Page 7 (1/2)
Except so about the way she peered doard made him want to look too Was this another trick? He firaze to the patch of slushy earth beside his boot
A dead face stared back at hih the ice
Chapter 4
Sunny screamed
Horror raked up her throat as dead eyes peered at her through a thin sheet of ice and snow Not just any eyes Madison’s eyes The woh the pass just yesterday
She clasped her throat, right where the gash gaped across Madison’s severed carotid The dead woman’s blonde hair fanned around her The fatal wound was outlined in crystallized drops of frozen blood, as if rusty red tears wept fro and she couldn’t s Wade clamped a hand over her o in that unwise, out-of-control kiss
Oh God, they’d been kissing beside a dead body Nausea gagged her
"Careful," he said softly, urgently "Toolaunched hysteria at the possibility of being buried alive--with Madison
What had happened? Where was Ted? And the sheriff’s deputy? Questions dog-piled inside her, shredding through her already raw emotions with vicious teeth
Her brain went into hyperdrive Ted and Madison h very clearly she’d been murdered By whom? A squatter? And where were Ted and the deputy?
God, if she’d thought to look for Ted and Madison the minute the storm started, maybe she would have found her before this
Or she could be right there under the ice, waxy and dead just like her friend
Hysteria bubbled until her cries gurgled, much like Madison must have choked on her own blood
"Sunny? It’s okay," he continued softly, sliding his arht I know the first time you see a dead body it’s scary as hell I wish I could say it gets better, but it doesn’t You just learn to hold back the reaction until the crisis passes And we need to do that now We need to function so we can get out of here"
She forced herself to take slow, even breaths, to push cold oxygen and reason to her stunned brain "Okay I hear you"
"Good, noe have to get out of here andus in Then we can notify the authorities about this person so they can work on an ID and notifying the family"
He didn’t realize she knew Madison Her secret was safe for a while longer… Except she needed to know about Ted and the deputy, no matter the cost "What if there’s someone with her? Shouldn’t we look around?"
"On the off chance? Even though a rescue tea out" He looked at the frozen face, then around the narrow crevasse about twenty feet froroup we rescued They were so disoriented e rescued theet a solid count as to whether it was four cliuide, or four people total"
He squinted up toward the horizon, his face alert "And if that’s the case, then we need to be careful, because there’s a murderer out there somewhere"
Her teeth started to chatter from the cold and fear The fall too,into shock
He squeezed her shoulder For coet away "Co anywhere, and we need to think sames anymore Not with Ted’s life at stake "I know her She’s not with the other team, and she must have been " She sed hard "I do guide work and I was out helping her uide today She had a partner, Ted"
Her voice cracked with eer than this But the exhaustion, the horror of seeing Madison, thinking of her friend’s drea how she’d always ranola for the whole community at Christmas… It was all tooseconds--deciding if she was a party to this horror?--before shaking his head "Right You’re good at ain If there’s someone else out there, then my team can track him"
"But what about Ted? The deputy?"
"My first priority is to get you out of here alive Now let’s go" He pulled a knife fro a toehold out of the ice
"I’m not a child"
"I noticed," he said, then continued withouta beat "We need to haul our asses back up out of this gorge Are you going to help ht I’m sorry" She pulled out her survival knife
"Shit"
His curse stopped her "What?"
He slapped a hand against the ice, his shoulders braced in resignation as he looked down, giving her only a scant second’s warning before he said, "I think I just found Ted"