The transformation is immediate. The shoes arch my posture, make my calves flex, tilt my ass up. My reflection in the full-length mirror is all legs and blonde tresses—barely recognizable as the girl who used to scrawl poetry on takeout napkins.
Is this what Sweet Lies wants? Is this whatIwant?
The truth is, I don’t know. I want the money, but I want to win, too. I want to show up to that cabin and be more than what the client expects.
I stand in the dark, letting Marta’s warnings echo in my ears, but it’s the sound of my own heart that drowns them out. It pounds, fast and unsteady, like a drumline counting down to whatever comes next.
I picture myself on the mountain, serving coffee to a famous stranger, reading his secrets and maybe learning to write my own. I imagine learning from a bestselling author and then becoming a bestselling author myself. Both options sound good.
I take off the heels, set them carefully in the closet, and climb back into bed. I promise myself I’ll text Marta tomorrow, every day if I have to.
I close my eyes and drift, already dreaming of who I’ll be on the other side.
4
CHAPTER FOUR – ARRIVAL AT THE CABIN
Kat
The town car’s leather seat cradles me with a tenderness that feels almost medicinal after years of bus vinyl and lumpy thrift-store couches. The ride hums with the subtle, constant vibration of wealth: a suspension so perfect it erases every pothole, even as the roads get rougher and more remote. My luggage—one suitcase, one battered laptop bag, both stuffed to bursting—rests beside me. I run my fingers over the embossed logo on the seatbelt and glance out the tinted window. Suburbs have given way to an endless run of dark green pines and gray-brown sticks, the kind of forest that eats sound and sunlight.
The driver hasn’t spoken since “Good morning, Miss Vreeland.” He’s not exactly ignoring me, but his eyes in the rearview are quick, bland, and very professional. Every so often he asks if I need anything, but it sounds less like a question and more like a prompt from a script. I say “No, thank you,” every time, just to hear the shape of my own voice in the car’s dead-silent interior.
My phone sits in my lap, screen unlocked and open to the signal bars, which are fading like a dying star. Three dots. Two. I text Simone (“Still not kidnapped, heading north now”) and Marta (“This car is nicer than my entire childhood, will update when I arrive”), but both messages get stuck on “sending.” I watch the bubbles twitch, then flatten, as if the words are evaporating before they even reach our destination. I guess it’s good that I already told Thistle Cafe that I need to take a leave of absence. Not that they were surprised, since turnover at almost all dining establishments is near a hundred percent. The work just doesn’t pay enough, so when employees get another opportunity, they tend to jump with little notice.
I twist a strand of my hair around my finger and bite my lip while staring out the window. The road narrows, and the car’s navigation system says in that weirdly mechanical voice, “Prepare to turn left in 200 feet.” The driver eases the car off the main road and onto a gravel path so suddenly it feels like falling. The suspension does its job, but my stomach doesn’t get the memo; it flips, and for a second I imagine the headlines:Local Woman Hired for Mystery Job Vanishes in North Woods, Leaves No Clues.
The trees press in, branches overhanging the dirt lane and scraping the roof in soft, rhythmic swishes. It smells like sap and cold air, with a faint tang of something mineral beneath it—rock, maybe, or the memory of a river. The sky is the color of wet clay, clouds so thick they flatten the sun to a dull disc. The further we drive, the more my body feels the isolation: the phone, now at zero bars, is dead weight. My breath fogs the glass even though the car is climate-controlled. I pull my jacket tighter and think about what it means to be unreachable, to trust that whatever waits at the end of this road is worth what I’m giving up to get there.
Camille said I’d be working for “a prominent author with exacting standards and an urgent deadline.” His name is allegedly Sam Smith, but obviously, that’s fake. There’s a real Sam Smith, who’s a British singer, and whom Google returned about a million hits. The name is too common, otherwise, and I couldn’t find anything.
But Camille said my employer wanted “a fresh, smart, adaptable presence who can work alone and respect boundaries.” I don’t know if that’s actually me, but I do know that if I can hold this job for even a month, I can clear my tuition balance and maybe take the next semester off the clock. The Sweet Lies NDA is still burning a hole in my brain, and the three thousand dollars currently floating in my checking account makes me giddy. I already feel rich, to be honest.
The car rounds a bend and the trees finally break. A clearing opens up, shockingly green against the mud and the sky, and in the center of it is a house that looks like the love child of a lumber baron and an HGTV designer. Two stories, stone foundation, big windows trimmed in matte black, and a wraparound porch with Adirondack chairs like open arms. It’s not a “cabin” in any way the word means in my life; it’s a compound, a statement, the kind of place that wants you to know it could survive the end of the world and still offer espresso.
The car crunches to a halt on the gravel circle. The driver kills the engine and glances at me, his eyes bland. “We’ve arrived, Miss.”
“Thanks,” I say, voice fluttering. My hand trembles on the door handle. This is it. There’s no turning back, not unless I want to hike twenty miles by myself.
The air is sharper out here—cold and awake, like a slap to the face. My suitcase wheels rattle on the flagstone path as I drag it toward the front steps. Up close, the house is even bigger, more fortress than home. The door is painted a deep oxblood, the knocker shaped like a fox’s head. For a moment, I just stand there, breathing in the silence and trying to rehearse what I’ll say if someone answers. I ring the bell, once. Then twice. Then three times. But nobody comes. What in the world? I hope Sweet Lies told “Sam Smith” that I was coming because the hired car’s already left, and I’m alone here in front of this cabin.
That’s when I hear it: a steady, meaty thwack, coming from behind the house. It’s not a gunshot, not the wild shriek of an animal—just a hard, repetitive chunk of sound, deliberate and unhurried. I hesitate, then follow the flagstone path around the side, shoes slipping in the soft moss that creeps along the stones. The forest picks up again on this side, with huge maples and ancient-looking pines looming over the clearing. The smell of fresh-cut wood hits me, bright and raw.
I stop short.
There, at the edge of a stack of split logs, is a man wielding an axe. Not like a horror-movie psycho, but like someone who knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s huge—not just tall, but broad in a way that makes the flannel shirt strain over his shoulders. His hair is black and damp, a little too long, falling across his forehead with each swing. Sweat slicks the side of his neck and darkens the cotton at his shoulders. I watch his back flex, the way the jeans cling to his thighs. It’s obscene, the kind of body you see on gym posters and think,Yeah, right.
He doesn’t see me at first. The rhythm of his work is hypnotic: lift, swing, split, stack, repeat. The logs yield in perfect halves, bouncing on the block before tumbling to the ground. I catchmyself staring, jaw slack, a voyeur in my own life. I remember what Camille said about the “client” being “particular,” but nothing about this man fits the picture in my mind. He looks like he could wring water from stone, or snap me in half, or just as easily cradle a kitten. I’m frozen, duffel still in hand, until the man finally straightens and turns.
His eyes are blue. Not polite, office-building blue, but cold and wild, glacier blue. They land on me and narrow, as if he’s trying to decide if I’m a threat or just another weird forest hallucination. He wipes his hand on his jeans, then picks up a water bottle and downs half of it in one go.
“You must be Kat,” he says. His voice is low, rough around the edges but not unkind. More like a warning bark from a dog that hasn’t yet decided to bite.
I manage a nod. “Um, yeah. Katherine. Or Kat. Whichever is fine.”
A dark eyebrow goes up, but he doesn’t comment. Instead, he sets the axe aside, sticking it into a stump with an ease that suggests he’s done this every day of his life. He steps toward me, and I realize how much space he takes up—not just physically, but gravitationally. It’s like being caught in a tractor beam. I tell myself to chill, that this is just another gig, that I am not going to get all gooey over a guy who could toss me into the next county.
He stops a few feet away, and gives me a once-over that feels less like checking me out and more like cataloguing data for future use. I try not to blush. I fail.
