Chapter 1 - The Stranger Who Knew My FatherThe first thing the woman outside my tent said was my dead father’s name.
Lightning split the Colorado sky behind her, bleaching Rocky Mountain National Park white for half a second.
Rain streamed from her brown hair and down the oversized green sleeping bag crushed against her chest.
She wasn’t looking at me.
She was staring at the battered brass lantern hanging from my tent pole.
“Was that Daniel Whitmore’s?”
My hand froze on the zipper.
My father had been dead eleven years.
I had never seen this woman.
“What did you say?”
Her face changed immediately.
Fear.
Not because of the storm.
Because she had revealed something too soon.
“I thought I recognized it.”
“From where?”
She glanced toward the lantern again.
“There are initials.”
“There aren’t any visible from where you’re standing.”
Thunder rolled through the valley.
For several seconds neither of us moved.
Then I noticed her lips turning blue.
“Can I stay here tonight?” she whispered.
Every rescue instinct I had told me to deal with the immediate danger before investigating the mystery.
I opened the tent.
“Get inside.”
Her name was Claire Mercer.
Thirty years old.
Historical-record restoration technician at a Denver library.
She said the storm had snapped her tent poles.
I gave her a dry flannel shirt and hot tea.
She sat opposite me, clutching the sleeping bag as though I might take it from her.
When she finally unrolled it, I noticed two letters stitched onto the bottom.
NM.
“Yours?”
“My brother’s.”
“Where is he?”
Her eyes dropped.
“He died eighteen months ago.”
“Sorry.”
“Cancer.”
She ran her fingertips over the patch.
“Noah carried this thing everywhere. Even when he got sick, he kept saying he’d hike again.”
The name struck something in my memory.
Noah Mercer.
Mountain rescue.
Four years earlier.
Late October.
Hypothermic hiker trapped below a ledge after a sudden freeze.
I remembered carrying a young man down part of the trail after he stopped being able to walk.
I stared at Claire.
“Your brother was Noah Mercer.”
Her eyes lifted.
“You remember him.”
“I rescued him.”
“Yes.”
A chill moved through me that had nothing to do with the weather.
“How long have you known who I am?”
Claire looked away.
“Almost a year.”
I stopped breathing for a second.
She reached into the side pocket of her backpack but changed her mind before removing whatever was inside.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For finding you this way.”
“You didn’t find me by accident.”
“No.”
Outside, rain hammered the nylon roof.
“Then why are you here?”
Her eyes filled.
“Because before Noah died, he told me he owed your family something.”
“What?”
“He wouldn’t tell me everything.”
I stared at her.
“That makes no sense.”
“I know.”
She tightened both hands around the sleeping bag.
“He said if I ever found Daniel Whitmore’s son, I had to make sure you knew what happened the night your father died.”
The storm suddenly seemed very far away.
My father had supposedly died alone from a heart attack.
Claire looked directly at me.
May you like
Then said:
“Noah was there.”
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