Page 22 of Guard Bear (Return To Fate Mountain #5)

Chapter

Twenty

Joy flexed her fingers beneath the gauze wrapping, testing the limits of her healing flesh.

The burns that would have crippled a human for weeks were already knitting themselves back together.

Sharp itches crawled across her palms like insects burrowing under skin.

She sat at her parents' kitchen table, the familiar oak surface scarred from decades of family meals.

Nothing about this moment felt familiar.

The phantom smell of burnt honey clung to her hair despite two showers. Each breath brought it back. Sweetness turned acrid. Life transformed to ash. Her mountain lion paced beneath her skin, muscles coiling and releasing in endless loops of grief and rage.

Her laptop screen glowed with another dead end. Ryan Holbrook. Pacific Northwest Investments. She'd been searching for an hour, finding nothing but clean corporate websites and vague mission statements. The man who'd studied her booth like a predator remained a ghost in the digital world.

Maria moved quietly around the kitchen, the soft clink of pottery punctuating the silence. A cup of tea appeared at Joy's elbow. Her mother's hand rested briefly on her shoulder, the warmth seeping through the flannel.

"You should rest."

"Can't." Joy's voice came out rough, scraped raw by smoke and screaming. "He knew, Mom. Holbrook knew what was coming."

The door burst open. Andre filled the doorway, still carrying the electric energy of the raid. His clothes bore dust from the warehouse, his jaw tight with barely contained fury. But when his eyes found hers, something in him shifted.

Joy pushed herself up from the table, moving toward him. She needed to touch him, to reassure herself he was whole and safe. Andre met her halfway, his arms coming around her.

"What did you find?" she asked, stepping back.

Andre pulled out his phone with his free hand, thumb swiping to a photo. "This shipping label. Look at the reference number."

Joy leaned closer, squinting at the screen. "CMDev-MW-3847. What does that mean?"

"We don't know yet. Tyler's running searches on CMDev, but nothing obvious." Frustration bled through his professional tone. "Could be anything. Company abbreviation, project code, someone's initials."

Joy stared at the letters. CMDev. The combination meant nothing, but something nagged at her. Like a word sitting just beyond memory's reach. "CMD..."

Then it hit her. The community center meeting. Rollo's weathered hands spreading out old newspaper clippings. The grainy photo of Samuel Prescott with his rolled blueprints.

"Oh my god." She sat back at her computer. "Andre, at the community meeting. Remember when Rollo showed those articles about the developer from the seventies?"

"Samuel Prescott." Andre moved behind her chair, close enough that she felt his body heat. "The one who blamed demons for ruining his resort."

"His business was called Crown Mountain Development." Joy's fingers flew across the keys, muscle memory overriding the sting of healing burns. "What if CMD is something similar? Crown Mountain something?"

"That was fifty years ago, Joy."

"But someone's been using these shell companies. Someone who knows this mountain's history." She tried variations. Crown Mountain. CMD. Different combinations yielding different results. Pages of companies with CMD in their names filled the screen.

"Try Cascade," Andre suggested, his breath warm against her ear. "Cascade Mountain Development."

Joy typed. The search results shifted. And there it was.

"Cascade Mountain Development LLC." Her voice barely rose above a whisper. "Registered 2019."

She clicked through to the corporate filing. The page loaded with agonizing slowness. When the details appeared, her breath caught.

"CEO: Jason Mitchell."

"Mitchell?" Andre frowned. "Not Prescott?"

Another dead end. Joy slumped back in her chair, exhaustion pulling at her bones. Jason Mitchell meant nothing. Another stranger in a web of strangers. She minimized the window and returned to her Ryan Holbrook research, pulling up his LinkedIn profile she'd already scoured three times.

"Wait." Something she'd skimmed past before suddenly registered. "Look at his employment history."

Andre leaned closer, his chest brushing her shoulder. She pointed to the screen.

"Current position: Director of Acquisitions, Pacific Northwest Investments. But before that..." Her finger traced the timeline. "Business Development, CM Development. 2017 to 2019."

"CM Development?" Andre's voice sharpened. "Cascade Mountain?"

Joy's heart hammered against her ribs. She opened a new tab, typing quickly. "Ryan Holbrook, Jason Mitchell."

The search returned several results. She clicked on an alumni newsletter from University of Washington.

"'Business School Graduates Launch Joint Venture.'" She read the caption under a photo of two young men in suits, all confident smiles and firm handshakes. "'Ryan Holbrook and Jason Mitchell, class of 2015, celebrate the opening of their consulting firm.'"

"They know each other." Andre's hand found her shoulder, grounding her. "College friends."

"More than that. Business partners." Joy's mind raced, connecting dots that had seemed random before. "But who is Jason Mitchell?"

She refined her search. "Jason Mitchell" + "Prescott." Most results were noise, unrelated Mitchells and Prescotts. But halfway down the second page, a society blog post caught her eye.

"'Prescott Industries Annual Gala.'" The date was twelve years old. Joy clicked through to a page of photos from some long-ago charity event. Women in gowns, men in tuxedos, champagne flutes and forced smiles.

She almost missed it. A group photo near the bottom, the kind taken to document attendance rather than celebrate. The caption made her blood run cold.

"'Samuel Prescott (center) with son Thomas and grandson Jason Mitchell-Prescott.'"

"Mitchell-Prescott." Andre read over her shoulder. "He's using his mother's maiden name."

Joy stared at the young man in the photo. Younger, smoother, but unmistakably the same sharp features.

"Jason Mitchell is Jason Prescott. Samuel's grandson." Her voice came out steady despite the rage building in her chest. "They've been planning revenge for fifty years."

Joy stared at the screen where Jason Mitchell-Prescott's young face smiled back at her. The same entitled confidence his grandfather had worn in those old newspaper photos. The same certainty that the mountain belonged to him.

Her mountain lion rose inside her chest, no longer pacing but perfectly still. The stillness of a predator who had identified its prey.

"Now we hunt," Joy said.