Filling my plate, I took it and my mug of coffee to the sunroom, which was currently the blizzard room. It was the place I often sat if I wasn’t out on the deck.
Maggie plopped down beside me, those brown eyes silently begging me for a bite. I knew I shouldn’t, but I tossed her a few morsels as I chowed down, eating not for pleasure but to simply get the chore over with.
Five bites in, an alarm rang from inside. It was one of the security sensors I’d put in place shortly after I bought this side of the mountain. They’d gone in at the same time the cameras went up. Probably security overload, but I was a cautious kind of guy, and I knew from brutal experience that caution was wise. I didn’t give a shit about my own safety. I just wanted to know what was coming. I never wanted to be taken by surprise again.
There wasn’t a single person on this planet who gave a damn if I lived or died. My parents were long gone, and my in-laws hated my guts, blaming me for what happened to their daughter and granddaughter.
They weren’t wrong.
My attorney and accountant would miss me, some of the contract staff I employed. No, they’d miss the money they made from the software I coded when I felt like it. Miss the fees that made them very rich.
The rest of the money just flowed into bank accounts and then was funneled to various charities. I didn’t need it. I had everything I needed right here. A solid place to spend my days and a good dog at my side.
Everything else that could have made me happy was gone.
I stabbed at the omelet. It wasn’t fair. I met Jessica back when I was still struggling to get by and had to scramble for money for Friday night taco runs. She didn’t care. She loved me for richer and poorer, and we’d made love endlessly in the tiny studio apartment that was our first home.
When we could afford a tiny two-bedroom cottage, we thought we had hit it big. When the pink plus sign indicated that the second bedroom would need to be more than just for storage, we’d painted it with soft yellow and green stripes. As her belly grew bigger, I could finally afford to buy us an even bigger house in a better neighborhood. No, not just bigger and better. The best. I’d just sold a piece of software for a million dollars to the government and had two more divisions on the hook for ten times that. But Jessica didn’t want to leave our little home.
“Maybe when I’m pregnant with our third,” she’d said, laughing softly on that fateful day nearly two years ago, her arms around me as I looked through the realty section of the paper, our daughter kicking my back as she pressed close.
Jessica was so sure our little one would be a dancer. I insisted she would play soccer instead.
But on that dark Halloween night, fate decided that I’d never get the chance to find out.
The alarm sounded again, and I took another bite, forcing the past from my head. The sensor had probably just picked up a deer running for shelter. Surely no other living thing would be out in this. When it sounded a third time, Maggie whined, and I pushed myself to my feet.
Back at my computer, I located the tripped sensor and pulled that camera up on the middle screen. Shit. I sat down and peered closer at the monitor, hoping beyond hope that what I could see through the blur of white wasn’t what I thought it was. Fuck. It was. Very slowly, the goddess’s Jeep was crawling up the mountain.
Enlarging the image, it was confirmed. The goddess was at the wheel. I could barely see a dark outline through the snow and fog on her windshield, but I knew it was her. And I could almost feel how scared she was.
Because I was scared too. For her.
Long minutes passed as I watched her complete the slow ascent, my heart hammering as the tires slid left and right. On the summit, I switched cameras and watched the Jeep come to a complete stop.
“Don’t do it,” I told her image and rose from the chair. “Stay right there. I’ll come get you.”
But even as I said the words, the Jeep rolled forward, then began the steep descent.
“No!”
She didn’t listen. And as I watched her approach the first curve, I knew she was in trouble as the Jeep kept going straight. She over-braked, overcorrected, and lost control, the Jeep sliding off the side. Through the blur of the blizzard, I watched two wheels come up, and then she was gone.
“No!”
Fumbling with the controls, I searched for the camera I’d mounted on the other side of the road. Using the joystick, I turned the lens. Searching. Searching. Searching… there.
Fuck.
She was lodged against a tree, but it didn’t look big or strong enough to hold the Jeep’s weight. As I watched, heart a piston against my ribcage, the heavy vehicle slid a few inches before halting again.
She didn’t have much time.
Within minutes, I was bundled up, the GPS tracker in my pocket. I tossed extra blankets and a few tools into a bag and ran out the door after forcing Maggie to stay.
Jumping from the porch, I was alarmed to see that the snow was already ten inches deep. I pulled the goggles over my face to protect my vision as I ran to the garage.
Tossing two long coils of rope onto the back of the four-wheeler, I also grabbed my rappelling equipment. Under these conditions, I wasn’t sure what I would need, so I grabbed everything I could reasonably hold.
The snowflakes were like bullets as I raced down my gravel driveway, praying the entire way that I wasn’t too late.
CHAPTER THREE
Zoe
I woke gradually but didn’t open my eyes, fearing the light on the other side of my eyelids would make my excruciating headache worse. The pain was terrible, like a jackhammer digging around inside my skull. Very slowly, I lifted my hands to my face, hoping that by shading my eyes, I could open them.
Just as I felt something wet on my fingertips, I noticed a metallic smell mingling with the hot scent of gas and rubber. I was hot, but at the same time very very cold. I was also having trouble breathing. Whatever was happening to me wasn’t good.
Forcing my eyes to open, my vision was blurred and spotty, but I was able to see a thick tree limb pinned against my chest. Smaller branches poked into my face, neck, and arm. Fighting against the pain, I lifted a hand and pushed the branches away, snapping the smallest ones so that I could very slowly turn my head.
The Jeep was pinned against a tree whose sturdy limb had burst through the vehicle, going into the passenger window, across the cab, and through the driver’s side glass. How had this happened? My pounding head made it difficult to think. Then I remembered. The scary climb up the mountain. Stopping before heading down the other side. The curve. The slide. Dropping over the edge. Glass shattering. A brutal stop. Then nothing. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been passed out, but from the amount of snow now inside the Jeep, it had been several minutes at least.