Hero (Alpha Mountain 1)

She just nodded and left.

“You camped around here?” I made my voice and face cheerful as I faced the man who I’d watched kill another in cold blood. With my brother present.

“Uh huh.”

That was it. Creepy as hell.

I’d been trying to tell myself I’d made a mistake. That this couldn’t be Tully, but it clearly was. And I was definitely fucked.

I glanced at his belt and pockets, checking for visible weapons. I didn’t see any, but he had a small backpack over his shoulders, and there were bulges in both side pockets that definitely could be a gun or knife. When he saw me looking, an evil smile quirked his lips.

I’d been playing dumb, but the jig was up. My number one priority needed to be separating myself from the family, so they didn’t get harmed.

“Are you here for me?” I asked with as much calm as I could muster.

His smile grew larger. “You know who I am?”

I gave a nod. “I think so.”

He leaned against a large boulder like we were just two hikers having a casual conversation. “I knew your brother, Indigo. But probably, you know that.”

I forced myself to nod. Glancing back toward the lake at the sweet family then in the direction we’d come.

“You have two choices,” he offered. “Put up a fight leaving with me, and I kill that family. Or you keep them alive by leaving all nice like.”

He grinned, knowing the choices sucked.

“So you can, what? Kill me and make it look like a mountain lion?”

He pretended to think for a moment. “Not a bad idea.”

Oh Jesus. He wasn’t only here to kill me. He’d have done it by now. And killed the family too. The guy had to be the kind who raped and pillaged while he was at it. But I should’ve guessed that from watching that video. I presumed he’d been the one torturing the victim before the recording started, and he hadn’t hesitated to shoot him.

What was his plan? He’d come to Montana, to this mountainside for me.

I was panicking on the inside. Totally losing my shit. But I had to stay focused. I turned the way I’d led, hoping his focus truly was on me. And only me. Which meant I needed to either lead him off this mountain, or I needed to kill him before he killed me.

The guy was at my flank, not walking by my side. He remained a step behind, so he could watch my moves. About five minutes in, I looked over my shoulder. “Why the mountaintop visit?”

Yeah, it was ballsy to ask, but I needed to know. If he’d wanted me dead, he’d have shot me in the back. Stabbed me. Whacked me on the head with a tree limb.

I swallowed, freaking at all those possibilities. So far, he’d kept his word about the family. And I didn’t have a hole in my back.

“You’re the one who treks into the wilderness for a living,” he replied. “I only followed.”

It made sense that he could’ve beaten me up here. The six-day excursion involved two nights on Wild Onion Butte to the west, so all he’d had to do was come straight to Glacier Lake to ensure he headed me off before I came back down off the mountain.

My stomach churned, but I forced myself to put one foot in front of the other. I normally did my best thinking while hiking. Hopefully, something would occur to me.

“Why?” The question was so loaded that I wasn’t sure what his answer would be.

Why did he kill the Afghan man? Why was Buck there? Why was he here now?

“I came to find out why you were searching my name on your computer.”

I tripped over a root and recovered. Ice cold pricked every inch of my skin. How would he have even known that? That had been… three days ago. Had he been monitoring me?

Of course he had. I had never heard the name Cameron Tully until the video. Hadn’t entered it into my computer until after I’d seen it. Which meant he had some kind of trace or something on people searching his name. I’d come up, and my last name was familiar.

That’s when an idea occurred to me.

“So I tell you, and then you kill me,” I said. I stopped and turned to face him. To see the answer on his face because I couldn’t believe anything out of his mouth. “The perfect place, right?”

Adrenaline dumped into my system, and I felt my scalp tingle.

He grinned. He looked more like an insurance salesman from Cleveland than a murderer.

“Tell me what I want to know, and I’ll give you a choice. A sad trip off a cliff. A slip into a rushing river. Or a stumble over a tree root where you hit the back of your head on a rock.”