Excerpt from Pine Mountain

The morning sun sat heavy on the ridgeline, drenching the gravel lot outside the office trailer in a glare that made everything feel sharper than it needed to be. Kate Ellis squinted against the brightness as she stepped out of her ten-year-old SUV, the hem of her black slacks catching on the jagged edge of the door frame. She gave it a tug, muttered something under her breath, and slung her leather tote over one shoulder as she crossed the lot toward the trailer steps.

The Pine Mountain Mining Company office wasn’t much—just a double-wide that rattled when the wind hit it right and smelled faintly of motor oil, burnt coffee, and a touch of mildew that no air freshener could quite erase. But it was hers, in a way. As office manager, Kate ran the place with the kind of grace and grit only a single mother of two could manage. She was thirty-two, with quiet, blue eyes that carried a weariness most people missed, and a voice that could go from warm to steel in under a sentence.

Inside, the radio hummed low in the background—classic rock, always—and the coffeemaker gurgled its last breath of usefulness into a chipped ceramic pot. Kate set down her tote, turned on the fan in the corner, and flipped open the day’s dispatch log.

By 7:15, the door swung open with its usual squeal, ushering in the first wave of dusty boots and denim. The men came and went in waves—drivers, mechanics, foremen—each bringing their own brand of small-town swagger.

“Morning, Katie-girl,” Clint said, tossing a file on her desk and helping himself to coffee. “You’re too pretty to be working in a place like this.”

Kate smirked without looking up. “And you’re too old to be flirting at seven in the morning.”

Laughter. Clint gave a feigned wounded expression and wandered off to the breakroom.

The teasing was constant, harmless in its way. She knew how to deflect it. Some of the younger guys let their eyes linger a little too long, offered compliments slick as the grease on their hands. But no one crossed a line. 

Not yet.