Claw heart mountain, p.1
Claw Heart Mountain, page 1
CLAW HEART MOUNTAIN
DAVID OPPEGAARD
CONTENTS
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Part II
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Part III
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
More from CamCat Books
Chapter 1
More Spine-tingling Reads from CamCat Books
CamCat Books
CamCat Publishing, LLC
Brentwood, Tennessee 37027
camcatpublishing.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
© 2023 by David Oppegaard
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address CamCat Publishing, 101 Creekside Crossing Suite 280, Brentwood, TN 37027.
Hardcover ISBN 9780744307504
Paperback ISBN 9780744307511
Large-Print Paperback ISBN 9780744307528
eBook ISBN 9780744307535
Audiobook ISBN 9780744307559
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022941978
Cover and book design by Maryann Appel
5 3 1 2 4
For Joyce Jorgenson
PART I
WINDFALL
1
Claw Heart Mountain sat apart from everything, like a forgotten god hunkered in thought. It looked both eternal and lonely, without a friend in sight, surrounded by rolling hills dotted in sagebrush and cheatgrass, the summer sky a hazy blue above it. Nova watched the mountain through the SUV’s windshield, hypnotized by its looming presence. She was driving, while Mackenna sat in the front passenger seat, playing a game on her phone. The three dudes—Landon, Isaac, and Wyatt—were sprawled in the SUV’s two-tiered backseat. Landon and Wyatt were asleep, while Isaac listened to music on his earbuds.
The SUV was quiet except for the soft whir of the air-conditioning fans. Nova didn’t like listening to music or talk radio when she drove; she preferred to focus on driving, which she took seriously. The SUV, some kind of luxury Mercedes and probably super expensive, belonged to Mackenna’s wealthy family. At eighteen, Nova didn’t have much driving experience. She was worried she’d wreck the vehicle in a random accident, get everybody mad at her, and ruin her driving record before it had really started.
A petite five-two, Nova felt slightly ridiculous piloting such a massive beast of a vehicle, like a toad telling a dragon what to do. Still, they’d made it this far. They’d left Greenwood Village, a suburb in south Denver, later than planned, because predictably, Mackenna had shown up late. Mackenna had driven for the first two hours, through the traffic of Denver and into the mountains, before asking Nova to take over. Nova protested, hoping Landon, Mackenna’s boyfriend, or one of the other guys would take the wheel, but it turned out all three of the dudes had eaten marijuana gummies before they’d even left Greenwood Village. She should have known. This was their big end-of-summer road trip before returning to college, so naturally they’d be stoned from the get-go.
They’d all gone to the same prep academy in the Denver suburbs. Nova, a year younger than the others, had just enrolled as a freshman at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, where the others would be sophomores. Nova had told her parents she’d be spending the next three nights with Mackenna’s entire family at a cabin in Vail. This was partially true—they were going to stay at one of the Wolcotts’ cabins—but it was her family’s cabin on Claw Heart Mountain, across the state border in Wyoming, and Mackenna’s parents would not join them.
Nova didn’t like lying to her sweet, trusting parents (and this trip was by far the largest lie Nova had ever told them) but she knew they would have said no. It was the end of a long summer for Nova—a summer that had started with getting dumped by her boyfriend—and she’d grown tired of hanging around her house and her lame suburban neighborhood, going for walks and eating her dad’s overcooked barbecue. The memory of endless time on lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic still fresh (sometimes it felt like being stuck at home, bored, had been her entire teenage life), by mid-August Nova had finally reached the point where she feared she’d wither away and die if she didn’t go somewhere.
So, basically, Nova had lied to her parents to save her own life.
Kind of.
Nova glanced at Mackenna, who was still absorbed in her phone. Mackenna was a tall, tan, volleyball-smashing Nordic beauty with a mane of curly blond hair that cascaded down her shoulders. Nova, with her pale skin, brown pixie-cut hair, dark eyebrows, hazel eyes, stubby nose, and short chin, thought she resembled a woodland elf more than anything an average person would consider “sexy.” Which was fine with her. The attention Mackenna attracted, both in high school and the real world, from all kinds of people, seemed like a huge pain in the ass. Nova would much rather float under the sexiness radar, free to live her life without everyone drooling over her all the time.
Mackenna looked up from her phone. “What?”
Nova looked away and focused on the road. “Nothing.”
They weren’t far across the border into Wyoming, maybe thirty miles, but Claw Heart Mountain already seemed different from the mountains in Colorado. Its outline appeared indefinite, its edges somehow blurry. Which didn’t really make sense, because like the mountains in Colorado, Claw Heart must have been a part of the Rocky Mountains, which stretched all the way from New Mexico into Canada.
Mackenna leaned forward against her seat belt and peered through the windshield. She drummed her hands on the SUV’s dashboard.
“Huh. Claw Heart looks even more badass than I remember.”
“How long has it been since you’ve been here?”
Mackenna tilted her head, thinking. “Last summer, I guess.”
“You haven’t been to your own cabin for an entire year?”
“We used to come here more often, but that was before we got the second cabin in Vail. Now Dad mostly uses this one for hanging out with his business buddies and entertaining clients. Claw Heart Mountain’s good for hunting. Dad pays a neighbor to look after it for most of the year.”
“So why aren’t we just going to Vail?”
Mackenna wrinkled her nose. “It’s being fumigated. Mom saw a cockroach when she was there last weekend for her book-club retreat.”
“Vail cabin problems, huh?”
Mackenna sat back and sighed. “I know, right?”
Nova glanced in the rearview mirror. The dudes were all oblivious—eyes closed, ears stuffed with earbuds, minds still buzzed. Nova felt like a mom driving her kids to summer camp. For the seventh or eighth time that day, she wondered why she was even friends with these people. Or friends with Mackenna, anyway, since Nova hardly knew the dudes at all. Landon, with his good looks and blond, fake bedhead hair, was hot but sort of dumb, the kind of guy she’d normally ignore and be ignored by, the average Great White Bro. Isaac was smart but mean, a handsome Jewish kid with piercing brown eyes. Wyatt was probably the nicest of them, a genuinely sweet Black guy with a big smile. He’d moved to Colorado from Minneapolis three years earlier and didn’t seem worried about being popular, which, of course, made him super popular.
Nova swerved to avoid a dead critter in the road. It had exploded all over the place and was unrecognizable. Nova felt her heart go out to the creature, whatever it had been, and straightened in the driver’s seat, determined to avoid any further roadkill. The highway sloped sharply upward as they reached the base of the mountain and climbed the first length of a switchback highway, which appeared to zigzag all the way up the mountain.
Isaac removed his earbuds and leaned forward from the backseat. Nova could smell his cologne, a subtle musk that made her think of a dim coatroom at a cocktail party.
Isaac pointed at the windshield. “What the hell is that?”
Nova frowned and examined the road. It took her a moment to see what Isaac was pointing at because it was light blue, almost the same color as the sky. It was a brick-shaped armored van, lying upside down on the road, wheels in the air. The van’s small side windows had shattered, and its roof was crunched.
“Holy shit,”
Nova stopped twenty yards from the overturned van. She put the SUV in park, rolled down her window, and stuck her head out to look at the armored van and then up the mountain. A path of broken trees and torn earth went straight up, maybe a hundred yards, to the next switchback tract of highway. A haze of dirt hung in the air, still filtering down from above. Nova sat back and turned to Isaac and Mackenna. Landon and Wyatt were still sleeping in the backseat, oblivious.
“They fell,” Nova said.
Mackenna blinked. “What?”
“They fell down the mountain.”
“Whoa,” Isaac said, sitting back and rolling down his window. The smell of gasoline drifted into the SUV and Nova pulled to the side of the road in front of the overturned vehicle. She thought back to her excruciatingly dull driver’s ed classes and activated the SUV’s flashers. She wondered if they had a road kit. They could light some road flares and set up a warning lane. They needed to call 911. They had to check for survivors.
Nova put the SUV in park. She noticed her hands were trembling and rubbed them together, as if the conductive heat would offset the trembling. She unbuckled her seat belt and opened her door.
“What are you doing?” Mackenna asked.
“We have to help. We might need to give them first aid.”
“But this is so . . . dangerous. This road is super narrow. What if a semitruck comes along and smashes us too?”
“We’ll be fast.”
“We will?”
Nova nodded, feeling a surge of adrenaline. This was finally it. A real-life important adult-type situation. An adventure. Nova got out of the SUV and slid around on the loose rock that had been sprayed across the highway. She peered up the mountainside, checking to see if anything else was poised to come crashing down to the highway. She noticed a disturbance among the trees. Something enormous was moving through the shadows—something almost as tall as the trees themselves—but it appeared to be headed farther up the mountain, not down, and within a few seconds its shape disappeared into the trees altogether, leaving Nova wondering if she’d really seen anything at all.
Shaking off the unsettling vision, Nova ran up to the front of the overturned van. The side of the van read steel cage armored services. Gasoline was pooling around the van, its surface a hypnotic sheen of purple and blues. The smell was so strong it made her dizzy. Nova got down on her hands and knees and crawled closer, trying to get a better look inside the van. Both front seats were empty, as was the rest of the van’s cab. A steel partition wall, still intact, blocked off the rear cargo area of the van.
Nova scrambled to her feet and brushed the road grit from her pants. Isaac and Mackenna had exited the SUV along with Landon and Wyatt, who both looked dazed and confused after their edible nap. Nova went around to the back of the van. Its rear doors had buckled and one thick steel door was wedged open about two feet. Nova pulled on the door to increase the gap, but it wouldn’t budge. She shouted hello into the opening. No response. She turned on her cell phone’s LED flashlight and shined it into the darkness beyond.
2
Nova had expected to find the armored van’s driver hurt, maybe even dead, but no one was in the back. Instead, she found the shattered fragments of a wooden pallet and a large green-and-white cube wrapped in clear, industrial-strength packaging film. Through the film, Nova could make out stacks of paper bound into packets.
It was a cube of money.
So.
Much.
Money.
“Nova? What is it?”
When Mackenna approached, Nova instinctively shielded the van’s opening as best she could with her body, but Mackenna was taller and peered over the top of her head.
“Holy fuck.” Mackenna gasped and gripped Nova’s shoulders.
“It might be fake,” Nova said, half hoping this was true. This was too much. This was too much of a thing. She could already feel the energy caused by the sight of the money cube radiating from Mackenna’s fingertips clawing into her shoulders. It was a wild, hungry energy. A crazy energy.
“It’s not fake,” Mackenna said, starting to bop up and down. “I know cash when I see it. That’s real money, Nova. Fucking real money!”
Nova stepped through the two-foot gap between the van’s jammed door and its frame, shining her phone’s light in front of her. Jagged shards of wood, the smashed remains of the pallet, were covering the cargo hold like confetti. Nova leaned down and picked up a piece. It looked like a huge toothpick, or a knife. She looked at Mackenna.
“Where’d the driver go?”
Mackenna shrugged. “Maybe they walked away to get help.”
“I doubt it. Would you leave all this money behind?”
“Hell no.”
“I wouldn’t either. I’d wait for help to come along.”
Mackenna turned. The highway was still quiet behind them. “It seems so deserted out here,” Mackenna said, putting her hair back in a ponytail. “I still don’t see anybody coming in either direction. Maybe they didn’t want to wait for somebody to come along. Maybe they couldn’t wait.”
Nova heard Isaac’s voice coming from outside the van, asking what was going on. His head popped into the doorway a second later. He looked at Nova crouched with the wooden shard in her hand and the cube of money behind her.
“Is that . . .?”
Nova shrugged. She poked into the plastic with the shard, gouging a hole into its clear surface.
Maybe the money was fake. Maybe this was some kind of elaborate prank.
Once she’d made an opening in the packaging wrap, Nova pulled out a single bundle of cash, which was held together by a white paper band with yellow edging that had $10,000 printed on it. She ran her thumb against the edge of the bundle, examining the bills.
“Are those all hundred-dollar bills?” Isaac asked.
“They feel real,” Nova admitted, holding the bills up to her eye and focusing the light of her cell phone on them. “They look real.”
Mackenna slipped her hand through the cargo-hold doorway. She moved fast, like a snake striking its prey. She had those athletic fast-twitch skills.
“Here. Let me see.”
Nova looked at her friend, hesitating. Since Nova had first peeked into the back of the armored van, a cold, uneasy feeling had steadily been growing in her heart. Mackenna saw the hesitation in Nova’s eyes and darted forward, snatching the packet of money from Nova’s hand.
“Hey!”
Mackenna thumbed through the money, while Isaac stepped back from the doorway and shouted to the other dudes to come quick. Nova stood up and exited the upside-down cargo hold, returning to the world of wind and heat and fading sunlight. Even though they had barely started up the mountain, she could already see far across the plain below. Mackenna was right. No other vehicles were in sight for miles. Nova had never seen such a deserted stretch of highway. She peered up the mountainside and checked for traffic coming from higher up. Nothing moved. All she could hear was the wind rustling the trees.
Landon and Wyatt came around to the back of the van. They looked at Mackenna, who was grinning and slapping the bundle of cash against her palm, her eyes gleaming with manic joy.
“It’s our lucky day, fuckers.”
