Page 84 of Famous for a Living

A flash of light reflects on the window beside the door and my eyes automatically flicker over. It’s too late, though. The light has come and gone, but I frown anyway. It was probably just a reflection off the flames in the woodstove, but the angle felt off. The light was more of a silvery white than orange.

I push the blankets off.

Pause a moment.

Stand up.

Listen to the world of silence but for the crackling flames.

Tap.

What’s that?

Not an animal. Just the lightest of taps on the exterior door.

Tap.

Tap. There it goes again.

I move to the back of the door, out of view from the window.

Put my ear a little closer to the wood. Listen.

Tap.

A pause of three or four seconds.

Tap.

Why, it almost sounds like gravel hitting the door.

My hand is just on the handle, ear pressed against the door, when I hear an absolute roar over my shoulder and feel my body thrust to the side.

“Ahhhh!” Mina cries, throwing the door open. Her waist-length hair is unbraided over her nightgown, and around her waist is a pack with a series of items—Is that a knife strapped onto her ankle?

As I watch, stunned as I hit the wall, she leaps barefoot into the blackness, holding out two giant cans of bear spray.

Leaps.

“Mina!” I scramble to my feet. I look around frantically for something, anything, that could possibly be used as a weapon, then grab the first thing I can find.

Somebody yelps in the distance, a man’s voice, as I run onto the porch.

Zaiah’s truck spews gravel as it slides to a slushy stop in front of the cabin, and before I know it, he’s thrown his door open and is running through the beam of the headlights, rifle in hand.

And there’s Uncle Terry, peeling up in his truck behind.

The screen door of Jax and Kevin’s cabin next door slams and there they are, halfway dressed but aiming weapons.

A man scrambles to his feet behind a tree but only makes it a few steps before Mina pulls herself off the snow and leaps on him with the agility of a mountain lion. I know because last week I saw a mountain lion.

Right now, I’m not sure which of the two I’d rather go up against.

“I yield! I yield!” the man cries. It’s a little hard to hear, though, given his entire body is spread-eagle, facedown in the snow. And Mina’s sitting on him.

Wait a minute . . .

I know that voice. That nasally, high-pitched voice. “Adam Adams?” I move closer.