Chapter Sixteen
“—hear me? Willow? Come on, wake up.”
The voice filtered through the fog in her brain, pulling her toward consciousness she didn’t want. Her head throbbed, and her mouth tasted like chemicals—sharp, acrid…wrong.
The smell hit her again, that same suffocating scent from the parking lot, and her stomach lurched. She almost gagged, fighting down the nausea.
“There you go. That’s it.”
Her eyes cracked open, and the dim light felt like knives.
Rough-hewn beams crossed the ceiling over wherever she lay on her side, her head resting on a pillow.
The scent of smoke from a wood burner indicated there was some source of heat, but it couldn’t keep up with the cold winter storm blowing across… what? The mountain?
She was in a cabin—small, sparse, with rough wooden walls and a single curtainless window showing light that looked suspiciously like dawn. Her mind tripped over the fact it had been early afternoon when she arrived at the feed store. How long had she been unconscious?
The man sitting across from her came into focus.
Cal. The veteran from the feed store, watching her with an intensity that made her skin crawl.
“Welcome back.” There was something very wrong in his smile. Something that didn’t match the friendly store employee who’d loaded feed into her truck.
Memory crashed back—the dropped pen, getting out of the truck, strong arms grabbing her from behind, the chemical-soaked cloth over her face.
“What—” Her voice came out raspy, and when she moved, she realized something cold and metal was tethered around her ankle. Panic spiked through her veins. “What’s happening?”
“I noticed you had your brothers around a lot more lately,” Cal said conversationally, as if they were picking up a conversation she had no memory of starting. “And that guy. The quiet one. He’s always with you now.”
Her heart flipped over, ice that had nothing to do with the temperature in the cabin filling her veins.
Decker. Oh God, Decker. He was going to be frantic. She could picture him returning to the ranch, expecting to find her, and instead—
Wait. Decker had questions about Cal yesterday. She’d brushed them off as him just being overprotective about any man who talked to her.
Now a man with a crazy glint in his eyes sat watching her and suddenly those questions were very important.
“I knew I was running out of time.” Cal sat with his back against the wall, something she’d seen her brothers and every other veteran do. It was a military thing—they didn’t want anyone sneaking up on them from behind.
“They started guarding you,” he continued. “All of them, circling like those fucking guard dogs that won’t let anyone near.”
He was growing agitated—she felt the shift in the air. She had to find a way to defuse the situation.
She issued a little laugh, something she did when her social battery ran low and she still had hours left of dealing with people. “Why would I need guards?” She forced another laugh, hoping it didn’t sound as unhinged to him as it did to her own ears. “Cal, this is crazy. Whatever you think—”
“I saw you at the bar that night,” he broke across her. “The bachelorette party. I was watching the whole fight. Could have taken you then, you know. But they wouldn’t let you out of their sight. Surrounded you like a goddamn military escort.”
The honey. The book. The rose. The gifts she’d written off as harmless. Now she was tied up in a cabin with a madman.
“I made up my mind then to show you how much I love you.”
Her gut twisted at the word that sounded so wrong falling from his lips.
“The honey was for you,” he confirmed her worst fears. “And I had Felicity order the book for you. That time I followed you into the bookstore, you told me you love Black Beauty. Did you like it?”
Oh god. He followed her.
Swallowing the bile in her throat, she nodded. “I did.”
The smile he gave her was just as off as every other expression. “And the flower…a red rose to show my love. Every gift, I was trying to show you how I felt.”
Her mind raced, trying to find the right words, the right approach. She’d dealt with volatile situations before—her drunk father had taught her how to read moods, how to de-escalate, how to survive. She could do this.
“Cal, I think there’s been a misunderstanding—”
“No misunderstanding.” His voice was firm, certain. “I knew from the first time we talked on the phone that you wanted us to be together. The way you tried to help me find work. You heard me. Really heard me. Then I saw you for the first time at the feed store and I was blown away.”
Her skin broke out in goose bumps. He’d built an entire relationship in his head based on simple human kindness. Based on her trying to help a struggling veteran find employment and general niceties exchanged after that.
“I fixed it.” He gestured around the cabin. “Fixed it so we can be together. No more brothers, no more guards. Just us, Willow.”
His phone buzzed, and his expression darkened as he looked at the screen.
“No,” he muttered. “No, I told them I couldn’t come in today.”
It rang, and he answered it with barely controlled fury. “What? I’m busy… I don’t care if you’re short-staffed… Fine. Fine. I’ll be there in thirty minutes!”
He launched off his chair. For a heart-pounding moment, she thought he’d turn that anger on her.
Then he hurled the phone across the room.
It struck the wall like a gunshot and shattered.
He stormed across the room, sweeping papers off the rickety table, kicking over a chair.
The violence was sudden and absolute, and Willow forced herself to stay calm, to breathe through the fear even though everything inside her wanted to hide.
She’d seen this before. Her father’s rages, the unpredictability, the way rational thought fled in the face of anger. She knew how to compartmentalize.
How to wait out the storm.
When Cal finally stopped, breathing hard, she wet her dry lips and spoke in a soft tone. “It’s okay, Cal. You have to go to work. I understand.”
He looked at her, suspicion and hope warring in his expression.
“I’ll be here when you get back.” She made herself smile to let him believe he was getting his dream. “We can talk then. Really talk.”
“Four hours,” he said finally. “I’ll be back in four hours. And we’ll have dinner together. Like a real couple.”
“Can you untie me?” she asked carefully. “So I can clean up, maybe start dinner?”
His laugh was bitter. “You think I’m stupid? You have use of your hands. There’s twelve feet of chain around your ankle—enough to reach the bathroom and the fridge. Don’t worry, you can still make dinner.”
She followed the chain from her bound foot to where it was secured to a heavy bolt in the floor. Twelve feet. Just enough freedom to be cruel.
Her eyes caught on the old landline phone mounted on the far wall. The cabin couldn’t be so remote that it was completely off-grid then.
Yet that landline was too far away. Even stretched to the limit of her restraints, it would remain maddeningly out of reach.
“Make sure dinner’s ready when I get back.” Cal grabbed his coat and turned to look at her. The way his eyes softened made her feel sicker. “We’re going to have a nice evening. Just like you always wanted.”
“Of course,” she said sweetly, the words tasting like ash. “I’ll make something special.”
The door slammed behind him, followed by the sound of a lock engaging. Then an engine starting and tires on gravel that faded into silence.
Willow waited. Her hands were trembling, and she felt close to throwing up, but she had to keep a grip.
She counted to one hundred to make sure he was really gone. Then she started working.
When she was a kid, she’d once spent hours tied to a tree when Gray had abandoned her during survival training. She’d gotten out of that by dislocating her thumb—a trick she hadn’t known existed until she’d done it by accident and Carson had explained it later.
But she couldn’t dislocate her foot. The ankle chain was solid steel, the bolt driven deep into the floor, maybe even connected to a pipe under the cabin.
She tried anyway, yanking at the chain until her ankle was raw and bleeding. Nothing. The bolt didn’t budge.
From across the room, the phone mocked her. It probably wasn’t even connected, but it didn’t matter. Even stretching to the max, her fingertips couldn’t begin to grab it.
Think, Willow. Think.
She surveyed the cabin with new eyes, cataloging everything within reach. The kitchen area had knives—but the drawer was just beyond her chain’s limit. The bathroom had a small window—also unreachable. The fridge was accessible, and she could make it to the ancient stove.
She had four hours before Cal returned. Four hours to figure out how to save herself.
Deep in her bones, she knew Decker was coming. He was out there right now, tearing apart the world looking for her. But she couldn’t just wait to be rescued.
She’d learned long ago that sometimes you had to save yourself first.
* * * * *
Decker had given up on sleep after only an hour and returned to the office where her brothers were still working.
Theo was dead to the world on the leather sofa in Carson’s office, his exhaustion finally catching up with him. The rest of them looked equally haggard, eyes bloodshot from staring at screens and running down dead ends.
Decker met Carson’s stare. “Anything?”
“The feed store worker is still our only suspect. And we haven’t tracked down a single person who knows where to find him.”
“Fuck.” He jammed his fingers through his mussed hair. He must look like hell, but nothing mattered except finding Willow.
“Colt’s driving all the back roads now. There are a few mountain passes closed for the weather, but if he sees any tracks, he’ll follow.”
“What now?” Decker’s voice cracked from disuse and raw pain. “Feed store opens in two hours. We’re going to be there when they unlock the doors.”