Page 6 of Forest Reed (Seals on Fraiser Mountain #8)

Forest

Morning on the mountain didn’t ask permission; it just arrived—cold air, pine through the cracked window, light slicing across the floorboards like fresh-cut boards.

Zoe had stolen one of my flannels in the night and was currently hogging about ninety percent of the blanket, sprawled on her stomach with her hair a riot on my pillow.

I made coffee strong just how I liked it. She padded in, bare legs, my shirt, my undoing, and squinted at the percolator like it was a suspect.

“That coffee could strip paint,” she said, voice sleep-rough. “Is this an interrogation technique?”

“Welcome to altitude,” I said, handing her a mug. “I can add milk.”

She took a cautious sip. Blinked. “My ancestors just sat up in their graves.”

“Thanks,” I said, deadpan.

She gave me a look over the rim. “You’re doing great.”

I smiled before I could stop it. The smile died when I glanced out the window and saw it: a thin stack of three stones on the stump by the trail—didn’t belong. Cairn. I hadn’t built it.

“Stay here,” I said, too fast.

Zoe heard the change. She set the mug down and reached for the sidearm she’d parked on the table like silverware. “What is it?”

“Marker.” I jerked my chin to the yard. “Someone came through.”

We were dressed and outside in a minute, the cold chewing our ears. The cairn was fresh—damp earth, clean cuts on the top stone. Two paces beyond, a sapling wore a tiny etched pine tree near its base. The same mark from the pier napkin and the woman’s palm.

“Your mountain has a fan club,” Zoe muttered, crouching. She brushed away duff with a gloved hand, exposing a half-buried new orange survey flag. She looked up at me. “They’re mapping something.”

“Routes,” I said. “Or drop points.”

She straightened, eyes on the tree line. “And they left you a doorbell.”

I did a slow pan of the yard. No broken brush near the cabin, no boot scuffs on the porch. Whoever had come in knew how to move. That bothered me.

Back inside, we spread the map from the switchback across my table.

The red Xs ran along a string of decommissioned logging spurs, skirting a gorge we called Devil’s Stair, then cut east toward Timberline.

Someone had drawn a rough pine over a switchback I knew too well.

If you wanted to carry heavy products without hitting a checkpoint, that was a path.

Zoe braced one hand on the table, the other cradling her mug. “If Harris is part of this, he’s small—a mouthpiece, not a brain.”

“Courier at the pier took orders,” I agreed. “The woman with the stroller enforced them.”

“And the guy who looked like a lawyer must have been a courier coordinator,” she said. “We need names to match roles.”

I tapped a cluster of Xs. “Trail camera here. If they’re smart, two more downrange. Once we trip one, they’ll either run or come see who we are.”

Her mouth ticked. “So we trip it.”

“You really do speak my language.”

She shouldered me. “I also speak ‘breakfast.’ If you feed me jerky again, I’m filing a complaint.”

I made eggs, biscuits and gravy, and watched her demolish all three with visible suspicion and then reluctant appreciation.

We argued about socks—she wanted her city socks, I handed her mountain ones—and I lost when she called my emergency winter stash “flannel overload.” She tucked those ridiculous heart-shaped sunglasses from the pier into her pocket “for morale,” and I pretended not to love her for it.

We rolled out just before noon: packs light, radios, med kit, blades, and the quiet hum that meant we were synced. The forest took us in. The sun came out and laid gold across the firs. Somewhere up-canyon, a jay heckled us in fluent profanity.

“Rule one,” I said, leading us onto the old spur. “Don’t run downhill on loose gravel unless you know where you’ll stop.”

“Translated,” she chuckled, stepping where I stepped, “don’t die, stupid. You’ve told me that rule before,

“Exactly.”

“Rule two,” she asked, breath even, eyes everywhere.

“Keep your center over your feet and your brain a step ahead. Rule three—”

She cut in. “If you say ‘hydrate,’ Mountain Man, I will stage a coup.”

“—talk to me,” I finished. “Even if it feels small. Look at me, sweetheart.” She turned her head. “Any little thing that doesn’t belong in the mountains.”

Her shoulder bumped mine. “Copy.”

We covered a mile quickly, then slowed down.

The first trail camera was hanging on a fir at knee height, camouflaged but pointed in the wrong direction—toward the access road, not the spur.

The second was higher up in a hemlock, aimed across the slope.

The third, I found with my nose: a faint sour battery smell and disturbed bark at chest level, pointed directly at the switchback with the pine etch.

“They knew someone would come this way,” Zoe murmured softly. She instinctively grabbed her phone, looked at the “No Service” message, and let out a sigh. “Your mountain hates my plan to text a strongly worded message.”

“Later.” I stepped into frame on purpose and lifted my hand in a friendly, exaggerated wave. “Let’s meet our neighbor.”

We didn’t wait long. A small quadcopter whined up the canyon, as subtle as a fly.

It hovered twenty yards out, watching. I turned my head like I was just a guy in a hoodie (thanks, city), admiring the trees.

The drone drifted left, and that’s when I saw the shimmer of nylon fishing line at ankle height, stretching from a stump to a rock.

“Zoe,” I said.

“Tripwire,” she breathed the word I was already thinking.

We knew what to do by instinct—she held position, covered arcs; I traced the line with my eyes to a tin can half-buried in duff. Not explosive. A rattle can—early warning. Someone had mixed old-school with new toys.

“On your left,” Zoe warned.

The forest folded and gave up a man in a gray jacket and a face you’d forget in a crowd by design. He walked like he belonged. Wrong. He didn’t look us over; he looked past us, cataloging exits.

“Afternoon,” he said pleasantly, hand tucked in his pocket. His eyes flicked at the drone, then to the pine-carved tree. “You folks lost?”

“Just admiring your craftsmanship,” Zoe said, tipping her chin at the camera in the hemlock. “Landscape photography’s hard.”

He smiled. “City people love our views.”

“You’re not from around here,” I said.

His smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Neither are most bears anymore. Reintroduced.” He tilted his head. “Word of advice: trails can turn on you if you don’t know them.”

“And sometimes they do it on purpose,” Zoe replied sweetly.

He lifted his hands a fraction—not surrender, not threat. “Turn around. Enjoy the scenic route back. Forget this spur exists.”

“Can’t,” I said, because his jacket hem flashed the corner of a pine stamp when the wind nudged it, and I was done pretending. “It’s our favorite.”

Something satisfied moved behind his eyes. He dropped the smile.

“Okay,” he said.

The drone zipped straight up like a startled bird. A second later, the forest spit echo-soft pops—suppressed fire—off to our right. The gray-jacket man didn’t draw; he stepped backward and vanished into trees that suddenly had too many shadows.

“Down!” I shoved Zoe as the first round stitched bark above where her head had been. We hit the ground and rolled into the depression below the switchback berm. Dirt fanned my tongue with the taste of old needles and iron.

“Two shooters, right flank, ten and one o’clock,” she called, calm even as adrenaline lit her fuse. Her voice steadied me more than any cover. “I see dark beanies and rental-store vests. Not locals.”

“Copy,” I said, counting the rhythm of the shots and hearing the distance shifts. I popped smoke, left to make them think we’d break that way, and threw a rock to the right so it cracked branches and drew their fire.

More pops. A twig near my ear disintegrated. Zoe returned two clean shots, not to hit—THE angles were bad—but to make them respect the idea of being hit. They paused.

I heard something hitting metal. The faintest tick of metal on metal floated up from downslope. Hood latch. Son of a— They were trying to take our exit off the board.

“We’re going to the culvert,” I said. “Southeast. Thirty yards.”

“Copy.”

I reached for her. She was already there, palm slapping mine once—here—then our bodies snapped in sync. We moved—not fast, not slow, the speed that got you home. Smoke curled with the wind; the shooters adjusted; the drone tried to lead them like a conductor counting time. I didn’t let it.

We slid under ferns tall as kids and into the culvert mouth—concrete dark and cool, a wet wind breathing out of it. A trickle of water licked my boots.

Behind us, a new sound: tires on gravel. A van nose crept into view at the low road, white and familiar in a way that made the back of my neck crawl. The same blocky bumper from the pier. They’d made good time.

“Forest,” Zoe breathed. “Guest list keeps growing.”

“Birthday party,” I said, because humor was a life preserver, and she caught it with a look that said Don’t you dare sink.

Something clinked overhead—metal against concrete. I looked up and saw the fishing line again, this time strung across the culvert's mouth just inside the shadow. The can wasn’t making a rattle. This one had a small clay lump tied to it.

I didn’t think. I tackled Zoe deeper into the tunnel, hard enough to drive air out of both of us.

The charge popped behind us—small, concussive, a mean little slap that turned air into fists and dirt into teeth. The world lurched; grit sprayed our backs. The opening half-choked with fallen duff and a caved lip of concrete. Not sealed. Tighter.

“You good?” I asked, hands on her shoulders, my mouth too close to her ear to be professional.

She coughed, blinked dust out of her lashes, and nodded. “My jacket is deeply offended, again.”

“Your jacket will file a complaint later.” I shifted, put my body between her and the light as another suppressed round pecked the edge. “We go through. It opens in a ravine after fifty yards.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“Then we create a new exit.”

She cut me a sideways look, eyes bright and maddeningly alive. “That is an actual plan?”

“It’s a mountain plan.”

“Copy,” she said, and squeezed my wrist once—quick, electric—before she crawled ahead. I took rear, listening to the van’s engine idle, the drone’s faint buzz, the soft crumble of dirt as someone slid into our smoke.

Halfway in, another sound threaded the culvert, wrong enough to raise every hair on my arms: a wet click and a soft whine like a battery charging.

I went still. My night vision painted the world grainy. Up ahead, faint blue blink, low to the water.

“Zoe,” I said, very quiet. “Stop.”

She froze. “Trap?”

“Sensor.” I slid past her on my side, careful, keeping my weight distributed like I was moving across broken ice. The device was new, cheap, effective—a pressure pad with a battery taped to it, wired to… I squinted. A little steel can further in, nestled in leaves.

“Nonlethal?” she asked.

“Maybe.” I eased my knife in, drew the wire up and out without tension. My chest didn’t unclench until the thing lay in my palm, cold and disconnected. “Or not.”

We were three yards past it when a beam of light jittered at the culvert mouth. A silhouette crouched in the opening, head cocked. He spoke into a radio.

“—Switchback two. They’re in the pipe.”

A second voice answered, clearer now that the blast had dug out my ears. Calm. Confident. The kind of voice that didn’t worry about pushback.

“Copy. Herd them. They come out at the ravine, bring the net.”

Zoe’s eyes met mine in the dark, understanding passing between us like a current.

“Net?” she mouthed.

I nodded once. “They want us alive.”

She smiled without humor. “Good. I have questions.”

“We’re going to make them regret the Q&A.” I shifted the pack, counted backward from three in my head, and felt her move with me before I reached one.

“On my mark,” I whispered. “We run.”