by Karina Light
That is, if she escaped today. Had she made it out earlier in the week, she might’ve found her way to freedom by now.
I move to study the chains, lifting the metal and scanning each link.
Did Antonio already know she was here?
If he did, why didn’t he shoot me in the face on the spot at the funeral? Why not off me the moment he found her?
I shake the thought away.
Lombardi isn’t as emotionally driven as a Tully nowadays. He’s ruled this long with good reason: He’s a smart man. He doesn’t let conflict throw off his game. If he knows, he’s plotting a long game. Explains the bald fuck at the docks.
Tossing the chains away, I head outside, making a beeline for the disturbed earth at the base of the porch. From this angle, I see definite toes in the soupy mix of mud, pine needles, and ice. I track the prints, battling a wave of annoyance and relief when I realize they head right rather than left—the way out of this hellhole. Instead, she ventured straight into thick greenbriers and underbrush leading to nowhere but pain.
And I have no choice but to follow her.
Fuck my life.
Not even a stride into the thorns, I see the first sign of trouble in the slush: blood. The droplet is diluted to a pale pink, the falling precipitation mixing to dull but not entirely conceal my prey’s path. The deeper I step into the patch of wilderness, the more I find. Crimson streaks the snow and branches in a cluster of dots. Bits of fabric cling to thorns, the tangled cloth frosted in red. Eyeing the trail, it spans into the distance, charging right through the brambles that any sane person would avoid. And she’s done it barefoot.
I forge ahead along her path, swallowing the irritation that rises with every vine and thorn.
In and out trip, my ass. It could take hours to find her out here. Days, even. And she’ll be dead by then. A recovery rather than a search and rescue.
The wind howls through the trees; the storm churning gray clouds overhead that I can barely make out between the slush-laden branches. The wintry mix is now straight snow, and the trail of pink grows more faint as the flakes drift down, spiking the need for me to hurry the fuck up and find her.
The forest only goes thicker from here on out, with fallen trees and berry patches occasionally interrupting the briers. The property backs up to state land that’s rarely used. There’s nowhere to hide or seek shelter. Just forest and cedar swamp. She’s exposed in the worst way possible.
Even when I stop and listen for signs of her, there’s nothing but my blood rushing in my ears.
I can’t help but swear at my luck.
Had Evangelina Lombardi stayed put, she would’ve seen the night through, resting in a blanket, protected from the storm. By running into the forest, she might’ve sealed her own fate. And mine along with it.
11
Eva
I can hear him.
I know it’s not my imagination.
Someone is moving through the brush in the distance, forging ahead like a bear, undeterred by the thorns that have battled me mercilessly.
It feels like I’ve traveled for hours through this endless stretch of misery, yet nothing has changed. The same pine trees surround me. The same briers and underbrush attack my flesh. There’s no end in sight. No road. No house. No general store or campsite. I’m alone. Aside from whoever’s after me, putting up a relentless chase like a damn bloodhound.
The snow falls freely, the wet slop from earlier now a drift of white powder. It clings to my hair and lashes, the coat’s hood slipping as I run. It comes with a constant wind that cuts through the trees, biting at my exposed flesh.
The cold numbs the skin’s surface, taking away some sting from the thorns, but not entirely. Every step is torturous, and I know the trail behind me is dappled in blood—a roadmap leading to yours truly. All my pursuer has to do is look down and they’ll find me no matter how far or fast I run.
But I can’t stop. I can’t give in. As soon as they catch me, I’ll never see the light of day again. I know it.
I can only hope it’s the nicer of the two after me. The man from Minerva’s—Death as he so nicely introduced—will probably kill me for the trouble I’ve caused. I don’t want to go through this hell to wind up dead out here with a bullet in my head.
If I can outlast him, I’ll remain free. That realization fuels me, even as exhaustion, pain, and the cold mock my progress. With bare feet, frostbite is the most immediate concern. I just need to get to somewhere I can recover and get a little warmth back into my limbs. Then I can pick back up and run. There has to be someone out here. Anyone.
My lungs explode with ragged breaths, but I still hear the steady crunch of branches in the distance. It’s a constant reminder that I need to keep going. It’s not safe yet. This hell is only temporary. I’m almost there. This will be worth it; I know it.
The vines are lessening, with dried bushes now mixing in more with every stride. This is exactly what I need to put more space between us. It’s an opportunity to widen my lead, so I do, using everything I have to erupt into a sprint.
Snow pelts my face, the coat’s hood flapping freely against my back. Every muscle I have burns with exertion. This is the most running I’ve done in my entire life. I always hated gym class in school, and now I wish I’d taken up marathoning at the asscrack of dawn like the fitness models that flood my Instagram feed with their morning stretches and daily run maps in cute shapes. I’m not made to move like this, but pure adrenaline and a will to live force me to.
There’s a dip on the horizon, and excitement bursts through every cell within me. It might be a house or a road, a means to an end out of this. Someone can save me. I just need to do my part. To finish this last stretch of pain.
I give it everything I have, forcing my body ahead, gritting my teeth through the agony of the frozen ground beneath my feet. This is it.
I’m running at full speed when I reach the edge and tumble forward into freedom.
Or not.
There is no hill downward toward a home’s clearing or road. There isn’t anything under me and I’m falling, my body hitting an embankment of mud, snow, and sleet that’s littered with tree roots and fallen branches that I hit with blinding force. I can’t make sense of it as I roll, unable to distinguish sky from earth.
As quickly as it starts, the descent is over. I plunge into frigid water, a thin sheet of ice shattering beneath me on impact. The water’s not deep—barely up to my chest—but I’m still soaked head to toe, the water far worse than thorns as it pierces my skin, robbing me of any fight, thoughts, or breath.
A screech erupts from me as soon as I surface, reaching for anything to help hoist myself out. The water is a copper brown and smells just like the bath water from the cabin—woodsy and metallic. I can taste it on my tongue, feel it on my pores, invading any semblance of warmth I had left.
I grab an exposed root and pull myself from the soupy pool, my pain reaching new heights along with panic. I scoot next to a fallen tree at the water’s edge, tucking my knees against my chest, praying the log conceals me from whoever’s following me. It won’t be long until they catch up now.
As I look out at the massive wetlands ahead, angry tears burn. It’s a roadblock I have no hope of crossing, stretching as far as I can see in either direction.
I’m done. I’ll either die here—frozen to death, out there—frozen to death, or with my pursuer, in god knows what fashion. Any scenario ends in death. But at least here in this moment, I’m in control, making a choice in what my fate will be. I don’t need to look down to know my body’s ravaged, torn and tattered by the wild I couldn’t escape. It’s tired, and my soul is too. I’ve earned this rest.
And to think, going left instead of right out of the cabin might’ve been different. I might be sitting in a police car right now, well on my way home to Papa.
I laugh bitterly, the sound barely coming out over the chatter of my teeth.
Once again, a bad choice has cost me
dearly.
And now it’s cost me my life.
Hunched in a frozen bundle, it feels like hours pass until I finally hear what I’ve been dreading: footsteps. They’re high above, likely at the edge of whatever I plummeted off of. He’d been further behind than I imagined.
Secretly, I hoped to die before he got to me. Freezing to death always looked peaceful in movies, but now that I’m sitting here in icy clothes, it doesn’t feel very peaceful. Everything hurts. Burns, really. Like someone’s tossed me into a cauldron of scalding water.
I expect whoever it is to walk to the water’s edge to check for me, but they don’t. I listen to them crunch back and forth and mutter swears under their breath, too far away to distinguish which of my kidnappers drew the short straw to check on me today.
I hold perfectly still and try to stop the chattering of my teeth, an impossible feat now that I’m halfway toward becoming a television dinner for a lucky bear.
“Evangelina!” The voice echoes through the barren forest, projecting across the open swamp ahead.
Whoever it is has to see the gaping hole in the ice. I’m sure I left a lovely smattering of blood down the hill too. I know I’m leaving a puddle around myself; the coat pulled down over my legs, shielding my eyes from the damage. I don’t want to die looking at that.
If there’s a god, he’ll let the idiot up there think I drowned and send him home. At least then I’ll die in peace by my own doing, not assisted toward the light via a raging kidnapper.
But like everything else in my life, this situation isn’t as open and shut. The ground crunches and tree branches crack, every new sound bringing fate closer and closer until suddenly, he’s almost on top of me, standing on the other side of the log.
My scalp tingles, expecting a bullet at any moment.
But it doesn’t come.
“You can come with me, or you can stay here,” my pursuer says. It’s the man who pinged me in the head with a Snickers bar. He doesn’t sound as angry as I imagined, and his words shock me. He’s giving me a choice.
Chewing over his offer, I adjust my grip on my legs, my fingers starting to go numb in their current position.
“You’ll die if you stay here, Eva,” he warns, his voice solemn even as he uses my preferred name rather than the clunker my parents’ saddled me with at birth. “This is a cedar swamp. It’s impossible to cross in this weather. And even if I call your father and he brings in a goddamn helicopter, you’ll be dead by nightfall. Not by my hand, but by another. There’s a bounty on your head.”
He’s lying. Papa owns the city. If he can’t keep me safe, no one can. Especially not these two morons. They can’t even keep me in a damn cabin.
“I haven’t lied to you once,” he continues, seeming to read my damn mind. “Freezing to death isn’t fun, and neither is being shot or stabbed. The latter two hurt like hell. I have blankets back at the cabin. I’ll make a fire, and we can pretend this didn’t happen.”
Curling up in a blanket in front of a fire sounds amazing right about now. Fuck, sitting back in that grimy bathroom would be heaven.
“You don’t need to die, kid.” He says it with pity that I don’t want.
But I also don’t want to die.
The falling snow is only getting heavier. The flakes fatter. Colder. Unforgiving. This isn’t peaceful. This is torture. The movies are full of shit.
“I’m not a kid,” I protest, eager for this all to be over, to be back in the damn cabin in front of a fire and out of these soaked clothes. I won’t even mind the handcuffs at this point.
“Then stop acting like one,” he chastises.
What little heat I have left rushes to my cheeks. “I’m not.”
“Kids run away.” He sighs, his hands jutting over my head to offer assistance. “Stand so I can lift you out of there. I take it you trusted the ice?”
I ignore his help, trying to stand on my own. “I fell into it.” I don’t want to admit it, but there’s no sense lying to this man. He’s seeing me at my absolute worst. I have nothing left to hide.
My legs are rubber, the limbs struggling to right themselves. It’s like being drugged all over again, only this time it’s cold-induced. A mixture of searing heat and cold battle across the skin, the drenched coat and dress already stiffening around me.
After watching me topple over twice, the man tires of waiting and steps over the log with relative ease despite its size. I’m pretty sure he’s wearing a suit under his dress coat, and his black slacks bear a few scratches from the thorns. His cheeks glow red from the cold, his hair a tousle of dark auburn and snow crystals. “Can you stand?”
I grip at the log’s grooved trunk and try to pull myself to my feet again before shaking my head in a wordless answer. My legs aren’t cooperating and alarm bells sound. Something is terribly wrong, but I try not to show it. If I fractured something in the fall, I’m royally fucked. He won’t take me to a hospital.
His long fingers sweep the icy fabric of the coat cloaking me—his coat. “Take this off.”
“It’s snowing!” I hiss, pulling it close. He’s out of his mind to ask for it back now.
“It’s only making you colder. I’ll give you this.” He shrugs out of his dress coat and rests it on the log. A white button-down lies underneath with a loose tie dangling from his neck. What the hell? Who wanders around in a suit? Who is this guy?
I don’t want to accept the help from him, but I can’t handle another second of the cold. I know the coat will be warm from his body, and I’ll do anything for warmth. Even trust him.
My fingers fumble over my coat’s buttons, rolling the round clasps endlessly rather than unfastening them. It feels like my hands belong to someone else and I’m giving commands through a smokescreen.
The man grunts and pushes my hands aside, working the buttons himself. “You’re going into hypothermia. You need to take this off now.” He tosses the coat to the ground once fully undone, exposing my dress-clad body to the frigid air. My frosted hair slaps my newly bared skin, sending ice flying every which way. He blows out a stream of curses that rival the ferocity of the storm above as he hooks a finger in one of my dress’s straps. “You need to take this off too.”
“No!” My hands move to shield my chest in a panic. No man’s seen me, and he won’t be the first, dammit. He’s already taken my freedom. I won’t let him have this too.
But arguing isn’t an option as he reaches into his pocket and extracts a folding knife. I scream—expecting the worst—but he cuts my dress rather than my flesh, slicing through its straps and sending the bodice tumbling down. The only thing that saves my shreds of modesty are my hands cupping my breasts, catching the fabric.
All he does is scoff. “I’ve seen tits, Eva. Yours are nothing special. Get over yourself.”
I gape at him. What a world-class prick.
He waves a hand to hurry me along while sliding the knife back in his pocket. “We don’t have all day, princess. You’re going to turn into a popsicle.”
I have little choice. As bizarre as it is, my exposed flesh is warmer than what’s still shrouded in my dress. So I let the bodice fall, making sure my hands still cover my breasts the best they can while the dress collapses to my waist.
He doesn’t wait for me to stand, pulling me up and propping my body against the log. The move lets the dress fall to the snow and I’m suddenly next to naked in front of him in a thong, my hands desperately clutching at my chest. He doesn’t bat an eyelash at the miles of skin, waiting patiently as I fumble each arm into his suit coat’s sleeves, using the other to cover my breasts in the meantime.
The black wool swallows my frame as he fastens the buttons. The warm fabric envelopes me in his heat and scent—warm spice and man. It’s heaven. I let out an involuntary sigh of pleasure as his fingers graze my chest and he coughs back a laugh. “Control yourself, kid.”
I scowl and push against his shoulder. “As if.”
I’d never feel that way about
him. It’s just a relief to feel warm. To know I won’t die as frozen as a Thanksgiving turkey.
His grip falls to my hips and hoists me high before I know what the hell he’s doing. I shriek as he tosses me to his shoulder like a rolled carpet. “Stick to your side of the pool. You’re in way over your head, little girl.” One of his arms hooks over the back of my thighs once I’m in place, shielding that bit of exposed flesh from the falling snow.
“Do you have to be such a condescending asshole?” I sneer, reluctantly grabbing at his back so I’m not left jostling around like a bag of potatoes. His body is hard and hot beneath my fingers, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t appreciate it. He’s the giant heating pad I needed in this frozen wasteland.
“Just giving you a bit of advice. You’re looking at me like a piece of meat.”
My face burns. “I. Am. Not.” Each word comes out more forceful than the last, but all he does is chuckle.
We don’t speak as he hikes back to the cabin, breezing through the brush that held me back.
Instead, I dangle over his shoulder and try to suppress the urge to vomit as I’m gifted to a dizzying view of my blood smeared throughout the snow. The path could easily be a stand-in for the aftermath of a polar bear’s buffet, a kaleidoscope of red dots and swirls decorating the snowy forest floor.
It’s slow-going, but he tackles the trip better than I did. He should, seeing that he has shoes on and all. Shoes misted in what looks like blood that definitely didn’t come from me or his trek through the snow. It’s also on his pant legs, the crimson tint to the fabric fanning out in a spray high above the small tears from the thorns. Apparently not only is this man a kidnapper, but he might very well be a murderer, too.
My stomach is in knots when he climbs the porch stairs, a squeak in a step making my heart practically leap out of my chest. It’s getting dark, and snow shows no signs of letting up. He fishes out keys and unlocks the front door, shouldering through before setting me on the floor in a discarded lump. He doesn’t spare me another glance before buzzing around the living space, grabbing two logs from a nearly empty lumber rack and tossing them in the fireplace. He drops to a crouch in front of the hearth and pulls a lighter from his pocket.