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Small talk drained him faster than any physical drill Black Heart ever threw at him, and he’d hit his limit an hour ago. Even though he wanted to be on this mountain expedition more than anything he’d wanted in a long time, he was starting to think that ranger work suited him far better.
At least state park trails and trees for company didn’t make him feel like his skin was too tight for his body, like one wrong brush would make it split.
He studied the guys around the fire, the flickering glow turning their expressions into masks. None of them were bad guys. He didn’t even dislike them. He just didn’t fit in with them.
This was what he’d asked for when he applied for a spot at the Black Heart Tactical Training Facility. He’d hoped the training might bridge the gap between him and the military career he could never have. With his reading limitations, mountain warfare training was as close as he could get.
The military had taken one look at his file and turned him away. He hadn’t scored high enough on the ASVAB to qualify—something nobody in his family would understand even if he tried to explain it.
Reading difficulties didn’t show up on an X-ray. It didn’t earn sympathy the way a bad knee or a heart murmur might have. It just meant a recruiter who looked at him with something close to pity before pointing him to the door.
Every Rhodes son before him had worn a uniform. His father still had his hanging in a garment bag in the closet, pressed and untouched for thirty years, as if he expected to need it again someday. Wyatt had grown up assuming he’d add his own to that closet eventually. Instead he made up a story about a bad shoulder so his family didn’t think less of him.
Black Heart didn’t care what his ASVAB score said. They never even asked for it.
Talk around the fire turned to women. At that, Wyatt had had enough.
“I’ll take first watch.” He stood before anyone could argue.
Nobody did. If anything, a couple of them looked relieved.
He walked deeper into the shadows and soaked in the noises of the mountain, the voices dropping to a low hum behind him. He wandered for a little while, finding peace in the night sounds and the scent of pine sap flooding his nose. He found a flat rock to sit on and let the quiet settle back into his bones where it belonged. After a few minutes, he reached down and plucked a pebble off the ground. He tested the weight in his hand—good for skipping across water. Good for just holding too.
He slipped it into his pocket so he could examine it closer in the bright light, something he’d done since his early days as a ranger. He wanted to know everything about the mountains, and now he had a piece of this one too.
After sitting there for two minutes, he knew he was happier here, alone, than with all the acceptance in the world from those five guys back at the fire.
The longer he sat there, the more he questioned things. In high school, he had a few good friends and he always had a pretty girlfriend willing to read his homework assignments to him after he told them how much he loved listening to their voices.
His parents and his brothers were supportive of his decision to become a forest ranger and never rubbed in his face that he wasn’t serving his country the way they did.
But it hadn’t been enough for him. Now he was at the top of his class, right where he wanted to be. During the next thirty days on this mountain, he would complete the tasks the program set for him and become certified in more than the things the state of Wyoming required of him to be a ranger.
A voice in the back of his head kept intruding whenever things turned bad at the Black Heart. It whispered that if this didn’t work out, he could return to his old job anytime.
A small animal rustled in the low scrubby bushes to his right, and he cast out his hearing for more. Somewhere down the ridge a bard owl high in a trees gave a low hoot. The wind soughed through the treetops, and he turned his face into it, breathing in the fresh scent.
He loved it up here. Had missed it.
Maybe he did belong here more than he belonged anywhere else. Not with the guys around the fire, not in a family full of uniforms he’d never wear, but here—rock under him, wind moving through trees older than any of Black Heart’s rules. The mountain didn’t care what his file said or how he struggled to read a page.
He pressed his palms into the cold rock and tipped his head to gaze at the dark sky. At least out here the only thing judging him was himself, and he’d lived with that for the past thirty years.
The wind stilled and the animal in the brush stopped moving. Without those noises, he tuned in to another, coming from the ridge below. A low burble of water.
He’d picked up the music of a mountain stream playing nearby and pushed to his feet before he fully made up his mind to follow it.
He found his footing on the way down the slope, carefully placing his boots on the uneven earth and feeling for solid ground. He skirted a jagged outcrop that sliced out of the earth. When loose gravel shifted under his heel, he caught himself against a tree trunk before he skidded down the ridge on his back.
Twenty more yards and the trees thinned enough for moonlight to break through in patches. Silver light pooled on the ground in uneven splashes. Then he saw it—a stream, narrow and glittering. It cut a silvery ribbon through the landscape and reflected just enough moonlight to allow Wyatt to mark its path.
He approached slowly, aware that wildlife would be drawn to water as much as he was. When no deer bounded away, crashing through the woods to escape him, he neared the edge.
He turned his head and saw the trees opening up to a small clearing.
Then he froze in his tracks.
A tent stood a few yards back from the water, staked into a patch of level ground. Even in the moonlight, he could see it was a dull red.
