Dare Me Again (5 page)

Once the driver was secured, Simon called for the passenger in the right backseat to exit. When there was no movement and no response, Simon’s heart slammed hard against his ribcage.

“What is the condition of the passenger?” Simon demanded of the driver.

“I didn’t do anything wrong!” the driver screamed.

“What is the condition of the passenger?” Simon asked again, losing what little patience he had left.

“There is no passenger! A man paid me to drive around with a fake Santa in the backseat!”

“Fuck!” Simon cursed as he cautiously approached the left back door of the cab. As the driver said, there was no living, breathing passenger, only a life-sized fake Santa with Scott’s monitoring bracelet taped to his black plastic boot.

The blood drained from Simon’s face. He knew exactly where Scott was.

Quickly he called Kat, but it went directly to voice mail.

He called Stevie’s cell phone and got her voice mail.

He called Jack over. “Fucker followed Kat from her apartment to me, then followed her to the cabin!” He called Kat again, praying to God she answered. When it went straight to voice mail yet again, he left a very precise message for her. “Baby, when you get this, if you aren’t in the Jeep, get in it and go back down to Donner Pass. Go into the grocery store where there are people, and call nine-one-one. Make sure Stevie goes with you. Scott slipped away. I think he followed you. Please, do what I say and call me as soon as you get this so I know you’re okay. I love you. I give you my word by all that is holy, he won’t hurt you.”

As Simon hung up his cell phone rang. “Stevie!” he said. “Tell me she’s all right.”

“Simon, we got separated on eighty. They closed it north of Blue Canyon. I think she got through, but I didn’t. I’m at the Sac CHP Garrison; I’m trying to get up there with one of their road crews.”

Holy fuck
. Kat was in the Sierras alone in a freak blizzard with a crazed psychopath.

It was difficult navigating the mounting snow along the dark mountain roads. The power was out, the streetlights of no use. The cabin was located at the top of a narrow winding road. Finally, according to the GPS, her destination was a thousand feet ahead on the left. As she approached, she let out a small cry as the headlights hit the steep snow-covered driveway that lead to an equally snow-covered A-frame. There was no way she was going to get the Jeep up that drive.

She glanced down at her cell again. No signal. She looked over her shoulder, debating whether to try and make it back down the mountain to civilization and a landline or suck it up and make a break for the cabin on foot. Under these conditions, Simon would not be getting to her any time soon. She was alone with no cell service on a snow-covered mountainside without any neighbors that she could see. Since the streetlights were out, assuming she even made it inside, she probably wouldn’t have power in the cabin, only the bags of food she’d brought with her for sustenance for Lord knew how long.

Sliding her hands down to her belly, she said, “Well, kiddo? Flight or fight?” She glanced up at the lovely cabin and the scary snow. “Yeah, my thoughts exactly.”

It was a no-brainer. Civilization won.

She put the Jeep into reverse and the wheels dug into the snow, jerking the vehicle backward, but unable to breach the snowpack. Her heart pounded in her ears. Then the wheels began to spin.

“No, no, Jeep. Please get some traction and get me out of here,” she pleaded.

Switching tactics, Kat tried quickly shifting from first gear to reverse in order to rock the Jeep back and forth, hoping the inertia would give it enough push or pull that she could get out of the rut she’d created for herself. All the while, the snow continued to fall so heavily all she could see was white.

After a half hour of trying to get out of the rut, she heard the Jeep starting to make a grinding noise and the acrid odor of hot metal on metal told her the Jeep wasn’t going anywhere. Knowing when she was beaten, she threw in the towel.

“Okay, Mother Nature, you won that round.” Kat grabbed the envelope with the instructions and key and shoved it down her sweater, then grabbed her coat and shrugged it on, then her overnight bag and one of the two bags of groceries. She’d have to hoof it. And the Uggs she was wearing weren’t the snow-covered-steep-driveway-traction kind.

When she stepped out of the Jeep, and sank knee-deep into a snowdrift, she realized it didn’t matter if she had on treaded snow boots or not. The drifts were too deep for it to matter. The only way she was going to get to that cabin was one slow step at a time.

Cautiously, slowly, arduously, with the headlights to guide her, she trudged up the driveway with only a few slips. It was a good thing she wasn’t too far along in her pregnancy, she was a runner and a gym rat, because she was seriously sweaty and out of breath as she made it up the last few steps to the wide front porch. Dropping everything to the porch, she leaned against a support pole and collected herself.

The snow was coming down so hard and so fast her footprints were already filling up. Digging for the key in the envelope, she prayed it worked. Otherwise, she and the baby were going to become human popsicles.

Thankfully, the door opened. Letting out a huge sigh of relief, Kat grabbed her bags from the porch and walked inside. In the dim light, she saw a spacious great room with a large stone fireplace on the far wall. Fishing for a light switch, she found it on the right side of the door, and of course when she flipped it, the lights didn’t work.

“Argh!” She shivered and felt utterly alone. There was no way Stevie was going to join her, nor was Simon. Kat was alone. And she felt more than a little afraid, but grateful Simon was taking care of Evan. There was that one small consolation.

Pushing the bags farther inside the cabin, Kat used the meager light from the high beams of the Jeep to look for something,
anything,
to light. Then she remembered Simon’s reminder about the emergency roadside kit in the Jeep. She trudged back down the steep snowy driveway and hauled the kit out from the back of the car.

“Yes!” she cried as she pulled out a flashlight and fired it up. She grabbed the kit, the other bag of groceries, turned off the headlights, and locked up the Jeep. As she was heading back up the driveway, she could have sworn she caught the flash of headlights down the road, through the thick copse of evergreens. Was there another house up here? She waited for another flash, hoping there was a neighbor with a phone she could make a call from, but was disappointed when there wasn’t one. Maybe she had imagined it.

Once she was inside the cabin, she locked the front door. Using the flashlight, she found an oil lamp sitting on top of the hewn wood mantel. Breathing heavily from the exertion and feeling more than a little nervous being alone in a remote cabin in a blizzard, she watched as her frozen breath curled around her head. It was as freezing inside as it was outside.

There was a decent stack of firewood piled in a neat pyramid to the left of the fire screen, but that wouldn’t keep her warm for long. Still, it was enough to get her started. She placed a few logs onto the grate in the fireplace, positioning them carefully, then took some tinder from the open copper box next to the logs and tucked it in. After checking to make sure the flue was open, she used the long-nosed lighter, got the tinder lit quickly, and before she knew it, Kat had a nice robust fire going. She stuck her hands out toward the warmth, feeling pretty happy with her survival skills.

Maybe this wasn’t going to be so bad after all. Maybe the snow would stop soon and before the snowplows got busy
Simon the Invincible
would be here. She had food, water, and fire. Once she had the cabin in order, she’d change out of her wet clothes and put the groceries away and make herself at home.

First she needed more firewood. There had to be more somewhere. She turned, pausing a moment to truly take in the room now that she wasn’t freezing or quite so freaked. It was open, rustic, and very nicely appointed. The eerie shadows of big leather furniture dominated the room, and above the mantel a big bear head snarled at her. Hanging from the wall to the left of the fireplace was an ax, along with a nice looking compound hunting bow and quivers full of arrows slung from a thick wooden wall peg beside them.

It had been a long time since she’d handled a bow, but she bet if she had to, while she might not be able to hit a bull’s eye at one hundred yards, just like she had in high school, she’d get pretty damn close. Along the side wall was a collection of some of the biggest, baddest knives she had ever seen. As she looked more closely, she saw that they weren’t merely for ornamentation but showed signs of regular use. Same with the bow. Though worn, it was in immaculate shape. Whoever owned the place liked to hunt. Along with the bear head, there was a nine-point buck head, and a nasty looking wild boar head mounted on the opposite wall. She wondered if the heads on the wall were the trophies of an expert bowman? It certainly seemed like a more equitable match. Anyone could aim and shoot a gun and kill something, but it took skill and finesse to hunt down a bear with a bow and hit the mark with an arrow. She wondered how Simon had found this place. It was total testosterone. Perfectly suited for someone like her husband.

As the fire crackled and popped, Kat looked up the wide stairway to what looked like a loft. Indulging her curiosity, she walked up the steps, stopping at the top. A huge bed took up most of the floor space along with another fireplace, juxtaposed above the one in the great room, tying the chimneys together. She shivered, not from the cold, but in anticipation of wrapping herself around Simon in that big bed with a fire blazing in the hearth.

But if that was going to happen, she needed firewood! Still using the flashlight, she hurried downstairs and walked toward the back of the great room to the open kitchen. There was a door to the right of the fridge. It led to a covered porch with what looked like a wood pile covered with a tarp.

Struggling with the snowdrift bound door, she got it open enough so that she could dig through the snow to the mound. Sure enough, it was firewood. She made several trips back to it until she had a sizable pile in the great room. After locking up, she stoked the fire so that it blazed, throwing more logs on it until the flames cast a warm glow over the room. After settling the fire screen in place, she went in search of the bathroom. Finding it off the great room, she didn’t bother nosing around. She wanted to get comfortable. So she did what she had to do, then grabbed her overnight bag and took it upstairs along with her flashlight. It was a toss-up whether she should conserve the firewood she had brought in and just sleep downstairs, but… She shivered. She’d feel safer somehow on higher ground. Not that marauders would be out in this terrible weather. Hell, she doubted any living creature would venture out. The snow was piling up as the wind began to howl.

Emotion tugged at her bravado. She was afraid of being up here in the Sierras in the middle of a blizzard all by herself. She wanted her husband with her. She wanted his strong arms around her, the feel of his hard warmth pressed to her.

As she made her way down the stairs, a loud crash from the front of the cabin startled her. She gripped the flashlight like a weapon and moved to the small window along the door and gasped. There on the front porch was a piece of firewood, as if someone had thrown it at the door.

She turned off the flashlight and backed away as an uneasy dread infiltrated her. Her cellphone chirped that she had a text message.

Did she have service? She grabbed it out of her purse where she had left it on the hearth and nearly cried in relief. It was Simon:
Are you Okay? Did you get my message?

Instead of
texting him, she tried to call him but the call timed out. Panic exploded. Quickly she texted:
Simon, I’m afraid. Stevie isn’t here and I think someone is outside and the Jeep is stuck in the snow.

His response was immediate:
Lock the doors, take as many weapons from the wall in the great room as you can, go upstairs, and stay upstairs, but not in the loft, stay at the top of the stairway. DO NOT leave that post. Stay at the top of the fatal alley, don’t give it up. And stay calm, Princess.

Another loud thud on the porch startled her. She screamed. Hastily she grabbed the bow, the ax, several of the knives, the two quivers of arrows, and hauled ass upstairs.

Simon.
She could barely text, her hands were shaking so badly.
Is it Evan?

I think so. Stay calm, baby. I’m coming.

As she read the text, another thud against the door startled her.