CHAPTER 4
Frankie
Fuck it all and fuck it all back again.
The rancher was right.
This wood isn’t burning. How the hell am I supposed to know that the color of wood even matters? Does the green indicate it’s too fresh to catch fire?
Ugh.
Whatever the reason, the wood is hissing and sputtering and hardly putting out any heat.
I’m freezing. I didn’t bring the right clothes for May in the high-elevation mountains.
I came up here from Vegas, where it’s already ninety-five in the shade.
Besides, it wasn’t like I could put any thought into my wardrobe, seeing that I was running for my life and all.
I can’t believe it was only two nights ago that my world turned to shit. I feel like I’ve aged ten years in that time. But that’s all it’s been—two nights.
I close my eyes, allowing my thoughts to wander back to the series of events that led to me being here. I don’t want to remember any of it. I wish I could forget it all.
I can’t. I never will.
The evening started normally enough. Niko insisted I meet him for dinner at one of his favorite hole-in-the-wall restaurants. He wouldn’t take no for an answer, insisting the way he usually did, his voice all smarmy and sickeningly sweet with a hint of threat. I knew I had no choice.
That’s the way it had been with Niko recently. And it was getting worse with every passing day. He always apologized, saying he had a lot on his mind. But then he’d return to asshole territory the first chance he got.
I was planning to break up with him the next time we had some privacy to talk. It wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have at a restaurant.
But about that dinner date… it really bugged me how he made such a big deal about me not being late for our dinner date. He used these words: “If you’re late, things won’t work out in your favor.” What the hell was that supposed to mean? Why did he give a shit about me being late?
This was new.
It should have been a giant red flag, but I met him for dinner anyway. That’s how I became a witness to some kind of gangland murder. And I don’t know what I’m going to do.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I’ve really gotten myself in a shit ton of trouble this time. I used to think I’d already made enough bad decisions about men to last a lifetime. But that was before I met Nikolai Koslov—the absolute worst of all my wrong choices.
He seemed so sweet at first. Sweet and rich. I got sucked in. Spoiled. I liked it.
Right up until I didn’t.
And now here I am, huddled in the dark and cold in the middle of the wilderness, wishing I could stop the images from playing out like a movie in my brain: Throats sliced. Blood everywhere. Screaming. The muffled thud of bullets from silencers.
So much death.
And me, standing out there on the sidewalk watching a real-life Quentin Tarantino scene unfold. If I hadn’t been five minutes late to the party, I would have been a victim instead of a witness to events I should never have seen.
In an instant, I understood that my life was no longer my own. As I turned to run, I saw Niko being shuttled out of the restaurant’s back exit. He turned his head in time to look my way, and his angry eyes burned into mine.
Whatever his plan was for me that night, I ruined it.
And we are. Me and my cat. In the middle of nowhere.
I scratch Pussy behind her ears and pull her close to my chest, staring up at what I assume is the ceiling of this rat trap. I can’t see a thing. “You doing okay, kid?” I ask her. She answers with a deep rumble-purr. She’s so warm and soft. Such a comfort.
She’s all I have.
If anything were to ever happen to her, I wouldn’t survive. Without her, I’d have nothing.
I drop my lips to her fur and breathe her in. I close my eyes as the rest of the events of two nights before unfold in my memory. Each moment. Each decision. How long each step took.
I run to where I parked and haul ass out of there. I power off my phone almost immediately and throw it into the gutter so I can’t be tracked. When I pull up to my little house—the one I’ve worked so hard to buy—I start counting the seconds aloud. The sound of my voice keeps me from losing it.
I pull into my driveway.
Ten seconds—I’m out of the car and inside the front door. Lights off.
Twenty seconds—I grab the wad of cash I keep stashed in the false bottom of my oatmeal tin and shove the roll in my bra.
Thirty seconds to sixty seconds—I stumble around in the dark, snatch the envelope off the kitchen table almost as an afterthought, and run into my bedroom.
One minute to two minutes—I grab Pussy off the bed, shove her in her carrier, and find her leash, harness, and cat backpack.
Two minutes to three minutes—I throw a few random toiletries and clothes into a duffel bag and then empty out the contents of my mini-safe. And I’m out.
Out and gone.
In my gut, I know I’ll never be back.
I gun the car and drive out of Las Vegas, putting some distance between everything I just witnessed and wherever the hell it is I’m heading.
An hour out of town, I looked down at myself to find I’m still wearing the low-cut red cocktail dress and stilettos I’d selected for my dinner date that night.
Great.
Two hours in, I stop at a twenty-four-hour Walmart off the highway to get some cat food, a sleeping bag, a roadmap, an axe, and a few food staples. It takes hours more to reach what I think is the general area, and then hours more after that to find what I can only hope is the location.
I get lost more than once and turn around on the endless series of dirt roads until I finally have to admit that I have no idea what the fuck I’ve gotten myself into. All I can see in the headlights is tall trees and black nothingness.
So I pull off the road and crawl into the back of the Toyota, curling up in the sleeping bag with Pussy. I don’t sleep. Pussy doesn’t either. Of course, we don’t. We’re on the edge of a dirt road in the middle of nothing. It’s cold.
I don’t cry. I’m too numb to cry. Too stunned to feel anything at all.
And when the sun finally shows itself, I sit up and look around. I scrabble to the front seat and grab the envelope, take out the folded papers, and laugh out loud at the predicament I find myself in.
I’m pretty sure that was the last time I laughed. I may never laugh again.
With Pussy clutched to me, I stare at the darkness inside this strange little shack. I wonder who built it, how long it’s been here, and how it ended up in Karl’s name.
And instead of sheep, I count the many things I forgot to pick up at Walmart that would make life easier up here.
Warmer clothes and sneakers to start. A flashlight and batteries. Fire starters and charcoal. A bottle of bourbon, for fuck’s sake.
But I can’t be too hard on myself. I was in shock wandering the Walmart aisles in my sexy dinner-date dress. I couldn’t think straight, couldn’t piece together all the items I might need while hiding in a mountain cabin.
It’s not like I’ve ever done this before.
I went camping exactly once in my life, when Dad took me to Crater Lake National Park about a four-hour drive from our tiny town of Pine Haven on the Oregon Coast. I hated that trip. I hated it so much that after one endless night of my bitching and complaining, Dad packed us up and drove us home.
He wasn’t mad at me—but he was disappointed.
I didn’t like the forest back then and I sure as hell don’t like it now.
The wilderness isn’t exactly my regular habitat.
This girl’s got exactly two speeds—the Pacific Ocean or the concrete jungle.
That’s it. I’m only interested in nature when a beach or craggy ocean-view cliffs are involved.
Otherwise, I prefer traffic and neon lights and coffee shops and late-night dining and shopping.
But what I prefer doesn’t matter anymore, does it? Not after what went down in Vegas.
My comfort zone is irrelevant. The only thing that matters now is doing what I have to do in order to survive, and though I may not like being up here in the middle of Bumfuck, Nevada, I’m glad to be here.
It means I’m still breathing when I’m fairly sure I should be dead. I think I was supposed to die in that bloodbath.
As arranged by the coward and criminal I called my boyfriend.