Total pages in book: 193
Estimated words: 184001 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 920(@200wpm)___ 736(@250wpm)___ 613(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 184001 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 920(@200wpm)___ 736(@250wpm)___ 613(@300wpm)
There’s always next year.
If I live.
As I wait for the water to boil, I’m considering radioing the guys again to check on them when I jump, hearing a knock on the front door. Immediately, I’m on edge since the guys wouldn’t knock and the sheriff is no doubt busy with the search. And then my blood goes cold when I wonder if he came to tell me something happened to Khalil, Thorin, or Seth.
Shoving away from the counter, I run to the door and snatch it open only to rear back when I see a lone robed figure standing on the porch. Interesting choice for outerwear. Maybe he’s a priest. His head is bent like he’s praying, so I can’t see his face, but priest or no priest, I’m officially creeped the fuck out.
Remembering there are lost hikers out there, I ignore that paranoid voice in my head whispering danger and reach for empathy.
“Can I help you?”
Finally, the visitor’s head lifts at the sound of my voice, and I’m met with a scarred black mask and familiar green eyes. Before I can react to the strangeness of it all, movement across the clearing catches my eye, and I squint as I try to make out the dark shapes taking form. The hand of the stranger in front of me slowly raises toward his mask just as more robed and masked figures slowly drift from the trees like a plague. I count at least twenty carrying lit torches, and that whispering voice in my head starts screaming.
“On second thought, nope.”
I only get a glimpse of the man’s charred face before I slam the door shut and lock it without an introduction or an explanation. I run to the kitchen where I left the radio. The kettle is whistling now, but I don’t stop to remove it from the stove or radio my guys. Instead, I make a mad dash out of the kitchen and down to the basement where the weapons are stored.
As I ransack the weapons locker, I try repeatedly to reach the guys to no avail. It doesn’t take many guesses to figure out who the creep is, which means Seth, Zeke—all of them—are in danger.
Isaac is here in the Cold Peaks somehow, and if he and his cult want inside, there’s not much that can stop them. This cabin wasn’t built to be a panic room. It’s not a fortress than can survive a siege. Khalil, Thorin, and Zeke’s entire defense system rested in never being found, and now their walls are crumbling, and they don’t even know it.
If Isaac had them, he wouldn’t be coming after me, so I don’t have to wonder if they’re safe. And the only hope of them staying that way is to make damn sure Isaac doesn’t get his hands on me. He’s already used the girl Zeke loved against him once. I’ll die before I let Isaac do that to him again.
It’s not until I smell the smoke and return upstairs armed with my bow and a handgun to investigate that I realize Isaac never had any intentions of coming inside. With burning lungs and stinging eyes, I run over to the windows in the kitchen and see flames licking around the porch railing and smoke curling from the shed.
A moment later, I hear a window shatter, and I run out of the kitchen to see the couch and Bruce on fire. Before I can grab the extinguisher and put them out, more windows shatter one after another. I scream and duck and scramble for cover from the flaming objects as fire erupts all around me until the message from Isaac is clear.
Come out or burn.
SETH
You got the line ready?” Thorin asks as he peers inside a hole that’s little more than a slit. It’s exactly the kind of dumb antics tourists would risk their lives exploring for shits and giggles. “We need to get down there to look around.”
We’re in our fourth cave in a system that has at least twice that after searching the first three with no sign of the campers.
“I don’t know about this. We should wait for the divers,” Khalil suggests. “It looks tight as fuck. What if you get stuck?”
But Thorin is already shaking his head. “We can’t wait. You heard the sheriff. Everyone’s spread thin, and if they’re trapped, they might have limited oxygen.”
“Which means you’ll have limited oxygen.”
“I’m going, Khalil. We agreed to this. Let’s just find them quickly and get the job done so we can get back. I won’t go in far. Just enough to look around.”
“Let me go,” I offer before Khalil can argue further. “I’m leaner than both of you. I won’t get stuck.”
“You’re also claustrophobic, so no,” Khalil denies.
Ignoring him, I glance over at the deputy, who is standing outside the cave at the edge of the cliff, looking through some high-grade binoculars. That eerie feeling returns when he lowers the binoculars and turns his head toward me with a creepy smile I don’t return.