Chapter 42
42
Maura refused to hold onto SS on the backseat of the snowmobile, figuring that she’d rather fall into the snow and take her chances than touch the man. He didn’t seem to notice. Something told her he wasn’t making the best decisions. He seemed off-kilter, on edge, desperate.
“How did you find me here?”
“Followed that private investigator. I’m a police officer, it’s what I do.”
She had to admit that was pretty clever. “Probably not for long, the way you keep breaking laws.”
“That’s your fault, the way you keep playing hard to get.”
Hard to get? Try never get! she wanted to scream. But she was still afraid of him, afraid of how unpredictable he was. Would he hurt her? Would he abandon her here in the wilderness? What was his plan here anyway?
“What do you want from me? My feelings haven’t changed,” she said carefully.
“Shut up. I have to think.”
They hit a spruce branch weighed especially low by the snow, and he nearly lost control of the snow machine. “Slow down,” she cried. “It’ll be easier for you to think if you aren’t driving so fast.”
“You just want them to catch us, don’t you?”
“Who would catch us? How? You left them tied up with bungee cords.”
“It doesn’t matter. Even if they do catch us, it’ll be too late.”
Alarm bells sounded inside her. “What do you mean, too late? What’s going on here?”
He said nothing, just steered the snowmobile between towering spruce trees. They were traveling through a pristine winter wonderland, and yet she was living her worst nightmare. The contrast was jarringly surreal. His snowmobile was new and expensive, and quiet—it purred over the snow, and they were able to converse fairly easily. How had he afforded such a pricey piece of machinery? He wasn’t wealthy.
Something was off with SS, and she didn’t know what.
Her fear shifted, turned from a helpless feeling to a need to fight back. She’d fled here to Alaska and she’d survived—and thrived. That took resourcefulness. Call upon it now. Figure this out.
“Look, I know how much trouble you’re in. There’s that woman who’s accusing you of harassment. Then you crossed state lines so you could stalk me.”
“I didn’t break any laws,” he growled.
“You broke into our hotel room.”
“They let me in.”
“Maybe they did. But then you came here and you invaded my grandfather’s house and tied him up. You punched Lachlan and tied him up. That’s not good. You’re not thinking clearly. But it’s okay…I’m sure I can convince Pinky and Lachlan not to press charges. I won’t testify against you. All of this can be smoothed out. Just like always.”
That bitter fact left a sour taste in her mouth, but facts were facts. So far, SS had completely avoided accountability. And right now, she just wanted to get away from him.
He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t care. This is happening. It’s all I can think about. I picture it every time I close my eyes.”
“What do you picture?” She hid a shudder. “Us? Me?”
“Yes, but not here. Someplace better.”
Just as she was puzzling over that, he asked abruptly, “What’s Wind Valley?”
“Well, it’s a valley.” She wasn’t sure what he meant. None of this was making sense. “It has very steep walls and it’s oriented toward the prevailing winds, so it’s kind of a natural wind tunnel. The air currents are so tricky that most pilots won’t go near it.”
For the first time, his bleak tone brightened. “Say more.”
“Well, I don’t know much more than that because I’ve never been there, but I’ve seen sketches and it’s pretty stunning. High cliffs, even waterfalls in the summer. They’ll be frozen now.”
“Does anyone live there?”
“No. It’s very forbidding.” Was he thinking of hiding out in Wind Valley like a fugitive? When he didn’t make any move to turn around, her alarm rose. “It’s uninhabitable,” she emphasized. “We cannot live there. Do you understand?”
After a few more moments of wordless cruising through the woods, they reached an open meadow. The sun shafted across the snow, turning the tiny crystals more brilliant than any diamonds.
“Is this because of what Lachlan said about the gold mine? I can’t help you with that,” she said urgently. “I don’t know enough about it. You should have kidnapped him if that’s what you want.”
“That’s not what I want.” He gunned the machine to go even faster, until they were hydroplaning across the surface of the snow field. “I knew it was bullshit. How stupid do you think I am?”
“It’s not bullshit. There is something. I think Lachlan figured it out. We should go back.”
Even though the last thing she wanted was for Pinky and Lachlan to be in SS’s crosshairs, every instinct was telling her that she was in the grips of something very bad, something worse than she’d imagined.
“Is that Wind Valley?” He gestured up ahead, the engine whining as they headed upslope.
“Yes, it’s on the other side of that ridge. Right past there. See how the wind is blowing those treetops?”
“That’s some cool shit. This’ll be perfect.”
“What will be perfect? You said you’d never hurt me,” she cried. “Remember that? You promised.”
“This won’t hurt.”
“ What won’t?”
He gave the snowmobile even more gas. The slope was rising at a steeper angle now, and like it or not, she had to grab on to his back. “I want people to talk about me like a legend. I don’t want to go to jail. I want to go out with an epic bang.”
Her jaw fell open. Was SS going for some kind of Thelma and Louise thing, driving off the edge of a cliff? “I don’t consent to this,” she screamed, yanking her hands off his back. Maybe she could dive off before he went over the edge. But they were going so fast, and they were back in the trees now, and no doubt there were rocks under that snow. “I don’t want this! Let me off!”
“We need to be together,” he shouted. Now he sounded high on adrenaline, full of glee and purpose. “That’s the beauty of it! Together forever!”
Oh God. If she’d known he was suicidal, or insane, or whatever this was, she never would have gotten on this kamikaze snowmobile. All she’d wanted to get him away from Pinky and Lachlan, but she hadn’t meant to sign her own death warrant.
“We’ll be dead!” she screamed. “What’s the point of being together if we’re dead?”
“Being alive sucks.” He howled it into the air. “It suuuuucks.”
“Let’s talk about this. We can fix it. We can make it better.”
He ignored her. A cold fury rose inside her. If she was really going to die this way, either on a speeding snowmobile or by flinging herself off said snowmobile, she wasn’t going to die with lies in her mouth.
“I lied before. Lachlan is my boyfriend. I love him,” she cried. “He’s a thousand times, a million times the man you are. You’re a sad spoiled child who never learned how to be a respectful human being and I feel bad for you. But none of that is my fault or my problem and I despise you from the bottom of my heart. The only good thing is that running away from you brought me here to Firelight Ridge. So if you’re going to kill me, just know that I won’t be thinking of you at all , I’ll be thinking only of Lachlan and the time I spent here. We won’t be together except in that demented brain of yours.”
God, it felt good to speak all that out loud, but it made no difference. If SS even heard her, he didn’t show it. He kept heading up and up, past trees and snow dunes, with the roar of wind up ahead growing louder and louder.
Then they broke through the last line of trees and raced across an open field that was probably filled with rocky scree, all now covered with windblown snow.
As they zoomed toward the edge of a high bluff, she caught her first sight of Wind Valley, a deep cut between two steep granite slopes, so starkly beautiful that it felt like another planet.
She’d dive off. Take her chances with the snow and the rocks. She hauled in a deep breath, preparing herself, and kept her promise to think of Lachlan. I wish he could see this too.