Page 13 of Left Cold, Wolf Owned
I look at him. "Who's Garrett?"
"Good mechanic. Part of the group up here." He says it easily, with no further explanation offered. "He picked it up early this morning. Coolant hose blew—he's already got the part ordered."
"You had someone get my car." I set the mug down. "This morning. Without telling me."
"You were asleep."
"Logan."
He meets my eyes directly, unbothered. "It was sitting on the side of a mountain road. I wasn't going to leave it there."
I open my mouth and close it again, because the honest truth is that it's a completely reasonable thing to have done, and I can't actually argue with it, which is its own kind of frustrating. "How long until it's fixed?"
"Couple of days, maybe less, depending on the damage."
I pick the mug back up and look out the window at the trees. A couple of days. No signal, forty minutes from civilization, and a car in pieces. Three days ago, that would have felt like a crisis. This morning, it feels, quietly and without much logic, like exactly the amount of time I need.
"Okay," I say.
A twitch crosses his mouth that doesn't commit to being anything. "Okay?"
"Don't push it."
He tells me there are people outside who want to meet me, which is a sentence I am not remotely prepared for at seven in the morning. I look down at the sweatpants cinched at my sternum and the gray Henley, and my general situation.
"I look like I lost a fight with a mountain," I say.
"You kind of did," Logan says. "They won't care."
He opens the front door, and I follow him onto the porch, and that's when I realize people were an understatement.
There are four of them in the clearing, and they all look up at exactly the same moment with the kind of unified attentionthat should feel unsettling and somehow feels present. Like they were actually waiting and are actually glad the waiting is over.
The first one I notice is the man standing closest to Logan—lean and athletic, with dark hair shaved close on the sides and warm brown eyes that are doing quick, intelligent math about the situation. He's in worn work clothes that have seen real use, and he carries himself with the particular ease of being the steadiest person in any given room.
"Mateo," Logan says by way of introduction.
Mateo nods at me, and there's something in it—a warmth underneath the calm that feels genuine rather than performed. "Harper. Good to meet you."
"You too," I say and mean it more than I expect to.
Before I can say anything else, someone steps forward, and I don't have time to prepare.
"Oh, finally." The woman who says this is tall and athletic, with sun-browned skin and curly auburn hair that moves with her like it has opinions of its own. Her eyes are a sharp amber, and they are absolutely lit up in a way that suggests she has been waiting to sayoh, finallyfor some time. She's in trail clothes, restless energy practically radiating off her. "I'm Nora. I've been standing out here for forty-five minutes."
"Nora," Logan says it with the tone he’s used many times before.
"What? I'm just saying." She looks at me with unfiltered curiosity and something that reads like immediate, uncomplicated warmth. "You look like you need a hot shower, dry shampoo, and about sixteen hours of someone not asking you questions."
I blink. "That's—yes. That's exactly right."
"I have all of those things." She says it like it's settled. "Well, not the sixteen hours, but the shower and dry shampoo for sure.I've got a whole bag of stuff at the lodge. We'll get you sorted before breakfast."
The other two have hung back slightly, giving me room, which I notice. The larger of the two is immediately striking—big-framed, with a graying beard and deep-set blue eyes that have a quiet, patient quality to them. He's in a canvas work jacket with a set of keys in one hand, turning them over slowly, like he's already thinking about the job waiting for him.
"Garrett," he says when I look at him. The one word, like that, covers it, and somehow it does.
"You have my car," I say.
