Chapter Thirteen
Pale and cold morning light filtered through the cracks of the line shack, cutting through the gloom like a knife and exposing the dust motes dancing in the stagnant air.
Cassidy woke slowly, tangled in wool blankets and limbs on the narrow, rotting bed. Her head was resting on Sterling Thorne’s chest. She was warm where their bodies touched—a sensation so foreign after the last twenty-four hours that it took her a moment to register it.
His heartbeat, steady and rhythmic against her ear, was a comforting sound that grounded her in the present.
She lifted her head slightly, though the movement made her muscles protest. She was sore in places she hadn’t known existed.
Her wrists chafed where the rope had bound her, and her inner thighs were tender.
Her ass stung with a dull, throbbing heat but in a good way, almost pleasurable, a physical reminder of how completely he had claimed her the night before.
Sterling was awake and staring at the ceiling, his profile sharp against the morning light. His arm was wrapped around her, and his hand rested possessively on her hip.
He looked down as she moved. His blue eyes were clear, no longer clouded by hypothermia or lust. It was the color of deep ice.
“The storm broke,” he said in a voice was rough with sleep but steady.
Cassidy sat up, pulling the scratchy wool blanket with her to cover her chest. The air in the shack was freezing again. The fire in the stove had died down to gray ash; they had burned the last of the scavenged cedar hours ago.
“The horses,” she whispered.
She slipped out of bed, shivering under the blanket, to stick her head out and check the lean-to.
The space was empty, and Whiskey and Shadow were gone.
Their blankets lay in the snow where they had shaken them off.
She turned and saw their tracks leading down the ridge, disappearing into the trees.
They’re mountain horses. They knew the way home better than any GPS.
She drew back and shut the door. “They went home,” she told Sterling. “They know the way.”
She looked around the room at the wreckage of their survival.
Her ruined panties lay on the floor near the door. The black climbing rope was coiled at the foot of the bed. Her clothes were scattered in a heap near the cold stove.
Reality came rushing back—the debt, the investors, and the leak. Travis.
She shivered, but not from the cold, and walked back to sit near his warmth on the bed.
“We need to go,” she whispered. “If we leave now, we can make it down the ridge by noon.”
Sterling didn’t move and just continued to watch her. Then he reached out and brushed a tangled lock of hair from her face.
“Not yet,” he said.
“Sterling, the deadline…”
“Forget the deadline,” Sterling interrupted. His tone was absolute. “Tell me about the phone call.”
Cassidy looked away, focusing on a knot in the wood of the wall. “I told you. It was a wrong number.”
“Don’t lie to me,” Sterling said. “Not after last night.”
He sat up, revealing his broad, scarred chest. He looked like a king in a hovel.
“You panicked,” he said. “When you saw the name on the card at dinner, you stopped breathing. You nearly froze to death on this mountain because you were too terrified to think straight. Who is Travis Miller to you?”
Cassidy closed her eyes and felt the tears prickling behind her lids. She had spent four years running from this conversation, building a fortress of silence around the truth.
But the fortress had crumbled in the storm, and she had nothing left to defend herself with. She was naked, bruised, and exhausted.
“He’s my ex,” she whispered.
“The security contractor,” Sterling clarified.
“He wasn’t in security then,” Cassidy said in a brittle voice. “He was a rodeo star, the golden boy of the circuit. Everyone loved him. Even my father liked him.”
She took a breath, and the air tasted of ash.
“I met him after college,” she continued. “I had tried living in Seattle for a year, working a desk job, but I hated it. The city felt like a cage. So I came back and started barrel racing on the weekends just to feel something again. That’s where I met Travis.”
Sterling didn’t speak, just listened with a terrifying intensity.
“He was charming at first,” she said. “He bought me gifts, took me out. But then he isolated me by telling me my friends were using me and that my father was disappointed in me.”
She looked down at her hands.
“Then the accidents started. I’d fall down the stairs. I’d get kicked by a horse that had never kicked anyone. I had to stop riding in competitions because I was always ‘recovering.’”
She rubbed her left wrist where the bone had never healed quite right. It ached when the weather turned.
“Four years ago,” she said, “I told him I was leaving and that I was done.”
She looked up at Sterling.
“He broke my wrist—snapped it like a twig,” she said. “He told me that if I couldn’t ride for him, I wouldn’t ride for anyone. He said I belonged to him.”
She paused to take a breath, and the heavy silence in the shack pressed down on them.
“But I left anyway,” she continued softly. “I stormed out that night and drove off. I moved back to Seattle for six months, just to disappear and create the illusion I was gone. Then my father passed away.”
Her voice cracked.
“I came back for the funeral, and I stayed. I’ve been working the ranch ever since. I haven’t seen Travis in years; I thought he moved on.”
Sterling was silent for a long moment. His face was unreadable, but the air around him seemed to drop ten degrees. Then the muscles in his jaw bunched.
“He is the leak,” Sterling stated confidently.
“Probably,” Cassidy said. “He works security and probably knows how to hack systems, or at least he knows people he can pay off to do it for him.”
“He compromised my servers,” Sterling said in a low, dangerous voice. “He stole proprietary data and sold it to Tanaka to force a sale. He is trying to strip the land from you.”
“He wants to destroy me,” Cassidy said. “He wants me to have nothing so I have to crawl back to him.”
Sterling reached out, took her left hand, and ran his thumb over her wrist. His touch was gentle, a stark contrast to the violence she was describing.
“He will not touch you again,” Sterling said.
“You don’t know him,” Cassidy argued. “He’s—”
“A man,” Sterling cut her off. “And he has made a fatal error by attacking my asset.”
He looked into her eyes, and the blue ice in his was burning now.
“And he attacked my woman.”
Cassidy’s breath hitched. “Sterling…”
“Listen to me,” Sterling said, gripping her hand tighter. “The debt, 3.2 million, it’s gone.”
“What do you mean?”
“My board wants the sale to Tokyo,” Sterling shifted into his crisp, decisive CEO voice.
“They see the profit margin and don’t care about the land or the history.
They have a fiduciary duty to the shareholders to close the deal by the deadline.
If I don’t sign, they will vote to remove me and execute the foreclosure anyway. ”
He paused. “So I am removing the board from the equation.”
“How?” Cassidy asked.
“I am buying the debt personally,” Sterling said. “I am liquidating some of my private holdings in the Singapore markets this morning. I will wire the full principal of 3.2 million dollars to the firm’s account before noon and make the asset private.”
Cassidy stared at him. “You’re…spending your own money? Three million dollars?”
“Yes,” Sterling said.
“Why?” Cassidy whispered. “You said so yourself: it’s a bad investment. The numbers don’t work.”
“The numbers changed,” Sterling said.
He reached up to cupped her face, and his thumb brushed her cheekbone.
“I am buying a home,” he said softly. “I am buying a future.”
He leaned in and rested his forehead against hers.
“I am choosing you, Cassidy—over the board, over the profit…over everything.”
Tears spilled down Cassidy’s cheeks, but she didn’t try to stop them. For the first time in her life, standing between her and the abyss, fighting for her.
“Thank you,” she sobbed.
“Don’t thank me yet,” Sterling said grimly. “We still have a problem to solve.”
He pulled back with a hardened expression. The tenderness was replaced by cold, lethal rage.
“Travis Miller,” Sterling said. “If he comes near this ranch again, I will kill him.”
It was a statement of intent, and he sounded deadly serious. Cassidy believed this promise made by a man who had the money and power to bury bodies and make sure they were never found.
She shivered, this time in relief.
He was a monster, but he was her monster.
Sterling pulled her into his arms and kissed her deeply, sealing the vow.
Then, a sound cut through the silence. The high-pitched, mechanical whine was getting louder.
Snowmobiles.
Sterling tensed and broke the kiss. “Someone is coming,” he said.
He stood up with efficient speed, unbothered by his nakedness and grabbed his trousers from the floor.
“Get dressed,” he ordered. “Hide the rope.”
Cassidy scrambled out of bed, grabbed the coil of black nylon and shoved it under the mattress. Then she pulled on her Pendleton flannel shirt, her fingers fumbling with the buttons.
The roar of the engines grew deafening and stopped right outside the shack.
“Hello in there!” a voice shouted. It was rough and familiar.
“Roger,” Cassidy gasped. “It’s Roger!”
She pulled up her Levi’s and kicked the destroyed panties under the bed with the rope.
Sterling was already dressed and pulling his shearling coat on. He looked at her then glanced around the room.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Ready,” Cassidy said.
She went to the door, threw the bolt, and pushed it open.
The blinding white light of the snow-covered mountain flooded the shack.
Roger and Gabriel, their rescuers, were bundled in heavy winter gear and standing next to two idling snowmobiles.
When Roger lifted his goggles, his face was pale with worry. He looked from Cassidy to Sterling.
“We found the horses at the lower gate,” Roger said. “We thought the worst, but I know Cassidy West is a survivor.” He looked at her. “Figured you might be in the Line Shack.”
“We’re fine,” Sterling said, stepping from the doorway out into the light. He blocked the view into the shack. “Just a minor detour.”
Gabriel stepped forward, looking nervous. “Mr. Thorne, it’s a mess down there. There are a lot of people in suits at the main house—black SUVs everywhere.”
Sterling’s expression didn’t change as he adjusted his cuff.
“That would be my legal team,” Sterling said calmly. “And the board.”
He put his hand on Cassidy’s shoulder. It was a claim and a warning to the world.
“Let’s get down the mountain,” Sterling said. “We have a wire transfer to make.”
He looked at Cassidy and gave her a small, almost imperceptible nod.
The nightmare on the mountain was over, but the war for the valley was just beginning.