The easy warmth from their hike to the waterfall lingered into the next morning, a soft buffer against the hard realities facing Whispering Pines. Cole, dressed as Cal in faded jeans and a thermal shirt, found Maya in the main office, staring at a spreadsheet with a frown that couldn’t quite extinguish the light in her eyes.
The air between them was different now—less a truce born of necessity and more a comfortable, unspoken alliance. He’d learned yesterday that her stern exterior was armor for a deeply feeling heart, and he found himself wanting to protect that heart more than his family’s bottom line.
“Coffee?” he asked, holding up a steaming mug.
She looked up, and a genuine smile softened her face. “You’re a lifesaver, Cal. I was about two minutes away from using these expense reports as kindling.”
“Careful,” he said, leaning against the doorframe. “Our kindling supply is getting low enough as it is.”
He was only half-joking. With so few guests, they were running on a skeleton crew and a shoestring budget. Every cancelled booking was another nail in the coffin Jed Stone seemed so eager to build.
Before Maya could reply, the office door creaked open further and Ben Carter shuffled in, his weathered face set in grim lines. He held a crumpled baseball cap in his hands, turning it over and over.
“Morning, Ben,” Maya said, her smile tightening into a look of concern. “Everything okay?”
Ben grunted, avoiding her gaze and fixing his on Cole. “Been thinkin’ about all this trouble. The power line, the bear nonsense. It ain’t random.”
“We know,” Cole said, his tone gentle. “We’re trying to figure out who’s behind it.”
“Well,” Ben said, finally looking at Maya, “you remember Rick Miller? The fella you had to let go last spring?”
Maya’s posture straightened. “Of course. He was stealing liquor from the bar storeroom.”
“That’s the one,” Ben nodded. “Heard he was in town the other day, down at the Rusty Anchor, runnin’ his mouth. Said this place had it comin’. Said you’d get what you deserved for firin’ him.”
A current of energy passed through the room. It was the first tangible lead they’d had, the first name attached to the faceless malice that had been plaguing them.
“Rick…” Maya breathed, testing the name. “He was angry, but I never thought he was capable of something this… calculated.”
“People get pushed,” Ben said with a shrug. “He lost his job, his girl left him. Heard he’s been in a bad way. A man like that gets bitter. Bitter enough to cut a power line? Maybe.”
Cole exchanged a look with Maya. It was thin, but it was something. “Where does he live?”
“Don’t know if he lives anywhere permanent,” Ben said. “But he drinks at the Anchor. If you’re lookin’ for him, that’s where I’d start.”
An hour later, Cole was behind the wheel of his beat-up truck, with Maya in the passenger seat. The thirty-minute drive to the nearest town, Northwood, stretched before them, a ribbon of asphalt cutting through dense evergreen forest.
The quiet intimacy of the truck’s cab felt both comfortable and charged.
“Do you really think Rick could do this?” Maya asked, her gaze fixed on the passing trees. “The sabotages seem too… sophisticated for a drunk with a grudge.”
“Maybe,” Cole said, keeping his eyes on the road. “But a grudge is a powerful motivator. He knows the lodge’s layout, its weaknesses. He knows the propane tank layout, the location of the main power junction. He’s a better suspect than a ghost.”
She was quiet for a moment. “I hated firing him. But he left me no choice. He was a good worker, when he was sober.”
She sighed, a puff of weary frustration. “This whole thing feels personal. Like someone is trying to rip the soul out of this place.”
“We’ll stop them,” Cole said, the words feeling more like a vow than a prediction. He glanced at her, at the determined set of her jaw, and felt a surge of protectiveness so fierce it almost stole his breath.
This mission had started as an impersonal assessment of a failing asset. Now, sitting beside her, it felt like the most personal fight of his life.
The lie of his identity was a physical weight in his chest.
Cal the handyman could offer her his strength and support. Cole Sterling, the man whose family could end all this with the stroke of a pen, was a ghost she didn’t even know existed.
The Rusty Anchor was exactly what it sounded like: a dark, dive bar smelling of stale beer and regret. The bartender, a burly man with a faded tattoo of an anchor on his forearm, confirmed Rick Miller was a regular.
“Ain’t seen him today, though,” he said, wiping the counter with a damp rag. “He got into it with some folks last night. Kicked him out. Told him not to come back ’til he’d dried out.”
He jerked his thumb toward the back. “Lives in the motel behind here, room seven. But I wouldn’t go knockin’. He was in a foul mood.”
They found room seven at the end of a row of peeling, faded blue doors. The curtains were drawn. Cole knocked firmly.
There was a muffled groan from inside, then the sound of shuffling feet. The door cracked open, and a man with bloodshot eyes and a three-day-old beard peered out.
The stench of cheap whiskey rolled out in a wave.
“What do you want?” Rick Miller slurred.
“Rick, it’s Maya Jimenez,” Maya said, her voice steady and professional despite the pathetic sight before them. “We need to talk to you.”
Rick’s eyes focused on her, and a flicker of recognition, followed by resentment, hardened his face. “Got nothin’ to say to you.”
He tried to shut the door, but Cole put his hand flat against it, holding it open with gentle but firm pressure. “We just have a few questions about some trouble up at the lodge.”
Fear warred with the drunken anger in Rick’s eyes. He wasn’t a monster; he was just a broken man.
He stammered out a series of denials, his alibi a messy but ultimately convincing patchwork of bar tabs and witness accounts from his drinking buddies. He had been drowning his sorrows at the Anchor the night the power was cut.
As for the bear sighting, he’d been on a bender so profound he could barely remember his own name. He was capable of self-destruction, but not the coordinated campaign of sabotage they were facing.
They walked away from the motel, the lead dissolving into a pathetic dead end. The drive back to the lodge was quieter, the air thick with disappointment.
“Well, that was a bust,” Maya said, finally breaking the silence as they pulled up to the main building. Her shoulders slumped.
“I almost wish it had been him. At least then we’d have an answer.”
“We’ll find another one,” Cole said, turning off the engine.
As they got out of the truck, another vehicle pulled in behind them—Jed Stone’s immaculate new SUV. He emerged with a charismatic smile, dressed in expensive-looking hiking gear.
“Maya! Cal! Just the people I was looking for,” he said, his voice booming with false sincerity. “I was just checking in, see how you were holding up.”
Maya managed a tired smile. “Thanks, Jed. It’s been a long day.”
They explained their fruitless trip to town, the dead-end lead with Rick Miller. Jed listened intently, his brow furrowed in a pantomime of deep concern.
“Rick Miller? Nah,” he said, shaking his head with an air of authority. “That guy can’t tie his own shoes, let alone orchestrate something like this. You’re thinking too small.”
“What do you mean?” Maya asked, leaning in, desperate for any new angle.
“I mean, look at the big picture,” Jed said, gesturing vaguely toward the mountains.
“You’ve got a prime piece of real estate here. Who benefits if Whispering Pines fails? Think about your competition. What about that new luxury resort over in Granite Creek? They’ve been trying to poach your corporate clients for years. This smells like corporate espionage to me. A few strategic mishaps, your reputation takes a hit, and suddenly their bookings are way up.”
He presented the theory with such confidence that it sounded completely plausible. Cole watched Maya’s expression shift from dejection to renewed focus.
Jed was good, he had to give him that. He was a master of misdirection, a wolf cloaked in the fleece of a concerned neighbor.
Cole felt a deep, instinctual dislike for the man, a gut feeling that this charming guide was a venomous snake.
“You really think they’d go that far?” Maya asked.
“In this business? Absolutely,” Jed said with a cynical laugh. “Just a thought. Keep your eyes open. Anyway, let me know if you need anything. Anything at all.”
He gave Maya’s arm a familiar squeeze and nodded at Cole before getting back in his SUV and driving off, leaving the scent of expensive cologne and deceit in his wake.
“He has a point,” Maya said, turning to Cole. “I’ve been so focused on who might hate us, I haven’t thought about who stands to gain.”
Cole wanted to tell her Jed was playing her, that this was just another trick to send them chasing shadows. But what could he say? ‘I have a bad feeling about him’?
He had no proof, and to Maya, Jed was a trusted friend of the community. Voicing his baseless suspicions would only make him look jealous or paranoid.
“It’s a possibility,” Cole said, his voice carefully neutral. “Something to look into.”
They walked into the great room of the main lodge, the silence of the empty building a heavy weight. A young staff member, Sarah, was kneeling by the grand stone hearth, a bundle of firewood next to her.
“Thought I’d light a fire,” she said cheerfully. “Warm the place up a bit. It feels so gloomy in here.”
She struck a match and held it to the kindling. The flame caught, but as it licked at the larger logs stacked on the grate, a horrendous smell began to fill the room.
It wasn’t the comforting scent of pine and woodsmoke; it was a putrid, chemical stench, acrid and nauseating, like burning plastic mixed with sulfur.
Sarah jumped back, coughing. “What is that?”
Cole moved quickly, grabbing the fire extinguisher from the wall and dousing the sputtering, stinking flames with a cloud of white foam. Maya was right behind him, her face a mask of disbelief and fury.
He knelt and picked up an unburnt log from the woodpile. A dark, oily substance had been soaked into the wood, almost invisible against the bark.
They stood in the smoky, foul-smelling room, the evidence of the saboteur’s latest move right at their feet. It was a petty, vicious act, designed not just to cause damage but to defile the very heart of the lodge.
While they had been out chasing a ghost, the real enemy had been here, poisoning their hearth, turning a symbol of warmth and welcome into a source of filth. The dead end with Rick, Jed’s smooth misdirection—it had all been a waste of precious time.
And the saboteur, Cole realized with a cold dread, was just getting started.