Page 1 of Craved By the Mountain Man

Chapter 1

Hannah

There are easier ways to discover your boyfriend has stolen your identity.

A declined credit card, perhaps. A concerned phone call from your bank. A tasteful letter beginning with Dear Ms. Vance, we regret to inform you that the man you have been kissing for four months is a lying piece of shit.

I would have appreciated the letter.

Instead, I get three men looking for money I never borrowed, an ex-boyfriend who has disappeared so completely he may have joined a monastery, and six hours of mountain roads with a phone that refuses to stop buzzing in the cupholder.

It vibrates again.

I grip the steering wheel tighter. “No.”

The phone keeps going.

“I said no.”

Threatening strangers have terrible respect for conversational boundaries.

Rain taps against the windshield as I follow the narrow road deeper into the Oregon mountains. Pine trees rise on both sides, black and endless beneath a sky that has already surrendered to night. My headlights catch wet asphalt, tree trunks, and absolutely no signs of civilization.

Which is the point.

Civilization knows where I live. Civilization has my credit score. Civilization currently wants sixty-eight thousand dollars I do not have.

I prefer trees.

The phone stops buzzing for a few seconds, then starts again. I look at the screen despite every survival instinct telling me not to.

UNKNOWN NUMBER.

My stomach tightens.

The last message is still waiting beneath it.

Running doesn’t change what you owe.

“I don’t owe you anything,” I mutter.

The trees remain unsympathetic.

I should have thrown the phone away two hours ago.

I almost did at a gas station outside Bend. I stood beside a trash can with a stale blueberry muffin in one hand and my phone in the other, seriously considering which one had caused more harm to my life.

The muffin won by texture.

The phone survived because Kaden might call.

My brother has not answered in thirty-eight hours. I know because I have called him thirteen times.

Fourteen if we count the one where I panicked, hung up before voicemail, then immediately called again like the second attempt might find him in a more convenient section of whatever classified hellscape currently has him unreachable.

Straight to voicemail every time.

There are stretches when he cannot call. I know that. Kaden has spent most of my adult life appearing and disappearing according to rules I am not important enough for the government to explain.