When the police call the slaughter of his mother and brother a home invasion gone bad, Mika doesn't believe it. Because he has no way to prove otherwise, he closes down, refusing to talk about what happened.<br><br>That is until Buck, a bouncer at a local bar Mika visits, convinces Mika to open up to him. When he does, Buck not only learns about the murder, but also that Mika grew up living off the grid until his father died, two years previously, at which point his family moved to the city.<br><br>They begin to bond as they try to figure out the reason behind the murders, which may revolve around the family property in the mountains. All they have to do is prove it, without being killed in the process. Only if they can will they take a chance and move their growing friendship on to something more.

Hunting a Killer

“All right. Soon after they married, my folks began living off the grid. You know what that means?”


“Yeah. You are totally self-sufficient. You don’t use any public utilities, especially electricity. As I understand it, you hunt and fish for your food and raise your own vegetables.”


“Exactly. Dad owned a small piece of property in the mountains. He and Mom, and some of his friends, spent the first six months of their marriage building a house into the mountain slope. I mean, init. All you could see of it from outside was the front wall and about six feet of side walls, with a roof composed of solar panels for heating and power. By the time Reko was born, it was two stories, the second one fully underground. I won’t bore you with the rest of the details about it. Anyway, I came along two years later. By then they had only minimal contact with the outside world.” He smiled to himself. “It was a wonderful life, as far as we were concerned.”


Chapter 5