by Stone, Kyla
Hannah sat next to the dresser, leaned against the foot of the bed, and rocked Charlotte. The baby’s cries subsided. Safe in her mother’s arms, her tiny scrunched face relaxed, and she drifted back into sleep.
Hannah felt the tug on her own eyelids, her limbs suddenly heavy.
She felt tired, so tired. Her body and mind exhausted to the core. But she couldn’t allow herself to rest. Not yet.
With Charlotte still in her arms, she clambered awkwardly to her feet. She couldn’t bear to put her down.
Ghost rose and gave an anxious whine. She glanced at him. He turned toward the doorway and chuffed.
“I know, boy. I know.”
She followed him out of the room, down the stairs, and into the living room. Ghost bounded to the front door and gave a low, throaty growl.
Outside, the snow still sheeted from the iron-gray sky. The wind howled around the corners of the house. Fingers of icy cold slipped through the seams in the windows.
Hannah’s chest tightened. She felt a sob rising in her throat and swallowed it back. If she started weeping, she might never stop. “You’re looking for him, aren’t you?”
He whined again, high and plaintive.
She looked down at Charlotte nestled peacefully in her arms. The crooked knit hat was tugged over her soft, fragile skull. “Do you think he’s still alive? I want him to be. That doesn’t mean he is.”
Ghost scratched at the door and looked back at her imploringly.
“If anyone could still be alive out there, it would be him.”
The dog went to her, poked his nose against her palm, then circled back to the door. His tail swished back and forth. He pressed his muzzle against the door handle.
“You want to go out there. You want to go find him.”
Ghost gave a low chuff of assent.
“It’ll be dangerous. It’s deadly out there, Ghost. I can’t—” She sucked in a breath, her eyes stinging, and tightened her hold on Charlotte. “I can’t lose you, too.”
Ghost rose onto his hind legs and pressed his front paws against the door. He was taller than she was. Strong and beautiful and courageous.
She bit her lower lip but nodded slowly. She raised her chin. “Then I guess we’ll both have to be brave.”
Ghost glanced back at her, a question in his beautiful brown eyes.
“You are so brave. So good and brave. I have one more request of you, my friend.”
Ghost waited expectantly.
“If he’s alive, find him and bring him back.” Hannah reached for the door handle. “Find Liam.”
21
Liam
Day Twenty-One
Liam was dead.
Or, nearly.
He had fought in wars. Assassinated dozens of men. Leapt out of choppers and airplanes. Survived bombs, shrapnel, and ambush attempts.
Hell, he’d even survived a plane falling from the sky in downtown Chicago.
Nothing had ever felt like this.
He was paralyzed. Frostbite and hypothermia took hold of his body and mind. It didn’t matter how strong, how skilled, or how fierce he was—nature was stronger, fiercer.
Not only could he not feel or move his legs, his hands were growing stiff and numb. The frozen ground beneath his butt sapped the warmth from his body. Snow matted his hair. His face felt scalded.
He knew maintaining circulation in his extremities was critical to preventing frostbite. He couldn’t do anything about his lower body, but he twitched and wrinkled his face, rubbing his ears, cheeks, and nose with his hands. He wiggled his fingers inside his gloves, squeezed his hands into fists, windmilled his arms.
He was losing critical water through every intake of cold, dry air, which had to be humidified by the body to be used effectively. It felt like the cells lining his respiratory tract were freezing with each ragged breath.
The cold crept into his mind, infiltrated his brain. His thoughts began to slow, becoming jumbled and disjointed.
His nightmares stalked him, images of his past haunting him—Jessa and Lincoln and the babe he’d left behind, his namesake. His nephew.
Thoughts of Hannah slipped in and out of memories of Jessa. He saw them both—Jessa’s warm brown skin and generous smile, Hannah’s delicate freckled face and those green eyes shining like gemstones, beckoning to him, whispering an answer he desperately needed, but no longer remembered the question to.
Sometimes, he no longer knew what was past or present. Where he was or why. Who he’d been chasing, who he needed to get back to.
Time drifted, and after a while—a minute, an hour, a day—he didn’t feel cold anymore. He didn’t feel much of anything.
He could just sit here and rest. Wait for Jessa or Lincoln to come for him.
I’m not coming for you, Jessa whispered in his mind. No one is coming for you.
His eyes stung as if ash had been sprinkled into his eyeballs. Blinking was getting difficult. His eyelashes were sticking together. Soon, his eyelids would be iced shut.
He would be blind as well as paralyzed.
You have to get up, Jessa said in her strong, capable voice. You need to get up now.
If he didn’t get his butt up and start moving, he would die here. He didn’t fear his own death. He’d never feared death. He did fear what he would leave behind.
Hannah and Charlotte would be on their own. And that was unacceptable.
You have to go. You have to go to Hannah.
He forced himself to sit up straighter. His back scraped against the tree trunk. Snowflakes tumbled from his head and shoulders.
I’m already gone, Jessa said. You aren’t yet.
Don’t leave me, he thought. I need you.
No, Jessa responded, her voice already growing dim and distant. You don’t.
He knew he’d never hear her voice in his head again. Just as he knew that she was right.
It was Hannah he needed now. Hannah he needed to get to.
It wasn’t just a mission anymore. Hadn’t been for a long time. His frozen heart thawing painfully, achingly slow, but thawing all the same.
He cared for her. He cared for Charlotte. He had to get back to them. Wanted to get back to them, with every beat of his heart.
He would crawl to her if he had to.
With a pained grunt, he forced himself to move. He sank onto his side and rolled onto his belly, awkwardly forcing the AR-15 to his back. He began to low crawl up the steep slope.
It felt like attempting to scale the back of a frozen wave. He used his forearms to pull himself along, arm over arm. Snow in his face, his mouth, his arms grasping for the next branch, the next slim trunk poking from the snow, the next tangle of roots buried in the powder.
He dragged himself upward, inch by inch, foot by exhausting foot.
His hair had frozen into brittle tendrils. His hands were snow-burned, his cheeks scalded. His legs and arms felt like deadweights—the blood freezing to sludge in his veins. His toes burned.
His toes. Burning. Hurting.
He tried to move them. They were numb. Both of his feet were numb. Simultaneously, they burned like he’d pressed them against a hot stovetop.
If he were truly paralyzed, he wouldn’t feel anything. Nothing at all.
He choked in a breath that seared his lungs.
The memory came to him in fractured pieces. This had happened before, years ago in Afghanistan after a mission. His crushed discs shifted, grinding, pinching a critical nerve that had severed the feeling in his lower half for hours.
His feet tingled painfully like they were being pierced with needles. It hurt like hell. The feeling spread slowly up his legs—so did the pain. Electric jolts seared his spine, scalding his nerves.
But he could feel. He could move his legs.
Relief washed through him—replaced just as quickly by nerve-shredding fear.
Hannah. He had to get to Hannah.
He looked up. Just above his head, a thick branch protruded from a tree trunk
. He reached up and grabbed hold of it. His stiff hands slipped a few times, but he finally got a good grip and pulled himself to his feet.
He slid his foot forward, straining to place the heel down, then the toe, every step slow, brutal, strenuous. He leaned into the incline, legs aching, muscles burning, pain burrowing deep.
White-hot electric pain shot up his spine. He cried out. Sucked in a sharp breath that seared his throat and lungs.
He needed to manage the pain, or it would overwhelm him, send him into shock.
He’d dealt with pain like this before. He knew what to do.
He analyzed the pain, imagining it like a white ball of fire at the base of his spine. He traced it through his body—a fiery trail of nerves, muscles, bones, and tendons.
He created a clear image of the pain in its entirety. Then he placed it in a mental box and sealed it away. He locked it down.
It partially worked. His thoughts were too slow and ragged. The cold slowed his mind, his reflexes, everything.
If you can’t think, you can’t lock it down. An old Army Ranger buddy had told him that.
Still, it was enough. It had to be enough. Failure was not an option.
His heart was pumping so fast that he felt his temples begin to throb. The incredible exertion was causing him to sweat, his body clammy beneath layers of clothing.
Once he was damp, the frigid cold would take him that much faster.
If he stopped, he died.
Finally, he reached the top of the ravine and collapsed. He needed to catch his breath and regain his strength. He lay back, gasping searing breaths, willing his body to move, to keep going.
He struggled back to his feet and started toward the woods, searching for the tracks that he and Pike had left.
He had no idea where he was, no way to orient himself in the whiteout conditions. People could freeze to death five feet from their house—five feet from safety that they couldn’t see, hear, feel, or sense in a blinding snowstorm.
He plodded ahead. He resisted the urge to shuffle forward with his hands outstretched. It was the opposite of absolute black—sheer blinding whiteness.
He stumbled forward in the snow, boots sinking deep, staggering from tree to tree. Red droplets snagged his gaze. He’d nearly walked right over them before seeing them. A trail of blood splatters beside two sets of tracks nearly filled in, smoothed over and almost erased by the brutal wind.
Nearly, but not quite. If he squinted, he could just make them out.
He followed the tracks, never wavering, his years of training kicking in. He had no idea how far his legs would hold him, how long until his body temperature dipped to critical levels.
If it were only his survival to consider, he would stop now and use the last of his strength to create a snow shelter to block the merciless wind and optimize his own body heat.
It would save him from freezing to death. He could safely wait out the snowstorm.
But he could not delay any longer. The monster was after Hannah. He had to stop it. He had to get back to her.
He yelled Hannah’s name as loud as he could. His mouth formed the shapes to make the correct sounds, but he heard nothing.
He shouted again. The sound was so utterly obliterated by the wind that he didn’t know whether he’d made a sound at all.
He was a soldier. He was trained for this. Trained to survive in any conditions, anywhere.
That was who he was. It was bred into every fiber of his being.
He kept moving. Every step slow and halting, requiring tremendous effort and concentration. His spine was on fire, his legs like wooden blocks separated from his own body.
He was caught in a snow globe being shaken violently by an unseen giant hand. Snow everywhere he looked. In every direction. Until he was unsure what was ground or sky, left or right.
Still, he maintained a dull awareness of his surroundings. The howling wind. The bending, creaking trees—white pine, sugar maple, red oak, hemlock. The relentless snow.
Every few yards, he stopped to listen. It was a long-engrained habit, but he heard nothing. Saw nothing—
Between the trees, something moved.
He balanced himself against the slim trunk of an aspen tree and fumbled for his weapon. His hands felt like frozen blocks of ice. How many rounds did he have left? Five? Ten? He couldn’t remember. He had his Glock but wasn’t sure if he could even squeeze the trigger anymore.
He was in no shape to defend himself effectively. Even he knew that.
The shape moved again. Darting from tree to tree. So blurry and indistinct, he might be imagining it.
It was no man, no human. A ghost maybe.
It was Lincoln, returning for vengeance. His eyes accusing. How could you leave me? How could you let her die?
Liam blinked.
Not Lincoln. His twin was dead and gone.
His ghost existed only in Liam’s mind, not out here in this harsh winter landscape. Not in the snow and cold.
Jessa. But not her, either. She had left him. She wasn’t coming back. Not even her voice. He knew this and accepted it.
A white shape against a wall of blinding whiteness. A white thing leaping through snowbanks, kicking up sprays of snow.
The blurry figure gradually took shape as it drew nearer. Liam could barely make out the length of the body, the regal head, the long-plumed tail.
Relief washed through his veins. Even in his delirious state, he knew who it was.
Ghost was coming for him. A great fluffy angel bounding through the snow.
The dog dashed up to him, barking urgently. He pranced around Liam in enthusiastic circles. Had he been barking all this time, and Liam had never heard it, never registered it?
He forced his bleary mind to focus. He buried his numb hand in Ghost’s ruff and held on tight.
“Lead me to our girl,” he said, his voice raw. “Take me to Hannah.”
22
Hannah
Day Twenty-Two
A soft but persistent sound penetrated Hannah’s dream. Her eyes snapped open.
It felt like hours had passed since Ghost had dashed out into the blizzard in search of Liam. She’d tried to remain awake, but exhaustion had finally lulled her into sleep.
She lay on the couch in Liam’s customary spot. The Ruger .45 was reloaded and resting on the floor beside the couch within easy reach.
Charlotte slept on her chest, a tiny heater warming Hannah’s entire body. The house was completely dark but for the low fire barely flickering in the fireplace.
She stilled her breathing and strained her ears.
The sound came again. A low, distant bark.
She sat up so fast that Charlotte gave a whimper of protest. She shushed the infant and set her gently in her drawer bassinet. Hannah had brought it back downstairs and placed it near the fire to keep her warm—and close by.
She grabbed the gun with her good hand, following Liam’s training. She went to the door and pressed her ear against it, listening.
Another bark. This one slightly louder.
She knew that bark. Knew it like she knew her own name.
Hope surged in her chest. Maybe it was futile, maybe it was pointless, but she hoped anyway. With her whole broken heart.
Be alive. Please be alive, she prayed, mouthing the words fervently. Bring him back to me.
She fumbled for the lock, kicked aside the door stopper, and threw open the front door.
The wind grabbed the door. She had to hold it tight to keep it from slamming open as snow and wind and cold gusted in.
The blast of freezing air slapped her in the face. Snowflakes drove into her face and clotted her eyelashes and eyebrows.
She ignored it all. She shielded her eyes with her bad hand and peered into the snowy darkness.
A shadow moved in the distance. Maybe two shadows.
“Here!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “Come here!”
She remembered the whistle Liam had given her
, tucked beneath her sweatshirt. She pulled it out and blew as hard as she could.
An answering bark from Ghost.
She whistled again and shouted. The cold seared her lungs. She didn’t care. She waved frantically. “Come on! You’re almost here!”
Ten yards away, two figures emerged from the darkness.
Ghost slogged through the snow, head down, ears back, powerful legs straining with every plodding step. Liam staggered beside him. His back was bent, shoulders hunched, one hand buried in the fur along Ghost’s spine. The dog was practically dragging him.
But he was alive. Liam Coleman was alive.
Hannah ran out into the snow. The sudden shock of cold felt like plunging into a frozen lake. She sank to her knees. She wore only socks, but she didn’t care.
Relief surged through her veins. She could’ve wept with joy.
She dashed to Liam, grabbed him, and slung his arm across her shoulder. He was so heavy. And so, so cold. His face was ashen beneath the scarf wrapped around the lower half of his head. He looked half-dead.
Concern flared through her. She had to get him inside. She had to get him warm.
Luckily, he was still on his feet. Otherwise, she’d never be able to drag his weight inside. “Come on! You’re almost there!”
“J-Jessa?” Liam mumbled.
Her lungs constricted. He couldn’t see her. His eyelids were glued shut from ice and snow. He was hallucinating.
“It’s me, Liam. Come on. It’s me.”
She staggered forward. One trembling step in front of the other. Snow scalded her feet. The snow crusted to Liam’s coat froze her neck and shoulders.
Somehow, she and Ghost got him into the house. Liam stumbled inside. Hannah couldn’t hold his weight anymore, and he collapsed to his knees just inside the doorway. Ghost slipped inside, and she shut and locked the door.
She scratched Ghost beneath the chin. “Good boy! I knew you could do it. There’s fresh water and food waiting for you in the kitchen. I’ll stoke the fire in a minute and get you both warm.”
Ghost shook himself, spraying snow all over Hannah. Chunks of ice and snow still clung to his coat.
