Chapter 4 #3
For a second, with everything dark, the place feels less like a winter wonderland and more like a set after the cameras stop rolling. Pretty, but hollow.
You’re fine, I tell myself. You’ve done this a hundred times.
I glance over my shoulder to check. Nick is a tall silhouette near the end of the lot, close to the gate. Just a shadow in the half-light of the streetlamp, but there. Waiting. The sight is weirdly reassuring.
I close the panel, then pull the padlock from my pocket to secure the outer gate. The chain is looped through the metal bars, cold biting through my gloves as I grab it. My fingers fumble with the links; the lock always sticks in winter.
The hair on the back of my neck prickles. A little flicker of that same wrongness from this morning—the snow globe, the sense of something being out of place—slips up my spine.
You’re jumpy because of the cabin, I tell myself. Because someone reached into your past and put it in a box on your counter. Not because of the guy who just fixed your reindeer and offered you his coat. Don’t be ridiculous.
I shake off the feeling and wrestle the chain free.
Headlights flare behind me, painting my shadow long across the pavement. I turn my head just enough to see Nick’s SUV idling a few car lengths back, his lights trained on the gap in the fence.
I wave him forward. “Go ahead!” I call over the wind.
He hesitates, just for a breath. Then the SUV rolls toward me.
As he passes, I catch a glimpse of him through the windshield—hands steady on the wheel, eyes on me instead of the road.
He gives a two-finger salute off the steering wheel, something warm and conspiratorial in the gesture, then eases out through the gate.
He pulls over to the shoulder under a streetlamp just beyond the entrance and cuts his headlights. The SUV becomes a dark shape, engine still running. The protective part of my brain notes that he didn’t just drive off. The part of me still buzzing from his touch finds that…sweet.
“Hurry up,” I mutter to myself, turning back to the fence. I thread the chain through from the inside so I can lock it from the road side. The metal is icy, biting at my gloved fingers. The padlock is stubborn, and I curse under my breath as it refuses to cooperate.
The world has gone very quiet. Snow hushes the distant traffic. My breath is loud in my ears.
You’re fine. Finish, drive home, open the wine. Watch Bruce Willis and forget about glass cabins and kind-eyed strangers.
Footsteps crunch softly over snow behind me. Heavy. Unhurried. Close.
I assume it’s Nick coming to help with the gate, because what else would it be? I don’t turn right away, cheeks burning with embarrassment over the stupid lock.
“I’ve got it,” I call, still wrestling with the chain. “It just sticks sometimes.”
The footsteps quicken. The hairs on my arms lift under my coat.
Something in the cadence is wrong. Too fast. Too precise.
“Nick?” I start to turn.
An arm snaps around my waist like a steel band, hauling me back.
The world lurches. Panic slams into me.
A gloved hand clamps over my mouth before I can scream. The padlock slips from my fingers, hitting the ground with a sharp metallic crack that sounds far away.
I buck and twist, heart crashing against my ribs. The arm doesn’t budge. My feet scrape and slide on the ice as I’m dragged backward, my boots barely finding traction.
This isn’t a friendly “let me help you.” This is—
No.
I force a scream into the palm over my mouth; it comes out as a strangled, useless sound. The wind snatches it, tears it apart.
He lifts me, actually lifts me clear off the ground.
The gate swings in my blurred peripheral vision.
My hip slams into the edge of an open car door—pain flares white-hot—and then I’m being shoved inside, the smell of leather and cold air filling my nose.
I claw for the door frame, nails scraping over metal and rubber.
The scent hits me next, woodsmoke and pine, undercut with something spicy and clean. The same smell from the coat around my shoulders twenty minutes ago.
My stomach drops through the floor.
He yanks me further into the SUV. I kick, connecting once with something solid—his shoulder, his jaw, I can’t tell. He grunts, grip tightening. For a heartbeat, hope flares that maybe I hurt him enough to break free. I twist toward the open door, reaching—
Fingers clamp around my ankle, dragging me back so my knees slam into the seat. Air punches out of my lungs.
He lets go of my mouth just long enough to jam something thick and rough between my lips—cloth, tasting like dust and detergent. I try to spit it out; he jerks it tight, tying it behind my head. The fibers bite into the corners of my mouth. My scream dies in cotton.
The door slams shut with a hollow, final thunk.
Darkness wraps around us, broken only by the faint glow from the dashboard. I twist and thrash, every nerve lit up with terror. Tears blur my vision; my breaths come in ragged, noisy pulls through my nose.
Nick grabs my wrists. Plastic hisses; a zip tie snaps tight around them. The bite of it is sharp, stern, plastic digging into skin.
I kick again, wild, animal. One heel connects with his ribs. He snarls, low and dangerous.
“Enough,” he says. Not playful now. Not warm. The word vibrates in my bones.
He catches my ankles and pins them, another zip tie wrapping and cinching until my boots knock uselessly together. I’m bound at wrists and ankles, gagged, trapped in the dark belly of his SUV.
This morning I was standing in my kitchen holding a snow globe of a cabin I tried to erase from my mind. Tonight I’m trussed up like cargo by Hot Santa.
A sob rips through me, smothered by the gag. My vision swims. This can’t be real.
He looms closer, breathing hard. In the thin light, I can see his face—eyes dark, jaw clenched.
Not empty, exactly. Determined. He sees my tears and hesitates.
For a fraction of a second, something flickers across his features, regret?
Pain? It doesn’t matter. Nick lifts a gloved hand and wipes a tear from my cheek with his thumb.
I flinch, recoiling as far as the zip ties allow.
“I’m sorry, Meredith,” he murmurs. He sounds like he means it. That somehow makes it worse.
Another broken sound tears from my throat, swallowed by the gag.
“Shh,” he says, almost soothing. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
The words send ice down my spine. People who don’t want to hurt you don’t throw you into cars and tie you up.
He reaches past me. Metal rattles. Something heavy and dark drops over my head—fabric, thick and scratchy. He pulls it down, tight around my neck. My last glimpse is of his mouth pressed into a hard line, his hand trembling just barely as he adjusts the hood.
Then there’s nothing. No lights, no shapes, just the smothering black and the sound of my own wild breathing.
The SUV rocks as he climbs into the driver’s seat. The engine revs, then settles. Tires crunch over snow and gravel as we pull away from Frost Plaza, away from my car, my gate, the little world I thought I controlled.
I roll onto my side on the floor, helpless against the movement. Plastic cuts deeper into my skin with every jolt.
Through the pounding in my ears, I hear the radio click on. A crooner’s voice drifts back, smooth and cruelly calm:
“…I’ll be home for Christmas…”
A sob wracks my chest, but the gag turns it into broken air. I squeeze my eyes shut under the hood as tears soak the fabric, the Christmas song curling around me like something rotten.
Home for Christmas.
Not tonight.