Page 35 of Winter’s Teeth

He blinked. Said nothing.

“What happened after I left? Did the others get out okay?”

I was answered with indifferent silence. Tension rolled off him in palpable waves.

“Are you hiding anything in this cabin? That’s venue-related.”

In a clipped tone, he retorted, “The Winter family upholds our promise for a safe and pleasant stay. We’re up to date on all inspections and have nothing to hide here but our subtle charms.”

I was pretty sure I read something along those lines on the website, but I couldn’t help but snap, “You didn’t uphold that promise on the day of my sister’s wedding. She wasn’t safe or having a pleasant stay at all.”

His shoulders stiffened, and his brows lowered, but he said nothing more.

We stood less than a foot apart, and I debated slapping him, but then I thought about how his hands were bound after his family roughly dragged him into the woods. He suffered enough with Arthur for a brother.

“You’re really not going to help me?”

“If you have maintenance issues, you can talk to whoever comes by at five and eleven—”

“Just forget it!” I spun away from him and headed back down the steps to the first floor to start my hunt. “You can leave. I left the money in the mailbox as instructed, and I’m fine on my own till dinner.”

His footsteps followed on the stairs, but they halted at the sound of tires on gravel rumbling between the timber logs of the cabin. Jolted by curiosity, I flew back to the foyer to see who it was.

Was it Arthur? Had he come to spill something new and horrible? Was he here to rough his brother up in front of me again? Some new ‘family tradition’ that was sure to curdle my blood?

When I peeled back the thick curtains to keep in the heat on the bitterly cold mountain, a Jeep pulled into the drive, and a second later, it let out a toot of its horn.

I gasped.

Ben and Riss sat in the front seats, and Angie hung out the back window with Maple, waving madly with a smile on her lips as if this was a spring break meetup and not a murderous liaison.

I rushed out the front door. “Have you all lost your minds!” I called over the roar of the engine.

When the Jeep shut off, silence falling back over the mountaintop, they filed out with their bags. Riss walked up first in her hiking boots and jeans, stuffing her hands in the pockets of her puffer jacket with a shrug. “We weren’t gonna let you do this alone, and it’s not like there’s not enough room.”

“What about your classes?”

“We all finished our exams and can afford to miss a few days now,” Ben said as he leashed up Maple, giving the overeager beagle a scratch behind her floppy ears.

Speechless, I gaped at three of them.

Then out of the corner of my eye, Fox darted by and jumped into his beat-up car. He turned over the key, speeding out of there faster than I thought possible.

“Guess he’s not gonna be helping us?” Angie asked as she joined me on the porch and slid her hand through the loop of my elbow.

“No.” That was one thing I was certain of. “He’s definitely not going to help us.”

Chapter 16

Geese honked their farewells as they flew over the cabin, just moments before snow flurries spotted the air like dust motes. An hour later, those flurries were huge chunks of flakes frozen together, and an inch settled on the ground, draping everything in white.

“...at least a foot of snow is expected for this area tonight,” the reporter was saying when we tuned in to a local station on the old flatscreen in the living room. No service meant we were limited on sources of outside information. “Stores are already empty, and the roads are backed up with people rushing to get home before this storm gets any worse.”

Even though I planned to stay two weeks, we were well and truly stuck here. At least for the night. There’d be no safe way to navigate in a storm this thick in such a remote area, and our chances were higher of ending up in a ditch than getting back to the highway.

I tucked my knees up tight against my chest, arms wrapped around the comforting fuzzy pants of my pajama set.

On my left, Riss wore silk, for she claimed her body temperature ran hotter than most. Angie, on my right, was sporting a sweatshirt, thick pajama bottoms, grippy socks, and one of the complementary robes that came with the cabin suites. She also sat closest to the fireplace and had cocooned herself in a chunky crocheted blanket.