The moon tried to break through the thick clouds but didn’t have the strength to illuminate much. The snow had finally stopped falling, but the sky had cleared just enough for the cold to deepen and settle into the landscape like a predator. She shivered as Brock straddled the sled beside her, reaching out to steady her with a gloved hand around her elbow. His firm touch grounded her.
Christian had zoomed ahead and set up impressive flood lights aimed toward the dilapidated structure.
Ophelia studied the ramshackle hut ahead. The place looked even older and more weathered than the one where they’d spent the night. The wood was warped and splintering, the roof sagging under the weight of accumulated snow. The kicked-out path to the door was rough, as if whoever made it had cared more about speed than creating something usable.
“This place has been abandoned for years,” Brock said, his breath fogging in the icy air. “We don’t use it anymore. There’s a better one about a mile east.”
Christian’s snowmobile sat parked to the left of the hut, the engine still ticking as it cooled. Christian himself emerged from the shadows of the entrance, shouldering the weather-beaten door open. The top hinge caught, and he had to shove harder to get it to swing wide. “This is not a good scene.”
Ophelia’s spine stiffened, and her head snapped up. “I’m an FBI agent, Christian. I’ve seen dead bodies before.” Her breath puffed white in front of her face as she spoke.
Christian lifted a shoulder, his expression unreadable. Somehow, despite the unforgiving weather, he looked completely at ease in his black snow pants and matching jacket. Not even his nose or ears were red. The cold seemed to slide right off him.
Would she ever get used to this? The cold here wasn’t like anything she’d ever known. It felt alive, relentless. She figured it might take years to adjust.
Taking a steadying breath, she plowed forward, sticking to the rough path. Even with the trail, the snow reached her knees in some places. Every step took effort.
Christian stepped aside to let her pass, and she ducked into the hut. Inside, the temperature somehow felt even colder, even with a large floodlight scaring all of the shadows away. The windhad worked its way through the cracks in the walls, and patches of snow and ice coated the floor. The place was an empty shell—just rotting wood, dust, and silence.
Her gaze landed on the body propped against the far wall.
A woman.
Her legs stretched out in front of her, stiff and awkward. What remained of her pants clung to her thighs in frozen, threadbare patches, faded from exposure and shredded near the ankles. Her jacket hung in tatters around her shoulders, its original color long lost to dirt and time. The fabric was frayed and paper-thin, brittle in some places like it had been gnawed or rotted through.
Her hair—what little was left—hung in sparse, brittle strands around her scalp, a dull, lifeless brown that looked matted and clumped from where the weather and animals had gotten to it. There were strange gaps where patches had fallen away or had been torn out entirely.
Ophelia swallowed hard, forcing herself to move closer despite the chill creeping up her spine.
The body was leaning at an unnatural angle against the far wall, half slumped, as though she’d been dropped there. Ophelia’s gaze swept over the remains. Her arms lay limp at her sides, the sleeves of her jacket barely recognizable, the fabric shredded and frozen into the shape of the wall. What skin remained on her arms was stretched taut and thin, cracking along the joints where the ice had settled.
The woman’s torso was partially exposed, the remnants of her shirt stiff with frost. Beneath the layers of ice and fabric, her ribs protruded slightly, as if the skin had dried and shrunken around her bones. Ophelia’s breath hitched as she caught sight of her face—or what had once been her face. Then she lifted her phone and took pictures of the scene from every vantage point.
“She’s partially frozen, partially not,” Christian said from behind her, his voice grim. “Probably killed in the summer, decomposed for a while, and then froze when the temperatures dropped.”
Ophelia barely registered his words. Her eyes remained locked on the hollow sockets where the woman’s eyes should have been. The void there was haunting, as though the skull itself had secrets it was refusing to share.
She felt Brock step closer, his steady presence a silent reassurance. His warmth radiated through the frigid air, but she forced herself not to lean into it. Instead, she took another step forward and crouched down for a better view.
The skin on the woman’s face was like thin, cracked parchment, discolored in places where frost had taken hold. Her lips had curled back slightly, leaving her teeth exposed in a macabre grimace. Her cheekbones jutted out sharply, skeletal but still oddly human beneath the frozen ruin of her flesh.
“Rodents?” Ophelia tilted her head, her voice quiet but steady.
Christian nodded grimly. “Could be. Scavengers, maybe birds. There’s no way to know for sure until Doc takes a look.”
She pointed to the woman’s skull, narrowing her eyes at the faint, uneven depressions along the side. “There are dents here.”
Christian crouched beside her, his expression dark. “Blunt force trauma, maybe. Or it could be bullet wounds, depending on how things broke apart. Hard to tell with the way she’s been left like this.”
“There’s dried blood on the floor,” Brock added, nodding toward the dark stains just visible beneath the layer of snow and dust. The stains had spread outward in uneven streaks, frozen over in thin layers of ice, but still unmistakably red-brown.
Ophelia scanned the rest of the room. It was barren—no furniture, no tools, no signs of human life. Just dust, ice, and decay.
Her stomach twisted, but she kept her voice calm. “I don’t suppose we can get a forensic team out here?”
Christian snorted, shaking his head. “Not until May, probably.”
Her head snapped toward him. “May?”
