Page 2 of Mountain Storm (Mountain Shadows #1)

CARYN

Hollow Ridge, Alaska

Present Day

Perfect.

Exactly the kind of place that keeps secrets buried deep.

I kill the engine, tug my hat lower over my ears, and glance into the rearview mirror. My reflection looks flushed, a little wild-eyed. Makes sense. Only someone a little unhinged would chase the ghost of a man up into the Chugach Mountains.

But I've planned this from the moment I heard that first whispered story.

Not reckless impulse or adrenaline-seeking foolishness—calculated risk, sharp instinct, and a need that runs deeper than logic.

I've researched and traced every breadcrumb to this frozen corner of the world.

I didn't come all this way to be turned back by a little snow—or the ghost of a man I've never stopped wondering about.

This isn't about chasing shadows. It's about proving a theory.

About confronting what's haunted the back of my mind for years.

I'm not here for an article. Not really.

I'm here because I need to confirm if the man I saw once—briefly, in the fog and pine of a memory that refuses to fade—is real.

And if he is… why he never came back for me.

The rumor started as a whispered story in a bush pilot's bar back in Anchorage.

A feral ex-military sniper who lives completely off-grid above a peak called Solace Ridge, with a reputation for disappearing intruders and hunting his own food year-round.

No one knows his name. No one's seen him in years.

But the locals speak of him with the kind of respect and wariness usually reserved for apex predators.

A few beers, a carefully played flirtation, and a hefty tip slid across a warped bar top later, and I had what passed for coordinates.

Rough ones. Half-remembered numbers scribbled on a cocktail napkin, a landmark no outsider would know, and a warning said with deadpan seriousness: "If you see bones in the snow, turn around. That means he's already seen you."

That was enough to ensure that I wouldn't turn back. I don't like being told what to do... or what not to do. Those who know me know that giving me an order or an ultimatum will usually ensure I do precisely what it is you don't want me to do. I'm dependable that way.

I need to see for myself if the man who pulled me out of that ravine all those years ago—the one who never said a word but vanished into the trees like a ghost—is the same one everyone here is too afraid to name.

I step inside the gas station. The bell above the door jingles, and an older woman behind the counter looks up, her expression tightening slightly as she takes me in.

The place smells of burnt cedar and old oil.

A space heater hums near the door, and next to it, a rack of faded postcards and dusty snow globes.

A mounted lynx, frozen in time, stares down at me from a high shelf, its glassy eyes full of silent judgment.

The woman has a hard-lined face of someone who's seen too many winters and tolerated too many fools.

Deep crow's feet etch her wind-chapped skin, and she's pulled her gray hair back into a thick braid resting over one shoulder.

She wears a flannel shirt layered under a stained quilted vest, and her gnarled fingers drum lightly on the counter, callused and steady.

There's no softness to her expression, but no cruelty either—just wary curiosity, the kind that doesn't like surprises walking in through her door.

"You lost, sweetheart?"

I smile, friendly but not too open. "Not lost. Just headed up toward Solace Ridge."

Her brow lifts. "That so? You a photographer? Hiker?"

"Journalist," I reply easily. "Doing a piece on Alaskan isolationists. Looking for stories."

"You looking to write your own obituary?" mutters a man seated by the window, his boots up on a low wooden bench. "Ain't no good reason for a woman to be going up there."

"Maybe I enjoy writing about dangerous men," I reply, brushing snow from my jacket.

"You like getting eaten alive, more like," he mutters then cackles at his own unintended double entendre.

The woman narrows her eyes slightly, clearly debating whether to humor me or call in someone with a badge.

But after a long beat, she sighs. "We get people through here now and then, asking about the ridge.

Most of them either turn around or don't come back.

I suggest you be the first kind, or you'll end up becoming one of the others.

You sure you want to be one of those who never return? "

I laugh and then realize she isn't joking. "I'm not most people," I answer.

She studies me a moment longer, then gestures toward the back. "Well, you're going to need a snowmobile. Nothing with four tires is going to get you up the side of the mountain. Donny out back will help you. We got one snowmobile left with enough fuel for a day run."

"Great. Can I rent it for the week?" I ask as I start toward the door.

"Hold up," she says, her voice low and rough like gravel under snow.

"I want to be sure you understand what kind of place you're heading into.

We got a storm warning last night, and it's not just wind and flakes, it's the kind that swallows cabins whole and takes names off gravestones.

If you get stranded up there, no one's coming.

Not today. Maybe not for days. Maybe not until spring pries your frozen fingers off whatever you were clinging to. "

"Understood. I'll take my chances. I've got a bit of research to do so I'm going to rent a room and I'll wait until the weather gets cooperative."

She nods her head. "Have you got a sat phone? Emergency beacon?"

"Yes. And yes." Untruths, but necessary ones.

She nods slowly. She doesn't believe me but seems to decide that it's on me and none of her concern. "You crash or go missing, I'm telling the troopers you lied to me."

"Fair enough."

The man by the window snorts again, the sound more of a wet rasp than amusement.

His eyes, pale and too still, flick over me with the kind of interest that isn't flattering.

"Pretty girl like you, storm like this, you'll end up in a snowbank or worse.

" He grins, slow and showing crooked, yellowed teeth, the creases around his mouth deepening.

"There are a lot of things living out there. Not all of 'em are human."

His words linger in the air. Something in the way he says it makes the room feel colder, the shadows seem deeper. I don't flinch, but I file his face away under the kind of man who enjoys scaring women just to see what they'll do.

I give him a smile we both know is as fake as a two-dollar bill. "Then it's a good thing I have a penchant for monsters and things that go bump in the night."

He grunts and goes back to his coffee. The woman just mutters something about fools and their own damn funerals as she rings up the rental.

I head back to my rented room and begin to lay out my search grid.

Two days later, I'm cutting along the edge of a narrow trail just shy of the tree line, the snowmobile engine humming beneath me like a living thing.

The cold burns in my lungs, and the wind slices through my jacket, but the thrill of the chase has kicked in hard, racing through my veins like a shot of pure adrenaline.

Every mile I ride takes me farther from civilization and deeper into a silence so thick it presses against my ears, muffling even my own breath.

It's the kind of quiet that makes you feel watched—judged by the land itself.

The trail twists, narrowing between walls of snowdrift piled high and untouched.

No footprints. No tire tracks. No evidence that any living thing has passed this way in weeks, maybe months.

The air sharpens, colder than before, biting at the exposed strip of skin between glove and sleeve.

The trees grow sparser, as if even nature hesitates to climb higher.

It's as if the world forgot this place ever existed… and the mountain liked it that way. Or maybe—maybe this place never wanted to be remembered. Maybe it's meant to stay lost, like a grave with no name and no marker, waiting to swallow the next fool who doesn't take the hint.

The trees thin. The sky opens. The mountains rear up around me, stark and merciless.

I slow the snowmobile down and take in the vastness of it—how small I am in comparison.

And yet something inside me stretches to meet it.

I've never felt more alive than in places like this, where one wrong step can mean death.

Where the air tastes like ice and defiance.

The path narrows, hemmed in by ancient spruce and skeletal birch. My breath fogs the visor of the helmet Donny insisted I wear. Every twist in the trail feels like a dare. I pause once to snap a few shots—the treetops haloed in ice, the powder-blasted ridge beyond, stark and cruel.

No signs of life. No trails. Just jagged cliffs and the endless white expanse of Solace Ridge towering ahead.

I should turn around. The wind is picking up. The light is dying.

But something pulls at me. A whisper in the dark part of my soul that likes danger more than it should. I gun the throttle again and press forward.

The world disappears in a sudden roar of wind and white.

The snowmobile lurches unexpectedly, jolting forward as if possessed. I barely have time to curse before the track loses its grip, skidding sideways over a concealed ridge of ice beneath the powdery snow.

My body is dashed against the handlebars, the impact forcing the air from my lungs. Suddenly, the world spins in a chaotic blur of white and shadow. Cold engulfs me, biting through my clothes with a sharp intensity.

Pain explodes through my body, a searing reminder of the violent collision. A crunching metallic scream echoes in my ears, the sound of the snowmobile twisting under the stress of the crash.

Then—darkness.