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City boots.

Camera.

Well, that’s interesting.

I stay back, watching her through the brush while she moves carefully through the woods about fifty yards ahead. She pauses every few seconds to photograph survey stakes hammered into the ground near the restricted ridge line.

The developers’ markers.

My jaw tightens.

She doesn’t belong up here.

That much is obvious immediately.

Not because she looks weak.

She doesn’t.

Everything about her says sharp edges and defensive posture, from the way she scans her surroundings to the way she plants her feet like she expects confrontation before conversation.

But she moves wrong for this terrain. Too focused on what’s in front of her. Not enough attention behind.

And she’s alone.

That’s the bigger problem.

I circle wider through the trees, moving silently downhill while I track her path from a distance. She doesn’t notice me once.

Good.

But somebody else already has.

I spot the second set of tracks almost immediately.

Larger boot print.

Male.

Following her trail but keeping distance.

My expression hardens.

Fresh too.

Maybe thirty minutes ahead of me.

The woman crouches beside another marker, muttering something under her breath while snapping photographs. Wind pushes strands of dark hair loose around her face, and for one brief second she glances up toward the mountain ridge.

Pretty.

That’s unfortunate.

Because pretty women alone in isolated places usually mean trouble eventually follows.

And judging by those tracks?

Trouble already found her.