Page 1

Chapter

One

GINGER

C lick.

A car door opens. My heart slams against my ribs.

One imperative throbs through my brain, one obsession steels my focus…

Survive.

Last night and today blur together. So do life and death. Only before and after remain, fracturing the timeline of my life…

Before a clammy, large hand gripped my mouth, stifling my screams as I frantically awoke from sleep. Before a violent male arm locked around my waist, yanking me, kicking and screaming from my bed, silencing the few cries I managed with a smack of duct tape. Before I stared into the inky, evil eyes of a masked assailant as he hauled me by my long hair through the house, glancing at the lifeless bodies of my two roommates on the kitchen’s ancient linoleum.

Before my sight disappeared beneath an opaque blindfold, and the intruder bound my hands and feet in the back of a vehicle, hog-tying me so that I can’t sit up. I envision myself in the trunk of an SUV or similar vehicle, though this is only a guess.

The trunk latch closed, and “after” began… The interminable drive as I counted the seconds, hoping for some indication of how far we traveled. After, with ears straining and senses honed for any clue, any hint at our final destination. After the car stopped moving, the engine cut, and the door opened.

How long have I been missing? Why am I still alive?

Hours ago, I quit fixating on the most obvious question: Why me?

What did I do to deserve this? Ginger Harper—the good girl, the rule follower, the virgin, the goody two-shoes. The one who focused on her studies and her career and doing everything right … by the book and with superstitious precision, mistakenly assuming it guaranteed a safe, vanilla future.

If I knew then what I know now, how brutally short my life would be, I’d have done things radically different. Taken chances. Fallen in love. Gotten my heart broken a time or two. Bent rules and lived brazenly on my own terms instead of the world’s.

Because all of the rule-following, all of the cautious decision-making, all of the doing things by the book … coloring inside the lines have still culminated in this present horror.

I stopped feeling my hands a while ago, the rope digging into my wrists and cutting off the blood supply, so they got grainy and fell asleep. I would give anything—maybe even my soul—to move them again. Or to have even one drop of water on my tongue.

One drop.

A luxury beyond imagining.

I would cry if I had tears left. Instead, I pray for mercy, the kind that brings swift death.

Minutes pass. I hear vague noises. The rustling of fabric. Heavy footfalls. Heavier breathing. Metal hitting metal.

The wind blows in great gusts outside, and the car shudders. A winter storm warning is predicted for this evening. I made a point yesterday to get extra groceries, some candles in case the lights went out, hot cocoa, and a few logs for the fire. I even added new romances to my Kindle, fully ready to enjoy the blizzard…

The blood roars through my veins, my pulse fluttering, and I feel lightheaded. I remember a white-crowned sparrow my childhood cat, Macy, caught. It trembled and died between her paws from a heart attack long before the calico sunk her teeth into its fragile neck. “Please, God, show me mercy. Let me die of fright.”

The trunk latch sounds, and I hear whistling. “Yellow” by Coldplay. Skin, bones… The lyrics wash over me, terror rushing behind them.

The kidnapper tugs on the bindings around my ankles, his clammy hands grazing over my flesh. I grimace, registering every movement with startling clarity as time crawls to a stop.

He frees the bindings around my wrists, and I tentatively move my arms, deep aches shooting through the fronts of both shoulder joints.

The blindfold flies away, and I squint in the harsh light of early afternoon that pierces the shrouded forest canopy. My eyes narrow on his maskless face—revulsion, anger, and terror twisting me.

Asher Scofield.

A mass of thick hazelnut curls crown his head, and his black eyes scrutinize me, oozing frigid superiority. His thick eyebrows form an unkempt unibrow, and his cheeks bear days worth of stubble. An acquaintance of my roommates, we attended the University of New Brunswick together before my graduation last year.

Asher always creeped me out. He told sick stories, stories that made me wonder if the biology grad student perceived fellow humans as individuals or test subjects. He spoke cruelly of animals, nauseating me on several occasions with depraved jokes about experiments he ran. His presence raised the hairs on the back of my neck and twisted my stomach. I did everything in my power to avoid him.

But as the wealthy, well-connected son of one of our senators, knowing him came with certain perks and access to a societal rung my roommates, Crystal and Tiff, thirsted for. I don’t care about stuff like that, determined to make my own way and control my own destiny. Crystal and Tiff thought differently…

“Here, I’ve known you all this time, and still, I have to ask: Do you like hiking?” He laughs. “Duct tape’s got your tongue. My bad.” With one merciless tear, he rips the adhesive from my face. I wonder how much of my cheeks and lips he took. But when I lick them, I only taste a little blood and register a slight sting. “Well?” He repeats in mocking tones, “Are you a fan of hiking?”

I raise my chin defiantly, refusing to answer him. He probably wants me to beg. But I refuse to play his games. Fuck him!

Whack! His hand collides with my face, knocking me back into the trunk of a Jeep. I can tell by how the trunk door swings out and the telltale boxiness of the windows as I lie back dazed.

“I asked you a question, you fucking bitch!”

My cheek burns, and my head spins as I regard his menacing face, fury and fright tussling internally for dominance. What a coward! Preying on women in the dead of night. Asher sneers, and dejectedly, I realize I can’t spit at him. Dehydration has robbed me of excess saliva.

“Answer my fucking question!”

“Why Crystal and Tiff?” I whimper, barely able to produce audible sound due to dry vocal cords.

He laughs darkly, running his hand through his hair. “They were useful idiots. It’s you I’ve been after this whole time.”

Asher examines me as he delivers the words, a clinical voyeurism marking his features. I strain to keep my face stony and my words few, robbing the sadistic man of his delight in my suffering.

But as things escalate, how long will I be able to maintain the facade of composure?

Disappointment or maybe curiosity flashes across his glacial expression. “Get your fat ass out of the car. Time to hike.”

Just one drop of water. Something to put spit back in my mouth .

I stumble forward on legs stiff from inactivity, scanning my surroundings wildly for locational clues or anything that might help me escape and survive.

In all directions, a verdant, menacing forest greets me. It stretches into infinity, mocking the hope flickering inside. We’re deep in the Idaho backcountry. Or maybe the forests of Eastern Washington. It’s not nearly misty enough for a Western coastal location. Even if I could escape this madman, my chances of wilderness survival look bleak, especially in a freak April blizzard.

My feet are bare except for the fluffy pale pink socks I wore to bed. Every stone, every stick, dry pine needles, and pinecones stab into my tender soles as we move at the frenetic pace of his long strides.

I search out potential landmarks, noting broken tree branches, large boulders, streams, a river, mountains, and the slant of the light. Anything that might help me survive or find my way back … if I can escape.

But escape to where? His Jeep? It’s my only anchor to civilization. I have to try. Nothing left to lose.

Flurries and flutters of snow descend, and the sky darkens ominously. Our march takes on the quality of a funeral dirge, accompanied by my ragged breathing. On and on, we trudge.

I strain to capture snowflakes in my mouth, ravenous for a drop of water. They dance near my face and lips, evading me like hope. But I manage to gobble a few, savoring their fleeting moisture on my tongue.

My kidnapper stops abruptly. I dig my heels into the pine needles on the forest floor to avoid slamming into him. Narrowing his eyes, he observes the sky, rubbing his hand over his chin. “This weather’s the last thing we need. It’ll spoil all the fun.”

My throat fills with bile as menacing clouds engulf us, treading the thin line from stratus to fog as they sink. Fun . The word pounds panic through my veins.

Ahhhhhhhh! A deep, male scream pierces the quiet of the woods, echoing through the valley, his words distant and unintelligible. My heart thrills as my captor turns on his heels, stalking toward me. I try to swallow, wet my mouth enough to respond. But only a squeak emerges as Asher slams his soft, clammy hand over my face. His other arm encircles me, pinning me against him.

I fight to break his steel-band grip as he listens intently to the still forest. I could almost second-guess myself, believe I didn’t hear the scream at all, except for the rapt attention Asher gives it.

Minutes pass in tense silence. Finally, my kidnapper hisses against my ear, “One sound. One noise, and you’re dead.”

“I’m already dead,” I spit, glaring at the coward. He raises his hand to backhand me but hesitates.

A jolt of hope runs the length of my spine. Perhaps the male voice we heard is already protecting me, restraining Asher with fear I’ll make a sound loud enough to get his attention. After an interminable pause, he loosens his hold on me, and I struggle to swallow the bile rising in my throat.

“Hurry up!” he orders, blazing ahead on the game trail.

As each step takes us further from the scream, my mind spirals. I slacken my pace despite repeated threats, hoping a sliver of distance will help me sprint from Asher toward the scream. Or a cliff or the muffled rush of water I hear to the right of us. All are better than my current trajectory.

Fatigue, thirst, and hunger lodge in every cell of my body. Dragging my feet, I upset nearby bushes and break twigs, leaving a trail.

But who will follow it and when? The man who screamed? Search and rescue officials once my missing status becomes official? Law enforcement with cadaver dogs many months from now?

When I judge the distance from my captor the greatest I can exploit, I swallow hard, having collected as much spit in my mouth as possible with the help of the bigger, faster-falling snowflakes the storm now blows in. Gusts of frigid wind whip my long, loose hair around my shoulders and face, and my cheeks burn from the cold.

I sprint from the game trail we follow, letting out the most bloodcurdling scream I can manage. My weak legs carry me into thick, nearly impassable underbrush.

Barreling towards the sound of rushing water and the man’s voice, I’m unsure of my course in the cover of the emerald-hued woods, guided solely by one imperative…

Survive .

Behind me, a gunshot pierces the air, weakening my knees as I stumble forward, desperately begging the forest to swallow me.