Once upon a time, Lily had known every inch of these rugged, isolated peaks, including the most infamous of all of them—Dead Man’s Cliff. Hell, she’d once hiked up the back side of the dangerous peak and then free-climbed down the face with no more gear than her own wits, which, granted, in her teenage years wasn’t saying much.

Luckily, she’d grown up enough to recognize danger. There would be no free-form rock climbing in her near future. Hiking, most definitely. Risking her life? No, thank you.

As she made it over the last summit before coming into town, Lily rolled down her window and sucked in the mountain breeze. Yep, June in the Rockies still smelled like cedar and pine and air so fresh it hurt.

Or maybe the pain came from being back for the first time in a decade. Her gut twisted at the thought and all the implications that came with it. Telling herself that it was hunger and most definitely not grief, she drove into the town proper. There were ten thousand residents scattered across a county that easily had far more wild animals than people. This didn’t include the influx of crazy that went on during ski and board season. During those times, Cedar Ridge’s population could triple in size. Most of the tourists spent their time up on the slopes, though, a five-minute drive and two thousand more vertical feet above town.

Lily had no intention of going any farther up the mountain. At all.

Ever.

Instead, she pulled into the first of the three gas stations in town and took a glance at herself in her rearview mirror.

Ack. Her hair had started off decent only because she’d flat-ironed all the natural frizz out, but somewhere between California and Colorado she’d gotten hot and had twisted the unruly mess up on top of her head, holding it there with the stylus stick from her tablet. Strands had escaped and rebelled back to their natural habitat of Frizz City.

Hmm. Not exactly runway-ready after two days on the road. But really, who cared? Probably no one would even remember her.

Buoyed by the thought, she stroked a hand down her clothes to smooth out the travel wrinkles. She wore a sundress and cute blazer out of habit, because that’s how they’d done it at the San Diego beauty salon where she’d worked until The Incident. They’d dressed nice to match their upscale clientele, a uniform of sorts.

And now being dressed nice was also her superhero cape. She figured if she looked well put together on the outside, people would assume the inside matched …

For the record, it didn’t.