know how to let me know.”
Shaken, she lowered her gaze. He began walking away toward the car. All too soon, their morning together was at an end. She was so sad. It had felt like a reprieve.
Then something hard and wet smacked the back of her head. A snowball. She whirled around to find him bent over, already packing another one.
As fast as she could, she grabbed two handfuls of snow and smacked them together. There was no snowball, only an explosion of icy crystals. She shrieked, defenseless, as Trick’s second snowball hit her on the shoulder. As she yelled in protest, he picked her up and carried her to her sled, plopped her on it, and grabbed the rope. He began to drag her up the hill.
“No!” she cried. He kept pulling. “Trick, I said no!”
“It’s all in the context, darlin’,” he said, and kept going.
“Fine. Wear yourself out.” She dug her heels into the snow to add to the drag. He kept pulling and she kept dragging. Then she leaped up and yanked on the rope he held so tightly, throwing him off balance. As he fell, she took off running down the hill, arms flailing as she laughed in triumph.
She tried to keep herself from running flat out, but her competitive streak got the best of her. Stumbling over her boots, she put on a burst of speed, heading for a copse of trees at the slope’s edge. Her laughter echoed against the hill. She was giddy. It felt so good to put everything on a shelf and just be in the moment — to be a kid, to flirt with a hot guy who was into her. It was exactly what she needed to burn off all the tension.
“I’m coming for you!” Trick bellowed behind her. “Better run, girl!”
She burst into the trees and tore through them, laughing like a crazy person. Then she came to a rise before the next hill and stopped to catch her breath. As she panted, she looked back over her shoulder, but Trick’s approach was hidden by the trees. Then she looked down the next hill, planning her escape.
About a hundred feet away, something dark was lying on the ground. As Katelyn studied it, a funny feeling tapped at the base of her skull and lifted her hair from her neck. She began to run toward it. It was a person.
“Hey!” she cried. “Hey, are you okay?”
As if in answer, a bird trilled. She heard something behind her crashing through the trees. She didn’t wait for Trick.
It was a man. Or rather, what was left of him.
12
Katelyn stared down at the man’s body. His eyes gaped wide in shock, his mouth an O of horror, pain. And his chest and stomach . . .
Katelyn covered her mouth with both hands as she fell to her knees beside him. The hunter-green parka he wore was soaked with blood and . . . and there were things . . . pieces.
“Mister?” she said, reaching a shaking hand toward him. His eyes didn’t blink; the cavern that had been his chest didn’t rise and fall. She took a deep breath and pressed her fingertips against his neck. His skin was ice cold. Recoiling, she pulled away for a moment and then forced herself to take another deep breath as she wondered how long he’d been dead. She clasped his wrist. Clammy flesh did not give way; it was frozen.
I’m touching a dead person.
The crevices in his chest revealed something white protruding from mangled piles of bloody, dark objects. His ribs. On his parka, an embroidered patch bore the emblem of a wolf’s paw. The writing said The Inner Wolf Center, Wolf Springs, Arkansas.
“Oh, my God,” Trick said above and behind her. Then he moved past, bending over the man, checking his pulse the same way she had. She watched numbly, shaking all over. Then she scooted away and got to her feet. “Call 911,” Trick said, pulling his phone out of his pants pocket and handing it to her. “God, there’s so much blood.”
There was. The man lay sprawled on an incline, and the blood had pooled beneath him, then run down on the side farthest from Katelyn. A river of blood had gushed out of him, then frozen.
His left knee was bent backwards. And his left foot . . .
His foot was missing.
“Trick,” she said wildly, but she couldn’t make herself say anything but his name.
“Here,” Trick said, taking the phone from