Chapter 44
44
Do it! It’s your only chance!
Hauling in a deep breath, steeling herself for a collision with snow and anything under it, Maura flung herself off the snowmobile.
The force of her momentum sent her plummeting into the snow and knocked the breath out of her. Snow in her face, snow in her mouth, snow above her, below her, all around her. She spat out snow in a desperate effort to find air.
A large hand wrapped around her leg and dragged her to the surface, where she rolled onto her back, spluttering and coughing and blinking against the sudden onslaught of light.
“I got you,” said SS tenderly, as if he was some kind of freaking hero. “I got you.”
Enraged, she kicked at him and landed a solid blow on his shin. Even though he swore, she knew she hadn’t really affected him, not with those muscles of his. She kept kicking, aiming higher, hoping for a groin hit. He moved from side to side, avoiding most of her attempts.
After a few moments of this, SS lost patience and used his boot to flipped her over onto her stomach. She yelled in fury and humiliation, her voice muffled by snow, her face nearly frozen.
The next thing she knew, her hands were being yanked behind her back, and then she couldn’t move them at all.
He hauled her to her knees, then to her feet, and while she was struggling and spitting snow out of her mouth, he picked her up and plopped her back onto the snowmobile. Then he pulled out another zip-tie and fastened her wrists to the roll bar behind her.
“There,” he said in satisfaction. “Not going anywhere now except where I say so.”
“Fuck you,” she hissed at him through frozen lips.
He ignored her and climbed back onto the front of the seat. They zoomed forward again.
Hey, her feet were still free. She wore snow boots with cleats that just might do some damage. She leaned backwards and tried to lift her foot high enough to kick him. That effort was a little more successful, until he trapped her leg under his elbow and held it tight against his side.
“Together!” he crowed as he urged the machine up the slope.
“ Let me go !” she screamed. “Leave me out of this.”
“No. This is all your fault. If you hadn’t seduced me like you did, tempted me into sin, I’d still have my job. I’d still have everything. You deserve to die right alongside me. But it’s okay. I’m not afraid to die.”
I am! I don’t want to die! I want to live and I want to love and I want to teach and I want to breathe the air and gaze upon the beauty of the world and I want it all with Lachlan by my side…
It wasn’t to be. SS had won.
But he’d never win her soul.
Banishing him from her thoughts once and for all, she fixed her gaze on the steep mountain peak on the other side of Wind Valley. One side was a plane of pure white, while the downwind face was bare of snow and stark gray.
She catalogued every detail while a sense of pure love flooded her being. Love for Lachlan. Love for the mountains, the sky, the clouds, the snow, the beautiful world and its maker.
A smile tugged at her lips and the strangest sense of peace came over her. Love. I love. Thank you.
And then…everything stopped. The whine of the snowmobile’s engine, its forward movement, the wind against her face. It all stopped.
She reluctantly drew her gaze away from the mountain peak across the valley. They were about twenty yards from the edge of the cliff. SS stomped angrily on the accelerator, but that did nothing.
“Fuck,” he yelled. He flung himself off the snowmobile and unscrewed the cap of the gas tank. “Plenty of fuel. What the fuck? What did you do?”
“Nothing. How could I?” She gestured with her chin at her hands, still tied to the roll bar behind her.
The quiet settled around them like a blessing. She dared to sit up and look around at their surroundings. To the left, a spruce grove marched up the slope. To their right, she saw nothing but snowfields, which were probably scrubby alders buried under feet of snow.
If she could get into that forest, maybe she could lose him. He was bigger than she was, but that meant he’d be dealing with more weight as he forged through the snow. If she could only get her hands free, maybe she could make a run for it.
“If you untie me, I can take a look,” she said. “I helped Pinky get his snowmobile going. That’s what he does, he collects old broken-down equipment and figures out how to fix it. I’ve learned a lot from him.”
“Shut up,” he growled. He flung open the curved orange hood of his Skidoo. “It’s probably just a loose fuse. It’s gotta be electrical.”
The hood blocked him, which meant he couldn’t see her either. As he tinkered with the engine, she furiously went to work trying to loosen the zip-ties around her wrists. Even though they were tied quite tightly, they went around her gloves. So kind of him, to allow her to die without her hands turning into blocks of ice. If she could just maneuver her hands out of the gloves…
She heard swearing from under the hood. Squeezing her right hand into its smallest possible shape, she twisted and pulled and tugged until…
One hand free. The cold air prickled against her skin. Next hand.
The hood slammed shut. “The fuck if I know…” he growled.
She slid her free hand into her pocket, hoping he wouldn’t notice. The other one was halfway out of her glove, and even as he stomped through the snow back to the driver’s seat, she kept working on it.
He focused on the ignition now, turning the key, listening for clicks. Did the twisting of her hand in her glove make too much noise? She stilled, but he didn’t notice the difference, so she kept going.
Her hand was almost free when a low growl made them both jerk their heads toward the forest. A gray wolf with deep amber eyes stood just at the edge, its head lowered, teeth bared in a snarl.
“Shit! Come on!” SS banged his fist against the dashboard of the Skidoo. “Go, you piece of crap!”
The wolf took a step toward them. Desperate, Maura tugged at her hand. She was a sitting duck tied to this snowmobile. And wolves probably like ducks. “Let me free!” she cried to SS. “Don’t be an ass!”
“Okay, okay.” He came over to her and slid a knife from its sheath. “Jesus, you already got one out.”
“Does that matter now? Come on. That wolf means business.”
He slit the plastic tie and her hand sprang free. She rescued both gloves from their zip-tie captivity and pulled them on. The wolf took another step, then another, picking up its pace to a steady trot, heading right toward them.
SS took up a fighting position in front of the snowmobile, his knife brandished in one hand. “Bring it on, wolf!” he roared. “Go big or go home!” He yelled at the wolf, who seemed unaffected by his stream of taunts and curses and kept loping toward him. If anything, SS’s yelling seemed to rile up the wolf. Maybe it confirmed his sense that his territory was being threatened.
Maura crouched behind the snowmobile. She couldn’t head toward the forest because that was where the wolf was. Going the other direction would leave her completely exposed. If SS got his rig going, he’d catch up with her in no time, especially because she’d be post-holing through the snow. But if she could knock him out right here…
She looked around for a weapon, but saw nothing other than snow. Could she pack some into a ball of ice and knock him out with that? Of course if she did that, there would be no one to defend against the wolf.
She’d rather take her chances with the wolf, she decided, and scooped up some snow.
As she was stepping around the rear of the snowmobile, icy snowball in hand, another sound caught her attention. She spun around to see a pair of dogs, then another pair, and another. They crested the slope, practically swimming through the chest-high snow. With a jolt of joy, she recognized them—Fiona, the lead dog, and Danny-boy, her mate. These were Lasse Ulstrom’s dogs, and they were doing their favorite thing on earth—pulling a dog sled.
But that wasn’t Lasse, that was Lachlan standing on the runners behind the sled.