I freeze, heart hammering weakly against my ribs. Through the driving snow, a shape emerges—tall, broad-shouldered.
He stands still—too still for a man who doesn’t know what’s coming. He has no flashlight, no radio. He doesn’t speak right away. Doesn’t rush to help me. He just watches, calm, grounded, real.
Dogs flank him.
Drake doesn’t use dogs.
This man isn’t part of the hunt.
He moves like he belongs here, like the storm is simply weather instead of a weapon.
A massive dog bounds toward me through the snow, tail moving—not aggressive, but curious. Protective. The other dog holds its position, alert but not threatening.
“Who’s there?” His voice cuts through the wind like a blade, deep and authoritative, low and steady, as if we’re the only two people left in theworld.
“Please,” I whisper, the word torn from my frozen throat. “They’re hunting me.”
Steam rises from his breath in the frigid air. Snow clings to broad shoulders covered in winter camouflage. A scar bisects one eyebrow, and his eyes are pale gray—winter sky after the storm passes.
“Who’s hunting you?”
The honest concern in his voice breaks something inside me. I sway on my feet, the last of my adrenaline finally failing. Blood loss, hypothermia, exhaustion—all of it crashes over me at once.
He moves toward me, like he’s seen this before. Like nothing about me—bloody, half-broken, filthy—makes him hesitate. When his arms wrap around me, it’s not the rough grab I brace for. It’s strength wrapped in control. Hands that lift without hurting, that ground without caging.
“I’ve got you,” he says, and something in his voice—calm certainty, unshakeable protection—breaks the last of my resistance.
I collapse into him, this stranger who smells like pine and gunpowder and safety. The flash drive cuts into my palm where I still clutch it desperately.
Three years of evidence. Three years of documenting a federal judge’s corruption while he destroyed me piece by piece. It has to matter.
“They’ll kill me,” I manage against his chest, my voice barely a whisper in the storm. “If they find me.”
His arms tighten around me, and when he speaks again, his voice has gone deadly quiet—not a threat, but a promise carved from winter steel.
“Then we’d better make sure they don’t find you.”
Something shifts inside me. The fear doesn’t vanish, but it’s no longer everything. I still feel the cold, still hear the men behind me. But now, I’m not alone.
TWO
Mason
The womanin my arms weighs nothing and everything. One hundred and twenty pounds of frozen responsibility I swore I’d never carry again.
Not after Rachel.
Not after the night that rewrote every line I thought I could safely walk.
Fifteen minutes ago, I was tracking a six-point buck through fresh powder. Now I’m cradling a half-frozen stranger while my planned route back to the cabin dissolves in the thickening white-out.
Funny how fast priorities shift.
How quickly training overrides common sense.
Her skin is ice, brittle, and pale. Bruising darkens her throat in finger-shaped smears, fresh and ugly. Her hair is matted with blood where someone struck her temple hard enough to swell a knot beneath the skin.
Scrapes and abrasions mar her arms—defensive wounds. The kind that speaks of struggle. Of someone who fought back until she couldn’t.
