There was no answer and she sat straight up, panicked. She wasn’t in her room back home. She’d fallen asleep in the wreckage of an abandoned trading post in the middle of the wilderness. A quick glance at her watch told her she’d been asleep for more than two hours.
The distant roar became louder, unmistakably the sound of a snowmobile.
No, no, no, no, no…
Jonathan!
No doubt about it. Who else would be in the wilderness with a storm heading this way? The madman was on her trail. And she had no place to hide.
She was trapped in this forsaken, falling-down building like a mouse in a maze.
“Think.” The sound of her own voice brought her out of her panic.
Moving as fast as she could, Kate pulled her lucky buckeye out of her backpack and tossed it into the corner. Even if he found it first, he wouldn’t connect it with her.
But if her parents found it, they’d know what it was. Gran had given it to her for luck on her sixteenth birthday. An old Carter family tradition, she’d said. Kate carried it with her everywhere. Her lucky buckeye would scream to her parents, I’m alive. I’ve been here. Don’t give up. Come find me.
She fastened on her snowshoes and gathered her belongings. In a split second she rejected the front of the trading post as an escape route. If he came into view before she got across the open space she’d be an easy target.
Would he shoot her? Or send an arrow straight through her heart? Had he killed the other girls first or dragged them back to that awful house to torture until he grew tired of them?
Panic obscured her vision as she thrashed blindly toward the back, crashing into abandoned furniture and knocking over a stack of empty boxes.
Stop, she could almost hear Coach saying. Be tough.
The voice in her head centered her and Kate made herself deep breathe, forced herself to assess the problem. There was a door at the back with rusty hinges, but she’d left tracks that would lead right up to it.
She whipped one of the stolen sweaters out of her backpack then raced through the store, dragging it through the dust. By the time she’d backtracked to the door, still dragging, it appeared a long-tailed animal of some kind had been in the store.
Satisfied, Kate stuffed the sweater into her pack and jerked on the door handle. It didn’t move.
Please, please, please.
She centered herself then tugged with all her strength. Slowly, the door creaked open. Kate nearly cried with relief. Gran would say her guardian angels were with her. Gran would say, There’s no such thing as luck, Kate. Use your head, make smart decisions and live right, and your guardian angels will come when you need them.
Kate plunged through and the wind hit her with a force that knocked her backward. The sound of the snowmobile was getting louder. Jonathan was closing in.
She righted herself and searched for the best escape route. Nothing was familiar to her. But she knew the Superior wilderness was filled with ridges and boulders, both of which would offer shelter and loose rocks she could use as weapons.
If she could get high enough, Jonathan would have to abandon his snowmobile and track her on foot. A real advantage.
As she climbed, heavy winds lifted curtains of snow off the ground and swirled it around her. Still, it wasn’t enough to hide her escape route. Kate broke off a long branch and used it to sweep over her tracks.
“KATE!” His scream sent a chill through her.
“Don’t let fear make you stupid,” she told herself.
She kept climbing, kept covering her tracks. Move. Sweep. Move. Sweep. Kate lost herself in the rhythm, blocking out the new and horrifying threats as Jonathan came closer.
“You can’t hide from me,” he screeched. “I’m never going to let you get away!”
How close was he now? The rocks were larger at this elevation, and Kate searched for a hiding place.
“Please,” she said.
That’s when she saw it, a boulder that made a natural wall. She headed in that direction.
“KATE! YOU’RE MINE!”
She ducked under the boulder’s natural overhang, but even there she still felt exposed. As her tormentor came closer, she backed deeper into the overhang. Suddenly, she’d backed into the narrow opening of a small cave.
Perfect. Even if he found her, he couldn’t get into the cave without going through her.
“I’M COMING FOR YOU! KATE? DO YOU HEAR ME?”
“Come on, you sucker.” She dropped her backpack to the cave floor then unfastened the ice ax. “Take one step into this cave and I’ll split your crazy head in half.”
Her own bravado left her shaking. Could she defend herself? She wasn’t a violent person. Nobody in her family was. Did she have what it takes to defend herself against a maniac in the wilderness who was determined to murder her in cold blood and then pose her like a bride?
The snowmobile’s motor went silent. Kate peered from her hiding place toward the trading post below. She could barely see his outline as Jonathan stood at the broken gas pumps bellowing her name. It seemed to her there was a new level of rage in his voice, a killing rage.
“YOU CAN’T ESCAPE ME, KATE! I’LL HUNT YOU TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH!”
He stood in the open beside the pumps for what seemed hours. When he finally disappeared into the store, Kate sank to the ground and reached for her thermos. One small sip of water. That’s all she’d allow herself.
Her immediate problem wasn’t thirst. It was escape.
She didn’t know what lay above or on the other side of the ridge. But long hikes with her dad made it possible to imagine the terrain. The ridges and valleys made for a constant switch between climbing and descending.
While the monster was in the store, she could keep moving, keep putting distance between them and hope he stayed inside long enough for her to find another hiding place. Or she could stay put and hope that when he finally left the store he would never guess that she had left the trail and was going in another direction.
“Better to travel with a plan than run out of panic,” she said.
Her courage shored up by her latest pep talk, Kate moved deeper into the shadows of her cave. Stopping at a point where she hoped she’d be safe, she took a wide stance and raised the ice ax.
Chapter Eleven
9:30 a.m
Jonathan stood at the pumps and cursed the snow. Instinct and logic told him Kate would have gone inside to get out of the cold, but the ground squalls had covered any signs she’d even made it this far.
He shoved his way through the door.
“Where are you!”
Jonathan could smell her. Even among all the rat droppings and the years’ accumulation of dust and mold, he could still pick up her scent, like fresh peaches and cream, like a citrus grove in Florida, like something delicious he wanted to subdue and then eat from one end to the other.
“Come out! I know you’re in here.”
She was good at hide and seek. Clever little thing. If the cops weren’t breathing down his neck, he’d have fun playing this game with her.
He trotted over to the defunct telephone. Her fingerprints were still there in the dust. Had she really thought she could call out? Had she imagined she could ring up that silly mother of hers and say, “Come and get me, please. I’m lost in the woods.”