She replayed everything she could remember in her mind. Someone had hit her. Twice. She knew she was fortunate to be alive. Blows to the head could be deadly. Whoever had hit her used enough force to knock her out, or even kill her. That could only mean they didn’t care whether she lived or died. Then why was she bound and blindfolded? And where was David? She remembered now. There was a body. Without thinking, she tried to scream.
“David!” But it came out garbled, like she had a broken jaw or a mouth full of rocks.
More muffled sounds, closer now, as if someone was trying to get her attention.
She cried out again with the same gibbering result.
Unable to see, or hear, or scream, she could at least feel. She could smell. Someone was close to her, inches from her face. A man? He smelled awful, like sewage and wood smoke—an outhouse on fire. She froze. What was he going to do? Her breath came in ragged, terrified gasps. She was helpless to do anything but wait and wonder. Her heart beat faster, pushing the pain deep in her skull to an agonizing crescendo. Bright lights flashed behind her eyes like an oncoming car at night, and then faded as she slipped from pain into unconsciousness.
DAY TWO
CHAPTER 5
“You let them play with knives and fire, Uncle Arliss,” Constance Cutter said, turning up her nose at the mess her twin seven-year-old brothers were making in the kitchen. “That’s the only reason they get up so early to help you with breakfast.”
The heavy bass beat spilling out of the white buds in her ears made it clear that the prickly fifteen-year-old was making an observation, not conversation. Mousy brown hair was parted in the middle, hanging to her shoulders and forming curtains over her eyes, which allowed her to shut out the rest of the world. For most teenage girls, the straight hair, ripped jeans, and loose sweatshirts were all carefully executed to make it look as though they didn’t care about their appearance. Constance truly didn’t—which made her probably the most authentic sophomore in the Anchorage school system. She had her mother’s natural beauty and her father’s athleticism, which allowed her to pull off the look, where someone with less confidence might come off like a female Napoleon Dynamite. She threw her backpack—pink and covered with a pattern of tiny white skulls—on one of the heavy Amish chairs at the dining room table, and grabbed a cup of yogurt from the fridge. Arliss remembered a time when she was all bubbles and brightness—but the death of her father had knocked the happiness right out of her. She cultivated all the coziness of an aggravated porcupine, forcing everyone else in the house to get out of her way or suffer the consequences.
Arliss’s brother had been gone for over a year. Bedtime was still difficult—when the house grew quiet enough for little boys’ hearts to run wild with emotion. But the twins had rebounded, for the most part. Cutter’s sister-in-law, Mim, was still struggling, emotionally and financially. She’d not only lost her husband, but the engineering firm that sent him to the Kuparuk River oil fields on the North Slope blamed him for a design flaw that caused the explosion that killed him. The court battle over any insurance money was stomping her into the mud. Cutter fantasized about meeting some of the suit-and-tie shitheads responsible for her misery, in a dark alley. He often dreamed of demonstrating to them that losing someone you love was a lot like having a couple of teeth knocked out. Cutter knew all too well. In the end, neither worry over losing his job or consequences of the law kept him from bludgeoning the executives into a greasy smear. He simply cared too much for Mim. Violent action on his part would trouble her—and she had enough trouble.
Arliss poured some buttermilk into a glass measuring cup and gave his grouchy niece a rare smile, even if she didn’t want one.
Michael, the older of the two boys by twelve minutes, sifted flour, salt, and other dry ingredients into a glass bowl. He had honey-colored hair and the natural sobriety of his father. Matthew, the younger twin, inherited his great-grandpa Grumpy’s flaxen blond hair and blue eyes, as well as the natural tendency toward a mean mug at an early age. He looked and acted much like Arliss had when he was seven. It wasn’t at all uncommon that people in the grocery store commented on how much Arliss’s “son” looked like him.
“We’re making Grumpy pancakes,” Cutter said to his niece. “We’ll make extra.”
Constance peeked around a flap of hair with a sulky side-eye that would have terrified a lesser man. “Pancakes go straight to my ass.”
The twins looked at each other and giggled. Michael pursed his lips.
Matthew put a hand over his mouth. “Constance said ass.”
“Well,” Cutter said, “Grumpy had a man-rule about that.”
Both boys threw back their heads and crowed in unison. “Grumpy Man-Rule five: No rough language in front of ladies!”
Matthew took the measuring cup full of buttermilk from Cutter and poured the liquid into the dry ingredients. “Constance is a sister, not a lady.”
Michael nodded in agreement, then dipped his finger into the batter, tasted it, then grimaced. “More like pan than cake,” he said, sounding an awful lot like his father.
Mim came down the hallway at that moment, head beautifully tilted, putting in an earring as she walked. Her damp hair was pulled back in a thick ponytail with a purple scrunchy that matched her hospital scrubs. Cutter caught his breath when he saw her, glancing away for a moment to steady himself so she wouldn’t see the look in his eyes. She wore very little makeup, but the morning shower had pinked her peaches-and-cream complexion, making her look flushed, like she’d been exercising. Cutter suspected she’d likely gone to sleep crying and then woken up the same way. He wanted to comfort her. To tell her that he was there for her. But she was his sister-in-law. That made it feel weird. It didn’t matter that he’d met her first, when they were only sixteen, in Manasota Key. That he’d been about to ask her out when his older and much cooler brother had swooped in and swept her off her feet with his smile and charm. Ethan had won her and that was that. He’d gotten the girl, had the beautiful kids, and then he’d died. Arliss chided himself for the pity party. He’d come to Alaska to take care of Mim and the kids, not kindle some unrequited romance from his youth.
She finished with the earring and took a deep breath. “Is that bacon I smell?”
“Yep!” Matthew said.
Michael gave a flourish with his drippy spatula. “Bacon and Grumpy pancakes.”
“Smells great,” Mim said. “What’s this about Constance not being a lady?”
Constance looked at Cutter, waiting.
“Nothing to worry about.” He shook his head. “Just some sibling rivalry.”
“No, it’s not,” Matthew said. “Constance cursed.”
Michael gave another of his smug nods. “She said the pancakes would go to her ass.”
Mim heaved an exhausted sigh. It was too early in the morning for a fight. “Ass isn’t really a curse word. But it isn’t polite, for a sister or a lady.”
“Sorry,” Constance said, obviously not sorry at all.
“It bothers me more that you’re worried about getting fat,” Mim said. “If anything, you could use a few more calories.”