“Don’t get too comfortable, Doc. This isn’t a vacation.”
He walks out.
The lock clicks.
I’m alone again.
I spend the afternoon pacing. I read fifty more pages, but the words blur. The sun begins to set, the gray light steeping into a bruised purple, then a heavy, suffocating black.
That’s when it happens.
One second, the kitchen hums with the low, sterile vibration of the refrigerator and the recessed lighting: a modern, electric sanctuary against the storm. The surfaces gleam, white marble and polished chrome, a fortress of technology designed to keep the wilderness at bay.
The next second, the silence slams into the room, absolute and heavy.
The lights die.
An instant, total erasure. The glass box plunges into an abyssal darkness.
A complete void. The kind of blackness that carries weight, pressing against my eyes, filling my mouth with the taste of ozone and panic. The floor-to-ceiling windows, which moments ago held the reflection of the warm kitchen, vanish into the storm, leaving me floating in nothingness. The house feels suddenly massive, a cavern of cold air and shadows.
My sternum locks. Blood pressure surges through my temples, a roaring I can’t reason away.
Cortisol floods my system. My pupils dilate, straining for light that isn’t there.
I’m not in a safe house in the Rockies. I’m back in the hospital garage. I’m back in the dark. The slide of a suppressor clicks into place. A wet thud as a body hits concrete. Exhaust. The concussive knock of a gunshot rattling my teeth.
I freeze, hand hovering over the faucet, water dripping onto my fingers like ice.
The name leaves my lips before I can stop it. A reflex. A call to the only other living thing in this frozen universe.
“Boyd.”
My voice sounds small, swallowed by the acoustics of the cavernous room. I hate the neediness of it. The outer door opens. It closes.
“Stay where you are.” His voice comes from everywhere and nowhere, low, calm, and terrifyingly controlled.
A beam of light cuts through the black, blindingly bright.
It sweeps the room, a solid bar of white incandescence carving shapes out of the shadows. It finds the sharp angles of the island, the gleaming chrome of the faucet, and finally, me.
I blink, raising a hand to shield my eyes against the glare. The light is aggressive, tactical. It pins me like a specimen on a slide, exposing my fear, stripping away the dark I tried hiding in.
“Grid’s down.”
He shifts the light away from my face to the ceiling, diffusing the glow so he appears softly illuminated.
He stands in the doorway of the den. He grips a weapon in his right hand, the dark matte shape of his Glock, and a tactical flashlight in his left. Barefoot, wearing only his jeans and a black T-shirt, he looks armored. Prepared.
“Is the security system down?” I force air past my tight throat.
“Backup battery. Good for twelve hours. Perimeter’s still hot.” He lowers the weapon, sliding it into the waistband of his jeans with a fluid, practiced movement. “But the heat’s electric. The furnace is dead. It’s going to get cold fast.”
He moves into the room, a shadow bisecting the beam of light. He moves differently in the dark: quieter, more predatory. He belongs here in a way I never will. I’m a creature of fluorescent lights and sterile fields. He’s a creature of the night.
“Fireplace. Grab the blankets from your bed. And the pillows.”
“My bed?”
