Page 7 of Auctioned to the Devil

My eyes drift toward it automatically and I see across the street the same enormous man from the parking lot is loading supplies into the bed of an old black pickup.

As if he feels me watching, he looks up and our eyes meet through the glass.

For one impossible second, it feels like the rest of the diner disappears.

His expression doesn’t change.

Then he climbs into the truck and drives toward the mountains without looking back.

Sally follows my gaze before smiling into her coffee. “Told you.”

“What?”

She wipes down the counter. “Just don’t mistake quiet for harmless.”

I glance toward the road where the truck disappeared into the trees.

Something tells me the Devil of Devil’s Peak isn’t a man people forget after meeting him once.

I have a feeling I haven’t seen the last of Caleb Mercer.

Chapter 2

Caleb

The storm took down three trees across the western trail, washed out half the switchback near Miller’s Ridge, and left enough loose rock scattered across the mountain to keep Search and Rescue busy for the next month.

I’ve been out here since six clearing what I can before somebody with brand-new hiking boots and a downloaded trail map decides a CLOSED sign is more of a suggestion than a warning.

I drag the last broken limb off the trail and toss it down the slope, then straighten slowly, rolling my shoulder until something pops. The ache in my left knee is worse today. Cold mornings do that. So do storms.

Twenty years later, my body still remembers the desert better than I’d like.

I grab the chainsaw and head toward the utility truck when movement catches my eye through the trees.

Bright blue jacket.

Dark hair.

Wrong boots.

I stop.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

The city girl from yesterday is picking her way through the woods below me, apparently determined to prove she has no survival instincts whatsoever.

Emily Harper.

Sally gave me her name when I stopped at the diner this morning, along with half her life story I didn’t ask for. She’s a substitute teacher. She inherited Frank Harper’s lodge. She plans to fix it up. She’s turning it into some kind of retreat for foster kids.

And according to Sally, she thinks I’m rude. That part made me smile.

I watch Emily step over a fallen branch and continue toward the old lodge, stopping every few feet to take pictures with her phone.

She’s wearing ankle boots with smooth soles.

There’s fresh mud from last night’s rain, a steep drop twenty yards to her right, and I saw black bear tracks less than half a mile from here this morning.