No. There were cameras. Susie’s car was still parked in front of the cabin. With her bags inside and probably both doors still open. And she had no doubt Baxter was still going insane in the bathroom, probably trying to scratch and bite his way out.
Riggs would try to find her. She knew it.
The only question was . . . how the hell would he do so? How deep was the snow above her head? Would he even search so far away from the cabin? Would he assume she’d been buried while running? Even if he did think to check the bunker, how would he find it with all the snow covering everything? With the door buried beneath so much debris?
The odds of her being found before she starved to death or suffocated were slim to none.
A tear rolled down Carlise’s cheek. She’d finally found the man of her dreams, only to be ripped away from him in the cruelest way imaginable.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. Her words seemed to echo around the metal box. Now that the avalanche had stopped, everything was quiet. Too quiet.
“I’m here, Riggs,” she said out loud. Hearing her own voice was preferable to the oppressive and scary silence. “I’m here.”
Carlise pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, trying to ignore the pain in her shoulder. That was the least of her worries at the moment. Her head dropped to rest on her knees, and she let go of the tears she’d desperately been holding back.
Chapter Fifteen
Chappy frowned as he pulled down his drive. A vehicle, with both front doors standing wide open, was parked haphazardly in front of the cabin, but he could see no one inside.
Who the hell was here, and why were the doors open?
He noticed the Maine license plate, but he didn’t know anyone who drove a RAV4. He immediately went on alert. Ever aware that Carlise had a stalker, he reached into the glove box of his Jeep and pulled out the weapon he carried with him in case he came across a random bear or moose who wasn’t inclined to give him some space.
Walking quickly, Chappy headed for the RAV4—but a familiar sound stopped him in his tracks.
He’d only heard an avalanche once, but the deafening noise had been imprinted on his brain. It sounded like distant thunder, and the closer the hundreds of tons of snow and rocks got, the louder the thunder became.
Every muscle in his body tense, Chappy stared in the direction of Baldpate Mountain. His cabin was out of the slide zone. His brain knew that, but he still fought his body’s instinct to run.
The avalanche sounded close. Really close.
Chappy forced himself to skirt around the SUV and up the stairs to the cabin. Even if there was a slide happening right that moment, he was safe. He wanted to reassure Carlise that they were fine right where they were. That he’d done the research and made sure his cabin would be clear from any slides that might happen.
But the second he opened the door, Chappy knew she wasn’t there. Wasn’t just in the bathroom. There was an empty feel to the cabin that had previously been filled by Carlise’s presence. She’d brought light and love to his world and into this home away from home. Both seemed notably absent now.
Then another sound, coming from the bathroom, had his heart in his throat.
Baxter, growling in a vicious way he’d never heard from the skittish dog before.
He opened the bathroom door, expecting to see Carlise, but only Baxter flew out of the room. The dog ran around the room, his nose to the ground, before he went to the door and barked loudly, over and over.
The dread Chappy felt was almost overwhelming.
Carlise missing, Baxter shut up in the bathroom, the unfamiliar car out front with both doors open . . . And now that he thought about it, he thought he’d glimpsed Carlise’s suitcase on the back seat.
Shit. She was leaving? Had she called a car service to come get her?
No. She wouldn’t leave him. He knew that down to his bones.
Baxter scratched at the door and continued barking. He looked back at Chappy as if to say, “What are you waiting for? Open this!”
Adrenaline swam through Chappy’s veins. He noticed his satellite phone sitting on the kitchen counter and dirty dishes in the sink. Carlise never would’ve left them like that. Like him, she was kind of a neat freak, and even if she had gone out for a walk or something—which he highly doubted she’d do on her own; she’d said her plans were to stay inside and work while he was gone—she wouldn’t have left the cabin with dirty dishes sitting around.
There were also papers on the table and a pen that hadn’t been there before. Something he normally wouldn’t question, if not for the fact that Carlise was fastidious about packing all her things when she was done working. She was kind of anal when it came to her notes.
As he looked around carefully, he realized quite a few things seemed out of sorts. The blanket on the couch wasn’t folded, which Carlise habitually did when she got up. A towel she used to wipe Baxter’s feet after potty breaks was lying on the floor instead of hanging on the coatrack.
He had to check the cameras, see what had happened before he’d arrived home.
He ran outside, forcing an unhappy Baxter to stay in the house, his heart thumping frantically as he started up the generator. Looking down at his cell phone, he swore. The Wi-Fi wasn’t working. Again. And he didn’t have time to fiddle with the antenna to try to fix it.
He needed help and he needed to find Carlise. She clearly wasn’t anywhere nearby. Whoever owned that SUV wasn’t here, either, but the vehicle itself told him they were both still in the area, somewhere on his mountain.
Chappy shut off the generator, then hit a preprogrammed number on the satellite phone he’d grabbed on his way out of the house, waiting impatiently for JJ to answer. Baxter barked once more from inside the house as he returned to the porch. “Hang on, Bax. I need to get help on the way before we let you outside.”
“Hey, you just left here. What’d you forget?” JJ asked, chuckling over the line.
“I need help,” he said without beating around the bush.
“What’s wrong?” JJ asked, all humor gone from his tone.
“When I got to the cabin, there was a car I didn’t recognize in front of the cabin, Baxter was locked in the bathroom, and there’s no sign of Carlise or whoever owns that car.”
“Shit. You think her stalker found her?” JJ asked.
“I have no idea, as I can’t get the damn Wi-Fi to work so I can’t check my cameras, but I’m guessing yes.”
“Shit! How?”
A horrible thought struck Chappy then. “The only people she’s talked to are her mom and her best friend.”
“Could Carlise have emailed anyone? Been tracked through her phone when you checked her messages?”
“Possibly. But Carlise wouldn’t have opened the door to someone she didn’t know or her ex-boyfriend or her dad.”
“You’re thinking . . . it’s the friend?” JJ asked, catching on to what Chappy wasn’t saying.
“I highly doubt her own mother was stalking her. They seem close. While I don’t know what she talked to Susie about, I’m guessing she probably told her enough for her friend to have a pretty good idea where she was.”
“I don’t know, Chappy,” JJ said skeptically. “Your cabin is in the middle of nowhere.”
“I realize that, but it’s still findable. There’s something else,” Chappy told his friend.
“What?”
“I heard a slide as I was walking toward my cabin. To the east.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah. And both front doors on the car in my driveway are wide open.”
“What are you thinking?”
“I’ll check the cameras when I can access them later to confirm, but I think the friend came here, and Carlise let her in without a second thought. Something happened while they were talking and . . . maybe the cat was let out of the bag? Maybe she found out Susie’s her stalker. The woman must’ve tried to force her to leave with her, considering both car doors are open. But if the vehicle’s still here, that has to mean Carlise ran.”
“Possibly straight into an avalanche,” JJ said grimly. “It’s the most likely direction she would’ve gone, since your place is surrounded by so much scrub brush in every other direction.”