Snowmobiles.
Two of them.
Reed heard them at the same instant and transformed before my eyes. Not fully, because pain still owned half his body, but enough. The wounded man vanished. Something colder looked out through him.
“They’re here,” he said. “Paxton sent two to confirm I’m dead.”
I didn’t have time to think.
I ripped the rug back, yanked the cellar hatch open, and stared into a dirt space maybe five feet deep, dark and narrow and just wide enough for a man to lie flat if he hated comfort enough.
Reed grabbed the leather bag, lowered himself one-handed into the hole, and looked up at me once. Trust sat plain on his face.
Not fear.
Trust.
I shut the hatch, threw the rug back over it, and turned to Brie, who stood frozen in the bedroom doorway clutching her bug notebook.
“Inside. On the bed. Door shut. Don’t come out till I call you.”
She disappeared without a sound.
I sat at the kitchen table, picked up my knitting, and started a row like the most important thing in the world was a child’s half-finished scarf.
Three knocks sounded at the door.
Evenly spaced. Calm. Confident.
I opened it with the face of a woman who lived alone in the woods and didn’t like strangers arriving before dark.
Two men stood there.
The one in front was tall and heavyset, polite in a way that felt rented. The one behind him was lean, quick-eyed, restless, already looking past me into my home before his mouth ever opened.
“Afternoon, ma’am,” the first man said. “We’re looking for a vehicle that may have gone off the road. Driver may be injured. Potentially dangerous. You seen anything unusual?”
I let my fingers tighten on the door frame.
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