Page 91 of Claimed on the Ridge

We both recognize shifting ground when we feel it beneath our feet, and we both know that naming it too early doesn't stop it from happening.

The satellite phone rings inside. Alex answers. His voice is low and brief through the open door, and I hear Amberly's name before he brings the phone to me.

"For you."

Amberly's voice is warm and professional, the combination she wears like a lab coat. She asks how I'm sleeping. She asks about the tremor in my hands. She confirms my medical records are still filed under Mitchell at her clinic, off every networked system Gary's attorneys could subpoena. She asks about Alex's knuckles with the clinical detachment of a woman who stitched enough Sawyer injuries to fill a textbook and stopped being impressed years ago.

"The check-in schedule is holding," she says. "Dead man's switch is armed. The forensic accountant is still working through Morrow's documentation."

"Good."

"State inspector is coming through next month. Routine clinic review."

The words are perfectly neutral. From Amberly, perfectly neutral is the equivalent of a flashing light. I've learned thisabout her. The things that don't register in her voice are the things she's thinking about most.

"Routine," I repeat.

"Completely routine." A pause. "His name is Ethan Hale. I'm told he's thorough."

The way she saysthoroughtells me everything the wordroutinewas designed to hide. The woman who holds my dead man's switch, who kept my medical records off every system Gary could access, helped to stitch this family back together after Jack’s death, has trouble of her own arriving next month.

I file that too.

Amberly is not the kind of woman who asks for help.

Neither was I.

Until this lodge taught me the difference between asking and drowning.

I hang up and bring both coffee mugs to the sink. Alex is at the kitchen table with the notepad, writing coordinates in the margin. He writes with decisive lines, no hesitation, the pen moving with the same certainty his hands have everywhere else.

"Amberly says hi," I tell him.

"Amberly doesn't say hi. Amberly delivers clinical assessments with strategic implications."

"Accurate." I rinse the mugs and set them in the rack. "She also mentioned a state inspector coming through the clinic next month. She was very casual about it."

Alex looks up.

"Amberly is never casual."

"I know."

The morning settles into the kind of quiet that used to make me count exits. The fire in the hearth. The wind pressing against the windows. Alex at the table. The notepad. The pen. The tape on his knuckles.

I lean against the counter and watch him.

I spent years training myself to observe men without being caught. Tracking moods, reading the weather before the storm hit.

I'm watching Alex now with none of that running.

Just looking at a man I chose.

Just wanting to look.

He catches me.

"Something on your mind, Mitchell?"