Abducted by the Mountain Man

by Ambrielle Kirk

  The Arrow Lake, Minnesota region was blanketed with an abundance of beauty and attractions like fishing, boating, and hiking. I couldn't blame the people who flocked to this area in droves. It was part of the reason I chose the mountains to dwell in. The main reason I sought seclusion in the woods was the fact that they would never whisper my secrets through the privacy of the trees protecting and towering over me. Whenever I did go into town for groceries and supplies, the locals often asked me if I was comfortable living out in the woods with all the wild animals—bears, wolves, coyotes, and everything in between. The truth was I'd rather take my chances with the animals. I didn't bother them. They didn't bother me.

  Today wasn't the best day for hiking or sight-seeing, but I could tell that the guides had been out with tourists. There were fresh tracks on the ground, and just like all the other times, someone always left some trash behind. I scooped up a crushed up plastic bottle and threw it in a metal trash can.

  I glanced up at the sky as the clouds rolled in. They were ominous, threatening and dark. I searched the atmosphere. Thunder bellowed and boomed through the air and shook the ground beneath my feet. There was an enormous storm brewing, and the bottom of the sky was getting ready to fall out and trample the earth below with thick, heavy rains. If I were going to make it to my underground storage unit and back in time before Mother Nature let it rip, then I'd have to hurry.

  Right as I crossed one of the asphalt trails marked for tourists, I spotted something brightly colored sitting on a park bench. Against better judgment, I walked up to the bench and picked up the item. It looked like some kind of sack or purse—something that someone would wrap around their waist. Tourists always left things behind, so this didn't surprise me. Whoever this belonged to, they were now long gone. There wasn't a chance in hell that anyone was still out here with the storm coming. Anyone lingering around despite the bad weather that was coming had to be a damn fool.

  I chuckled under my breath. “Yeah, like me.”

  Curious by nature, I inspected the small sack. It was pink with a black rose patch sewed into the front of it. On the back, there was another sewed on patch of the letter A. Despite the tiny size—it was heavy. I wasn’t surprised by that either. It also smelled like it belonged to a woman, and just about every man knew that women liked to carry a shitload of things with them. The sack was probably filled with makeup and beauty items. I could already smell the sweet scent of perfume on the fabric.

  I wanted to open it and determine whether there was any identification, but I restrained myself. It wasn’t my business. I was better off just dropping the bag off at one of the lost and found receptacles on the way back. There was no use letting it sit out on the bench to get wet in the rain. I was a bad man, but I wasn’t that evil.

  I stuffed the small sack into a pocket in the inside panel of my jacket and began to jog toward my secret storage unit. I’d figured out all the shortcuts over the years, and I got there in no time.

  I knelt down into the grass just as big pellets of rain began to fall, pulled back the bushes and thick vines used to hide the door, and unlocked the padlock. I folded back the wooden door and leaned it against the hill. Feeling the urge to take a piss, I rose from the ground and walked off to relieve myself on the other side of the hill.

  When I bought the land to build my cottage on, I hadn't realized that the property had so much history. Heck, all I wanted was a secluded place to call home and Arrow Lake fit the bill. I'd found the old abandoned cellar unit purely by accident one morning when I stumbled on some old crumbling bricks. After closer inspection, I realized that a home had burnt down but that the cellar was still intact. Now I used the cellar to keep my shit. Stuff I'd bought and collected over the years that I couldn't stand to get rid of. But I knew that if I wanted to put my fucking past entirely behind me that I'd have to get rid of all of it soon.

  Another cackling batch of thunder fired through my ears and in the next split second, thick rain pelted my skin and soaked me.

  I zipped up my pants and walked back around the hill. To my disbelief, a grown ass woman dashed out of the cellar and raced across the field.

  The fuck?

  My gaze traveled from the pair of legs pumping in the distance back to my cellar in shock.

  Had a woman just rushed out of my cellar? What the fuck was she doing there? Did she steal something?

  I raced over to my cellar and peered down inside. From what I could see, everything was still intact. I looked up again at the back of the woman running away. The heavy downpour blinded me and all I could make out was her legs and long brown or black hair.

  After slamming the door shut and securing the padlock, I ran out into the open field. My heart thumped erratically with fresh anxiety. Heat flushed my face through the coolness of the rain. As I took off in the direction that I saw her flee in, suspicion and paranoia rolled through my belly like the angry clouds churning in the sky above me.

  This wasn’t good. This wasn’t good at all. If someone had sent her to find me…

  I had left that world behind a long time ago. I was retired now, and my former clients knew that I was out of commission from now until eternity.

  I stood under a tree and watched her for a second or two. I was trying to take shelter from the pounding rain, but I also wanted to observe her and determine what her next move might be. She appeared to be flustered and out of her element.

  At that moment, a jagged, hot, white lightning strike scorched the ground and I heard the girl scream and jump a mile in the air. She took off again toward the mountains, toward the trail that would lead her straight to my cottage. This action made my suspicion widen even further. If she was somebody sent by one of my clients—or worse—one of my enemies, I was going to be infuriated.

  I did my best to follow her, but it was impossible to keep up in this storm. The wind was so fierce that it was pushing the rain into horizontal strands of hell that were pelting me left and right. My sight range was impaired by how strongly the wind was blowing the rain around and before long, she was gone.

  I stumbled on something. A rock? Bricks? Something…and landed hard on my ass. I grabbed my right elbow which had taken the brunt of the fall and cursed. While lifting myself up off the muddy ground, my fingers touched something. A flashlight. I’d fallen on my ass because of a flashlight. I lifted it up to my face and realized that it was my flashlight.

  Frowning, I looked out into the storm again. If that woman had taken my flashlight, what else had she taken?

  Beyond frustrated for losing her, I ran in the direction of my house, thinking that if my luck worked out and the stars aligned, I would find her along the way. If it was this difficult for me to trek through the storm, then I couldn’t imagine she was having an easy time of it. She looked slender and petite. The storm would beat her.

  When I was close enough to the cottage to see it in front of me, I found the woman again. She was deep in a muddy trench that had seen better days. It looked like it was on the brink of sinking and collapsing right on top of her.

  She screamed and I took off running toward her. And then she was gone.

  Scared for her life, I jumped into the trench and reached for her. The water came at us strong and it took all my effort to pull her up out of the mud.

  After realizing that she wasn’t breathing, I laid her out on the grass and began performing the life-saving measures I’d learned decades earlier but had never had to use. While pumping her chest, I prayed anxiously that she’d wake up. Even though she’d been snooping in my cellar, I didn’t want her dead. Less than a minute later, she took a breath of air and coughed up water.

  Hair was matted to her face and I could hardly see it. Her eyes were a hypnotizing hazel. She mumbled something incoherent and then passed out again. After confirming that she was still breathing by placing my face against her lips, I scooped her up and she was limp as a noodle. I carried her like a football as her arms and legs flopped along in her comatose state.
I had to rescue her because I knew she'd die out there alone, but more importantly, I was determined to find out who she was and what she wanted with me and my things.

  I took her to my cottage. When I got her inside, I immediately lit a fire in the fireplace and laid her down on the rug in front of it. My goal was to thaw and dry her. She was muddy and had a few scrapes and scratches on her arms and legs, but nothing life-threatening. I bandaged her up and peeled off her drenched clothing. I was surprised that she remained asleep throughout the entire process. She must have gotten extra tired trying to run from me. She was severely knocked out, but I checked her pulse and her breathing was fine. She was alive. Now all I had to do was sit and wait for her to emerge from the realms of unconsciousness and awaken to tell me why the hell she was going through my shit.

  As I watched her chest rise and fall, she looked like a beautiful doll. Her lips were plump and perfect. She had long, dark eyelashes that swept the top of her cheeks. Her body was slender and athletic, and her wavy brown hair was shining under the glow of the embers in the fireplace despite still being damp. Her skin was lightly bronzed to perfection. She was innocent and attractive, a combination I found dangerous and tempting.

  Chapter Three

  Alexis

  The first thing I noticed when I woke up was the fact that one…I was naked, and two…my head was splitting in half with the most enormously massive headache that I’d ever experienced in my entire life.

  My memories started flooding back to me. The heavy rains. The lightning. The guns. Me drowning. I knew something bad had happened to me. The fact that I was alive told me that a tour guide or someone must have found me just in time.

  I tried to speak, or scream, or yell…but the only thing that emerged from the depths of my throat was a faint and fizzled out crusty croak. I glanced around me. It appeared that I was in some kind of cabin or cottage or something. My vision was still blurry as I tried to gauge my surroundings with weary apprehension.

  I knew I was out in the middle of nowhere in this small town, but why did this hospital room look like the interior of a home? Or was I even in a hospital?

  As I blinked my eyes, the world around me began to get clearer and more focused. I saw a blazing fire in a fireplace that was crackling and popping as the logs hissed and burned. It seemed like a cozy environment, but I was frightened because I didn't recognize anything.

  So much for keeping a low profile. I was always paranoid about something like this happening. I only had myself to blame for my own damn foolishness. I should have left my belt bag where it was and stayed with the group like the tour guide had warned.

  The last thing I had remembered before waking up was the horrendous, bone tingling lightning. It had been so scary, trying to duck and dodge the jagged stripes pounding from the sky. Whatever this place was, I was thankful to have found a little shelter that could help keep me at least somewhat protected from the golf ball sized hail that was pouring out of the sky by the bucket loads. Even now I could hear the rain pounding against the rooftop.

  As I glanced around and more of the world became centered, I gasped. A man was standing over me. He was wearing an angry expression. I could tell this by the way his brow furrowed. He was big and toned. Muscles covered every square inch of his body.

  I sat up quickly and instinctively drew my knees up to conceal my naked body, which, I still hadn’t figured out why it was unclothed.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  I jumped at the sound of his gruff voice. He spoke with a sexy Russian type of accent.

  “I…um…” I fumbled.

  “Who are you?” His voice roared through the room. There was a vein that pulsed and bulged in his neck.

  “I’m…Alexis,” I squeaked. “Are you a…doctor?”

  “No.”

  “It was you,” I mumbled, as a stream of images hit me like déjà vu. “You saved me.”

  “Alexis who?” he asked again.

  He was profoundly intimidating, but he was so gorgeous that part of my psyche told me not to be afraid of him. I wasn’t sure what part of my brain I would listen to. I felt as if I just answered his questions and remained calm that he would let me live…and maybe even let me go.

  “Alexis Mancini.” Why had I just told this stranger my real name? I didn’t understand why he seemed so suspicious of me.

  “Mancini?” His gaze narrowed.

  I nodded, diverting my gaze to the floor as he studied my face almost as if he was examining me.

  “Italian?” he asked, leaning in closer. He smelled good too, like spicy cologne mixed with the outside fresh air.

  “Yes. My dad was.”

  “Where did you come from?”

  “Um…” I stumbled over my words again. “I’m from…”

  I wasn’t supposed to say anything. I wasn’t supposed to give strangers my real name. If someone found out who I really was, I’d have to start all over again in another city just like I’d been forced to do several times. I also feared the worse. I could end up dead like my parents.

  I swallowed as a painful lump rose in my throat.

  “Where?” He raised his voice again. “Who sent you?”

  “Nobody!” I blurted out and shook my head. Tears stung my eyes, but I looked up at the ceiling and took a deep breath so that he wouldn’t notice. “Nobody sent me. Look, why are you questioning me? Where am I?”

  “You tell me where you came from and I’ll tell you where you are,” the man said.

  “New York,” I mumbled.

  It was only a partial truth. What I really was, was a nomad. New York might have been my home base, but could I really call it home? No, not really. I had been born and raised in Virginia, right outside of the D.C. area. After my parents got killed and I began flying all over the world though, things changed. I didn’t really have a place to plant roots.

  “New York?” He narrowed his eyes again, but his tone was softer now. “What are you doing here in Arrow Lake?”

  His voice was accusatory as if he didn't understand how the tourism world worked.

  I sighed with relief. I was still in Arrow Lake. So, there was that, at least. I wasn’t off in some cabin in the woods in God knows where.

  “I won a trip,” I said with a gulp.

  “Trip?” His voice was smooth and sexy, even though he was towering over me with a domineering presence.

  “Do you think I could get some…clothes?” I asked sheepishly. I felt the heat of humiliation rush to my cheeks.

  “No.”

  His eyes were as blue as the sky and pierced my soul in such a way that I trembled. His hair was a rich mahogany, the same color as his beard which looked like he hadn’t shaved in a week or so. He had a firm jaw and a hardened look that could scare anyone into submission.

  My attention roamed to the cloth bandage he’d wrapped around my left ankle and heel. I must have hurt it when I had fallen as a sting of pain still lingered. I must have appeared to be like a hurt bunny because he quickly changed his demeanor even if it was only for a fleetingly brief instant.

  “Here,” he said and threw a plaid blanket at me. “Cover yourself with this.”

  “Thank you,” I said gratefully and draped the blanket over my body but not before I noticed how he was studying my body with affection and almost a lustful and hungry desire.

  I couldn’t help it. I was naked, and the thought of sex rushed to the front of my mind. I couldn’t understand why I’d been thinking about sex so much lately. I quickly shook it out. I didn’t know this guy. He seemed dangerous, but that was a turn on too in my warped and confused state of mind.

  “Now…tell me,” he stated again in the same gruff voice as he had before. “Who are you?”

  “I already told you! My name is Alexis and I’m from New York. I won a trip through my work to come here for an all-inclusive paid stay at a nearby bed-n-breakfast.”

  “What bed-n-breakfast?” He scoffed as if he didn’t believe such a thing could
exist. I both hated and loved the way his eyes searched mine. It was like he was trying to undress me again from the inside out.

  “Um…the one nearby. It’s called Lakewood Inn…I believe.” I scratched my head. I was stressed out and trying to remember everything that had happened since landing here last night.

  “Lakewood? You’re far away from your hotel,” he said.

  “You know where the hotel is?”

  He said nothing, but by the look he returned, I could tell that he knew exactly which hotel I was talking about. Thank God.

  “Can you get me back there?” I asked eagerly.

  “There’s a storm.”

  “After the storm? Can you…?”

  “You said you won a trip from work,” he said, ignoring my question. “Who do you work for?”

  “Jet Stream Airlines,” I stated quickly. “Please, I need to go back. I’ll miss everything. I’ll miss my flight out of here.”

  “You’re not going anywhere,” he stated flatly.

  Neither one of us spoke after that statement. The only sound between us was the fire crackling. It was romantic, scary and sexual at the same time. I didn't understand why I felt so drawn to him. Was I his prisoner? I didn't have answers. He had been the one probing all the questions, but I had a few of my own for him that I needed to unearth.

  Chapter Four

  Erik

  I knew the difference between people telling the truth and those who were lying. Unfortunately for this Alexis girl, I could tell that she was hiding something. I didn’t exactly know what that was that she was concealing, but I was bound and determined to find out.

  It was already wired into my DNA to be suspicious of people, basically everyone I ever came in contact with. I was just going to have to keep her here with me as my hostage until I squeezed the truth out of her. Not to mention, the longer I kept her here, naked…the more eye candy she became to me.