Page 53 of Left Cold, Wolf Owned
"I know," I tell her.
We stand there a moment longer, neither of us moving, and then she pushes off the railing and heads inside, and I hear her moving around in the kitchen, the familiar sounds of her simply deciding something needs doing and doing it, comfortable and unhurried and entirely at home.
I stay on the porch and look at the mountain and let it all sit where it sits—the bond, the threat, the gap between what she knows and what's coming, and the particular responsibility of being the thing standing between someone you love and the world that's been looking for her.
She wants to be here in spring.
I intend to make sure she can be.
19
HARPER
Inotice it first after a couple of days.
It's just past seven-thirty, and the sun hasn't fully cleared the ridge yet when I'm crossing from the cabin to the lodge with my coffee, the same route I've walked every morning. The ground is slightly hard underfoot, with a thin frost on the grass that crunches at the edges of the path, and my breath comes out in small, visible clouds. The kind of frost that will be gone by mid-morning once the light reaches it, but at this hour, on this mountain, in the middle of fall, it's there. The mountain is making that clear. There are two people I don't recognize moving along the eastern treeline. Not hiking. Not working. Strictly moving through the treeline with the particular purposefulness of people who know exactly where they are and are checking something.
I stop and watch them until they disappear into the pines.
The next day, I count three more unfamiliar faces, all of them moving through the outer property at intervals that feel less like coincidence and more like rotation. Garrett's garage light is on before dawn. Mateo, who is usually the steadiest presenceat breakfast, arrives late and leaves early with the particular preoccupation of someone running a list in his head.
And Logan.
Logan is the same as he always is on the surface—steady, unhurried, and present when I'm with him in a way that hasn't changed. But there's something underneath the steady that I've been cataloging since I first noticed the strangers in the treeline, the way I catalog everything that doesn't add up. The way his eyes track the perimeter when we're on the porch. The way conversations with Mateo finish themselves a little too quickly when I walk into a room is noticeable. Not abruptly, merely completed, the way a sentence gets wrapped up before someone changes the subject.
I am a nonprofit events coordinator. I spent five years managing complicated situations involving people who didn't want to tell me things. I know when I'm not being told something.
By the fourth day, I've had enough of being left in the dark.
I find Logan at the generator shed after breakfast, doing something with a panel on the side of the building that he is doing with more focus than a generator panel usually requires. He looks up when he hears me coming, and his expression does that thing it does when he's deciding how much to show.
"Walk with me," I instruct, in the tone I use when I'm not actually asking.
He sets down what he's holding and falls into step beside me without argument, which tells me he's been expecting this conversation and has made his peace with it arriving.
I wait until we're past the lodge and onto the south trail before I turn to face him.
"There are people on this property I haven't seen before," I open, keeping my voice even. "Running what looks like a patrol. Who are they?"
Logan doesn't miss a beat. "Brought in some extra hands for the season," he replies with the easy practicality of someone delivering a completely reasonable explanation. "Timber rotation coming up on the north parcels. We need extra coverage on the outer property."
I look at him. The answer is smooth. Too smooth, actually, in the particular way of an answer that has been prepared rather than retrieved.
"Timber rotation," I repeat.
"It happens every year around this time," he adds. "More people on the ground, more vehicles on the logging roads. Standard."
"And Garrett being in the garage before sunrise?"
"Equipment check before the rotation starts," he replies, without hesitation. "He does it every season."
I study his face. He is looking back at me with the complete, unhurried calm of a man deciding on his story and is comfortable in it, and the calm itself is the tell because Logan is always calm, and I know the difference now between his natural calm and his deliberate calm, and this is the second one.
"And Mateo disappearing every time I walk into a room?" I press.
"Mateo's coordinating the schedule," Logan responds. "It's a busy week."
The quiet between us has texture now. I let it sit for a moment, watching him watch me, and I think about what Nora had said about layers and the right order of things, and I think about the list I made last night in the cabin.
