Junior for the Mountain Man

An Amazon US Top 55 Bestseller!

My sister's gorgeous best friend and her little boy are in serious trouble.
Now, I can't rest until I know the two of them are safe.
I'm not afraid to show those scums they never should have set foot on these mountains.
My mountains.

Combat may have left me broken...
But Piper's surprising return woke my passion for life again.

Now, men with a death wish want to cause her and her little boy harm.
Not on my d*mn watch.

They picked the wrong family to mess with....
And I'll make them wish they never had.

Screams echoed through the smoke-filled air. Babies cried, children were frantically running away, trying to find their parents. I’d broken many rules by being there, but I couldn’t let innocents die.

His name meant perceptiveness or ingenuity, and Firash was both of those things. At only four years old, his eyes were always wide, he was always picking up on everything around him. He was one of the few children who wasn’t afraid of me when we strolled into their village. He walked right up to me, no fear in his eyes. Firash seemed to fear nothing, even in his war-torn country where there was always someone or something to be scared of.

I ushered other kids to safety, helped mothers carrying infants to find shelter from the explosion, but there was no sign of Firash and his family.

I ran to their home, and what I found would haunt my nightmares for the rest of my life.

My alarm went off, waking me from the brutal nightmare. If it was just a nightmare instead of a memory I had to relive night after night, that would have been a relief. I awoke with a start, struggling for air and covered in sweat.

It wasn’t even that warm in my house. It was late fall, the temperatures in Liberty, Utah, were dropping by the day and a snowstorm was on the horizon. But I was drenched in sweat from a fucking dream.

It was the same old story night after night. At least this time, I didn’t have to relive the true nightmare that followed—the moment I found their bodies.

I’d kicked my blanket off at some point, and I always slept buck naked. I hated sleeping in clothing; it felt too constricting. Since I lived alone, I had that privilege. It also kept the sweating from the night terrors to a minimum.

I sat up in bed, then climbed to my feet—rather, my foot. I’d gotten pretty damn good at getting around with only one leg. I didn’t have to often, but no point putting on the prosthetic just to walk to the shower then take it back off again. Grumbling, I hopped to the shower and turned on the cold water.

I closed my eyes and leaned against the wall as the water washed over me, waking me up and reminding me that I was no longer in Afghanistan. I was home.

Even if Liberty didn’t feel like home to me anymore, it was the only home I had. Nothing in Liberty had changed since my time in the Marines, but I had.

I’d seen things that no one in our idyllic town could even imagine. I’d witnessed horrors Hollywood wouldn’t or couldn’t show you. How could I return to ‘normal’ after that?

Nothing had felt right after that day. Not even my family home, the very house I grew up in, felt right. I’d inherited the house after our parents decided to downsize to an RV to see the country, but sometimes I wished I’d let Leah have it.

Being there, remembering my stupid, perfect youth before the service stripped away my naivety, was its own unique form of torture. It reminded me of better, happier days—of a time when I had hope for the future.

Now I merely went through the motions and kept myself busy to keep the nightmares at bay for as long as I could.