Her parents had made their distaste for her new lifestyle clear.
They responded with curfews and rules, tightened their walls of confinement, squeezed life's breath from her. Defiance was the only way she knew to fight back. She'd wept behind locked doors when she quit ballet, but she had to hurt them back. They didn't get to pick and choose pieces of her to love. Either she was theirs unconditionally, or they lost her completely. That was her deal. At eighteen, her resolve was steel-like.
"Mine,” she repeated. It took all her concentration to push the
word out. She had to get her locket back, and she had to get out of here. She knew it. But a strange sensation had stolen into her body; it was as if she were watching things happen without feeling emotion.
The cowboy hung her locket on the doorknob. His hands free, he looped scratchy rope around her wrists. Lauren winced when he jerked on the knot. He couldn't do this to her, she thought, detached. She'd agreed to come with him, but she hadn't agreed to this.
"Let-go me,” she slurred, a sloppy, unconvincing demand that made her cheeks burn with humiliation. She loved language, each word tucked inside her, beautiful and bright, carefully chosen, empowering; she wanted to pull those words from her pocket now, but when she reached deep, she found snipped thread, a hole. The words had tumbled from her muddled head.
She threw her shoulders forward uselessly. He'd tied her to the pole. How would she get her locket back? The thought of losing it made panic scratch inside her chest. If only her brother had returned her call. She'd left a message about going drinking tonight, as a test. She tested him constantly-almost every weekend-but this was the first time he'd ignored her call. She'd wanted to know that he cared about her enough to stop her from doing something stupid.
Had he finally given up on her?
The cowboy was leaving. At the door, he tipped the black Stetson up, his blue eyes smug and greedy. Lauren realized the enormity of her mistake. He didn't even like her. Would he blackmail her with compromising photos? Was that the reason for the camera? He must know her parents would pay any price for them.
"I've got a surprise waiting for you in the toolshed around back,” he drawled. "Don't go anywhere, you hear?"
Her breath came fast and erratically. She wanted to tell him what she thought of his surprise. But her eyelids drooped lower, and each time, it took longer to snap them open. She started crying.
She'd been drunk before, but never like this. He'd given her a drug. He must have slipped it in her drink. It was making her exhausted and leaden. She sawed the rope against the pole. Or tried to. Her whole body felt heavy with sleep. She had to fight it. Something terrible was going to happen when he came back. She had to talk him out of it.
Sooner than expected, his form darkened the doorway. The lights in the den backlit him, casting a shadow twice his height across the storage room floor. He was no longer wearing the Stetson, and seemed larger than she remembered, but that wasn't what Lauren focused on. Her eyes went to his hands. He yanked a second rope between them, checking that it would hold.
He walked toward her and, with shaking hands, fit the rope around her neck. He was behind her, using the rope to pull her neck back against the pole. Lights ruptured behind her eyes. He was tugging too hard. She knew instinctively that he was nervous and excited. She could feel it in the eager tremble of his body. She heard the choppy panting of his breath, growing more charged, but not from exertion. From adrenaline. It made her stomach roll with terror. He was enjoying this. A foreign gurgling noise filled her ears, and she realized with horror that it was her voice. The sound seemed to scare him-he swore and tugged harder.
She screamed, over and over inside herself. She screamed while the pressure built, sweeping her toward the edge of death.
He didn't want photographs. He wanted to kill her.
She would not let this horrible place to be her last memory. Closing her eyes, she went away, into the darkness.
One year later
CHAPTER ONE
If I died, it wouldn't be from hypothermia.
I decided this as I crammed a goose-down sleeping bag into the back of my Jeep Wrangler and strapped it in, along with five duffels of gear, fleece and wool blankets, silk bag liners, toe warmers, and ground mats. Satisfied nothing was going to fly out on the three-hour drive to Idlewilde, I shut the tailgate and wiped my hands on my cutoffs.
My cell phone blared Rod Stewart crooning, "If you want my body,” and I held off answering for a moment so I could belt out the "and you think I'm sexy" part along with Rod. Across the street, Mrs. Pritchard slammed her living room window shut. Honestly. I couldn't let a perfectly good ringtone go to waste.
"Hey, girl,” Korbie said, snapping her bubble gum through the phone. "We on schedule or what?"
"Tiny snag. Wrangler's out of room,” I said with a dramatic sigh. Korbie and I had been best friends forever, but we acted more like sisters. Teasing was part of the fun. "I got the sleeping bags and gear in, but we're going to have to leave behind one of the duffels: navy with pink handles."
"You leave my bag, and you can kiss my g-ass money good-bye."
"Should've known you'd play the rich-family card."
"If you've got it, flaunt it. Anyway, you should blame all the people getting divorced and hiring my mom. If people could kiss and make up, she'd be out of a job."
"And then you'd have to move. Far as I'm concerned, divorce rocks."
Korbie snickered her amusement. "I just called Bear. He hasn't started packing yet but he swears he's gonna meet us at Idlewilde before dark." Korbie's family owned Idlewilde, a picturesque cabin in Grand Teton National Park, and for the next week, it was as close to civilization as we were going to get. "I told him if I have to clear bats out of the eaves by myself, he can count on a long, chaste spring break,” Korbie added.
"I still can't believe your parents are letting you spend spring break with your boyfriend."
"Well-,” Korbie began hesitantly.
"I knew it! There is more to this story.”
”Calvin is coming along to chaperone.”
”What?"
Korbie made a gagging noise. "He's coming home for spring break and my dad is forcing him to tag along. I haven't talked to Calvin about it, but he's probably pissed. He hates it when my dad tells him what to do. Especially now that he's in college. He's going to be in a horrible mood, and I'm the one who has to put up with it."
I sat on the jeep's bumper, my knees suddenly feeling made of sand. It hurt to breathe. just like that, Calvin's ghost was everywhere. I remembered the first time we kissed. During a game of hide-and-seek along the riverbed behind his house, he'd fingered my bra strap and shoved his tongue in my mouth while mosquitoes whined in my ears.