I had barely settled on the four-wheeler before I started it and opened the throttle, skidding forward as fast as the machine would go in this snow. Although the storm was fierce, slapping my face and driving needles of snow against my exposed skin, the snow accumulation wasn’t too bad yet. I could get through it without a snow sled, which was good—because I didn’t have one.
The headlights on the four-wheeler barely made a dent in the blinding whiteout, but I kept my eyes trained on what I could see, rolling over jarring divots and through thick snow drifts. Twice, the tires slipped down into the accumulated snow, but I didn’t get stuck. I managed to get through the open fields, and then I was past the tree line, heading to where I knew the river bend scooped down into my property. A mile and a half was nothing. I could do this.
I slowed down, looking left and right, scanning the elongated, shadowed trees and uneven ground. But it was almost impossible to see anything through the driving sleet, and then my numb fingers began slipping off the throttle, soaking wet and useless. The voice of reason at the back of my brain whispered that I was hindering any rescue efforts by being here. I might get stuck. I might fall off and hurt myself. I might get lost.
But at the forefront of my scattered thoughts, I could comprehend only one pealing scream.Spencer. Spencer. Find Spencer. Find him now.
Suddenly, a wall of trees loomed up before me, and I ground the four-wheeler to a halt. The tires slid, burying my machine in two feet of soft powder. I gasped in shock as the jolt whipped my body to the side. I felt my butt leave the seat, and then the world was spinning, a kaleidoscope of white and gray and swallowing black. I landed in the snow, and the drift was far deeper than I had expected. It sucked me down with icy fingers,and crystallized, burning snow shoved its way up my sleeves, down my collar, and around my ankles.
The machine purred, chugging as it idled, and I stared up at the darkness with fear creeping over my panicked thoughts. With an effort, I forced myself to sit up, blinking in the murky light that filtered out from the four-wheeler’s upturned headlights. Pushing snow away from my face with shaking, soggy fingers, I crawled through the snow to the machine that was now buried deep in a snow drift and pointed up at a forty-five-degree angle. The headlights cast long shadows along the sparse trees, still idling for now. I turned it off because I didn’t know what would happen if the exhaust was clogged by the snow and dirt, and then I started digging.
Spencer. Spencer. He’s out here. He’s so cold, he’s warm now. He feels alone and scared, and he isn’t sure he wants to keep living. His four-wheeler—
I stopped digging.Wait, how did Spencer get all the way out here without a machine?That didn’t make sense. I had been hard-pressed to believe Spencer would do something this harebrained at all, but without a side-by-side or four-wheeler, that made no sense at all. A sinking suspicion turned my blood to ice. Either Jay had been mistaken, or…
I felt around for my phone, and I found my open, empty pocket, but no phone. “No,” I moaned, turning around to start digging through the snow for it. I felt for where I’d fallen, carefully pressing my hands around the deep snow and finding only stinging cold instead. “No,” I whispered, falling to my knees in snow so deep, my jeans were soaked through. This couldn’t be happening.
There was nothing for it. I had to go back. If I hadn’t been so out of my mind with worry for Spencer, I would have realized that there were no other vehicle tracks on this path, and there weren’t any other cleared roads that would easily lead to thecoordinates. Stupid. Really, really stupid. But I wasn’t sure if I was stupid for believing Jay… or trusting him. Either way, my heart felt heavy, weighed down with worry for Spencer and now a twisting, insidious anxiety that I had been lied to. But what purpose would Jay have to do that? What could he possibly gain?
I dug around the machine until my arms shook, and I noticed the signs of hypothermia settling in. I should have put on my snow pants before running out. Shit. I got on the machine and tried it. The wheels turned uselessly. I tried again. It sunk deeper.
I clambered off, and in the numbing darkness, I started digging again, pushing against the machine and trying to loosen it. I tried again. And again. I opened the throttle and pushed and rocked, but it didn’t move. And the whole time, the storm raged around me, soaking my face and hair and obscuring what was left of my vision. I couldn’t feel my feet. My fingers were long past useful. I couldn’t dig anymore—the shaking had gotten so bad, I was a rusted tin woman with useless, trembling digits. I tried to calm the shivers, but they only intensified, and I found it hard to focus on anything else.
I wasn’t getting the machine out. I had to turn back. But my thoughts had gone fuzzy, wrapped in a strange blanket that felt like déjà vu from when I’d been a devastated seventeen-year-old. I felt around in the snow for my phone again. It was like swimming. I swam in it, pushing through stinging, white water that bit my neck and nipped at my ears. It made me giggle.
Snap out of it.I shook my head, staring at the dark spot where I’d been rolling in the snow. No phone. I had to walk. I shuffled away from the four-wheeler, and a smarter voice in my head was trying to shout at me to do something else, to do something more logical. I couldn’t hear it. It was muffled, and I forced my rickety limbs to slog forward.
The blizzard pelted me, buffeting me from one side to the other, and I stumbled through the snow blindly. It was so dark. So confusing. I collided with a tree, and then I fumbled against it, trying to understand how far off the path I might have wandered. I reached out and hit another tree. I stumbled forward, completely blind now that I was away from the machine, and I hit another tree.
A manic cross between a sob and a laugh escaped me. I sank down, curling in on myself. This felt warmer. And I was so tired.
I just needed a minute to rest.
Then I would find Spencer.
Chapter thirty-one
Spencer
Ithrew my body weight against the door until I knew my arm would be black and blue. It took longer than I would have liked to weaken it, and I had to take breaks. Even with a coat on and inside an insulated building, it was bitterly cold, and my fingers went numb much faster than I ran out of energy. I paced to keep warm, felt around for what tools were available to me, and checked to make sure the wound on my right arm wasn’t bleeding too much. But it was dark, and my arm had gone numb quickly. It was hard to tell. But, more concerningly, that eliminated one side to ram the door with, so I had to alternate between my foot and the other shoulder.
When I noticed a little give, a little jiggle, I tried to look through the crack to get an idea of how much time had passed. It was dark, so quite a while.
Whatever Jay had planned, he’d been given far too much time to do it. I used a shovel and wedged it between the crack I’d managed to create. Using leverage and my body weight, I pried the crack open until I heard the wood splinter. It took forever.My body shivered, covered in a thick layer of sweat that cooled my temperature down dangerously. The more I pried open the fucking vault of a door, the colder it got. Snow began to filter in.
Finally, as I pried the crack wider on the side I knew had the hinges, I felt them give. They popped out of the wood, their screws wrenching out of where they’d clearly been rusted in place, and the door sagged. I gave it one final, definitive kick, and it hinged awkwardly to the left where it hung off the padlock that had kept it locked.
I stormed out of the shed and into the snow, my vision already red and focused on one thing. Beating the absolute shit out of that ranch hand. As the cold pelted my face, I saw that my car had been moved. Had he been planning on leaving me in that shed until I died from hypothermia? It was one thing to assist in water rights fraud, but attempted murder? This kid had lost his fucking mind.
I stormed back to the house, my body racked with shivers and my chest aching with worry for Arabella. If he had hurt her, I wasn’t just going to plant my fist in his face. I was going to kill him. I’d take the jail time for the satisfaction.
As I neared the house, I noticed that there were no lights on. Either Arabella still wasn’t back, or…
I refused to think about that. I ran, forcing my sore, frozen limbs to work overtime, and when I careened into the empty ranch house, the heavy silence haunted me. Her truck was in the driveway, but she wasn’t here. The clock read seven at night, so I knew I’d been in that shed for a while. Jay had had ample time to enact whatever psychotic plans he’d concocted, and my blood ran colder than it already was.
I tried to be logical. Her coat wasn’t on the hook, and she’d taken her gloves and scarf. She could be in the barn. It was possible Jay had panicked about me but hadn’t hurt her yet. I grabbed a knit hat from her winter basket along with workgloves and a flashlight, and then I hurried back into the blizzard. It had calmed some, and instead of a swirling, windy storm, the snow beat down in a steady, diagonal stream, but I didn’t want to risk any more exposure than I needed to. I was sure my core body temperature was low enough to be considered mild hypothermia judging by the intensity of the shivers I was experiencing. So, I got into Arabella’s truck, cranked the heat, and drove the short distance to the large barn.
Lights were on inside, but when I ran in, I didn’t find Jay or Arabella. I felt panic creep in along the edges of my awareness, but I pushed it back. I returned to the truck, holding my bright red hands over the blowing, warm vents and heading for Jay’s house. If he was stupid enough to be there just waiting for me, then he deserved what I was about to dole out.
