Chapter 1
Cameo couldn’t believe the turn her life had taken. Being on the run from a drug cartel had not been in her binder, but apparently she couldn’t plan everything that was going to happen to her. She swallowed her desire to curse as she kept her eyes fixed on her boots, carefully watching her footing as she navigated a particularly treacherous stretch of the narrow dirt trail that cut through the forest, hugging the base of a steep white mountain.
Even though she tried to keep her focus on not falling into the pines and firs that lined the slope to her right, part of it kept drifting to behind her. She tensed and froze as a sound echoed through the forest and she imagined someone was there, closing in on her. Her heart lodged in her throat, hammering there, and her breaths came faster, fogging in the chilly air. She resisted the urge to hurry onwards and started slowly moving again. Rushing was a sure-fire way of making herself trip and if she fell and hurt herself out here, only one of three things was going to happen.
She would freeze to death.
One of the local predators would eat her.
Or the men she was sure were following her would catch her.
Cameo breathed hard as the trail narrowed even further and sharply began to ascend to a part of the forest where the trees were sparser and the snow had been able to settle on the ground. She held back another curse. This wasn’t good.
Her breath misted in the air in front of her face as she picked her way over a tangled root that crossed the path, gripped a whip-thin sapling with her left hand and eased along a section of trail that had a sharp downwards angle to it that made her feel the mountain was determined to hurl her off it. Sweat dampened her brow beneath her thick woollen hat, irritating her. She wanted to wipe it away, but she wasn’t about to remove her gloves. The temperature was declining rapidly as the afternoon wore on and she couldn’t afford to lose any more of her body heat. She wasn’t sure she would be able to light a fire to warm up when it got too dark for her to continue.
They might see it.
They might find her.
Cameo wasn’t sure how they had caught up with her.
Back in Banff, she had been sure she had lost them, had started to relax while stocking up on supplies and had even spent the night in a motel, but then a red SUV had tailed her rental to the outskirts of the town and hadn’t left her rear view for close to fifty miles. When she had taken a precautionary detour to prove to herself that she was just being jittery and she wasn’t being followed, the SUV had remained on her tail.
Cameo had panicked and tried to lose them, had made it far enough ahead of them that they would have lost sight of her on the winding highway, and had turned down another road.
She had picked a doozy.
The road she had thought would lead her north towards another main road had led her to what amounted to little more than a forestry track. Recent tyre tracks had given her hope that she would find a cabin somewhere at the end of it, some place where she could call for help even when she hated the thought of pulling anyone into danger. When she had reached the end of the track, there had been several vehicles parked there, all of them covered in snow.
Cameo had parked her car next to them, dressed quickly for the weather and grabbed her backpack, and hadn’t stuck around. She had headed into the mountains, following a trail at first, but she lost it somewhere in the woods as a storm had closed in and had ended up taking a quick break to check the map in her pack.
She had checked her position on her GPS five times and had eventually ended up cursing.
It turned out that the valley she had picked only had one building marked on it and it was across the other side of the valley, miles from where she was.
She breathed a sigh of relief when she found a trail that led downwards before she reached the snowline, followed that instead and remained on guard, listening for signs of life in the forest. There had to be someone living out here. Those cars had been there for some time and the footprints in the snow had led in this direction, not towards the other side of the valley. She glanced up the mountain. Maybe if she could climb a little higher, where she could see above the tops of the trees, she might be able to spot a cabin nearby.
Probably not. Snow whizzed across the mountain, obscuring the peak of it, and the storm was only getting worse. Soon, it would be a blizzard. Climbing higher to see anything in this weather was not only dangerous, but pointless. She wouldn’t be able to see a few feet in front of her face.
Cameo rubbed her right arm, trying to keep the chill off it as the wind buffeted her and snow bit into her face as the gale drove it through the trees. Her thick dark green coat and black pants had been made for this weather, but she still felt the bitter bite of the cold. Her toes were numb in her waterproof boots, despite the thermal fleece that lined them, and her fingers felt ready to fall off.
She looked up as the light began to fade and told herself that she didn’t need to be worried when a jolt of fear jangled her veins and chilled her blood. Bears would be asleep at this time of year. Although that left her with wolves and cougars to worry about.
She chuckled mirthlessly.
And humans.
She looked back over her shoulder, peering into the gloomy forest, trying to see past the snow that made it through the canopy, falling in great chunks in places as wind shook the pines. She sent up a silent prayer that she had been mistaken even when she knew she wasn’t. It was them. The same men who had threatened her. Maybe they would keep going on the highway or not think to check the road she had taken. Maybe they were right on her tail, hidden just beyond that ridge she could see.
How was she going to get out of this one? If she kept going, she was only moving deeper into dangerous territory. She didn’t have enough food to keep her alive for long, although the cold would probably kill her before hunger did. If she didn’t keep going, there was a chance the men would catch her, and that didn’t bear thinking about.
She could call the authorities.
But part of her was still convinced that was a wrong move and would end with her being in more trouble than she was right now. The cartel, or whatever they called themselves, had made it clear that her parents would end up just like her brother if she spoke with anyone.
She couldn’t keep going like this though. Even if she evaded them, eventually they would catch her, or worse, they would go after her parents to make her give herself up.
She fished her phone from her pocket and checked it, her hands shaking as the screen lit up. No signal. Calling for help wasn’t an option after all. She tried to stop herself, but her thumb moved to the messages and pressed on the icon, and sickness rolled through her as she opened one of them.
Cameo stared at the picture they had sent her, one that had made her vomit when she had first seen it, still terrified and tormented her now.
Nate, her younger brother, was unrecognisable in it, slumped in a chair with his arms bound behind his back, covered in blood.
Dead.
She couldn’t let that happen to her parents.
Wouldn’t let that happen to her.
Cameo closed the message and shoved the phone back in the pocket of her salopettes, shifting the canister of bear spray that hung from her belt aside. She paused and leaned against one of the towering pines, breathing hard as she struggled not to vomit. When they had sent that photograph to her, she had been convinced it was some sort of terrible joke, the kind her brother would play on her.