cabin that should be about a half mile northeast of here, near the old Silver Queen Mine. There was a disappearance in 2004, and the search reports reference a structure that⁠—"

"You're researching a cold case."

Her chin lifts. "I'm writing a book about Marcus Farrell. He went missing twenty years ago on this mountain, and the investigation was⁠—"

"I know who Marcus Farrell is." Everybody who's worked this range knows. The hiker who walked into the backcountry in November of 2004 and never walked out. No body recovered. Case went cold in six months. "And the cabin you're looking for collapsed in a rockslide in 2011. There's nothing left."

Something shifts behind her eyes. Disappointment, maybe. Frustration. But she doesn't fold. She squares her shoulders and opens her mouth to argue.

The wind hits us both sideways. Hard enough that she stumbles a half step. The snow thickens from scattered flakes to a white curtain in under a minute. Visibility drops to forty yards. Thirty.

"We're out of time," I tell her. "My ranger station is a mile and a half northwest. Your car isn't going to make it down the switchback in this. We go to the station now, or we don't go anywhere."

She looks at the trail behind her. At the snow filling her tracks. At the sky that's turned the color of concrete.

"My laptop's in the car."

"I'll get it tomorrow."

"My research⁠—"

"Won't matter much if you're dead."

The word lands the way I meant it to. Blunt. Final. She flinches, and for half a second I feel something twist in my chest. Some reflex I thought I'd burned out of myself years ago.

"Fine," she says. "Lead the way, Ranger."

She falls in behind me without another word. Her stride shortens to match the terrain, and she doesn't complain when the trail dips into a creek bed that soaks her boots to the ankles. She's cold and she's underprepared and she's got no business being on this mountain.

But she keeps up.

The wind carries her scent back to me as we climb. Something warm underneath the cold. Cocoa butter, maybe. And something else I can't name that makes my jaw tighten for reasons I refuse to examine.

A mile and a half. My cabin. One night, maybe two until the storm passes.

I've done this a hundred times. Brought reckless people in from the cold, fed them, warmed them up, and sent them on their way without remembering their names.

This one's going to be different.

I can feel it the way I feel a storm coming. Pressure behind the eyes. A shift in the air that hasn't happened yet but will.

I walk faster. She matches my pace without being asked.

We don't speak again until the cabin comes into view through the snow, warm light already glowing in the windows from the generator I left running.

"That's it?" she asks.