Chapter Twenty-Six
Knox
A click.
Quiet enough that most people would sleep through it. I am not most people.
My eyes open before I’m fully conscious, every nerve firing alert. The cabin is dim, that gray pre-dawn light filtering through
the windows. Hailey’s head rests on my shoulder, her breath warm against my collarbone. Liam’s arm is draped across us both,
his forehead pressed to my spine.
We’ve been sleeping like this for two nights now. Piled together like survivors on a life raft. I’ve stopped pretending I
don’t like it.
But that sound—
I hold still, listening. The wind has died down. That’s the first thing I register. The constant moan that’s been shaking
the walls for days has gone quiet. The silence feels wrong. Heavy.
Then I hear it again. A mechanical click from the direction of the door.
Slowly, carefully, I extract myself from the tangle of limbs. Hailey murmurs something in her sleep but doesn’t wake. Liam’s
arm slides off me, his hand curling into the empty space where I was.
I cross the room barefoot, the floorboards cold enough to make my jaw tight. The door is right there. Same door that’s been
locked since they threw us in here. Same door I’ve tested a hundred times.
The handle turns.
It opens.
For one wild second, my heart slams against my ribs. Freedom. We can just walk out. We can—
Then I see what’s waiting for us.
Snow. Everywhere. A wall of white that comes up past my thighs at the porch line. The storm that’s been howling overhead for
days finally spent itself, and it dumped everything it had right on top of us.
The forest beyond is unrecognizable. Trees bent low under the weight. No paths. No landmarks. Just endless wilderness in every
direction, the kind of terrain that would swallow three people in city clothes and never give them back.
I step out onto the porch. The cold slams into me like a fist. Minus twenty at least, maybe colder. My lungs seize with the
first breath. I’m wearing nothing but sleep pants and a T-shirt, and within seconds my feet are going numb on the frozen boards.
We’d be dead in an hour out there. Less, probably. No gear. No direction. No food. Just miles of mountain forest waiting to
freeze us solid.
“Knox?”
I turn. Hailey’s in the doorway, blanket wrapped around her shoulders, Liam a shadow behind her. Both of them staring past
me at the white expanse.
“Door just unlocked,” I say. “Heard it click a minute ago.”
Liam pushes past Hailey to stand beside me, his jaw flexing as he takes in the view. His breath fogs in front of his face.
“That’s not the escape it looks like.”
“No. It’s not.”
Marlena’s little joke. Give us the illusion of freedom while the weather makes damn sure we can’t use it. She’s probably watching
right now, that crazy smile on her face, waiting to see if we’re stupid enough to try.
We’re not.
But then I spot something off to the side of the cabin. A small structure half-buried in the drifts. The woodshed. And inside, just visible through the gap in the door—an axe propped against a chopping block.
“At least I can get us more firewood now.” I nod toward the woodshed. “She probably noticed the pile was getting low. Might
be why she unlocked the door.”
“I need to go out there.” Hailey’s voice is steady. “Get my bearings. See what we’re dealing with.”
I frown. “It’s dangerous.”
“It’s dangerous in here too.” She’s already turning, scanning the room for the warmest clothes. “Twenty minutes. That’s all.
I need to know what’s around us. What our options are.”
I want to argue. Every instinct I have screams to keep her inside, keep her safe, lock the door again and pretend this never
happened. But she’s right. We’ve been blind in here for four days. If there’s any chance of getting out of this, we need intelligence.
“We do it together,” I say. “Nobody goes alone.”
We layer everything we can find. Sweaters under sweaters, socks doubled on our feet, scarves wrapped over our faces until
only our eyes show. Liam finds a pair of work gloves in the closet, stiff with cold but better than nothing. Shoved in the
back of the same closet, three pairs of snow boots in varying sizes. Because of course Marlena thought of boots. She thought
of everything else. The fit isn’t great—Hailey’s swimming in hers and Liam’s are a half size too tight—but they beat barefoot
in a blizzard. We’ve been padding around this cabin in borrowed socks for four days, and I’d almost forgotten what real shoes
felt like.
“I’m grabbing the axe first,” I tell them. “Wait here.”
I wade through the snow to the woodshed, thigh-deep with every step, and grab the axe from where it leans against the chopping
block. By the time I make it back to the porch, I’m already breathing hard.
“Just in case,” I say when Hailey raises an eyebrow.
The first step off the porch together sinks us all thigh-deep.
The snow is loose and powdery, the kind that looks soft until you try to walk through it.
Each step is a battle—lift your knee to your chest, plant, sink, repeat.
Within minutes my legs are burning and sweat is trickling down my spine despite the cold.
Hailey struggles beside me, her smaller frame working twice as hard. Liam brings up the rear, his breath rasping through his
scarf.
We circle the cabin. The slope of the mountain becomes clear almost immediately—we’re perched on the side of it, tucked into
a small clearing surrounded by dense forest. The trees crowd in close, branches heavy with snow. No roads. No power lines.
Nothing but wilderness as far as I can see in any direction.
“There.” I point to a set of tracks cutting through the snow near the tree line. Snowmobile tracks. Already half-filled from
the storm, but still visible.
“That’s how they brought us in.” Liam crouches, studying them. His face is red from the cold. “But look—already covered. Another
few hours and they’ll be gone completely. We’d never find our way following these.”
He’s right. The tracks wind into the forest and disappear into shadow. No markers. No breadcrumbs. Just an endless maze of
white and dark.
We push farther, mapping what we can. A small clearing behind the cabin. The woodshed, stocked with split logs. Beyond that,
nothing. Just the mountain sloping down into more forest, more snow, more of the same in every direction.
The isolation is complete.
“Fifteen minutes.” My teeth are chattering. The cold has worked its way through every layer, settled into my bones. Hailey’s
shaking beside me, her cheeks raw. “Inside. Now.”
Nobody argues.
We stumble back through our own trail, following the broken path we’ve already cut. By the time we reach the porch, my fingers
are clumsy clubs at the end of my arms and I can barely feel my feet.
The cabin’s warmth hits us like a wall. For a moment we just stand there in the entryway, dripping, shivering, too cold to
do anything but breathe.
“Fire,” Liam says through chattering teeth.
I move on autopilot, grabbing logs from the pile by the hearth, adding them to the embers. My hands shake as I work. Ice crystals
melt in my hair, sending cold water trickling down my neck.
Behind me, I hear them peeling off wet layers. Soaked sweaters hitting the floor. Waterlogged socks.
“My jeans are frozen stiff.” Hailey’s voice is muffled. “Actually frozen.”
“Body heat,” Liam says. “Come here.”
I get the fire built up, watch it catch, wait until the flames are steady. Then I turn around.
They’re huddled together near the bed, blankets pulled around their shoulders, Hailey pressed against Liam’s chest for warmth.
Her eyes are closed. His chin rests on top of her head.
Something twists in my chest. Not jealousy—or not only jealousy. Something older than that. The recognition that there’s history
between them I’m not part of. Conversations they haven’t had. Things they need to say to each other that have nothing to do
with me.
I pull off my own wet clothes, exchange them for dry ones from the pile we’ve been rotating through. Jeans. A flannel shirt.
My boots are soaked through but they’re the only shoes I’ve got.
“I’m going to split some more wood.” I say it to the room, not looking at either of them. “We’re going to need it.”
Hailey lifts her head. “Knox—”
“I’ll be right outside. Twenty feet from the door.” I pull on as many dry layers as I can find. “You two should warm up. Talk.”
The look that passes between them tells me I’ve read the situation right. There are things unsettled between them. Five years
of silence that needs to be broken. Old wounds that need to be either reopened or finally closed.
I’m not the one who can help with that.
“Be careful.” Hailey’s voice is soft.
“Always am.”
I grab the axe and head back out into the cold.