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Gerald’s face twisted in emotions she couldn’t read. Jaw tight, he stared at her. “Please believe me, I would love nothing more than to help you set the cops on me. I’m sick at the thought of forcing you into this house. But it’s not safe out here. You have to trust me. I do this for a living.” He winced and made to speak.
“You do this for a living?” she screamed. “You abduct people and drag them to kill rooms in God-knows-where for a living? And you’re telling me to trust you?”
Again, Gerald pushed speckled hair off his forehead.
“Melinda,” he shouted above the wind. “You begged me to stop earlier and I didn’t listen to you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I wish I could do everything differently. But now I need you to listen to me so you can understand. My buddy Paul and his girlfriend have this weird anniversary ritual where he gets a different friend to pretend to kidnap her and they go have a romantic getaway.” He held up his hand as she started to speak. “Please, let me explain. The thing is, you look just like her. It’s crazy. None of it makes any sense to me, so when you started going on about being the wrong person, I thought you—that is, Melisa—were just getting into the scene. I got freaked out so I put up the partition. I really thought you were her. This was all a horrible mistake. It’s unforgivable and I deserve everything you throw at me, including the law.” Gerald’s eyes were pained. “But right now we have to go inside. Now I’m begging you. I plow snow for a living. I know weather, I know these mountains. My cabin’s ten miles from here. This storm is coming in hard and it won’t let up until tomorrow or the next day, if we’re lucky. We have to get inside.”
As if to illustrate his point, snow blasted through the car and spattered her jacket with white.
Melinda’s hands shook in her lap. The air was below freezing. She had no idea if he was telling the truth about his friend or his job, but she knew he wasn’t lying about the weather. She’d hired a Kaar not just for the solitude but also because she wanted to be thirty minutes ahead of the weather. Now she was at its mercy.
“Go to hell!” she yelled through chattering teeth. “You drove me hours into the woods while I screamed, and you’re calling it a mistake? If you’re so worried about me, then leave the keys and go jump off a cliff!”
Gerald’s exasperated breath hovered like a cloud between them. “Do you really think I could leave you out here? You’ll freeze to death. People die from exposure all the time!”
“Do I think you could leave me?” Her voice vibrated with cold and fury. “Because you’re such an upstanding citizen? Yes. Yes, Gerald, I believe you could leave me.” She stopped short as she recognized her error. “Gerald. That’s not your name, is it.” It wasn’t a question because she knew the answer. “I was the one who said your name before. You just agreed. You’re not a Kaar driver. You’re a kidnapper. What an idiot I am! What’s your name?” She spat his question back at him. “Who the hell are you?”
Not-Gerald’s mouth flattened into a tight line.
“My name is Grant Samson,” he said. “I live over that ridge.” He gestured at the dark behind him. “I drive a plow, and I know Paul DiMario—who definitely won’t be making it here tonight, by the way, not in this storm—from ice hockey. Plowing is my business. I have a damn website, okay? I have weather advisories plugged in from the news. Go on your phone, and you’ll see we need to get the hell inside.”
At his mention of her phone, his face fell and both hands gripped the rear seat. His head hung and behind him swirled a tsunami of snow. “Your phone died, didn’t it?” he said finally. “Dammit to hell. I’m a monster. You must have been out of your skull. You said your phone was almost dead when I picked you up, and I...Dammit, I was relieved. I had a stupid charger and I lied to you, do you know that? I lied to you. Paul said Melisa—”
He stopped and looked directly into her eyes. There was that flash of pain again.
“He said Melisa would want to call him after she realized their date was happening. And I didn’t want to hear the pillow talk.” His jaw flexed and nostrils flared, and her mouth dropped partway open at his attempt at empathy. He’s ashamed. Melinda blinked. Well, he should be.
“Why would you care if they talked on the phone? They’re together! You had your partition,” she yelled with as much venom as she could muster with a frozen face.
Grant, if that was even his real name, shoved his hair back from his face yet again and returned his hand to its chokehold on the seat.
“Because I thought you were the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen and I couldn’t bear to know you were back here, uh...talking with him. I couldn’t bear it.”
Melinda’s mouth dropped open entirely. She blinked several times. Shouldn’t the screaming have tipped him off? Oh right. Village idiot. Her mouth closed, tried to form words, dropped open again.
“So please, Melinda whoever you are, please come inside. Please. I’ve told you all the truth I have. I’ll walk away from the car.” He gestured behind him. “I’ll stay by the trees over there until you’re inside and you say I can come in. I’ll tell you where Paul keeps his gun. The house key is here.” He stood and bent into the driver’s door to retrieve the keys, as well as his phone and gloves, she saw. “There’s just the car key and the house key.” He laid them on the seat.
“Please,” he said. And then Gerald-turned-Grant shut the door and left her. She felt him watching her, though. Even as she squinted through the windows at violent veils of snow, she felt his eyes on her and shivered.
The car went black and Melinda jumped. Oh. The door had been open for a while, she realized, and even the dome light abandoned her. There must have been an exterior light, though, because light from somewhere spotlighted the snowfall near the house.
Melinda marinated in indecision for a full sixty seconds before she slid her arms through the sleeves of her coat and zipped it. There were no options. Grant was right, as awful as it was to admit. To drive in this was impossible at best and deadly at worst. Staying in the car was a countdown to frostbite.
She gave herself a mental shake. Right, then. Out of the ice chest, into the igloo. If I survive the cabin, I’ll write him a good review.
Melinda hoisted her duffel bag onto her shoulder, collected the keys, and opened the rear passenger door. Ever an opportunist, the wind exploded in her face like a bomb. Force and fury snarled her hair and snow blew down her collar. Melinda sat in shock on the edge of her seat, bruised with cold humiliation.
That was unnecessary.
She steeled herself and tried again, tightening her scarf and assuring herself that Grant still waited by the nearly invisible trees. Melinda chanted a mantra in time with her choppy footsteps: keep moving, keep moving, keep moving.
The looming edifice of Paul’s cabin interrupted her self-hypnosis and she froze. Cabin? Surely “chalet” would be a better word for it, since “cabin” implied something less prestigious. Whatever it was, the building’s dark, stately door terminated the fifteen-foot planked walkway, bordered on the right by the stone-faced house and on the left by a solid wood railing.
The ground must be steep to warrant a railing. Maybe there’s a stream. Mountain properties are so cush.
Melinda chastised herself for getting fanciful while being kidnapped.
The door and doormat were black and speckled by angry snowflake welts. Welcoming, in a murdery sort of way. Melinda giggled to herself. Uh oh, the stress is getting to me.
