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The woman was still lying motionless in the grass when he returned. She must be freezing. He had to get her to safety as soon as possible.
Ice kneeled at her side and took her vitals. Her skin was icy to the touch, and he couldn’t wake her. When he tried, she made a low protesting noise, and tried weakly to push him away.
Definitely hypothermic, he thought. I have to get her inside and warm her up.
The first order of business was freeing her leg from that evil trap.
As he bent over to work it, he spotted purple glove fragments caught in the coils of the thick steel springs holding the jaws shut. He guessed she’d been unable to bear down with enough strength to free herself, either because the cold had weakened her hands or because she hadn’t been able to get the leverage she needed.
His shifter strength enabled him to open the trap in a matter of moments. Her knee-high hunting boots were badly indented from the trap’s teeth, but he didn’t see or smell any blood. That was the first bit of good news in this whole mess.
Now, what the hell am I supposed to do with her? Ice asked himself.
She needed a warm, dry shelter, and soon.
The problem was that the nearest ranger station was a ten-mile hike away, and the Bearpaw Springs Resort wasn’t much closer.
He sighed and concluded, I’ve got no choice. I have to take her to my place.
When he and Becca arrived at the Cougar Lake Ranch, Ice had deliberately chosen the most isolated of the old ranch hands’ cabins, located a stone’s throw from the property line that separated the ranch from BPS National Park.
Then he spotted a laptop lying on a pile of fallen chokecherry leaves under the bush. Powdery snow covered the silver-gray case.
Maybe it’s not too late to correct the trail cam fuck-up, he thought. Maybe I can find a way to erase any footage of my cat before she uploads it.
Ice grabbed the laptop and shoved it into his empty pack. Then he lifted her limp body gently into his arms and headed back to the trail at a rapid jog.
He hoped he could make it back to his cabin before she froze to death.
Chapter Four – Semi-Naked and Kinda Afraid
Holly crouched in the snow as a blizzard swirled all around her. She tried desperately to pull free from a pair of traps clamped painfully onto her hands. Something else bit deep into her leg, trying to drag her down into a snowdrift.
She had to get away! It was coming for her—the shadowy beast that had chased her through the snowy forest.
Now, as she frantically yanked and tugged her imprisoned limbs, a huge, menacing figure emerged from the trees. It carried an ax in one ham-sized fist. And instead of a human face, it had the head of a sabertooth cat. It advanced relentlessly on her; its enormous canines stained red with blood…
Panting, her heart pounding with terror, Holly started awake.
It was only a dream. Thank God!
She lay there, panting, and realized that part of her dream had traveled with her to the waking world.
Something was stabbing her hands and her right leg with a thousand red-hot needles. Beneath that, a bone-deep aching pain throbbed in time with her racing pulse.
Memories came rushing back. Wherever she was now, she wasn’t crouched in the middle of the forest during a snowstorm, slowly freezing to death.
Instead, she lay on something soft and yielding.
Her eyes flew open. She stared up at an unfamiliar ceiling of water-stained pine planks crossed with rustic wooden beams. Where the hell am I?
She looked down at herself.
She was stretched out on a vintage sleeper sofa with the same brown-and-cream tweed upholstery she remembered from her grandparents’ house.
A thick, soft fleece blanket covered her, pulled up to her chin. Her burning hands lay on top of a heavy, slightly squishy pillow lying on her stomach. It radiated gentle heat. Her feet nestled against another warm pillow.
Then she realized that under the blanket, she was nearly naked.
