Inside, the air smelled like cedar and coffee grounds. He barely set me down before my jacket hit the floor, his hands sliding under my shirt, hot and sure.
I broke the kiss long enough to gasp, “This doesn’t mean anything—”
He pulled my shirt over my head, eyes blazing. “It means everything.”
The heat between us snapped, sharp and irresistible. I shoved him backward onto the bed, straddling him, tasting him, daring him to match me. He rolled us fast, pinning me beneath him, mouth trailing fire down my throat. And all over my body. God, how I loved that mouth.
Every touch, every kiss, every ragged breath tore away the lies we’d told ourselves. This wasn’t casual. It wasn’t forgettable. It was the kind of night that rewrote you from the inside out.
And when the storm finally broke, when we collapsed tangled in sheets and each other, my heart betrayed me worse than ever.
Because I wanted him. Not just here, not just tonight. I wanted Forest Reed like he was mine.
6
Forest
Morning on the mountain didn’t ask permission; it just arrived—cold air, pine through the cracked window, light slicing across the floorboards like fresh-cut boards. Zoe had stolen one of my flannels in the night and was currently hogging about ninety percent of the blanket, sprawled on her stomach with her hair a riot on my pillow.
I made coffee strong just how I liked it. She padded in, bare legs, my shirt, my undoing, and squinted at the percolator like it was a suspect.
“That coffee could strip paint,” she said, voice sleep-rough. “Is this an interrogation technique?”
“Welcome to altitude,” I said, handing her a mug. “I can add milk.”
She took a cautious sip. Blinked. “My ancestors just sat up in their graves.”
“Thanks,” I said, deadpan.
She gave me a look over the rim. “You’re doing great.”
I smiled before I could stop it. The smile died when I glanced out the window and saw it: a thin stack of three stones on the stump by the trail—didn’t belong. Cairn. I hadn’t built it.
“Stay here,” I said, too fast.
Zoe heard the change. She set the mug down and reached for the sidearm she’d parked on the table like silverware. “What is it?”
“Marker.” I jerked my chin to the yard. “Someone came through.”
We were dressed and outside in a minute, the cold chewing our ears. The cairn was fresh—damp earth, clean cuts on the top stone. Two paces beyond, a sapling wore a tiny etched pine tree near its base. The same mark from the pier napkin and the woman’s palm.
“Your mountain has a fan club,” Zoe muttered, crouching. She brushed away duff with a gloved hand, exposing a half-buried new orange survey flag. She looked up at me. “They’re mapping something.”
“Routes,” I said. “Or drop points.”
She straightened, eyes on the tree line. “And they left you a doorbell.”
I did a slow pan of the yard. No broken brush near the cabin, no boot scuffs on the porch. Whoever had come in knew how to move. That bothered me.
Back inside, we spread the map from the switchback across my table. The red Xs ran along a string of decommissioned logging spurs, skirting a gorge we called Devil’s Stair, then cut east toward Timberline. Someone had drawn a rough pine over a switchback I knew too well. If you wanted to carry heavy products without hitting a checkpoint, that was a path.
Zoe braced one hand on the table, the other cradling her mug. “If Harris is part of this, he’s small—a mouthpiece, not a brain.”
“Courier at the pier took orders,” I agreed. “The woman with the stroller enforced them.”
“And the guy who looked like a lawyer must have been a courier coordinator,” she said. “We need names to match roles.”
I tapped a cluster of Xs. “Trail camera here. If they’re smart, two more downrange. Once we trip one, they’ll either run or come see who we are.”
