Page 41 of Untamed Hunter Daddy

Silence in the mountains doesn’t mean peace. It means the birds have detected something large enough to shut them up.

I set the coffee down and pick up the rifle. Not shouldering it yet. Just holding it. I scan the tree line in a slow clockwise sweep. South. East. North. Nothing moves. Nothing visible. But the quiet is wrong.

I go inside. Zoe’s at the counter reading, legs crossed on the stool. She looks up and reads my face before I say a word.

“Something’s wrong,” she says.

“Birds are down. Could be nothing. Could be a predator moving through. I want you away from the windows until I clear it.”

She slides off the stool and moves to the far wall beside the fireplace without argument. Solid cover on two sides.

I pull the sidearm from the coat hook and set it on the hearth beside her.

“SIG P320. Magazine release on the left. Slide back to chamber. Trigger is the safety.”

“You’ve told me this before.”

“I’m telling you again.”

I step back onto the porch and close my eyes, listening. Wind through the canopy. Generator thrumming. The creak of the porch rail under my hand.

And underneath it, growing: the high whine of two-stroke engines.

Snowmobiles. Two of them. Coming from the northeast. The same direction as the earlier tracks. The direction that connects through the backcountry to the Forest Service road and eventually to Alpha Range.

The sound builds fast. Within thirty seconds the whine resolves into two distinct machines moving in formation, one slightly ahead of the other.

I shoulder the rifle. Through the scope I pick up movement between the trees at about three hundred yards. Shadows. Fast. Deliberate.

They break the tree line at 250 yards. Two black snowmobiles, no visible registration. Riders in dark clothing and face coverings. No visible weapons, but that doesn’t mean anything.

They’re heading straight for the cabin.

I fire once. Warning shot into the snow twenty yards in front of the lead machine. The crack of the .308 rolls across the clearing. A plume of white kicks up.

They don’t stop.

The lead machine swerves left and accelerates. The second peels right. In two seconds they’ve split into a flanking pattern that’s too coordinated for recreational riders.

I chamber another round and track the lead machine. One hundred fifty yards and closing, angling toward the south side of the cabin where the porch wraps around and visibility from the front door is limited. The second rider curves north toward the back of the cabin, the lean-to, the generator, the blind spot I’ve never been able to fully eliminate.

I fire again. This time at the lead machine’s engine cowling. The bullet punches through the fiberglass and something vital dies. The engine coughs, screams, and cuts out. The snowmobile lurches sideways. The rider goes over the handlebars, hits the snow, rolls, and comes up running.

Coming up running means he’s not hurt. Coming up running toward the cabin means he’s not retreating.

I swing to the second machine. He’s behind the cabin now, out of my line of sight. I hear the engine rev high and then cut. He’s dismounted. Two men on foot. One from the south, one from the north. Pincer movement. Coordinated.

I can’t cover both approaches from the porch.

I drop off the porch and move around the south corner, using the log wall as cover. The first rider is forty yards out, sprinting through the snow. He’s carrying something in his right hand. Not a gun. An expandable steel baton.

He’s not here to shoot me. He’s here to put me down.

Which means they want something from the cabin that killing me would complicate.

They want Zoe.

I drop the rifle. At this distance it’s a liability. I pull the Benchmade from the sheath on my belt and step out from the corner.