Page 4 of Forest Reed (Seals on Fraiser Mountain #8)

Forest

The pier was a smear of neon and salt air. Gulls argued like old men. Food trucks lined the boardwalk, hawking everything from kimchi tacos to pretzels the size of steering wheels.

Zoe shoved a hoodie over my head from a tourist stand before I could protest. It read I LOVE THE CITY in a font that could be seen from space.

I looked down at it. “This is a hate crime.”

“Blend,” she said, tugging the hood up and giving me sunglasses shaped like hearts. “Also, karmic payback for telling a vending machine it’s doing great.”

She’d pulled her hair into a messy knot, a few strands kissing her neck. She wore a bomber jacket and a smile she claimed was “civilians-only” and then pretended not to notice me noticing her.

We walked, not touching, but our orbits synced. “Sauerkraut,” she murmured.

“Far end,” I said, nodding to a cart with a handwritten sign: FRANK OPINIONS. A guy in a newsboy cap took orders—“Two dogs, one heavy cabbage”—while a woman with a stroller never moved, just rocked, eyes on the water.

“Look at the lawyer,” Zoe added under her breath. Slick suit, expensive shoes, the kind you didn’t wear to a pier unless you had a meeting you couldn’t afford to miss. He took a mustard packet like it was a baton.

“Courier,” I said. “Black messenger bag, patched strap. He’s nervous.”

“I’ve got the nervous guy,” she said. “You take stroller mom.”

“She’s not a mom,” I murmured after a beat. “Stroller’s empty.”

Zoe’s eyes flicked, sharp and impressed—she’d clocked it a second later. We drifted closer, bickering loudly about pickles so anyone watching us would file us under “annoying couple.”

“Pickles are not a personality trait,” she said in a stage whisper.

“Artisanal brine is culture,” I said, deadpan, and she snorted, tried to smother it, failed. God, I liked that sound.

The exchange happened in a breath—a folded napkin passed with a hot dog, a shoulder bump, a pivot. Lawyer peeled off. Courier angled toward the far stairs. Stroller-not-a-mom pushed away from the rail, too casual.

“Now,” Zoe said, and we split like we’d rehearsed it.

I cut left, intercepting stroller woman at the end of the truck. Up close, she smelled like motel soap and adrenaline. “Rough night,” I said, friendly.

She smiled without teeth. Her hand dipped into the stroller canopy and came out with a pistol suppressed enough not to scare gulls, pointed at my heart.

I sighed. “Ma’am.”

“Walk,” she said.

Zoe’s voice cracked over comms—quiet, controlled. “Courier’s bolting west—”

Gunfire stuttered somewhere beyond the taco truck, too soft for most to clock over the surf. People laughed. A gull stole a pretzel. Music from the waves.

I lifted my hands. “We don’t want to do this.”

“Then don’t.”

She didn’t see my right foot hook the stroller wheel. I jerked it sideways, hard. The chassis rolled, she flinched, and I shoved her wrist up. The first shot hissed into a string of Edison bulbs, popping them like champagne. Shouts. The cart guy swore.

She brought a knee up; I took it on my thigh, pivoted, and we went into the rail together. Damn toothless mom had muscles. The gun clattered. I kicked it under the cart and grabbed her wrists.

“Security!” someone yelled. “Hey!”

I glanced down: her palm was inked with a pine tree and numbers beneath it—42.213, -122.56 what the hell was that. A coordinate, or part of one. She wrenched free with surprising strength and dove for the stroller.

“Forest,” Zoe said, breathless in my ear, “courier dropped the bag, but we’ve got a visitor—”

A white van fishtailed onto the boardwalk like it owned the place. Doors flew open. Two men in masks jumped out, one leveling a short shotgun, the other reaching for Zoe.

I moved. So did she.

Zoe slid over the hood of a car like it had been waiting its whole life for her and planted her foot in Mask Two’s sternum. He slammed into the van door, metal singing. Mask One swung the shotgun my way; I grabbed a tub of nacho cheese off a counter and threw it.

It hit center mass. Cheese went everywhere. He fired before he meant to—the blast pulverized the side of the pretzel truck and an inflatable pickle deflated with a scream that was one hundred percent not in my plan.

“Really?” Zoe called, ducking behind a bench. “Cheese?”

“Worked,” I grunted, catching the shotgun as it skittered.

I racked it empty, tossed it aside, and yanked Zoe behind the hot dog cart just as the van lurched forward, trying to clip us.

It missed, tires screaming, then jerked away into traffic with Stroller Woman diving in last second, empty-handed.

Sirens started to stack. People shouted. Phones went up.

Zoe shoved the courier’s messenger bag into my chest. “Got it.”

“You okay?” I scanned her, hands hovering because the urge to check her for injuries with my mouth was wildly inappropriate.

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t you dare triage me in public. Or anything else in public,” she said in a hot whisper.

Then she winced. I caught it. “Shoulder.”

“Grazed,” she said, jaw set. “He had a knife. My favorite jacket’s annoyed.”

Sirens grew teeth. We needed to vanish before our night turned into a paperwork musical.

I grabbed her hand. “This way.”

We ducked into the arcade, weaving through teenagers and a dinosaur that swallowed quarters. I yanked open the curtain on a photo booth and pulled her inside. It was either that or the janitor’s closet, and we had rules about closets now.

She stumbled against me, breath hot, heartbeat punching my chest. The booth was small enough to make breathing a team sport. Outside, security thundered past.

“Are we really hiding in a—”

The booth flashed, and the first photo printed: Zoe, wide-eyed, me looking like a man who’d just found oxygen after a month underwater.

Her laugh was soft and breathless. “We’re a cliché.”

“Not yet,” I said, the word a scrape because her palm had found my ribs and my brain had left the chat. “You got the courier?”

“Yep.” She lifted the napkin—the one the lawyer had passed. A sloppy pine tree doodled on it, same as the woman’s palm. Beneath: SWITCHBACK. TIMBERLINE. TONIGHT.

My stomach did a slow, certain drop. Timberline was a ridge on the way up Frasier Mountain, a turn locals used to bypass snow closures. Switchback was a specific one. I knew exactly which.

Her eyes flicked to mine, reading the tell. “You recognize it.”

I nodded.

The booth flashed again. Second photo: both of us looking at each other like a cliff we were about to jump.

“Of course this drags us up your mountain,” she said, wry and a little resigned. “Do I have to wear flannel?”

“You don’t have to wear anything,” I said, and her mouth did that curve that hit me like a match to dry tinder.

The third flash went off. This time she leaned in, foreheads almost touching, laughter dying into a silence full of wrong timing and perfect right now.

“Forest,” she whispered, like my name was a secret she wanted to keep and couldn’t.

“Zoe,” I said, and then I kissed her—quick, fierce, the kind of kiss that isn’t a promise, it’s a decision.

The fourth photo caught it. We both froze at the whir of paper. Outside, the sirens receded.

She pulled back, eyes bright and pupils blown. “That was—”

“Research,” I said.

“Uh-huh,” she said, voice low. “We should do more… fieldwork.”

“Later,” I said, because if we didn’t stop now, we weren’t leaving the booth, and the city didn’t need a strip of evidence with my career choices on it.

She slid the photo strip into her pocket, cheeks pink, professional mask snapping back into place with admirable speed. “Okay. We log the bag, hand the unlogged phone with a bow, and pretend we don’t know what sauerkraut means.”

“And then,” I said, “we drive to my world.”

She arched a brow. “And in your world, do vending machines require compliments?”

“In my world,” I said, pushing the curtain aside, scanning the pier before stepping out, “you don’t walk into an ambush without a partner. And you never run downhill on loose gravel unless you know where you’ll stop.”

She followed, shoulder brushing mine. “Translate, Mountain Man.”

I looked down at her, felt the click of pieces landing. “It means I’ve got you.”

She blew out a breath, softer than the surf. “Fine. But if I see a bear, I’m coming back to the city.”

“Noted.” I squeezed her hand once—quick, hidden. “Let’s go meet a switchback.”