Chapter 11
The bench seat was narrower than it had looked from outside. Bill slid in, his shoulder brushing mine as the door shut. Ricky climbed in on my other side and pulled the passenger door closed. Vinyl creaked under our combined weight.
Bill’s arm rested along the back of the seat, not touching me, but close enough that I could almost feel his heat through my coat. If he shifted even slightly, if the truck hit a bump, if he leaned in to speak, there’d be nowhere for me to go.
I folded my hands in my lap and stared straight ahead, focusing on the line of the windshield, the way the glass blurred at the edges from cold and condensation.
The engine rumbled to life, low and confident, and the truck eased onto the road. Headlights carved a narrow tunnel through the white. Everything outside that beam ceased to exist.
For a stretch, no one spoke. The silence felt intentional, like Bill was waiting for one of us to fill it. I could hear his breathing.
I tried not to think about how quickly things could change.
One sudden movement, one hand still steady on the wheel, the other closing the space between us before I could react.
Ricky wouldn’t be able to do much, not really.
Bill had control of the truck, of the road, of the momentum. My heart kicked harder against my ribs.
I shifted closer to Ricky, trying not to make it obvious. Bill noticed. I felt it, not through movement, but his awareness, like a temperature change. The road curved and the truck swayed a bit. His arm slid a fraction closer, still not touching. Not yet.
“So,” Bill said at last, “what happened to the girl?”
Ricky stiffened beside me. We exchanged a quick look, neither of us sure how to answer.
“We’re not sure,” I said. “We just . . . found her.”
The truck kept moving, steady and sure.
“I told y’all not to wander outside,” Bill said.
His statement wasn’t angry. It was factual and emotionless. I swallowed hard.
“Sorry about your friend,” he added after a moment. “Freezing to death out here is a wicked way to go.”
Ricky cleared his throat.
The truck turned into Bill’s drive, headlights catching our SUV half buried in snow.
He parked and cut the engine.
“You two hop out,” Bill said. “I’ll hook onto it and pull her free. One of you should be ready to hop in the driver’s seat and give me a little help or hit the brakes once it pops loose.”
Ricky was already shoving the door open. I followed, grateful for the space, the cold, the ability to breathe again. We stood near the porch while Bill worked. He moved with practiced ease, like this wasn’t the first car he’d yanked out of the snow.
“This is fucked,” Ricky muttered.
I nodded. The word didn’t even come close, but it was all either of us had.
“This was supposed to be a fun weekend,” I said.
Ricky let out a short, humorless laugh. “Yeah, our final hurrah.”
For Maddie, it had been final.
Ricky climbed into the SUV on Bill’s signal and followed his directions—turning over the ignition and shifting it into neutral. Turned out they didn’t actually need a spotter, but I felt more in control by doing something rather than sitting still in the cabin.
With a few revs and a violent lurch, the SUV came free from the snow with a ceremonial pop. The tires left behind deep semicircles of ice where heat had melted the snow.
I felt no relief. Getting unstuck wasn’t the same as getting out.
Bill wiped his hands on his coat. “You’re good now. Make sure you drive slow, don’t brake hard on the way down, and when you get back to the cabin, just ease ’er to a slow stop.”
“Thanks,” I said.
He nodded, then added, almost casually, “Y’all were running low on firewood. I’ll bring some down later, once I chop more.”
I nodded once and turned away. Ricky drove carefully, and the cabin appeared through the snow like a bad memory refusing to fade.
As we climbed the porch steps, my gaze snagged on the shape along the wall. For half a second, just long enough for my heart to stutter, I thought it moved. Maybe there was a ripple beneath the fabric or maybe a breath that wasn’t supposed to exist.
Ricky glanced back at me. “Hey, you okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, “it’s . . . nothing.”
The wind lifted one corner of the sheet, then let it fall. I forced myself to look away.
Inside, the fire had burned low, reduced to glowing embers that barely held the room together. The air smelled stale, like we’d been gone longer than we had. Jake lay stretched across the couch, one arm thrown over his face, mumbling to himself.
“Gee, I sure hope that’s Blair and Ricky walking through the door,” he said, “and not Bill the murderer.”
“Nice to see you too,” Ricky said flatly.
I shrugged out of my coat, my heart still racing. The house smelled damp, and I heard water running.
“Is Noah in the shower?”
Jake shifted, sipping from a glass of bourbon. “Must be.”
“Did you check on him at all?”
“Nope,” he said. “Figured I’d give him space. Let him process.”
Of course that’s what Jake thought, because checking on Noah was an interruption to his drinking and lying around. I walked down the hall, stopping outside the bathroom door.
I knocked. “Hey, Noah. We got your vehicle back.”
There was no answer.
I knocked again. “Noah?”
It was silent, save for the steady hiss of water.
“At least answer me,” I said, my voice cracking despite my effort to keep it steady. “Just so I know you’re okay.”
My hand hovered over the knob. I called his name once more, and when he didn’t answer, I pushed the door open, surprised it was unlocked.
Steam rushed out, and the mirror was completely fogged.
“I’m not trying to see you naked,” I added, forcing a thin, joking edge into my voice. “So if you’d like to avoid that, then you should probably answer me.”
My pulse started to climb. “Noah,” I said, louder now. “Okay, seriously. Answer me.”
When he didn’t, the air seemed to thin, like the room was bracing. I reached for the curtain, my hand already shaking before I understood why.
I pulled it back and my hand flew to my mouth.
The sound ripped out of me before my brain could catch up.
My eyes went straight to his throat. The gash was deep and deliberate, carved clean across the front of his neck, the skin split wide.
Water from the shower struck his neck again and again.
It wouldn’t let the blood settle. Every time it tried to pool, the stream broke it apart, chased it downward, erasing it just enough to make it start over.
A knife lay near his hand, but I barely registered it. My mind couldn’t move past the cut long enough to make sense of anything else.
Footsteps thundered behind me. Someone shouted my name. Or Noah’s. Or both. The sounds reached me warped and delayed, like they were traveling through water.
A hand grabbed my shoulder and pulled. I staggered back, my body responding even as my mind refused to follow. Hands kept touching me, voices kept happening, but all I could see was the way the water wouldn’t let him stop bleeding.