listen too.
At first there was nothing and then I caught it. The faintest buzz of snowmobiles chasing down the mountain from somewhere above us.
“Shit,” I cursed as the sound of them drew closer.
We may have been in the forest here, but the trees were big enough that their trunks were spread apart. Couple that with the fact that I was wearing a royal blue jacket and Winter was wearing red and it was pretty clear that we were sitting ducks.
I looked around, hunting for somewhere to hide her as my heart pounded to a warning beat. There was only one group of people who lived up on this mountain aside from me. The same group who had been holding my girl captive.
I spotted a tree with thick leaves and branches just low enough for me to reach and grabbed Winter’s hand as I heaved her towards it.
I reached the trunk and whirled her around to face me, looking into her green eyes which were wide with questions I didn’t have time to decipher let alone answer.
“Stay hidden, baby doll,” I murmured, catching her waist between my hands and lifting her off of her feet so that she could reach the branches above my head.
She did as directed and scrambled up, placing a boot on my shoulder to give her an extra boost before clambering onto the branch above us.
“Climb,” I urged as I backed up, looking around as the sound of the snowmobiles drew ever closer.
She started moving up the tree, reaching for a higher branch and then another, but before she could get any higher, the snowmobiles appeared, speeding through the trees straight towards me. There were six of them in all, each ridden by a single asshole and stacked up with packages tied to the back of them.
I gazed between them as I pressed my back to one of the towering trunks, praying they’d just keep on going without taking much notice of me, but of course luck wasn’t on my side.
Just as the lead rider drew level with me, he yelled out a greeting like we were old friends and whipped his machine around in a circle. The others followed his lead, churning up the snow all around us and thankfully managing to destroy the trail we’d left in the snow which would have led them to Winter’s tree.
I shot a glance her way and could just see her there, gripping the trunk as she hid in the shadows, her eyes wide with fear as she looked back at me. I quickly looked away again, not wanting them to notice my attention fixing in her direction.
After a couple of minutes of them gunning their engines and kicking up snow all around me while I folded my arms and waited them out, the leader pulled up before me and cut his engine.
I slowly slipped my gloves off, wanting my hands free if I needed them to be.
The others halted their snowmobiles too and the silence that fell after the roar of the engines was thick with the promise of violence.
“Well, if it isn’t our resident mountain man,” he said in a voice low and rough, only just loud enough to be heard over the wind. The look in his steel grey eyes said he was used to people listening when he talked though. So I was guessing his low tones hadn’t caused him too much trouble in the past.
“I didn’t realise I was famous,” I drawled, my gaze slowly sweeping over the assembled group.
They were all carrying rifles but they’d strapped them down among the packages which were tied to the backs of their machines. It was hard to tell what other weapons they might be concealing beneath their winter coats, but the guy talking to me had a thigh holster with a hunting knife in it.
“There are all kinds of tales about the great mountain man over at our camp,” the guy confirmed, pushing shaggy blonde hair out of his eyes as he assessed me. “They say you once killed a brown bear by choking him out-”
“I didn’t kill him, just choked him long enough to put him to sleep, then got my ass out of there before he came back around,” I deadpanned and a couple of the guys laughed while a couple looked wildly impressed. “I didn’t catch your name,” I added, my gaze firmly on the leader while I ignore the backup. Those five were easy pickings. There was always something about a man’s