Page 1

PROLOGUE

The wind howled and whistled through the trees late that winter night in the tiny town of South Fork, Colorado, blowing loose snow across roads and fields, creating mountains and valleys. If the wind stilled and the clouds lifted, by morning the town and trees would sparkle in the sunlight. Jesse could hardly wait to get out and take the sled to town, talk to people face-to-face instead of on his computer screen. He was naturally a social person, but his job kept him glued to his computer most of the day—and his vocation kept him glued to the computer most of the night.

At midnight, Jesse shut down his computer and stretched. He was done.

He hoped once Rina was out, Thalia could relax. They couldn’t do this forever. He couldn’t do it forever. At the beginning, he was all in. Now? He had doubts there was anyone left who wanted to be saved. Each one was harder than the last.

They all needed to de-stress.

He glanced down at the dog bed in the corner where Banjo, his eight-year-old Saint Bernard, looked at him with tired brown eyes.

“Five minutes,” Jesse said. “You know you need to go, and if you go now, I’ll be able to sleep in.”

As if understanding what he said, Banjo sighed dramatically as only large dogs could and slowly got to his feet. Jesse ruffled his neck and said, “Really, you’re going to complain about a little cold with that nice fur coat you wear?”

He grabbed his warm jacket off the hook by the door and put it on.

Jesse had inherited the cabin from his grandfather and over the years he’d installed better insulation, a more efficient woodstove, updated the kitchen, and enclosed the porch. This helped keep the heat inside and prevented snow and mud from being tracked into the house. In the summer, Jesse removed two walls so he could enjoy the fresh air. As his little sister said, he was much handier than the stereotypical computer geek.

The porch also kept the worst of the chill off him when Banjo did his business.

Jesse stood just inside the doorway, his hands stuffed into his pockets, as Banjo lumbered to a section of pine trees to the right of the house, his big, wide paws sure-footed in the snow. Jesse lost sight of his dog, then counted to one hundred. Banjo wouldn’t wander, but sometimes even familiar smells distracted him, or a rabbit hopping through the snowbanks.

When time was up, he called, “Banjo! Come, Banjo!”

It was another thirty seconds before Banjo came out of the trees. Finally. Jesse hadn’t wanted to put on his boots and go after the dog in the icy cold.

“You have the fur coat, not me,” Jesse said as Banjo walked by him and shook his fur while he licked his lips. Great, Jesse thought. It wouldn’t be the first time Banjo found himself a midnight snack in the woods. “You’d better not have eaten anything that will make you puke.”

Banjo ignored him and went back to his dog bed, where he heaved another sigh as he settled himself down.

Jesse locked up, double-checked the windows, stoked the stove—it would be out by morning, but it didn’t take long to heat up the place, and he had ample wood stacked in the grate.

He’d just started up the wide ladder to his loft when he saw a light outside the large picture window. As he turned to look, the light went out. It hadn’t come from the highway, which was so far from his house that he couldn’t hear or see traffic, and his driveway wasn’t plowed, so no one could drive in, unless riding a snowmobile. He hadn’t heard any vehicle at all. His closest neighbor was a good half-mile hike down the drive, on the plot of land where the highway met their private road. The widow, Mrs. Chastain, was in her seventies, and wouldn’t be out this late. If she needed help, she would call him. While cell service was spotty, the phone lines were buried and rarely, if ever, went out.

Might be nothing. But his racing heart told him he shouldn’t assume anything.

He was glad he’d already turned off the lights in the house, so no one outside would be able to see him move about through the windows. He backed off the ladder and headed to the closet next to the front door. He had a shotgun, which should be enough of a threat if someone was up to no good. He never had trouble here, but considering his night work, he was always alert.

Thalia’s paranoia had rubbed off on him.

He looked out the small window embedded in the heavy front door. No vehicle, large or small. No flashlight bobbing among the trees. Nothing out of the ordinary.

He checked the lock again; it was bolted closed.

He passed his office and glanced inside; Banjo was asleep on his bed, unmindful of Jesse’s rising fear. He loved Banjo, but maybe he should have opted for a more security-conscious German shepherd.

Jesse crossed through the kitchen to the side door. A large window looked out. He checked the lock. Secure. A durable lock led to the enclosed porch, but the porch itself had a flimsy bolt that he used only to prevent the wind from pushing open the door. There was nothing of value on the porch, and theft was rare in Rio Grande County.

Faint security lighting at each corner of his cabin illuminated the grounds for ten feet. Thalia had been wanting him to install an elaborate security system, but even if he did, he was well outside of town, so what would be the purpose? It would take at least fifteen minutes for the police to make it here, and they wouldn’t be able to use his driveway in the winter.

At first, Jesse didn’t see anything that stood out. He was about to turn away from the window when something caught his eye.

Footprints.

There were two distinct trails of footprints in the snow just inside the circle of light. They led from the grove of trees to the right and continued past his house. They hadn’t been there when he let Banjo out earlier. He could still see Banjo’s paw prints, though the wind had partly covered them.

These footprints were fresh. The wind hadn’t had time to conceal them.

Heart thudding in his chest, he racked his shotgun. It took him two tries because his hands were shaking. It was nearly one in the morning, below thirty degrees, and two people were walking around his house.

Destroy your computer.

The thought came to him suddenly. There was only one reason someone might be here with ill intent: information.

He ran to his computer and hesitated. If he destroyed it now, all his work for the last two months would be gone. Thalia depended on him—and he would fail her. But more people would be in danger if he didn’t destroy the data, so he really had no other choice.

As he was about to fire at his computer, he heard a gunshot. Then another. And another.

He aimed his shotgun for the doorway, taking a quick glance to his right to make sure that Banjo wasn’t in the line of fire.

Banjo hadn’t budged. But his chest moved up and down as he slumbered. Was he drugged?

Jesse remembered when Banjo came in he’d been licking his lips. He wasn’t a guard dog; if he’d encountered a person outside, he wouldn’t bark. He rarely even barked at wild animals.

Someone had drugged his dog.

There was no time—he couldn’t let anyone access his computer. He turned his shotgun to the hard drive and pressed the trigger. Plastic and metal exploded; a piece of shrapnel—a twisted metal chunk from the inside of his computer—flew out and cut his face. He barely registered the stinging pain as he turned the shotgun back toward the door in self-defense.

A man and a woman stood there. Before he could rack it again, the man fired a pistol, hitting him in his shoulder. His shotgun sagged in his limp arm. As he struggled to straighten it, the man shot him again, hitting his biceps, and Jesse’s weapon fell to the floor.

The woman stared at the computer. “That is unfortunate,” she said, “but you know what we want.”

“It’s all gone,” Jesse said, gritting his teeth against the pain. He put his right hand over the shoulder wound, trying to press down to stop the bleeding.

“The information is in your head. You will tell us everything we want to know.”

“Never.”

She smiled, but there was no pleasure in her expression. It was a smile of evil.

“Yes, Jesse, you will sing like a bird. Evan, how long do you think it’ll take?”

Evan, a tall, skinny man wearing a knit cap and parka, said in a deep voice, “Twenty minutes, give or take.”

The woman said, “Set the timer. I don’t think it’ll take twenty minutes.”

Evan looked at his watch, pressed a button.

Then the woman turned her attention to his dog.

He couldn’t stop the cry that escaped. He wanted to be brave. For Thalia, for Rina, for all the others.

But he wasn’t.

“Don’t touch him,” Jesse said, his voice quaking in fear and anger.

“No,” she said, stepping toward him, “it won’t take me more than ten. And then we wait. Thalia will be here soon.”