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Modern Wicked Fairy Tales: Complete Collection © December 2011 by Selena Kitt
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First Edition December 2011
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Modern Wicked Fairy Tales: Complete Collection
By Selena Kitt
Get EIGHT STORES—ALL seven modern retellings of fairy tale classics in Selena Kitt’s Modern Wicked Fairy Tales: Complete Collection—Beauty, Briar Rose, Goldilocks, Rapunzel, Red, Alice and Gretel—for one GREAT low price!
PLUS a BONUS STORY previously unreleased: Modern Wicked Fairy Tales: Wendy, a modern take on Peter Pan!
In Beauty, former beauty queen Jolee Mercier finds herself in big trouble, locked in the trunk of her husband’s BMW on her way to a remote location in the woods of northern Michigan where she’s going to be killed. Her crime? Knowing too much. An anonymous letter arrived addressed in her name with proof that her husband, Carlos, a state logging and mining mogul, had been the one responsible for her father’s death years earlier, killed for supporting the unions at a local logging camp. When a terrible accident ends her husband’s plan to kill her, Jolee wakes up alone in a cabin in the middle of the woods, rescued by a masked man they call “the beast,” with a husband who wants her dead, and miles of state forest between her and civilization.
In Briar Rose, although her dreams are filled with sensual imagery, and she’s often awakened with a throbbing sense of release, Rose has never had a sexual climax—at least, not while conscious. When she’s forced to confess her faked orgasms to her fiancé on the eve of their wedding, she finds herself alone, abandoned and suicidal—until her aunt gives her a business card with the name of a special clinic. Rose has undergone all sorts of physical and mental examinations in the past, but her aunt assures her that this place is “different.” Desperate for a solution, Rose decides to give it one last try, and finds that Dr. Matt, as he insists she call him, is indeed very different from any other person she’s ever met, and he’s determined to get to the bottom of her problem—one way or another.
In Goldilocks, Goldie Lax is a safecracking prodigy who learned her craft from her father and her grandfather before him. When she pairs up with Richard Campbell, who can hack any system, together they make the perfect team, mixing both business and pleasure. When Goldie’s grandfather, who survived the holocaust only to end up a nursing home in his eighties, tells her about a horrific crime that robbed a good friend of his family’s inheritance, Goldie enlists Campbell’s help to recover the diamonds. The three Behr brothers have stolen something too precious for words and Goldie, safecracker extraordinaire, and Campbell, their head of security, have hatched a foolproof scheme to get it back, but the long, involved plan may just complicate their relationship beyond repair.
In Rapunzel, Rachel runs Rapunzel’s, a high-end salon on the lower level of a downtown Chicago high rise and lives happily in self-imposed exile in an apartment at the top of the tower—that is until Jake Malden walks in with his teen daughter, Emma, and presents Rachel with a dilemma. Young Emma is determined to defy her mother’s wishes and get her long, beautiful, untouched hair cut off so she can donate it to charity to honor a friend with cancer. Rachel’s decision to cut the girl’s hair starts a snowball of drama, turmoil and hidden secrets rolling downhill on a course with destiny that no one is able to stop, one that ultimately threatens not only Rachel’s livelihood, but her slowly melting heart as well.
In Red, recently orphaned Mae finds herself taking care of her ill grandmother and trying to negotiate the big, wide world of New York. Aside from Griff, a drifter she’s befriended on the long walk to her grandmother’s, she is alone, a frightened country mouse in the big city. Mae can’t believe her good fortune when she meets Lionel Tryst, a charming and charismatic real estate agent, who arranges the miraculous sale of her grandmother’s expensive apartment in the horrible buyer’s market of the Great Depression so they can both move out of the city. But is Mae’s luck too good to be true—or is there a big bad wolf lurking in the shadows?
In Alice, Alice is madly in love with a man who taps into her naturally submissive nature and introduces her to the pleasurably painful delights of the BDSM world. When her Wade Knight sends a car to take her to a strange and wonderful new place, Alice finds herself in a very sticky situation where everything is upside down and nothing is as it seems.
In Gretel, Gretel has never understood her father’s choice of a second wife, and she and her brother Hans have high hopes of getting out from under the suspicious, spiteful eye of their penny-pinching stepmother once Hans graduates from college with his degree in chemistry. But on Gretel’s eighteenth birthday, when their stepmother insists they go on a month-long cruise around the coast of Australia with a rich candy-heiress grandmother neither of them has ever met, the siblings’ plan, in fact their whole world, is turned upside down. Hans is drawn into the lavish, opulent lifestyle on the yacht, easily seduced by their grandmother’s riches and her plans for his future. Wary Gretel, on the other hand, finds herself seduced instead by Andrew, their grandmother’s bodyguard and assistant. And when their grandmother reveals the real reason for taking the two siblings on the voyage, it may be too late for either of them to escape her greedy grasp.
In Wendy, Peter finds his Wendy while looking for a rare book on “shadow” in the library. After hearing Wendy’s tale of woe, he invites her and her two little brothers, Michael and John, to come live at his house in south Florida—a place he calls Neverland. But although a large cross-dressing blonde named Tink, who lives with Peter and his band, The Lost Boys, isn’t too happy about Wendy’s arrival, it’s Peter’s nemesis, James Hook, who proves to be the new couple’s greatest challenge.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
BEAUTY
Jolee could never stay out of trouble for long and being locked in the trunk of Carlos’s black BMW was no exception to that particular rule of her life. She’d given up trying to kick the side of the car to make noise—luxury car makers practically sound-proofed their trunks. Who knew? She wondered if engineers considered scenarios like this one—after all, any rich husband might have to enlist his hit men tie up and toss his troublesome wife into the trunk for easy disposal, right?
Besides, her feet were secured with zip ties, as were her hands, which stretched painfully behind her back. They didn’t use duct tape—too easy to wiggle out of—except for the pieces over her mouth. And even those weren’t just slapped on—they’d used the roll to wrap the silver stuff around and around her mouth and jaw in layers. Carlos’s guys knew exactly what they were doing. Of course they did. It was their job.
There was just no way out of this bit of trouble. That realization finally hit her in the darkness, the car’s wheels crunching gravel a long time now, off the highway, she surmised, the suspension bouncing her violently up and down. This was going to be the last batch of trouble she ever got herself into in the whole expanse of a life that seemed suddenly very short.
She’d been so focused on escaping or finding a way out since Carlos’s goons had grabbed her out back—zip-tied and duct taped before she could even raise the snow shovel she’d been using—that this final realization hit with such terrifying force Jolee actually wet herself, urine staining the crotch of her jeans with spreading navy blue darkness.
She was going to die.
“No,” she whispered, feeling herself giving in at the same time as she denied the notion. “Please, no.”
She had no one left to mourn her. Her mother had been gone since she was a baby, her father dead for years, killed in a logging accident. And her husband—Carlos was the reason she was facing this end, a betrayal she still couldn’t wrap her head around. But for the first time in her life she was glad for the miscarriages, that she had no baby or child to leave behind. Her only real regret was that she had never really loved a man who truly loved her back.
Jolee wailed, a muffled cry that wouldn’t have been heard over the pounding bass of Ted Nugent through the car’s speakers even if they’d been stopped in traffic somewhere, but they were far from civilization. She knew where they were. Not exactly, but they’d driven a long way on this back, bumpy, winding road and there was no doubt in her mind they were in the middle of nowhere, deep into the wild, far from the logging camps, but still on the thousands of acres of land Carlos’s father had left him.
That was where Carlos buried the bodies.
Jolee thought of her husband, the way he sucked on a Wintergreen Lifesaver and tied his tie in their dresser mirror every morning as if he was going off like any other man to a regular job living a regular life, the way he ruffled her hair and called her “chickie” and kissed her cheek before he left. How could that man be the same man who had ordered her kidnapped and killed?
As much as she wanted to deny it, she knew it was the truth. Her husband killed people. No, he had people killed. If they got in his way, if they threatened him or his little empire, Carlos had the money, the power and the influence to simply make them disappear. She hadn’t wanted to believe it, for years she had suppressed her intuition. But when proof had arrived in her mailbox, when she had confronted Carlos with the information and he had petted and placated and pacified her, she had still denied it, hadn’t she? She’d believed his lies. Because she wanted to? Because she had to? What woman wanted to believe her husband would have her father killed?
It had been over a week since the blow-up, since the unstamped white envelope with proof of Carlos’s crime had shown up in their mailbox with just her name—Jolee Mercier—scrawled onto the front. She’d thought things had gone back to normal, that Carlos had forgotten, that they could live out their lives as they always had, separately together. How could she have let herself sink so low? How could she have believed for one moment that the man she married wasn’t the monster he’d been revealed to be?
But she had found that living with something, day in and day out, numbed you to its power. Now she was going to pay for that denial, with her life.
“No!” She didn’t know where she found the strength. Maybe it was the thought of Carlos telling his next conquest that, sadly, his last wife had run off on him. Maybe it was the injustice of being interred beside her father somewhere in the middle of nowhere, a mass grave for Carlos’s enemies—men who had defended the union, women who had turned him down, people who had made Carlos’s life uncomfortable. How many bodies were buried out there, she wondered? If he would order his own wife killed—who hadn’t he gotten rid of?
Jolee wiggled around in the trunk. There was nothing back there—made more room for bodies, she assumed dismally—just a tire iron and a jack and a set of jumper cables. All great weapons if she could have gotten her hands free, but the zip ties were drawn so tight behind her back the circulation had long ago disappeared from her fingers. She could still feel her feet though, and that was what she used, slamming both of them against the latch of the trunk.
There was no way to disguise what she was doing. She knew the guys would hear her. The music stopped blaring almost immediately. She was probably denting the hell out of Carlos’s car. The thought, he’s going to kill me, crossed her mind and she gave a strangled, crazed half-laugh, kicking again, again, again.
“What the fuck? Bitch! Knock it the hell off!” She recognized the voice. One of the guys who’d grabbed her, an older man, her father’s age, someone she remembered seeing around the logging camps and later, at her husband’s office.
She heard him yelling but didn’t stop. If they pulled over now and shot her in the head it wouldn’t matter. This was her one chance, her last chance, a last gasp for a final breath.
When the trunk popped open, Jolee screamed in triumph behind her duct tape mask. She had time to see a gun metal expanse of winter sky and fat flakes of snow still falling outside, her nostrils flaring as she filled them with a sharp, cold intake of air, before the car stopped.
But it didn’t just stop. The impact was so sudden Jolee was tossed toward the front of the BMW, hitting her head against the car jack. She felt something floppy on her forehead, wetness flooding her eye, stinging, but then she was flying and couldn’t think about that anymore, thrown out of the open trunk into a foot of heavy snow.
The landing was hard, so hard she couldn’t breathe, but her head hurt the most and the last thing she remembered was hearing a scream, a wild animal cry of pain and death and horror, and she wondered briefly if she was making that awful noise before the world went black.
* * * *
Silas had been following the animal for over a mile. His father taught him long ago that hunting should be something a man did honorably, so tracking in the snow seemed a bit unfair, but he was carrying a bow, not a gun, and the elk had a good quarter mile head-start. Besides, the animal was a thousand pounds and bulls were known to charge any hunter forced to get too close. Silas was careful to stay downwind. He had two arrows ready—elk often ran, even after a kill shot, and he was ready to track it for the second if he needed to—but it turned out he only needed one.
The first shot was good, clean, a chest hit, surely puncturing the animal’s lung, possibly piercing the heart. And still, the big bull ran, bellowing as it bounded through the trees, heading for the old logging road. It wasn’t much of a road at all, just a two-track, and very few people knew about it—most of them dead. His brother, Carlos, only had it plowed or graded for “special occasions.”
It all happened far too quickly for Silas to do anything but bear witness. He heard the animal cry, a horrifying, sorrowful squall, but by the time he’d reached a clearing near the road, following both the elk’s tracks and the blood trail, events had already been set in motion. The first thing he noted, setting aside a rising anger at the sight, was that the two-track had been freshly plowed. The foot of snow they’d received overnight—nothing compared to the two more they were supposed to get over the next few days—had already been cleared from the narrow road.
The elk had bolted across the gravel path, not afraid or cautious of anything that looked like a road this far from civilization, and probably too weak from the arrow to jump far out of the way of the oncoming vehicle. Instead, it had tumbled sideways onto the hood of the BMW, its huge rack—calcified this time of year and sharpened to dangerous points on tree bark—shattering the glass, puncturing the air bag, and skewering the driver of the vehicle to his seat.
The other airbag had either malfunctioned or was nonexistent, because the passenger had gone airborne through the windshield, his body sprawled over that of the elk on the hood, limp and unmoving. There was so much blood Silas couldn’t tell from an immediate assessment which was human and which was elk. But the elk was still alive, the arrow rising out of its side as it struggled to free itself, the pulling and tugging of its head making the driver do a bloody dance in his seat.
Silas moved to the front of the car and raised his bow, making it quick and fast, easing the animal’s suffering and silencing its cries. He surveyed the scene, understanding immediately. He monitored the old two-track regularly, even though it was miles from his own cabin, knowing Carlos’s penchant for using it, but he hadn’t been down this way in a few weeks. He recognized the two men as Carlos’s, in spite of their disfiguring wounds.
Probably the same men who had taken Isabelle, he thought, a slow heat burning in his chest as he assessed the damage. The memory of his wife was always close to the surface, and although his life out here was full and far from idle, it was also quiet and lonely and left him a great deal of time to think about her. He couldn’t help imagining them carrying her out of his house while they left him, drugged and duct taped to a chair, in their burning cabin. What had they done with her? Where was she now?
There was no movement from either body, and they were probably dead—or would be soon if they weren’t already—and he was glad. He might have killed them himself if he’d found them barreling down this road, off to carry through with Carlos’s orders. God only knows what he had them doing.
He ran a hand over his own marred cheek, self-conscious—an emotion he didn’t feel much out here—reminding himself that at least he’d lived through his ordeal, although there had been plenty of times he’d wished he hadn’t. Slowly, he had discovered purpose in his life again—to protect his father’s land and to find his wife’s body. He was sure they’d killed her. He prayed they hadn’t raped her. The thought of these two men anywhere near his wife made his chest burn with rage.
Silas slung his bow over his shoulder, circling the vehicle. He would have to extract the buck and get it back to his cabin. But what to do with the car and the two bodies? His train of thought was completely derailed as he came around the trunk, seeing it popped open. The woman had been thrown clear of the vehicle, but she was lifeless on her side, a pool of blood melting the snow around her head.
He went down to one knee beside her body, checking her throat for a pulse and finding one, strong and steady. Then he checked her for wounds, finding only one, a gash on her head that was bleeding profusely, but it wasn’t deep or fatal. He couldn’t tell if she had any broken bones, but the head wound needed to be addressed first.
Unzipping his parka, he peeled up his layers of clothing until he got to the long underwear closest to his skin. Using his hunting knife, he cut a solid piece away out of the front, folding it up and pressing it against the woman’s head. She didn’t stir or cry out at all. He opened one of her eyes with thumb and finger. Her pupil retracted in the fading light of the sun and he sighed in relief as the other did the same when he checked it.
She looked young, a good ten years younger than he was—maybe early twenties. It was hard to tell with all the duct tape wrapped around her mouth, but there were very few lines in the skin around her eyes and none across her forehead, and her hair was dark and long and lustrous, no hint of gray. She was exotic-looking—maybe Native American, he guessed, cradling her head in his hand and using his other to press against her forehead, applying enough pressure to get the bleeding to stop, and waiting.
It was quiet. The wildlife had scattered, frightened away by the accident. He could sense them quivering, watching—rabbits, foxes, coyotes, joined for the moment in silence as they waited for the outcome of this strange event. The trees above him creaked under the weight of the snow on their bare limbs. It had been hovering near the freezing point for days, making the precipitation heavy and wet.
Silas looked over at the car, noticing the vanity plate. It was his brother’s BMW all right. Only someone as arrogant as Carlos would send men in a car with his own vanity plate on it to commit a murder. The car had stalled on impact but the engine was still ticking as it cooled. His brother would certainly wonder what had become of his BMW and his trusty sidekicks. Carlos would send someone to look for them. Perhaps he would even come himself. The thought of seeing and confronting his brother was tempting, but as he looked back down at the woman on the snow, he reminded himself of the reason he’d stayed hidden all this time. Isabelle first. Then he would deal with Carlos.
Long enough, he judged, peeling the cloth away from the woman’s head to check, blood blooming on the material like a red flower. It was still seeping, but it had slowed. He worked quickly, using his hunting knife to cut the zip ties on her wrists and ankles, carefully, gently peeling the duct tape from her skin. When he had her free, he stopped to gaze down at her, struck by how like Isabelle she looked, all that dark hair, those red lips. She even had the same body type, tall and full-bodied. The poor thing didn’t even have a coat— just jeans and a turtleneck—and his jaw tightened when he noted the dark stain between her thighs. Must have been terrified, he thought, trying not to compare this woman to his wife, trying not to think about her fate, wondering if Isabelle, too, had wet herself before they had killed her.
He checked the woman’s wound again. It would need stitches, but he couldn’t do that here. At least it had stopped bleeding. He used the remains of the duct tape to fashion a make-shift bandage, securing the material over the cut. The woman was cold, already far too cold. He looked around again, listening. Still quiet. Glancing up, he watched the snow falling around them growing heavier. There was no car coming after this one any time soon, he judged, and if they got as much snow as the radio had been predicting, there wouldn’t be one for days.
The whole thing was a big mess. He could bring the snowmobile back for the elk, but he couldn’t leave the woman here to freeze in the meantime. He unzipped his parka and wrapped her in it, zipping her arms in, making her an easy-to-handle bundle. She was dead weight but he lifted her easily, getting his head under her torso, using a fireman’s carry as he squatted with her over his shoulders.
For the first time, she made a noise, and he wondered when she was going to come to. What was he going to tell her? At least she couldn’t see his face from this angle, he thought, using the big muscles in his thighs to help him rise to standing. The girl over his shoulders sighed again and he stiffened, waiting, but she stilled. He wondered what the poor girl had done to arouse Carlos’s wrath. Refused him perhaps? That’s all Isabelle had ever done—she’d chosen one brother over the other. Of course, Carlos hadn’t killed her over that, although Silas was sure it had been, at least in part, some of his brother’s motivation. Carlos had killed her because Isabelle was Silas’s only heir. She would have inherited all the land their father had left to Silas that Carlos had been determined to get his hands on.
He shifted the girl’s weight, balancing her on his shoulders. There was nothing to do but take her back to the cabin and he couldn’t get there by car. It was a mile on foot and the sun would be setting by the time he arrived home. He grabbed his bow and took another look around at the accident site, marking the location in his memory. It would be dark when he came back, and the falling snow would cover his tracks.
It was going to be a long night.
* * * *
She drifted in.
Her head throbbed. It felt too big on her neck, wobbling around up there, hard to hold up. The man in the camouflage hunting mask held her head, made her drink water. His face floated in front of her like a demon, and the first time she saw him, she screamed and tried to scramble away. It came out only as a whimper and a shuffling of her feet under the covers, but in her head she was running for the door. She choked on the water and it dribbled down her chin. The man wiped at her with a cloth and they tried again. He didn’t speak and it scared her, but she didn’t say anything either. Did she have a voice? She tried to vocalize and just croaked, an unintelligible noise. He shook his head and wiped her mouth once more, offering her water. She shook her own head, and the movement sent shards of glass rolling around through her skull.
She drifted out again.
* * * *
It took Silas almost a full day to clean and dress the elk. He started in the early morning as the snow came down heavily outside the shed, making it hard to even see the house through the little window on the side. He stopped every hour to wipe his hands on his apron and trudge back to the house to check on the woman, just opening the bedroom door a crack, too afraid to show himself, masked and blood-stained. She’d think he was a serial killer for sure.
She slept on. The room with its twin bed served mostly as extra storage. He boxes full of books and magazines stacked against the walls and tools littered the floor. He had thought about putting her closer, in his own room, but there was only the one bed, and she was already afraid of him. Not that he blamed her. The poor girl clearly had plenty to be afraid of, and he couldn’t expect her to trust him.
There had been nothing to tell him who she was, no purse or wallet, no identification at all, and the woman was silent, like a beautiful ornament tucked away in his spare room. He had been forced to get her out of her wet clothes, undressing her quickly, doing his best to just take care of business, but he couldn’t help his reaction. He’d almost forgotten he wasn’t an animal, a monster living in the middle of the woods, but a flesh and blood man.
She was a stunning beauty, her tawny against the dark waves of her hair, her limbs long and lean. He checked them carefully for breaks, her skin almost painfully soft in his hands, like velvet. Her flesh was too much of a temptation and he was embarrassed by his raw, immediate response, glad when he was done and she was dressed and tucked back under the covers.
He took a break to try to feed her some turkey noodle soup about mid-day, but she just stared at him, her speech fuzzy, eyes glazed. He drank the soup himself instead, watching her drift off again and wondering if he should take her to the hospital. There was no way to get there that day anyway, he decided, even though he’d just winterized the Duramax. The snow was thick and heavy with ice and already another foot had fallen overnight. The main roads would be difficult and the back ones impassable, even with his plow.
Once the elk was taken care of, Silas took a shower, standing outside in the cold under the nozzle attached to the side of the shed. He could run the well on the diesel generator or use the hand-pump inside and there was a composting toilet and a sink in the bathroom in the cabin, but no shower. He’d never installed one, never saw the point. He got dirty outside, might as well wash off the dirt outside, he figured. Besides, the needling, freezing spray felt like good punishment, the warmth of the woodstove in the house a relief when he came back in, dripping wet, to dry by the fire.
Then there was another mess to clean up.
He tried feeding the woman again, but she just groaned and rolled over and slept. It was a gamble, but he decided to leave her. She probably wouldn’t wake at all, he told himself, and if she did, who would be crazy enough to go out in this storm? Only him. He didn’t take the diesel Arctic Cat—he made his own biodiesel fuel—but instead had gone on foot in snowshoes, not wanting to draw attention to himself if someone had discovered the accident.
The car and the bodies were where he had left them, undisturbed. The extra foot of snow now covering the two-track made it tough going. The BMW got stuck twice, and riding in the blood-and-gore-covered driver’s seat left him in desperate need of another shower. He’d stowed the bodies in the back, both of them cold but the remains of rigor mortis beginning to fade, making them easier to move.
He drove twenty minutes before he found the spot he was looking for, a place where the road dropped off on the right into a ravine. It was thick with trees down there and a creek bed ran through in the summer. It was mostly frozen now. Silas put the car in neutral and pushed it over the edge. The front end crumpled, accordion-style, before momentum flipped the BMW onto its roof, wheels spinning.
It wasn’t the best solution, but at least it looked like an accident, and there was no missing elk begging explanation. He covered his tracks to the woods and went back to the accident site. There was a great deal of blood in the snow and he did his best to cover that. They were going to get at least another foot of snow overnight again, and that would help. He covered his tracks again to the woods and started the walk on snowshoes back to the cabin.
He was nearly home when he saw a deer and thought of his bow, sitting in the shed. He had a gun in his belt—a good piece to take care of business, a .357 magnum, but nothing to hunt with. He faced the buck and its head came up when it heard him. The deer turned tail and bounded off further into the woods.
No sense being greedy, he thought. The meat from the elk would be more than plenty to feed him through the winter, along with the various turkey and pheasant and deer and rabbit in the freezer. Feed us, he corrected himself, walking a little more quickly as he neared the clearing where his cabin stood. He was careful to remove the camouflage hunting mask from his pocket and pull it back on.
The woman had been sleeping when he left to take care of the car and the bodies and he was sure she would be still, but he was worried. She still hadn’t spoken, and although her pupils continued to be normal size and responded to light, he didn’t like to consider things like concussions and brain swelling and hemorrhage, but he had to keep an eye out.
He went around the cabin, heading for the shed—and another shower—when he saw the woman standing just outside the shed door, still wearing his t-shirt. It came to mid-thigh and she was barefoot in the snow, staring at the mess inside. The shed was still full of blood and gore and tissue from butchering the elk. His heart sank when she turned and saw him, masked and bloody, and she let out a choked cry at the sight.
Her gaze darted quickly from him to the cabin to the woods, and he waited for her to run, but she didn’t. He saw it beginning to happen and barely made it to her side before she collapsed, muttering something under her breath. Now they were both a bloody mess again. He sighed, looking down at the woman’s bandaged head. She’s still sleeping, he realized, seeing how her eyes moved beneath her eyelids when they closed. He hoped whatever dream she was having didn’t involve bloody masked men. He lifted her easily and carried her into the house.
* * * *
She drifted in.
And this time she did scream. She was restrained, a makeshift zip-tie handcuff attached to her wrist, another looped around the bedpost. She pulled and pulled, thrashing on the bed, kicking off the covers. It was the first time she realized she was wearing a man’s button-down shirt and nothing else. Where were her clothes?
The man in the mask appeared in the doorway, the light behind him making him loom like a god. He came swiftly to her side, his big hands pulling the covers back up, smoothing her hair. He could cradle her whole head in his palm. The man was a giant.
“Where am I?” she croaked, confused and horrified at his gentle touch. “Who are you?”
“My name is…” He hesitated, sighed. “Silas. And you’re in my cabin in the woods.”
She let that information sink in, trying to get the world to make some sense.
“Why am I tied up?” She pulled at the zip tie again, whimpering.
“You were walking in your sleep,” he explained. “You went outside in your bare feet. It’s snowing.”
She didn’t remember that at all.
“Who am I?” she whispered, reaching up to touch her throbbing head. There was a thick bandage there.
The man was quiet. Then he said, “I was hoping you could tell me.”
She didn’t remember that either.
* * * *
Silas couldn’t deny his relief—she was getting better, eating now, getting up to use the bathroom—but she still couldn’t remember her name or what had happened. He prompted her as much as he could, knowing head injuries could cause amnesia, that memory could recur any time, triggered by anything.
“You found me in the snow?” she mused, sipping the tea he’d made. It was good to see her sitting up, although she didn’t do it for long and she still slept a great deal. Her head hurt her and although the wound was healing nicely, the bruises on her forehead were growing a deeper, angry purple by the day. He had taken the zip-tie handcuffs off since she seemed more lucid, but he didn’t go far, never out of sight of the house.
“There was an accident,” he reminded her.
“And you didn’t take me to the hospital because…”
He nodded toward the window. The snow had drifted against the pane, a good four feet high. He had to use snowshoes everywhere now. He’d plowed out the driveway, but the cabin wasn’t built near any real pavement or labeled roads, and the way out couldn’t be called anything more than a path—room enough for one vehicle in and out. It was ten miles by car to anything resembling civilization.
“But how did I get all the way out here?” she mused, rubbing her bandaged head. She repeated that action often, as if her wound was a lamp and a genie might appear to tell her the answers she sought.
“There were two men in the car.” He treaded this road carefully. He didn’t know her relationship to his brother. “Do you remember them?”
She shook her head, frowning into her tea. “I remember snow. Shoveling snow. I remember a squirrel at our bird feeder. I chased him away. We feed the cardinals and blue jays that stay in the winter…”
“Who is ‘we’?” he prompted gently. This was promising—more than she’d ever shared.
Again, she sighed, looking over at him with a helpless shrug. “I don’t know.”
He stood and took her tray. She’d graduated from soup to sandwiches and he was pleased to see she’d eaten almost all of it.
“The men…they were dead?” she asked again.
He nodded, waiting. She seemed to be considering this information as if for the first time, although they’d gone over it a dozen times at least.
“Will you call the police?” She put her tea on the night table, pulling the covers up high. “Take me to a hospital?”
“When the snow stops,” he agreed. He turned to take the tray out and her voice halted him.
“Why won’t you take off the mask?”
Her words made him cringe. She’d asked him this question before and he’d given his answer, trying to assuage her fears, but he found it hard to address the issue repeatedly. It was like piercing an old wound with an ice pick every few hours.
“It’s for your own good.” He hesitated, hand on the doorknob, balancing the tray. When he glanced back at her, he saw the hurt in her eyes and wished things could be different. “Trust me, you don’t want me to take it off.”
She usually argued with him, gave some sort of protest, but this time she didn’t. Instead, she turned to look out the window. Snow was falling again and the world was white.
He shut the door behind him and when he went in later to check on her, she was sleeping, her tea cup empty, covers twisted around her waist. He pulled them up to her chin and, not for the first time, wondered what in the hell he was going to do about her.
* * * *
She woke screaming again.
She couldn’t remember the dream, she just knew it terrified her. Silas stumbled in, feeling his way to the bed.
“Bad dream,” she whispered.
He sat on the edge. “Do you remember?”
“No.” It was hard to explain to someone how you could be so afraid of something you couldn’t recall, but that overwhelming sense of terror wouldn’t leave her limbs—they trembled under the blankets.
“Are you cold? Do you want me to put more wood in the stove?” He adjusted her covers in the darkness.
“No.” She shivered. He started to stand and she grabbed his arm. “Please. Stay for a while?”
His weight made the little bed creak as he sat. She didn’t let go, gripping the thick expanse of his forearm. They stayed that way for a few moments, quiet, their breath the only sound in the room.
“Would you talk to me?” she whispered, swallowing past her fear.
He shifted on the bed. “What about?”
“Anything.” Her hand slid down, finding its way into his.
Silas cleared his throat, squeezing her hand gently, and she waited, her heart still trying to find a normal beat. Just his presence helped, but the calming sound of his voice was better.
“I saw a wolf today,” he said finally. “She was really something.”
“You did?” She half-sat, already interested. “How do you know it was a ‘she’?”
“Females are smaller than males,” he explained. “I wish you could have seen her. I was out back getting wood and I looked up and there she was, right at the top of the hill.”
“Were you scared?”
“No.”
She smiled in the darkness. “Are you ever scared, Silas?”
“Yeah,” he admitted softly. His other hand moved over hers, petting her skin.
“Was she a gray wolf?”
“Black,” he corrected. “Beautiful. She reminded me of you.”
She felt warm at his words. “What did you do?”
“I just watched her.”
She tried to imagine it, face to face with such a wild animal. She’d seen her fair share of deer and coyotes, even a bobcat once, but never a wolf. “Aren’t you worried about her coming back and attacking us?”
“No. My father always said, anyone who’s afraid of the wolf shouldn’t live in the forest.”
She frowned, something flashing into consciousness. It was brief, fleeting, a cross between déjà vu and the sense that something was right at the tip of her tongue, if she could just remember…
“You’re safe here,” Silas assured her.
“I’ve never been safe anywhere.” The feeling was true even if there was no real memory to accompany it. She struggled with trying to remember anything about her life, even her own name. Again, it was that feeling, like it was all on the tip of her tongue, if only she could speak. Silas had been patient, prompting her often, but she could tell he was worried. She was worried too, but the snow falling outside kept them from making a much-needed hospital visit.
She turned toward the big man sitting on the edge of her bed, wondering about him. He seemed to have as much of a missing history as she did. He was quiet to the point of being laconic, giving her lots of space and privacy, although she had caught him checking in on her a lot in the past day or two. And the mask thing was strange, but everything felt weird, off-kilter, and he hadn’t given her any real reason not to trust him, after all.
She gasped as a low, silvery flood lit the room from the window pane, a cloud moving from across the face of a full moon. The light was dim but she could see his profile.
“You’re not wearing a mask.” She reached out without thinking, but he grabbed her hand, shaking his head, turning away.
“Don’t.” Silas stood, his back to the window, his face in shadow. “I should go to bed.”
The light dimmed, the moon playing hide and seek, as he moved away.
“Do you think the wolf will come back?” she asked as he opened the door.
“She was a lone wolf.”
She nodded. “My father always said they were the most dangerous kind.”
They were both silent, the air pregnant with the pause.
“My father…” She said the words again and they both let them dangle at the edge of comprehension. Her breath had turned to ice in her throat, her body moving from hot to cold and back to hot again. The world tilted up and down and back and she opened her mouth to speak, the first memory coming, the rest falling like dominoes behind it. It was a horrifying relief, that flood of memories, and all she could manage was a distressed cry.
Silas was by her side in an instant, pulling her trembling body into his arms.
“He killed my father,” she choked, hiding her face against his chest. He wore a pair of white long-underwear and moved like a ghost in the darkness.
“Who?” he asked sharply.
“Oh my god.” The tears came in a flood like the memories and she clung to him, feeling his arms tighten at her back. “Carlos killed my father! He tried to kill me too!”
He prompted her like he had been for days. “What do you remember?”
“Everything. Everything.” It was true. Her name, her life, her near-death, Jolee remembered it all in one terrifying, mind-blowing instant. “I’m so afraid.” She quivered. “I want to go home.”
He stroked her hair. “You’re safe here.”
“I don’t have a home.” She sobbed against his chest. This realization was the worst. For days she’d wondered about her family, the people who might be missing her, worried and waiting for her to return. Did she have a husband? Children? A mother and a father?
“Your father’s dead?” he asked.
“Years ago.”
“So where is home?”
“With my husband,” she whispered, closing her eyes at the memory of Carlos, who he was, what he had done. Her emotions hadn’t caught up with her brain, but they were coming—she could feel them lurking in the shadows, ready to spring her limbs and squeeze her heart.
Silas stiffened at her response. “But you said you don’t have a home…”
“I can’t ever go back there,” she confessed, realizing the truth of her statement. Home wasn’t safe. There was nowhere in the world that would be safe from Carlos.
“Why?”
She realized how cryptic and strange her words must be and tried to explain. “Because Carlos is my husband. He’s the man who tried to kill me. Those men you found, they were his. He hired them, told them, to kill me.” They both sat in silence, letting that knowledge sink in. “What am I going to do?”
He sighed, rocking her in the darkness. “You don’t need to think about it now.”
“You found me,” she whispered, incredulous. He had been her rescuer from the beginning, but she hadn’t understood just what he had saved her from, and clearly he hadn’t either. It wasn’t just the accident—in fact, the accident had been part of her salvation. “You saved me from those men. They were going to kill me.”
“They’re dead.” His voice was like steel.
“If that elk hadn’t come along…”
“But it did.”
She tried to hide the sob rising in her throat and it came out anyway. He tried to hold her but she struggled, pushing at him. “I thought if I could remember, everything would be okay again. But it’s worse. Everything’s worse.”
She twisted and buried her head in the pillow, still hiding her tears, although they were coming, whether she wanted them or not.
“I’m sorry,” Silas murmured. She felt his big hand pressed against her shoulder. “You’re welcome to stay here for as long as you need to.”
She turned toward the window. The moon was a high, yellow, silver-lidded eye. “I guess I don’t have anywhere else to go…”
Silas stood. “I’m sorry,” he said again.
“I want to go to sleep.” She closed her eyes. “I wish I hadn’t remembered anything.”
“Try to sleep.” He moved to the door and then turned to ask, “Do you remember your name?”
“Jolee Mercier.”
He stood for a long time. So long she turned to see if he was still there, framed in the doorway.
“Silas?”
“You should know.” He cleared his throat. “Carlos Mercier is my brother.”
Jolee gave a short, sharp laugh, but the man didn’t return her mirth. He was serious. It wasn’t possible, couldn’t be true. Carlos’s brother was gone, dead, that’s what he’d told her, told everyone. But that was all she’d ever known about her husband’s only sibling. She tried to remember more and couldn’t.
“Goodnight, Jolee.”
She tried to see him in the moonlight but could only discern his outline. “Goodnight, Silas.”
Overwhelmed with the crushing impact of chance, she turned her face to the wall and closed her eyes, wishing again for oblivion.
* * * *
The woman was impossible.
He’d wanted to take her into a hospital when the snow finally stopped, but Jolee refused, too afraid Carlos could find the records, trace her somehow.
“There are privacy laws,” he’d reminded her, but she just gave him a long, steady look and shook her head.
She did seem to be getting better, her cut healing, memory returning, but he would have felt better if he’d had confirmation from an emergency room doctor, or at least a few x-rays or an MRI.
Then he’d tried to take her into town for clothes. “You can’t live in my t-shirts forever,” he’d teased. But she didn’t want to go. Even when he’d offered to drive three hours away, to a different town, she refused.
“He’ll find me.”
Silas didn’t point out the holes in her logic. If Carlos found the car, if he discovered her body missing from the wreck, that would prompt a sweep of the area—and being anywhere near the accident site would then be the worst place to be. No, he didn’t emphasize that fact at all.
But he did bolster his security around the cabin—not lights or alarms, but traps and snares. And he watched, and waited and tried not to leave her alone. But he couldn’t always be there. He’d had to run to town for supplies, going three hours away, as he promised, getting them staples like sugar and salt, things he only had enough stocked of for one. He’d bought her clothes too, some jeans and shirts, both a little too snug—she seemed smaller to him than she was, apparently—along with underwear and socks.
“No bras?” Jolee had asked in wonder as she pawed through the bags.
Silas had flushed and shrugged and turned away to finish putting away groceries. What did he know about women’s clothes? The truth was, he had looked at bras, lacy, strappy things, small and soft in his hands. They made him dizzy, and the woman who had come out to help him had just made him feel more uncomfortable, so he’d left. He bought underwear for her somewhere else, plain white cotton, the kind that came in a plastic package, the kind he didn’t have to handle or touch. That seemed safer.
Of course, now the woman was walking around braless in t-shirts and driving him further to distraction. Lesson learned. But she’d really liked the oranges he brought home and had delighted in the bar of chocolate he’d splurged on. That alone made the trip worth it, in spite of her protest and worry and constant questions.
Silas wasn’t used to living with someone—he knew that was part of it. And the mask was a bone of contention between them that wouldn’t go away. He hated wearing it, she hated him wearing it, and yet he couldn’t take it off. Revealing himself to her would be a mistake, he was sure of it, and so he tried to deflect, change the subject, make a joke instead. It didn’t always work.
Just that day, she’d been eating her lunch in bed. He still made her take a mid-afternoon nap, even if she protested, like a child, “I’m not tired!” She always slept though, and he would bring her lunch on a tray. He liked seeing that sleepy smile on her face when she woke.
“What is this?” she’d asked, sipping from her spoon. “It’s so good!”
“Elk stew.” He’d had his before bringing hers, but now sat in the chair beside her bed while she ate to keep her company. The chair was a convenience for her nightmares, which came and went, but she liked to fall asleep after a bad dream holding his hand.
“My elk?” Her head lifted, eyes wide.
He raised an eyebrow. “I seem to remember having something to do with bringing him down.”
“Oh sure, take all the credit.” Jolee laughed, spooning another bite. “Just because you tracked him, shot him, dressed him…”
Silas smiled at her teasing. “I admit, it’s the only thing I’ve ever eaten killed by BMW.”
“Does food taste better when you’ve hunted it yourself?” she inquired, drinking her milk. Big Anna, his Irish Dexter cow, provided them with fresh, whole milk, and the three chickens, which the wolf had been eyeing, he was sure, when she showed up on the hill, gave them eggs for breakfast every day.
“I think it does.” He nodded. “Wait ’til I make the chops.”
“Mmm.” Her eyes lit up. He loved the way they did that whenever she got excited about something. “I haven’t had elk chops in years. My father used to make them.”
“He was a hunter?” Silas had asked her as much as he dared about her family and the circumstances surrounding her father’s death, although he’d been careful about what he, in turn, shared with her about his own life.
Carlos hated the unions, and it didn’t surprise him at all to hear he’d been getting rid of loggers like Jolee’s father who were organizing, although it made him furious. But most things about Carlos made him angry, although very little surprised him anymore.
Jolee smiled. “Know any loggers out here who aren’t?”
“Good point,” he conceded. He watched her eating and felt a deep ache in his chest. She looked a great deal like Isabelle, and he supposed that was one of the reasons Carlos had married her. That, and the fact that he’d killed her father and left her practically an orphan right out of high school. Carlos had created the perfect damsel in distress to rescue. Besides, his brother lived by the credo—keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
Silas noticed her looking at him and he let his gaze shift to the window, the pine trees sagging like a cluster of fat brides under the weight of the snow. He tried to keep himself from her as much as he could, to reveal as little as possible while still maintaining her trust, but it wasn’t easy when she looked at him like that. He sensed the question coming before she even asked it.
“Why don’t you want me to see you?”
“Jolee, please…” He held up his hand, shaking his head, and stood. This was the easiest way to end a conversation he didn’t want to have.
“Just tell me why.” Her voice was soft, pleading, and goddamnit, it made him want to relent. “Is it so much to ask?”
He tried not to carry the guilt of it, because part of him wanted to tell her, wanted to share his life—or lack thereof, anymore—with this woman. Then he reminded himself of their situation, that this was his brother’s wife, a woman who was in serious danger, someone he now had to protect. Taking off his hunting mask and scaring her away wasn’t going to do anyone any good.
“I’ll be out back,” he replied gruffly, heading toward the door.
“Silas, you don’t need to run away.”
Her words made him turn on her, in spite of his best intentions. He snapped. “I’m not running away. There are things to do around here. Food doesn’t appear out of thin air you know. I’ve got wood to chop.”
He heard her gasp when he slammed the door behind him.
It felt good to be outside and he stalked past the shed, around to the wood pile, grabbing the maul and swinging it at a piece of white oak already set on the block. He set about his task, easing into a steady, lulling pace, working hard, working up a sweat. He unbuttoned his flannel shirt, peeling it off, the cold air feeling painfully good against his skin. Picking up the maul, he got back to work, setting wood, swinging in a full, round arc, hearing that satisfying ‘pop’ as the oak split apart, flying to either side of the block. Lather, rinse, repeat. Splitting wood was like meditation, repetitive that way, giving his mind some freedom.
And he needed some freedom, because ever since he’d followed that elk onto the two-track and found Jolee in the snow, he’d been far too distracted. Life had taught him not to care, not to get too emotionally invested, but this situation had sunk him deep into something he wasn’t ready for and didn’t want. But what choice did he have?
Until this had happened, he’d had a purpose. Spring would be here before long, and his plans would come to full fruition. And he was sure to find Isabelle by then, he reasoned—although after so many years of looking, even he had to admit to losing some hope. There was a damned lot of land to cover, and he’d explored more of it than probably anyone in the history of the state.
But then this giant wrench in the works had come along…
He had his brother’s wife locked up in his cabin—a brother who thought he was dead. Hell, Carlos might even believe his wife was now dead, if they didn’t do too much investigation around the wreckage—at least until spring, when the way down the ravine was less treacherous.
We’ve got until spring, he told himself, swinging the maul again, aiming far past the point of impact, as if the top half-foot of wood didn’t even exist. The result was a fine, resounding split, the wood flying apart, the wedge of the maul separating it cleanly. His father had taught him never to split wood with an ax. A maul did the job best, and a dull one at that. A sharp maul was no good to anyone—it just got stuck in the wood.