Page 33 of Claimed on the Ridge

"Is she okay?" I ask.

Amberly sets the mug down. She looks at me for a long moment, and what she doesn't say fills every corner of the kitchen.

"I like her, Alex."

"Yeah."

"Be careful with that."

She pulls her coat on, tucks her scarf into the collar, and zips it to her chin. She heads back out into the cold. The drive to town takes longer in the dark, but Amberly has never minded the drive.

The door closes behind her. The place is quiet again and the quiet has a different shape now.

I've been carrying the bruise since the kitchen. My thumb found the ridge under Kendall's ribs and her body flinched away from me with a speed that only comes from practice. Amberly's silence just confirmed what I already suspected.

Now the suspicion has weight. Now it needs a response.

I pull on my coat and cross the yard to the workshop. Bryan is cleaning a rifle he cleaned yesterday. Bryan cleans rifles the way other men pace. The repetition is mechanical, and the focus keeps him steady. The fact that he's doing it at all tells me he's thinking about the same thing I am.

"Someone hurt her," I say. "You called it."

He doesn't look up from the bolt he's wiping down. The cloth keeps moving in the same measured strokes.

"I know," he says.

No satisfaction in it. He flagged it days ago, standing in the hallway calling her a liability while she was somewhere in the lodge close enough to hear. Fake name, flinches, favors her ribs, someone coming to look. He was right about all of.

"Kendall went to the clinic today," I say. "Amberly didn't say a word about it. Her face said enough."

Bryan sets the rifle down. Stock aligned parallel to the workbench edge. His eyes come up, and the shift from maintenance to operational is immediate.

"The flinch at the pan. The way she watches hands before she watches faces. The ribs." I lay it out the way Bryan laid it out days ago, except now Amberly's silence sits behind every item. "She's running from someone. When the pass opens, that someone might come looking."

"So we're moving on it," he says. Not a question.

"I want the access road watched. Anyone coming up that road who isn't local, I want to know about it before they reach the property."

"I'll take mornings," Bryan says. "South overlook has a clean line on the switchbacks. You can see headlights long before they reach the property."

"Cameron can cover the road between the lodge and town. He's back and forth enough to spot anything that doesn't belong."

Bryan nods. Economy and agreement.

I find Cameron in the workshop after Bryan clears out. He's underneath the snowmobile with a wrench and a trouble light, knees on a piece of cardboard spread over the concrete.

"Storm's breaking up," he says from under the chassis. "Give it two days and the pass opens."

"When it does, I want to know who's on the road. You're running between the lodge and town more than anyone. Keep your eyes open. Anything that doesn't fit, any vehicle you don't recognize, I hear about it."

Cameron slides out and sits up, wiping his hands on his jeans. He doesn't ask why.

"I can run the road twice a day when conditions allow," he says. "Morning and late afternoon."

"Do that."

He taps the wrench against the chassis once and slides back under the snowmobile. The wrench starts again before I reach the door.

I find Dash on the back porch splitting kindling. He stops when I tell him. He doesn't ask questions either. He just sets the hatchet down, looks at me, and says, "What do you need me to do?"