I assume it’s Nick coming to help with the gate, because what else would it be? I don’t turn right away, cheeks burning with embarrassment over the stupid lock.
“I’ve got it,” I call, still wrestling with the chain. “It just sticks sometimes.”
The footsteps quicken. The hairs on my arms lift under my coat.
Something in the cadence is wrong. Too fast. Too precise.
“Nick?” I start to turn.
An arm snaps around my waist like a steel band, hauling me back.
The world lurches. Panic slams into me.
A gloved hand clamps over my mouth before I can scream. The padlock slips from my fingers, hitting the ground with a sharp metallic crack that sounds far away.
I buck and twist, heart crashing against my ribs. The arm doesn’t budge. My feet scrape and slide on the ice as I’m dragged backward, my boots barely finding traction.
This isn’t a friendly “let me help you.” This is—
No.
I force a scream into the palm over my mouth; it comes out as a strangled, useless sound. The wind snatches it, tears it apart.
He lifts me, actually lifts me clear off the ground. The gate swings in my blurred peripheral vision. My hip slams into the edge of an open car door—pain flares white-hot—and then I’m being shoved inside, the smell of leather and cold air filling my nose. I claw for the door frame, nails scraping over metal and rubber.
The scent hits me next, woodsmoke and pine, undercut with something spicy and clean. The same smell from the coat around my shoulders twenty minutes ago.
My stomach drops through the floor.
He yanks me further into the SUV. I kick, connecting once with something solid—his shoulder, his jaw, I can’t tell. He grunts, grip tightening. For a heartbeat, hope flares that maybe I hurt him enough to break free. I twist toward the open door, reaching—
Fingers clamp around my ankle, dragging me back so my knees slam into the seat. Air punches out of my lungs.
He lets go of my mouth just long enough to jam something thick and rough between my lips—cloth, tasting like dust and detergent. I try to spit it out; he jerks it tight, tying it behind my head. The fibers bite into the corners of my mouth. My scream dies in cotton.
The door slams shut with a hollow, final thunk.
Darkness wraps around us, broken only by the faint glow from the dashboard. I twist and thrash, every nerve lit up with terror. Tears blur my vision; my breaths come in ragged, noisy pulls through my nose.
Nick grabs my wrists. Plastic hisses; a zip tie snaps tight around them. The bite of it is sharp, stern, plastic digging into skin.
I kick again, wild, animal. One heel connects with his ribs. He snarls, low and dangerous.
“Enough,” he says. Not playful now. Not warm. The word vibrates in my bones.
He catches my ankles and pins them, another zip tie wrapping and cinching until my boots knock uselessly together. I’m bound at wrists and ankles, gagged, trapped in the dark belly of his SUV.
This morning I was standing in my kitchen holding a snow globe of a cabin I tried to erase from my mind. Tonight I’m trussed up like cargo by Hot Santa.
A sob rips through me, smothered by the gag. My vision swims. This can’t be real.
He looms closer, breathing hard. In the thin light, I can see his face—eyes dark, jaw clenched. Not empty, exactly. Determined. He sees my tears and hesitates. For a fraction of a second, something flickers across his features, regret? Pain? It doesn’t matter. Nick lifts a gloved hand and wipes a tear from my cheek with his thumb. I flinch, recoiling as far as the zip ties allow.
“I’m sorry, Meredith,” he murmurs. He sounds like he means it. That somehow makes it worse.
Another broken sound tears from my throat, swallowed by the gag.
“Shh,” he says, almost soothing. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
