by Selena Kitt
He ran a hand over his own marred cheek, self-conscious—an emotion he didn’t feel much out here—reminding himself that at least he’d lived through his ordeal, although there had been plenty of times he’d wished he hadn’t. Slowly, he had discovered purpose in his life again—to protect his father’s land and to find his wife’s body. He was sure they’d killed her. He prayed they hadn’t raped her. The thought of these two men anywhere near his wife made his chest burn with rage.
Silas slung his bow over his shoulder, circling the vehicle. He would have to extract the buck and get it back to his cabin. But what to do with the car and the two bodies? His train of thought was completely derailed as he came around the trunk, seeing it popped open. The woman had been thrown clear of the vehicle, but she was lifeless on her side, a pool of blood melting the snow around her head.
He went down to one knee beside her body, checking her throat for a pulse and finding one, strong and steady. Then he checked her for wounds, finding only one, a gash on her head that was bleeding profusely, but it wasn’t deep or fatal. He couldn’t tell if she had any broken bones, but the head wound needed to be addressed first.
Unzipping his parka, he peeled up his layers of clothing until he got to the long underwear closest to his skin. Using his hunting knife, he cut a solid piece away out of the front, folding it up and pressing it against the woman’s head. She didn’t stir or cry out at all. He opened one of her eyes with thumb and finger. Her pupil retracted in the fading light of the sun and he sighed in relief as the other did the same when he checked it.
She looked young, a good ten years younger than he was—maybe early twenties. It was hard to tell with all the duct tape wrapped around her mouth, but there were very few lines in the skin around her eyes and none across her forehead, and her hair was dark and long and lustrous, no hint of gray. She was exotic-looking—maybe Native American, he guessed, cradling her head in his hand and using his other to press against her forehead, applying enough pressure to get the bleeding to stop, and waiting.
It was quiet. The wildlife had scattered, frightened away by the accident. He could sense them quivering, watching—rabbits, foxes, coyotes, joined for the moment in silence as they waited for the outcome of this strange event. The trees above him creaked under the weight of the snow on their bare limbs. It had been hovering near the freezing point for days, making the precipitation heavy and wet.
Silas looked over at the car, noticing the vanity plate. It was his brother’s BMW all right. Only someone as arrogant as Carlos would send men in a car with his own vanity plate on it to commit a murder. The car had stalled on impact but the engine was still ticking as it cooled. His brother would certainly wonder what had become of his BMW and his trusty sidekicks. Carlos would send someone to look for them. Perhaps he would even come himself. The thought of seeing and confronting his brother was tempting, but as he looked back down at the woman on the snow, he reminded himself of the reason he’d stayed hidden all this time. Isabelle first. Then he would deal with Carlos.
Long enough, he judged, peeling the cloth away from the woman’s head to check, blood blooming on the material like a red flower. It was still seeping, but it had slowed. He worked quickly, using his hunting knife to cut the zip ties on her wrists and ankles, carefully, gently peeling the duct tape from her skin. When he had her free, he stopped to gaze down at her, struck by how like Isabelle she looked, all that dark hair, those red lips. She even had the same body type, tall and full-bodied. The poor thing didn’t even have a coat— just jeans and a turtleneck—and his jaw tightened when he noted the dark stain between her thighs. Must have been terrified, he thought, trying not to compare this woman to his wife, trying not to think about her fate, wondering if Isabelle, too, had wet herself before they had killed her.
He checked the woman’s wound again. It would need stitches, but he couldn’t do that here. At least it had stopped bleeding. He used the remains of the duct tape to fashion a make-shift bandage, securing the material over the cut. The woman was cold, already far too cold. He looked around again, listening. Still quiet. Glancing up, he watched the snow falling around them growing heavier. There was no car coming after this one any time soon, he judged, and if they got as much snow as the radio had been predicting, there wouldn’t be one for days.
The whole thing was a big mess. He could bring the snowmobile back for the elk, but he couldn’t leave the woman here to freeze in the meantime. He unzipped his parka and wrapped her in it, zipping her arms in, making her an easy-to-handle bundle. She was dead weight but he lifted her easily, getting his head under her torso, using a fireman’s carry as he squatted with her over his shoulders.
For the first time, she made a noise, and he wondered when she was going to come to. What was he going to tell her? At least she couldn’t see his face from this angle, he thought, using the big muscles in his thighs to help him rise to standing. The girl over his shoulders sighed again and he stiffened, waiting, but she stilled. He wondered what the poor girl had done to arouse Carlos’s wrath. Refused him perhaps? That’s all Isabelle had ever done—she’d chosen one brother over the other. Of course, Carlos hadn’t killed her over that, although Silas was sure it had been, at least in part, some of his brother’s motivation. Carlos had killed her because Isabelle was Silas’s only heir. She would have inherited all the land their father had left to Silas that Carlos had been determined to get his hands on.
He shifted the girl’s weight, balancing her on his shoulders. There was nothing to do but take her back to the cabin and he couldn’t get there by car. It was a mile on foot and the sun would be setting by the time he arrived home. He grabbed his bow and took another look around at the accident site, marking the location in his memory. It would be dark when he came back, and the falling snow would cover his tracks.
It was going to be a long night.
* * * *
She drifted in.
Her head throbbed. It felt too big on her neck, wobbling around up there, hard to hold up. The man in the camouflage hunting mask held her head, made her drink water. His face floated in front of her like a demon, and the first time she saw him, she screamed and tried to scramble away. It came out only as a whimper and a shuffling of her feet under the covers, but in her head she was running for the door. She choked on the water and it dribbled down her chin. The man wiped at her with a cloth and they tried again. He didn’t speak and it scared her, but she didn’t say anything either. Did she have a voice? She tried to vocalize and just croaked, an unintelligible noise. He shook his head and wiped her mouth once more, offering her water. She shook her own head, and the movement sent shards of glass rolling around through her skull.
She drifted out again.
* * * *
It took Silas almost a full day to clean and dress the elk. He started in the early morning as the snow came down heavily outside the shed, making it hard to even see the house through the little window on the side. He stopped every hour to wipe his hands on his apron and trudge back to the house to check on the woman, just opening the bedroom door a crack, too afraid to show himself, masked and blood-stained. She’d think he was a serial killer for sure.
She slept on. The room with its twin bed served mostly as extra storage. He boxes full of books and magazines stacked against the walls and tools littered the floor. He had thought about putting her closer, in his own room, but there was only the one bed, and she was already afraid of him. Not that he blamed her. The poor girl clearly had plenty to be afraid of, and he couldn’t expect her to trust him.
There had been nothing to tell him who she was, no purse or wallet, no identification at all, and the woman was silent, like a beautiful ornament tucked away in his spare room. He had been forced to get her out of her wet clothes, undressing her quickly, doing his best to just take care of business, but he couldn’t help his reaction. He’d almost forgotten he wasn’t an animal, a monster living in the middle of the woods, but a flesh and blood man.
&nb
sp; She was a stunning beauty, her tawny against the dark waves of her hair, her limbs long and lean. He checked them carefully for breaks, her skin almost painfully soft in his hands, like velvet. Her flesh was too much of a temptation and he was embarrassed by his raw, immediate response, glad when he was done and she was dressed and tucked back under the covers.
He took a break to try to feed her some turkey noodle soup about mid-day, but she just stared at him, her speech fuzzy, eyes glazed. He drank the soup himself instead, watching her drift off again and wondering if he should take her to the hospital. There was no way to get there that day anyway, he decided, even though he’d just winterized the Duramax. The snow was thick and heavy with ice and already another foot had fallen overnight. The main roads would be difficult and the back ones impassable, even with his plow.
Once the elk was taken care of, Silas took a shower, standing outside in the cold under the nozzle attached to the side of the shed. He could run the well on the diesel generator or use the hand-pump inside and there was a composting toilet and a sink in the bathroom in the cabin, but no shower. He’d never installed one, never saw the point. He got dirty outside, might as well wash off the dirt outside, he figured. Besides, the needling, freezing spray felt like good punishment, the warmth of the woodstove in the house a relief when he came back in, dripping wet, to dry by the fire.
Then there was another mess to clean up.
He tried feeding the woman again, but she just groaned and rolled over and slept. It was a gamble, but he decided to leave her. She probably wouldn’t wake at all, he told himself, and if she did, who would be crazy enough to go out in this storm? Only him. He didn’t take the diesel Arctic Cat—he made his own biodiesel fuel—but instead had gone on foot in snowshoes, not wanting to draw attention to himself if someone had discovered the accident.
The car and the bodies were where he had left them, undisturbed. The extra foot of snow now covering the two-track made it tough going. The BMW got stuck twice, and riding in the blood-and-gore-covered driver’s seat left him in desperate need of another shower. He’d stowed the bodies in the back, both of them cold but the remains of rigor mortis beginning to fade, making them easier to move.
He drove twenty minutes before he found the spot he was looking for, a place where the road dropped off on the right into a ravine. It was thick with trees down there and a creek bed ran through in the summer. It was mostly frozen now. Silas put the car in neutral and pushed it over the edge. The front end crumpled, accordion-style, before momentum flipped the BMW onto its roof, wheels spinning.
It wasn’t the best solution, but at least it looked like an accident, and there was no missing elk begging explanation. He covered his tracks to the woods and went back to the accident site. There was a great deal of blood in the snow and he did his best to cover that. They were going to get at least another foot of snow overnight again, and that would help. He covered his tracks again to the woods and started the walk on snowshoes back to the cabin.
He was nearly home when he saw a deer and thought of his bow, sitting in the shed. He had a gun in his belt—a good piece to take care of business, a .357 magnum, but nothing to hunt with. He faced the buck and its head came up when it heard him. The deer turned tail and bounded off further into the woods.
No sense being greedy, he thought. The meat from the elk would be more than plenty to feed him through the winter, along with the various turkey and pheasant and deer and rabbit in the freezer. Feed us, he corrected himself, walking a little more quickly as he neared the clearing where his cabin stood. He was careful to remove the camouflage hunting mask from his pocket and pull it back on.
The woman had been sleeping when he left to take care of the car and the bodies and he was sure she would be still, but he was worried. She still hadn’t spoken, and although her pupils continued to be normal size and responded to light, he didn’t like to consider things like concussions and brain swelling and hemorrhage, but he had to keep an eye out.
He went around the cabin, heading for the shed—and another shower—when he saw the woman standing just outside the shed door, still wearing his t-shirt. It came to mid-thigh and she was barefoot in the snow, staring at the mess inside. The shed was still full of blood and gore and tissue from butchering the elk. His heart sank when she turned and saw him, masked and bloody, and she let out a choked cry at the sight.
Her gaze darted quickly from him to the cabin to the woods, and he waited for her to run, but she didn’t. He saw it beginning to happen and barely made it to her side before she collapsed, muttering something under her breath. Now they were both a bloody mess again. He sighed, looking down at the woman’s bandaged head. She’s still sleeping, he realized, seeing how her eyes moved beneath her eyelids when they closed. He hoped whatever dream she was having didn’t involve bloody masked men. He lifted her easily and carried her into the house.
* * * *
She drifted in.
And this time she did scream. She was restrained, a makeshift zip-tie handcuff attached to her wrist, another looped around the bedpost. She pulled and pulled, thrashing on the bed, kicking off the covers. It was the first time she realized she was wearing a man’s button-down shirt and nothing else. Where were her clothes?
The man in the mask appeared in the doorway, the light behind him making him loom like a god. He came swiftly to her side, his big hands pulling the covers back up, smoothing her hair. He could cradle her whole head in his palm. The man was a giant.
“Where am I?” she croaked, confused and horrified at his gentle touch. “Who are you?”
“My name is…” He hesitated, sighed. “Silas. And you’re in my cabin in the woods.”
She let that information sink in, trying to get the world to make some sense.
“Why am I tied up?” She pulled at the zip tie again, whimpering.
“You were walking in your sleep,” he explained. “You went outside in your bare feet. It’s snowing.”
She didn’t remember that at all.
“Who am I?” she whispered, reaching up to touch her throbbing head. There was a thick bandage there.
The man was quiet. Then he said, “I was hoping you could tell me.”
She didn’t remember that either.
* * * *
Silas couldn’t deny his relief—she was getting better, eating now, getting up to use the bathroom—but she still couldn’t remember her name or what had happened. He prompted her as much as he could, knowing head injuries could cause amnesia, that memory could recur any time, triggered by anything.
“You found me in the snow?” she mused, sipping the tea he’d made. It was good to see her sitting up, although she didn’t do it for long and she still slept a great deal. Her head hurt her and although the wound was healing nicely, the bruises on her forehead were growing a deeper, angry purple by the day. He had taken the zip-tie handcuffs off since she seemed more lucid, but he didn’t go far, never out of sight of the house.
“There was an accident,” he reminded her.
“And you didn’t take me to the hospital because…”
He nodded toward the window. The snow had drifted against the pane, a good four feet high. He had to use snowshoes everywhere now. He’d plowed out the driveway, but the cabin wasn’t built near any real pavement or labeled roads, and the way out couldn’t be called anything more than a path—room enough for one vehicle in and out. It was ten miles by car to anything resembling civilization.
“But how did I get all the way out here?” she mused, rubbing her bandaged head. She repeated that action often, as if her wound was a lamp and a genie might appear to tell her the answers she sought.
“There were two men in the car.” He treaded this road carefully. He didn’t know her relationship to his brother. “Do you remember them?”
She shook her head, frowning into her tea. “I remember snow. Shoveling snow. I remember a squirrel at our bird feeder. I chased him away. We feed the cardinals and blue jays t
hat stay in the winter…”
“Who is ‘we’?” he prompted gently. This was promising—more than she’d ever shared.
Again, she sighed, looking over at him with a helpless shrug. “I don’t know.”
He stood and took her tray. She’d graduated from soup to sandwiches and he was pleased to see she’d eaten almost all of it.
“The men…they were dead?” she asked again.
He nodded, waiting. She seemed to be considering this information as if for the first time, although they’d gone over it a dozen times at least.
“Will you call the police?” She put her tea on the night table, pulling the covers up high. “Take me to a hospital?”
“When the snow stops,” he agreed. He turned to take the tray out and her voice halted him.
“Why won’t you take off the mask?”
Her words made him cringe. She’d asked him this question before and he’d given his answer, trying to assuage her fears, but he found it hard to address the issue repeatedly. It was like piercing an old wound with an ice pick every few hours.
“It’s for your own good.” He hesitated, hand on the doorknob, balancing the tray. When he glanced back at her, he saw the hurt in her eyes and wished things could be different. “Trust me, you don’t want me to take it off.”
She usually argued with him, gave some sort of protest, but this time she didn’t. Instead, she turned to look out the window. Snow was falling again and the world was white.
He shut the door behind him and when he went in later to check on her, she was sleeping, her tea cup empty, covers twisted around her waist. He pulled them up to her chin and, not for the first time, wondered what in the hell he was going to do about her.
* * * *
She woke screaming again.
She couldn’t remember the dream, she just knew it terrified her. Silas stumbled in, feeling his way to the bed.
