Chapter Seventeen
The highway was a black ribbon cutting through the white void of the valley beneath the mountains.
Cassidy gripped the steering wheel of her Silverado with her good hand while her injured left hand lay throbbing in her lap. The heater blasted warm air that smelled of old dust, but it couldn’t touch the cold that had settled in her marrow.
She was leaving for good.
She wanted a completely physical departure; an amputation from the pain of betrayal. Every mile she put between herself and the ranch felt like she was tearing a piece of her soul out by the roots. She had left her home, her history, and the man who had promised to save her.
“He lied,” she whispered to the dashboard. “He signed the papers.”
The tears blurred her vision, turning the snowflakes in her headlights into streaks of light. She wiped her eyes angrily with the back of her hand. She wouldn’t cry for a man who looked at her and saw a liability to be managed.
Then in the rearview mirror, headlights appeared.
They were distant at first, two pinpricks of yellow in the gloom. Cassidy ignored them and focused on the road, navigating the slick patches of black ice that coated the asphalt.
The lights grew closer. They were moving fast. Too fast for the conditions.
For a second, a foolish, desperate hope flared in her chest.
Sterling?
Maybe he had realized his mistake and come after her—chasing her down to drag her back and explain everything.
The vehicle behind her closed the gap with aggressive speed. She watched the mirror, hoping to see a black Mercedes G-Class SUV.
Instead, she saw a massive white Dodge Ram 1500, lifted high on oversized tires. A rack of roof-mounted hunting lights suddenly flared to life, blinding her with a wall of artificial daylight.
Cassidy squinted against the glare, her heart skipping a beat.
Then it swerved. It didn’t pass, just hung on her rear quarter panel like a predator testing its prey.
Cassidy’s hope died, replaced by a cold knot of dread.
Sterling Thorne didn’t drive a lifted truck or use hunting lights to blind other drivers. This was an erratic and angry hunter flushing game.
This was Travis.
“No,” she breathed. “Please, no.”
She pressed down on the accelerator. The old truck groaned, the engine straining against the incline, but she needed to get away as fast as possible and find a turnoff, a gas station, anything with people.
But this part of the highway was deserted—a lonely stretch of asphalt surrounded by miles of frozen pastures and endless forests of Douglas Fir and cedar.
The Dodge surged forward.
Thud.
The impact was jarring. Metal screeched against metal as his heavy steel bumper slammed into her aging Silverado.
Cassidy’s head snapped back against the headrest, and her truck fishtailed on the ice. She fought the wheel, correcting the skid with a desperate yank of her right hand.
“Stop!” she screamed, though he couldn’t hear her.
He hit her again, harder this time. The force of it lifted her rear tires off the pavement for a split second. It became clear very quickly that he intended to push her off the road and kill her.
Her truck spun.
The world tilted into slow-motion timelessness as her headlights swept across the trees in a dizzying arc. The tires lost their grip on the pavement and found nothing but air.
Time stretched into an eternity of noise and violence as soon as her truck went over the embankment.
She felt the suspension snap with a sound like a gunshot. The world outside the windows became a blur of snow and dark trees. She felt the heavy vehicle tip past the point of no return, and gravity took over. The truck rolled.
She heard the glass of the side window explode inward, raining shards onto her lap like hail. The roof crunched as the heavy vehicle slammed onto its top, the metal screaming in protest. Debris flew through the cab—her bags, old coffee cups, spare keys.
Centrifugal force pinned her to the seat. The seatbelt locked, cutting into her chest like a wire, bruising her ribs. Her head slammed against the door frame.
Then came the absolute silence. The engine died, and the screaming of metal had stopped. There was only the ringing sound of her own blood rushing in her ears and the soft hiss of snow falling on the cooling wreckage.
Cassidy opened her eyes to see the world was upside down. The dashboard was above her. Her hair was hanging toward the roof.
Her ribs felt broken; pain bloomed in her side, sharp and hot.
She tasted copper in her mouth, and warm, viscous fluid trickled down her forehead and into her eye, stinging like salt.
Panic, cold and sharp, flooded her system.
She was trapped and hurt. She tried to move, but her legs were pinned under the steering column, and her left arm was trapped against the crushed door.
“Help,” she croaked.
The fragile, broken syllable simply vanished into the brutal, howling void of the mountain night.
Hanging completely inverted within the crushed cabin of her Chevy Silverado, Cassidy was forced to confront the devastating, immediate reality of her body being in shock.
Every desperate attempt to pull oxygen into her burning lungs felt exactly like swallowing jagged pieces of broken glass.
Freezing winter wind shrieked mercilessly through the blown-out safety glass of the passenger windows, biting fiercely at the thick tracks of warm blood running sluggishly down her forehead and dripping onto the collapsed roof.
Her senses were completely overwhelmed by a toxic, terrifying cocktail of chemical odors filling the tightly confined space.
The sharp, acrid stench of leaking radiator fluid and hissing engine coolant mingled violently with the unmistakable, heavy fumes of raw gasoline pooling ominously somewhere in the dark snow beneath her.
Reaching upward with numb, trembling fingers, Cassidy clawed desperately at the heavy nylon webbing cutting deep into her bruised collarbone.
The seatbelt mechanism had completely locked during the catastrophic tumbling of the old truck, jamming the metal release button permanently into its plastic housing.
She pressed against the red square with every ounce of remaining strength her left hand possessed, but the damaged restraint absolutely refused to yield an inch.
Trapped tightly against the crumpled ceiling of the cab, she shifted her frantic focus to her lower extremities, attempting to drag her heavy boots backward.
The warped steel of the crushed steering column immediately answered her pulling with a brutal, unyielding vice grip around her calves.
Pinned securely beneath the collapsed dashboard, her legs seemed entirely useless.
The sheer, blinding physical exertion of fighting the wreckage sent a white-hot spike of pure agony radiating outward from her injured chest. A wave of nauseating dizziness washed violently over her vision, nearly forcing her to pass out in the freezing dark.
Her brain wanted to get out, but her body was still in too much shock to respond.
The reality of her situation crystallized perfectly in her mind. This was not a random, unfortunate patch of black ice on a dangerous mountain curve. Travis Miller had deliberately, maliciously rammed his heavy Dodge Ram into her rear quarter panel, intending to violently end her life.
Processing the calculated brutality of his actions sent a fresh, agonizing shiver racing down her spine. Suspended helplessly in the frigid, blood-soaked wreckage of her childhood vehicle, a sudden, desperate memory flashed brilliantly behind her closed eyelids.
Just a few days prior, she had been wrapped completely in the intoxicating heat and dominant, protective presence of Sterling Thorne.
The calculating billionaire had shielded her from the freezing mountain elements with his own large body, offering a temporary, impenetrable sanctuary from the violence of her daily life.
Now, that immense safety felt like a million miles away, leaving her entirely isolated and completely defenseless in the frozen dirt.
The crushing silence of the isolated highway began to stretch out into an endless, agonizing eternity. Every single passing second hanging upside down felt like a lifetime.
Straining her ears against the howling wind, she listened desperately for any sign of approaching headlights or a passing county snowplow.
Instead, the unforgiving mountain offered only the ambient noises of her dying vehicle.
The overheated engine block ticked rhythmically as the metal rapidly cooled in the dropping temperature, creating a steady, metallic countdown to her inevitable demise.
Swirling flurries of fresh powder hissed sharply against the remaining jagged edges of windshield glass. The isolation was absolute, incredibly heavy, and deeply claustrophobic.
Cassidy was simply waiting, paralyzed completely by the overwhelming dread of what was to come, knowing with absolute certainty that her attacker was not finished.
Travis would never simply drive away without physically verifying his kill.
The monster who had systematically isolated her, terrorized her, and broken her bones in the past was still out there in the freezing night, patiently taking his time.
She heard a car door slam on the road above. Footsteps crunched in the snow, sliding down the embankment. Then she saw his black tactical boots through the shattered window.
Travis’ face appeared in the opening.
He squatted down, looking calm and terrifyingly sane as he peered into the wreckage with the casual interest of a mechanic inspecting a broken engine. The hunting lights from his truck cast long, grotesque shadows behind him.
“I told you,” Travis said softly. “You can’t make it on your own.”
“Get away from me,” Cassidy gasped, fumbling for the seatbelt release with her good hand.
“You’re hurt…bleeding,” Travis observed.
He reached through the broken window. Offering no comfort, he grabbed the handle of the door and yanked. The metal groaned, but the door was jammed.
Travis grunted. He put his boot against the frame and pulled with all his strength. With a shriek of tearing steel, the door popped open. Gravity took over and Cassidy slumped sideways, held in only by the belt.
“Let me help you,” Travis said.
He reached in, grabbed her by her bad arm and hauled her out.
Cassidy screamed. The pain in her previously broken wrist was so blinding it whited out her vision.
“Stop!” she begged. “My arm!”
“It’s okay,” Travis soothed. “I’ve got you.”
He dragged her out of the truck like a sack of feed. He pulled her through the snow, away from the wreck.
She tried to dig her heels in and fight, but her body wouldn’t obey.
Her legs were numb, and her ribs were on fire.
The fear was paralyzing. Beyond the horror of the crash, there was the realization that he was kidnapping her.
There would be no 911 call, no ambulance or first responders, no hospital.
He’s going to finish it, she thought. This is how I die. In the snow, alone with him.
The thought made her struggle harder. She clawed at the snow with her good hand and kicked out weakly.
“No,” she sobbed. “Please, Travis. Just let me go.”
“I can’t do that, Cass,” Travis said. He didn’t look at her as he kept dragging her up the hill. “You tried to leave me and replace me.”
He hauled her up the embankment to the road. His white Dodge was idling there, the engine purring, the heater running. The hunting lights were still on, blazing into the night like accusing eyes. He opened the passenger door and shoved her inside.
“Sit,” he ordered.
Cassidy slumped against the leather seat. She was dizzy from pain, ache, and terror and felt like she was going to pass out.
Travis leaned in. He buckled her seatbelt, letting his hands brush against her breast, lingering for a second too long.
“See?” he whispered. “I’m taking care of you. Just like I promised.”
He closed the door, and the lock clicked with a sound like a prison cell slamming shut.
Cassidy watched through the window as he walked around the front of the car looking calm and victorious.
She looked at her truck down in the ditch. It was a ruin of twisted metal and broken glass; her clothes and belongings thrown haphazardly about. It looked like a dead thing—like her life.
She thought of Sterling and the way he had looked at her in the shack. Then she thought of the contract on the desk. He hadn’t saved her, and now, no one could.
Travis climbed into the driver’s seat, put the truck in gear, and looked over at her with dead and empty eyes.
“Let’s get out of here, Cass,” he said. “I’m gonna make sure you’ll never be with anyone else again but me.”
He drove away into the night, leaving the wreckage behind to be buried by the snow, heading toward the old mines where no one would ever hear her scream.