Page 50 of Snowed In with her Mountain Men

CAMRYN

I woke up somewhere warm, someplace shielded by the wind. My brain reeled. My head pounded, especially in the back, where it felt even warmer than the rest of my body.

“Welcome back.”

The voice was low, casual, deep. And for some reason, non-threatening.

“You gave me quite a scare. For a while, I was afraid you’d never wake up.”

The intruder was behind me, and somewhere off to the left. I tried to turn, but couldn’t. I tried to stand, but realized I was expertly bound, hand and foot, with something tight and sticky that was burning my wrists.

“Who are you?” I coughed.

I was on the floor, inside the cabin. Judging by the array of terrible paintings and shocked-looking taxidermy, we were in Sarge’s office.

“I’m more interested in knowing who you are,” the man behind me said smoothly. “And more importantly, why you’re here in my cabin.”

I could hear slow footfalls, as the man paced back and forth. Shimmying to gather my ass beneath me, I scooted into a more upright position.

“Your cabin?”

“Yes.”

Oakley’s rifle was in the corner; I could see it propped up against the wall. But the snow in my hair was melting quickly against the warmth of being inside. I struggled to blink away the sweat that kept stinging my eyes.

“And what makes you think this is—”

My voice died instantly as the man stepped into view. He was tall and well-built, with stark white hair and a full, matching beard. But it was his eyes that I recognized most. They were deep-set. Piercing. Wholly familiar…

“SARGE?”

The man tilted his head at me curiously for a moment, then laughed. “Sarge, huh?”

My mind was blown. I could only speak in one word sentences.

“What… who… HOW?”

My captor sighed, shifted his weight, then folded his arms across his barrel-shaped chest. He looked down at me in grim disdain.

“Where are they?”

At first, I was too dazed for the question to even register. My face still throbbed from the cold. The back of my head was on fire.

“W—Where’s what?”

“The diamonds!” he scoffed. “Why else would I be here!?”

I couldn’t help my mouth from dropping open. Confusion swirled through the labyrinth of my beclouded brain.

“But you… you were the one who hid—”

“LOOK AT ME!”

His wrath came from absolutely nowhere. He’d gone from calm to mildly annoyed to outright furious, all in the span of a few seconds.

“Did you even know this man you’re calling ‘Sarge?’” my captor seethed. “Colton Tyler? Have you ever met him?”

I didn’t know what he was driving at. I shook my head.

“Well, I’m not him,” he spat. “Never was. I’m way smarter than that.”

“But—”

I gasped as he bent down, grabbed me by the shoulders, and pulled me in. Our faces were mere inches away. I could smell the stink of his heated breath as he shook me.

“I’m not Sarge!” he sneered, drawing the word out in a way that degraded it. Then, more slowly: “I’m his brother.”

A moment of silence stretched out, our gazes locked until I finally broke eye contact.

And then I saw it — the tiny differences, the things that both were and weren’t there.

The man before me had less wisdom, less experience, less of everything.

The lines in his face told a different story, too.

One that was no less sad, but still very much unlike the photo above the stairway I’d seen so many times before.

“You’re his… brother?” I repeated numbly.

“Yes.”

“A—Are you twins?”

His ensuing laugh was also a scoff. “Might as well be. Born eleven months apart, people always did think so. Especially when we were young.”

He released me, and I nearly slumped over again. My bonds were duct tape, wrapped so tightly it was chafing my wrists. I craned my neck, scanning the room, looking for any way out. A mountain lion snarled down at me, urging me to pull it together. Its glass eyes were angry and vengeful.

“But if you’re not him…” I murmured. “What are you here for?”

The man whirled on me again. He looked even more incensed than the lion.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“I mean, the diamonds, I know. But they were his, not yours. It’s not like your brother—”

“Everything that’s his is mine,” the man seethed. “My brother may be gone, but I’m his flesh, his blood. His only living relative.” He spat. “His little group of protégés that have been squatting here can have this cabin, along with the insane weather that comes with it.”

Turning, he leaned down into my face again.

“But the diamonds are mine. ”

I wanted to ask how he knew about the diamonds in the first place, or why his brother hadn’t included him in his will.

But I knew I’d be pushing my luck. The man standing over me wasn’t all there, but at least he hadn’t hurt me yet.

Not seriously, anyway. Pieces of him were definitely missing, though. They probably had been for a long time.

“Look,” I reasoned, “no one knows if there even are diamonds. We haven’t found them yet. It’s probably some stupid story, made up by—”

The man abruptly crossed the room and snatched the rifle, instantly shutting me up. But he didn’t level it at me. Instead, he merely unchambered the round and put it back.

“I don’t like guns,” he said, simply.

My shoulders slumped in obvious relief. Maybe this is why he never got along with his brother.

“O—Okay.”

“The diamonds are real though,” he grunted without looking at me. “Trust me, I know my brother. I know what he was capable of.”

“Fine then,” I reasoned. “Let’s wait until the others are back. Maybe the five of us could—”

He shushed me with a rapidly-clenched fist, then cocked his head to look around. He’d heard something I hadn’t. A moment later, I heard it too:

The sound of the front door, slamming closed.

“Camryn!?”

Oakley’s voice was music to my ears. I breathed in, presumably to scream, but I never got it out.

A hand clamped over my mouth, followed by the violent screech of duct tape as my captor wrapped it twice around the back of my head.

I growled and grunted, and even tried biting him.

One of my teeth caught the back of his fingers, but it was too late. It was over in seconds.

“I should’ve hit you harder,” the man growled, clenching his bloodied hand. “I liked you a lot better before you woke up.”

With that, he slipped from the room and pulled the door closed behind him.

Oakley!

I raged and shrieked against the sticky gag of tape covering my mouth; and pulling at my hair. All that would come out were hisses and squeaks. I tried my bonds again, but they were too tight. There was just no way.

So I sat there in misery, scanning the room, cursing the crude taxidermy and terrible paintings that glared back at me.

They looked as absurd as always. As mismatched and totally out of proportion as all the others hung throughout the cabin.

I fixated on one in particular; dark and tremendous, the giant canvas stretched nearly from floor to ceiling.

I blinked at the stupidity of the painting, then blinked and blinked again.

And suddenly… I knew where the diamonds were.