Page 31 of A Very Titan Christmas (Titan #14)

Rachel Porter woke with a sudden awareness that made her remember everything all at once.

Her throat and neck were bruised. Pain burst and throbbed behind her eyes like Christmas lights short-circuiting inside her head.

Her cold limbs were numb, and her teeth chattered.

An old plastic tarp had been tucked around her like a blanket.

It crinkled and crunched as she tested her body.

Zip ties bit into her wrists and ankles.

Every muscle hurt like she’d been trampled by Dancer, Prancer, Donner, and Blitzen, but she tried to make sense of her surroundings.

She was dry and inside some kind of shack. The air was damp and cold, tinged with the offseason scent of soil. Her cheek rested against the unforgiving, frozen dirt floor. She wriggled her fingers and toes then realized she wore only one boot.

She froze at the sound of low voices outside the thin wooden walls. They sounded calm, and the tone was conversational. She only remembered the one man who had taken her. How many people were involved?

“The timing’s off on this,” a man said. “Not to mention it’s fucking cold.”

Another man laughed. “Pussy.”

“Fuck that. I signed up for a simple job. Not babysitting in a blizzard.”

The door opened, and Rachel pretended to be asleep. But her heart hammered. She needed to take a deep breath. Panic tightened around her rib cage and squeezed the air from her chest. She heard two sets of footsteps and then the door slam shut.

“If you fuckin’ killed her—”

“She’s not dead.”

“But if you did before it’s time, they’re gonna have your ass. Not mine.”

Before it was time to kill her? She replayed his words and wanted to scream, but she sensed the man crouching down in front of her.

She thought he was holding a hand in front of her nose.

She could feel his warmth. Did unconscious people shiver?

Would these guys know she was awake one way or another? She couldn’t stop shivering.

“She’s still breathing for now.” The man let out a callous chuckle. “The only thing they’re gonna do is pay me a nice Christmas bonus when the summit is canceled.”

“There were easier ways to get Porter to cancel, and that’s all we were supposed to do.”

“I’m telling you, the opportunity presented itself, and it was far easier than anything proposed so far. So you should thank me. We’ll be home for the holidays.”

The other man snorted. “You’re going to have to do something with her before you go home for the holidays. Idiot.”

He nudged her legs with his boot. “She’s not going anywhere. Let’s get out of the fuckin’ cold and check in.”

Check in with whom? If they were part of her father’s security team, she was screwed. They could lead searchers astray. The door opened and slammed shut again. The voices trailed off. Rachel forced herself to sit still until she was certain they were gone. She needed a plan to escape and find help.

The whirring sound of a snowmobile crested and faded as her captors left. Her stomach sank. The men had gone, but they’d left her somewhere that required snowmobile access. Those snowmobile trails could be new and unmarked, but this place… She looked around. It had been there for a while.

The winter silence surrounded her. She tried to hear the distant roar of the snowmobile and was met with complete, unnerving quiet. Rachel was alone, cold, and in zip ties. She’d been left in the woods like a forgotten package.

But she wasn’t helpless.

With a grunt, she rolled out from under the tarp and got to her knees.

Her body protested. Stiff muscles ached.

The quick movement exacerbated her headache.

She paused to get her bearings and ignored the way her pulse pounded.

The cause wasn’t fear of the men but a surge of adrenaline. She was ready to figure out a plan.

Her most significant problems were the elements and the zip ties. Now that the tarp had fallen away, she realized it had been holding in more heat than she had imagined. Her teeth chattered. Rachel swallowed over the swollen ache in her throat. She had to think, or she would freeze to death.

Where was she? The shed was stocked with gardening equipment. Rakes, shovels, and garden loppers—rusted and hanging out of reach but the answer to her zip tie problem.

She half hopped and half scooted across the dirt floor and grasped a gardening hoe, holding it between her tied hands. She tried to lift the loppers off the hook but had no luck. Shivering affected her strength. “Fuck! Come on.”

She gave up on finesse, let go of the hoe, grabbed a shovel, and slammed it onto the hook holding the loppers. The strike was erratic and uncoordinated, but that was all she had in her. She beat the damn thing over and over until the hook detached from the old wall. The loppers fell to the ground.

She pried the blades of the loppers apart with her chin and bound hands. The rusted blades might’ve worked on shrubbery, but the zip ties might be more than they could handle. Still, Rachel shoved the rusty blade between her bound hands and sawed.

She might as well have been using a nail file, though the activity warmed her slightly. Hours seemed to crawl by. The plastic frayed. Finally, the zip tie snapped. She fell back, exhausted and victorious.

She rubbed her wrists. The tie had chafed her skin, and she had welts, but other than that, she was good.

Carefully, she used the loppers to remove the zip ties around her boot and ankle. Free from the bindings, she rotated her ankles and then tucked her bootless foot under her butt to warm it. She wrapped the tarp around herself again, needing to figure out the next part of her escape plan.

Her sock-clad foot was hurting from the cold. She pulled off her boot and shoved it onto that foot. She couldn’t walk well with a boot on the wrong foot, but the relief was instant.

Rachel rested for as long as she dared before searching the little shed so she could come up with an escape plan.

Gardening gloves and an old Silverberry Ridge Resort maintenance shirt were unexpected finds.

She pulled the shirt on and donned the oversized gloves.

Neither provided much warmth, but they would add layers of protection for when she trekked across the snow.

She found a large pile of used brown burlap sacks, blue plastic bags of peat moss brightly decorated with pink and yellow flowers, and a discarded net that had once held bulbs.

The burlap sacks were thick and itchy. The plastic bags were waterproof but couldn’t insulate against the cold.

All in all, not much in terms of footwear.

Rachel switched her boot to the proper foot and tore the flap from a cardboard box, fastening it to her other foot with duct tape and twine.

She tied the net around it to help keep it in place, then wrapped the peat moss bag around her foot.

Another line of tape and twine helped keep the bag in place, and voila, a makeshift boot.

It was hard to walk in, but it would keep her feet dry and semi protected from the elements.

She pushed open the old wooden door. The cold punched her in the chest like she’d been hit by the icy fist of a yeti. Her breath fogged as she stared out at the mostly untouched snow. It covered everything, and she had absolutely no idea where she was.

An escape on foot wasn’t going to happen.

She hated to wait, but she was woefully underdressed and could die of exposure battling the elements. Bryce would have to find her.

She sat again. Her gaze bounced around the shed. Hell with this. She couldn’t just wait. Rachel glanced outside again. The snowmobile had left tracks that stretched toward freedom and escape—or freezing to death. “Be smart.” She bit her lip. “Stay calm.”

She couldn’t leave, but she had to do something.

Rachel scanned her surroundings for anything that might help her. She could use the loppers to fend off the men, but they had guns. That wouldn’t work.

Her ears pricked up. Dread pitted at the bottom of her stomach. The snowmobile was returning—except the hum was different.

She opened the door again. Not a snowmobile but a helicopter.

She ran out onto the snowmobile tracks and searched the sky.

If she had something metal that would provide a flash, she could signal for help.

She ran back to the shed and saw nothing helpful.

Terrified that whoever was in the helicopter would leave without seeing her, she ran back outside, jumping, shouting, and waving her arms.

The helicopter didn’t come any closer.

If only she were taller. If they could see her… An idea formed in her mind as the helicopter veered away and the sound of the rotors disappeared.

They were looking for her. She had to signal to them through the trees and snow. Rachel returned to the shed and grabbed the duct tape. She tied the garden hoe to the rake and wound the tape around until she was sure it would hold. Then she added a broken shovel handle.

Now what?

She taped the brightly colored peat moss bags together into a colorful tarp that would stand out against the snow. She could attach the makeshift tarp to the pole as a flag. It might work, or it could fall apart. And how would she keep it upright?

She eyed the ladder leaning against the wall. It had one of those foldout arms that would hold a paint bucket. She could wedge a flagpole in there, couldn’t she? Maybe… There weren’t a ton of options.

Rachel dragged the ladder outside. The deep snow didn’t offer many safe places to set up the ladder other than where the snowmobile had been. With teeth chattering and fingers burning from the cold, she pulled the ladder to the part of the snowmobile trail with the most open sky overhead.

She was sweating and had no idea how that was possible. She took deep breaths as she dragged the ladder over to the spot she’d picked out, and with the gardening gloves on, she packed snow around the base of the ladder until it wouldn’t move. Probably.

Rachel returned to the shed to get the flagpole and trekked back to the ladder. She couldn’t stop shivering. Her teeth chattered. Exhaustion bled through her tired muscles. But she forced her flag into the ladder.

The wind picked up, and her bright flag shifted. It didn’t exactly lift and sway, but it was a colorful anomaly on the snow-white mountain. It might work.

She’d never been so cold, tired, and hopeful before. Someone had to see it.

Rachel wished for a helicopter. She prayed for rescue. The rescuers needed to arrive before her captors returned.

She trudged back to her shed. Rachel wrapped herself in the burlap sack and curled under the tarp. Her body shook, and her mind wandered to help—to Bryce.

He’d looked at her before they’d met with her parents like she was the only woman on earth. Like he wanted more than either of them had admitted to aloud.

What would happen with them if Titan Group rescued her?

The summit would be canceled, as these men had hoped.

Titan Group would leave. She would eventually find her way back to Philadelphia.

Bryce would go wherever Titan sent him. She had fallen in love with him again.

She hadn’t meant to, but facts were facts, and that was one she refused to ignore since she might be dead within the day.

“Bryce, find me,” she whispered. “Because I’m not letting you leave without a fight this time.”