Page 11 of Love for Thea

Grizzly’s finger tightened on his sidearm. He didn’t have a suppressor. If he fired, he’d ring the dinner bell for every contractor in the valley. He needed a diversion that sounded natural.

Around him, his hand found a fist-sized piece of shale. Memories of how sound bounced off the canyon walls here came to mind. Instead of throwing it at them, he aimed for a flat rock face fifty yards to their left. With a low, sidearm flick, the shale was launched through the air.

CRACK.

The sound echoed, amplified by the limestone.

The two contractors spun, their rifles snapping up. Grizzly heard one yell, “Movement! One o’clock!”

They broke into a run, heading away from the Ribs. Grizzly moved the moment their backs were turned, his boots finding the silent moss. He reached the fissure in three long, silent strides.

“Thea,” he whispered, his voice a low vibration. “It’s Benji. Don’t scream.”

A sharp intake of breath came from the shadows. Thea jerked back, her wide eyes struggling to process the massive silhouette looming over her. The adrenaline, cold, and sheer shock completely short-circuited her usually anxious brain.

“Benji?” she squeaked, the word a frantic whisper. Her gaze darted over his incredibly broad chest and thick arms. “Good lord, did your muscles grow muscles? You’re the size of a boulder.”

She instantly clamped an ice-cold hand over her own mouth, looking entirely mortified by what had just slipped out. Then her shoulders dropped, and her eyes softened with a mixture of disbelief, relief, and profound trust. “You came.”

Ben’s eyes softened as he looked at her. Fourteen years had passed since that day when a gangly, awkward Thea had nervously handed him a trembling baby robin. “Fix it, Benji.”

Back then, she was fragile and uncertain. Now, she stood tall and slender, her body toned and muscular from years tracking animals and surviving in the wilderness. Yet beneath that ruggedness, Ben could still see the flicker of the anxious girl he’d known, the one who always carried the weight of the world in her eyes. Somehow, despite it all, there was an undeniable sexiness that took him by surprise.

A ghost of a smirk touched Ben’s lips despite the danger. “Don’t move,” he commanded softly, his expression hardening as his eyes scanned the ridgeline for the drone he could hear humming above. “They’re circling back. I don’t have a suppressor, so I can’t take them out yet.”

He reached in and squeezed her hand. She was ice-cold. He realized her lack of a mental filter was likely compounded by the early stages of hypothermia. He did the only thing he could to help her hide. He shrugged off his heavy canvas work jacket and shoved it into the crevice.

“Put this on,” he whispered. “It’ll mask your heat signature better than that thin windbreaker. Keep your head down.”

Thea’s eyes locked on his, still wide with a mix of fear and that nervous awe. “But the temperature’s fifty-two degrees and dropping. You’ll get cold.”

“I’ll stay warm by moving.” He didn’t tell her that he was now a bright orange target for their thermal scopes. He unslung the small rucksack the team had packed for him and shoved it into the crevice next to her. “Eat one of those bars. Stay hydrated. I’m the bait now.”

“Ben, the creek⁠—”

“I know. The water is venting. Listen for the owl. Three times. Then move toward the Stone Ribs’ upper ridge. Stay high and stay in the rocks.”

He disappeared into the mist before she could argue, a man in a t-shirt and a tactical vest, ready to lead the wolves on a chase they wouldn’t survive.

As he moved, Grizzly cast a quick glance toward the shadows of a limestone shelf thirty yards away. He couldn’t see him, but he knew Reef was already in position, his Glock leveled at the path. They had run this play a hundred times before. Reef would hold the line and deliver the owl signal the second the coast was clear, leaving Grizzly free to draw the contractors deep into the timber.

FIVE

THEA

The smell of Ben was everywhere.

It was a jarring contrast to the acrid, chemical tang of the mountain air. His canvas jacket was heavy, still radiating a fading warmth that felt like a lifeline against the hypothermia nipping at her fingers. It smelled of woodsmoke, gun oil, and that specific, clean scent of the high-country wind she had associated with him since she was thirteen years old. It was a familiar, grounding dataset.

She pressed her back against the limestone, her breath hitching. Listen for the owl. Three times.

Minutes stretched like hours. In the silence, her mind did what it always did when overwhelmed: it cataloged data.

Data point: The stone is vibrating.

It wasn’t a tremor she could see, but a low-frequency hum she could feel in her molars. It was the sound of a pressurized system reaching its limit. If the drilling team, the “mercenaries” as Ben called them, had hit the brittle-ductile transition zone of the magma chamber, they weren’t just mining. They were lancing a boil.

A twig snapped in the distance.