“Getting bad fast,” I murmur, frowning out the windshield. The snow’s coming down in wild swirls, and it’s the heavy kind that suggests it’s going to stick around for a good, long while.
Sadie whines in agreement.
I take the road well under the speed limit. The truck has great brakes and four-wheel drive, and I keep it in tip-top condition. The road is already getting extremely slick. If I hadn’t already decided to close down the shop for the weekend, these roads would cement the decision for me.
Normally, I like to listen to the radio or a podcast on the drive home, but I need all my concentration now. I grip the wheel with both hands and do my best to stay well away from the edge of the road, which, the higher we get, leads to a steep drop down the side of the mountain. There’s a guardrails, but it’s probably sixty years old and rusted. A good gust on a windy day could probably take it out.
“Nice and slow,” I tell Sadie as we crawl along. “Easy does it.”
She huffs, then, a few moments later, lets out a firm bark.
I glance at her. “What?”
Her gaze is fixed on something out the windshield, and I follow it, puzzled. “What are you locked on, girl?”
Then I see it—two dull red spots of light in the snowy darkness off to the side of the road, but at a strange angle.
When I pull up, I see it’s a small SUV, the front of it smashed against a tree.
“Shit,” I mutter. I park my truck, turn on my hazards, and hop out. Sadie follows me then tears ahead toward the SUV. “Sadie! Come back here!”
She barks two sharp warnings.
I jog over, my feet sliding on the ice, to where Sadie is leaned up against the driver’s side, her paws on the window. She looks at me and barks again.
Inside the car, a woman is slumped over against the wheel.
“Christ,” I exclaim, then grab at the door handle. It’s either locked or jammed. I knock rapidly on the glass to see if she’ll wake, but she doesn’t move.
She’ll freeze out here, maybe die, if she isn’t dead already.
“Stay with her, Sadie,” I call, jogging back to my truck. In the bed, I pull out my own shovel and hurry back. I use the handle to tap the glass hard a few times until it cracks, then splinters. I use my gloved hand to punch out the rest of the glass, then yank off my glove to reach in and press my fingers to the woman’s neck. She’s warm, and I feel a steady pulse.
“Miss?” I shake her a little, but there’s no response. She’s unconscious.
I open the door, release her seat belt, then pull her out into my arms. Flowing dark hair spills back off her face as her head lolls back, and I nearly drop her.
The unconscious woman I’ve just rescued is the most heart-stoppingly beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.
Her face is a delicate heart shape with full, soft cheeks. Silky dark brows arch away from wide-set closed eyes, and long lashes rest on her cheeks. Her lips are full but pale.
Then I notice the rivulet of blood running from her scalp down one side of her sculpted face.
I use one hand to fish out my cell phone. My reception is spotty on a good day, but the storm has completely destroyed any signal. I’m closer to my cabin than town, and she needs help. I know basic first-aid, and assuming she’s not internally bleeding, I’m confident I can take care of her. If she needs more serious help, I’ll risk the drive to get her to Hawk City.
I gaze down at her still, pale face. “Guess you’re coming back with me, miss. I’ll take good care of you.”
Sadie dances around my feet and whines, sniffing the woman’s hands. Then she gives one a lick and stares up at me with her best Daddy, please look.
“You want to help me help her?” I ask. She barks. “Then let’s go.”
I carefully load my brand-new passenger in the front seat. Sadie immediately jumps into the back seat of the truck’s cab, panting. She props her chin on the passenger seat, whining anxiously as she studies the unconscious woman.
You don’t have to be a dog mind-reader to understand what worry looks like.
“Don’t worry, girl,” I say, rubbing her ear. “We won’t let anything happen to our new guest.”
3
Stephanie
My head hurts. A lot.
It’s my first conscious thought since…I don’t know when. But a throbbing ache in my forehead coupled with a stinging near my hairline pulls me from under waves of unconsciousness.
What the hell happened to me?
I try to mutter words, but I can only groan.
In the next breath, something warm and a little stinky laps at my face, over and over. A tongue. The accompanying whine I hear tells me it’s a dog.
I don’t have a dog. Or do I?
A state of genuine confusion comes over me. I can’t remember anything. I don’t know why. And why is it so hard to open my eyes?
“Sadie, Sadie,” a deep, gentle voice says, and the face-licking stops, but the whining doesn’t. “Take it easy now, miss.”
Miss…does that mean me?
Wait. What’s a man doing here, wherever here is?
This is what drives my eyes open finally. Bright light assaults me, but when my vision returns, I find myself staring up into a pair of crystal-blue eyes. They’re what I imagine the lake in a mountain valley to look like under the sun on a beautiful, still day. They’re steady, calm. Reliable. You can trust in those eyes.
Mountain valley…
Holy shit. The mountains. Lisa’s parents’ cabin. The snowstorm.
The accident.
It all rushes back in at once, along with the sudden understanding I am in a cabin, but it’s definitely not the one I was supposed to be in, and a man is definitely not supposed to be here. The furniture and decorations are entirely different, along with the layout, and it’s a little smaller than the other cabin.
Every episode of the true crime murder podcast I love fills my head in that instant. Overly confident woman is over-confident and irresponsibly plows ahead with irresponsibility when she knew better. Then she falls victim to some murderous dude who wants to murder her and probably dismember her, and her family will never see her again or find the pieces of her body.
I sit up straight on the large, wide-cushioned sectional I’ve been lying on. “Get away from me!”
The force of my scream makes the dog who licked my face whimper and scamper away to hide behind a tall-backed easy chair, tail tucked.
The owner of the blue eyes—who also has a heavy but short-cropped black beard, thick black hair, and a square jaw—backs away, hands raised. His eyes turn from calm to wary.
“It’s all right, miss—”
I vault off the couch and put it between us. “Don’t ‘it’s all right’ me! You think I’m stupid? I know what’s happening. You’re not about to dismember me!”
There’s a lamp on a small table nearby. I lunge for it, intending to hurl it at the man’s head. Instead, a sharp throb of pain twangs through my own head and I stumble to my knees.
He’s beside me in an instant. “You really need to take it easy. I’m not a serial killer, I promise.”
“That’s what all serial killers say,” I grunt, trying and failing to stiff-arm him away from me. “Don’t touch me!”