Page 151 of Ruthless Rustanovs

What the freaking heck? Sola wondered as she crept into the outbuilding.

She’d thought of going straight up to the front door after the driver dropped her off at The Thirsty Wolf. But a quick chat with Lorraine at The Thirsty Wolf quickly changed her mind.

“Rumor is the Russkie’s keeping your daddy in the outbuilding behind the big house. If it was me looking for my kin, I’d go straight there instead of trying to deal directly with that bastard and his turncoat servants.”

The bar itself, though small and dark, had a certain vintage charm. A simple wood framed mirror took up most of the back wall, and was surrounded by a cluster of old seventies wolf paintings with several pairs of what looked like handmade snowshoes thrown into the mix.

Eclectic, to say the least. The kind of place the hipsters at ValArts would love, even though this place wasn’t trying to be ironic with its décor.

There was a handwritten chalkboard menu in the midst of the wall decor.

Supposedly they were offering lamb stew as the main course tonight.

But no one had taken Sola’s order. Or even offered so much as a drink since she walked in and gingerly sat down on one of the rough, carved oak barstools.

Instead, Sola felt the eyes of every patron on her back, and the bar became silent as a stone until Lorraine came over to speak with her.

“Have you tried going up there on your own yet?” Lorraine had asked with a frown.

“Nope, she just got here,” answered one of the bar patrons behind her.

Sola glanced over her shoulder to see a man in a short-sleeved plaid button up. He nodded toward the bar’s single front window. “Saw her get off the shuttle myself.”

“Well, at least we don’t have to add assault to the Russkie’s list of offenses, I guess,” Lorraine grumbled. Though she didn’t sound at all as pleased about this as Sola imagined she would.

Meanwhile, everyone in the bar continued to stare at them. No, not at them. Her. Just Sola. And Sola couldn’t help but think of every horror movie she’d ever seen set in small remote town, just like this one.

Suppressing a shiver, she told Lorraine, “Um, I just need directions to where my father is being kept. Then hopefully we can get out of here.”

“I can give you directions,” Lorraine answered, “But if you’re serious about rescuing your dad, your best bet is to break him out of that cage. Don’t bother going up to the big house. Especially seeing as how the main road is scheduled to close in less than two hours from now.”

“I already seen the sheriff headed down there,” the man by the window called out helpfully.

Lorraine nodded. “So you have to hurry. And you definitely don’t have time to argue with that Russkie bastard. Here, I’ve got just the thing for you…”

Lorraine bent down behind the bar and came back up with a skeleton key. It was old and slightly rusted with a two-pronged bit.

“My grandpappy used to tend the stables up there back when the Wolfson family still kept horses for getting around town. This is a skeleton key and he told me it could open the lock of every building on that property.”

Whoa, Sola had thought, taking the key. She was definitely not in California anymore.

She couldn’t even imagine a structure with locks so old that a skeleton key worked on them.

With the eyes of all those people on her, Sola had decided to take Lorraine’s advice, and now the key felt heavy as hell inside the pocket of her tweed jacket.

The trip up the smallish hill to the main house overlooking the town had been an effort and a half.

She must have burned at least a few thousand calories trekking up the snow-covered road towards the huge manor and then around that to the collection of buildings in the back.

There was an old barn, which she imagined housed the horses Lorraine had mentioned earlier.

There was also a charming little cottage, and a few other structures.

But she immediately sensed the small, dull red building with its iron door was the place she was looking for, and she headed toward it.

After unlocking it with the skeleton and then putting considerable effort into yanking the heavy door open, she was confronted with a pitch-black interior and a deep cold unlike anything she’d ever known.

Literally. She’d grown up in Guatemala and California, and she was fast discovering that her hoodie, tweed jacket, and faux raccoon hat ensemble wasn’t nearly enough to handle the frigid air inside the building.

Shivering, she turned on her phone’s flashlight, only to go even colder when she saw the row of floor-to-ceiling cells lining the back wall.

“Brian?” she called out softly, hoping like hell he wasn’t anywhere near this cold, dank place. But no such luck.

“Sola?” a wobbly voice called out from the cell on the back wall, the farthest one from the door. “Is that you?”

She ran to the cell and found Brian huddled on the floor on top of what looked like a very large doggie bed. He was wrapped in a thick, wool blanket and dressed a lot more warmly than her in a flannel cap, gloves, a down parka, and hiking boots. But still…

“Brian, oh my God! Who did this to you?”

“Someone bad. Sola, you have to get out of here. Before he finds you. I don’t know how you found me. In fact, I’m wondering if you’re a hallucination, but just in case you aren’t, dear girl, I beg of you…go. Go now!”

“What? No way! You actually think I’d leave you here? Look, I’ve got a key and you’re coming with me!”

She tucked the phone under her chin and went to work, placing the skeleton key in the lock. It was hard going. Her hands shook with cold and she really had to shove in the key, putting her whole arm into turning the heavy lock.

But she managed in the end.

“C’mon,” she said, flinging open the cell door and rushing in to help the older man to his feet.

“What happened to your face?” Brian demanded when he got a closer look at her.

“I’ll tell you in the car. Your rental is parked at the bar. Do you still have the keys?”

“Yes, they’re in my pocket. Thank goodness that brute didn’t take them.”

Yes, thank goodness, she thought, guiding him out of the cell and toward the main door. But she was well aware that whatever monster locked Brian in that cage was still lurking around on the property.

“We’ve still got some time before the road closes, if we move fast we can—”

She’d turned to glance back at Brian who was slowly shuffling behind her. And walked right into a hard wall. So hard, her bruised face screamed in protest as she stumbled backwards, almost losing her footing completely.

“What the…?!”

She raised her phone flashlight to look up…then up some more.

A man stood there. So huge, she immediately knew who he was.

And why Lorraine called him the Russkie Monster.

He had to be six-foot-five—maybe even taller.

He had long, crazy wolfman blond hair. It looked like it hadn’t been combed in days.

Maybe not ever. And he reeked of what smelled like a semi-permanent cologne made up of sweat and alcohol.

Half his face was mottled and red, like it had been covered in Freddy Krueger make-up, but on closer examination, she could see it wasn’t make-up. No, definitely not make-up.

So that was why they called him a monster. He stood there, looming over her, larger than life. And breathing fast and hard.

Like a beast awoken.

He raised some kind of old timey oil lamp, and Sola squinted against it’s sudden light.

“Who are you?” the monster demanded, his voice little more than a dark snarl. “And what are you doing here?”