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She’d dated other men and had never felt like that with them. The first time she’d met Griff at McP’s, she’d felt something special. If she had it her way, she wouldn’t let him get away again.
Still keyed up from all that had happened in the past twenty-four hours, Rachel left the bathroom, crossed to the French door and pulled it open. She stepped onto the upper deck and lifted her face to the cool breeze.
Starlight shone down from the heavens. The majestic mountain peaks towered around the lodge, indigo blue against the night sky.
She listened for sounds of movement in the room beside hers but heard none. Had Griff gone back downstairs to talk more with the men of his new team?
Walking out on the upper deck, Rachel had secretly hoped Griff would come out at the same time.
After ten minutes of breathing cool mountain air and staring out at the star-studded heavens, Rachel retreated to her bedroom and slid beneath the sheets.
The calm of the mountain setting and crispness of the air must have done the trick. Within a few short minutes, she drifted to sleep.
Her dreams started out nice.
She stood on a trail on the side of a mountain, looking out over the vast beauty of the Colorado Rockies. Skies so blue were dotted with puffy white clouds. She walked on, the trail growing steeper, the ground more uneven as she went. Rounding a bend in the trail placed her in the shadow of the mountain. The clouds turned gray, and the blue skies darkened.
Footsteps sounded behind Rachel, but every time she turned around, the trail behind her was empty. She climbed faster, her breathing becoming more labored, the altitude and fear pressing against her chest.
The footsteps behind her came faster.
To stay ahead, Rachel ran, her feet slipping on loose gravel, her lungs burning with each breath. She raced to the top of an incline and slid to a stop when she realized the trail ended in a three-thousand-foot drop-off. With a rock wall on one side and a slope so steep and long on the other that she would tumble to her death, she had only one way to go.
Rachel turned to face her pursuer.
He stood in the deepest shadows, dressed in black and his face hidden. In his hands, he carried a snowy-white wedding veil.
He stepped forward, one foot at a time, his face no more visible even as he moved closer.
Rachel knew she’d have to fight her way past him to escape. She braced herself as best she could on the uneven ground and charged like a bull toward the man and the veil.
She hit him hard, shoving him back along the trail. He staggered, regained his footing and grabbed her arms.
He was bigger and stronger than her. She couldn’t give up hope. She had to take him down, had to stop him from killing her so that he couldn’t kill others.
He trapped her arms to her sides and wrapped the veil around her throat.
That’s when she decided, if she couldn’t fight her way free, she’d take him with her.
As the veil tightened around her throat, Rachel changed the direction of her struggle, twisted and backed into the killer, shoving him toward the edge of the trail.
He fought to keep from falling.
Rachel strained against his weight. Just a little more.
He tipped over the edge and fell down the steep slope, still holding the veil wrapped around her throat, pulling Rachel with him.
As she fell toward her death, she closed her eyes and thought, “This is a dream…it’s not real.”
Rachel woke in a cold sweat, the sheets tangled around her so tightly she couldn’t move and her heart pounding so hard she could barely breathe. The panic of falling to her death in her dream transferred to being trapped in the sheets. She tore at the sheets, finally kicking her feet free. Then she leaped out of bed to stand barefoot on the cool wood floor.
Adrenaline pumping, she had to keep moving. She crossed to the French doors, pulled them open and stepped out onto the porch. She’d paced to the end of the long deck before her heartbeat slowed and she had her breathing under control. When she turned around to go back to her room, she froze, and her heart lodged in her throat.
A shadowy figure stood between her and the door to her room. Fear wrapped its icy fingers around her heart, and she was back in the dream. “No,” she whispered. She turned to run only to realize she was at the end of the porch, boxed in by the railing.
She spun toward the first set of doors nearest her, grabbed the handle and tried to open it. It was locked.
The figure moved toward her, closing the distance one step at a time.
