The mountain was quiet after dark. The logging trucks had stopped rumbling hours ago, and the night wrapped itself around the mill like a thick, breathing thing. Only the hum of the fluorescent lights inside the office kept her company.
She sat at the worn wooden desk, her fingers flying over the keyboard as she finished the last of the numbers she was supposed to file. Her first week on the job, and already she’d been handed a mountain of work. Everyone had warned her about the boss. How he didn’t like excuses. How he wasn’t exactly human.
They called him the Bear.
She’d laughed the first time she heard it. But after one meeting with him, she stopped laughing.
She felt him before she heard him.
The air shifted, colder and hotter all at once. Her hands froze over the keyboard. The qui
