“What the fuck? Bitch! Knock it the hell off!” She recognized the voice. One of the guys who’d grabbed her, an older man, her father’s age, someone she remembered seeing around the logging camps and later, at her husband’s office.

She heard him yelling but didn’t stop. If they pulled over now and shot her in the head it wouldn’t matter. This was her one chance, her last chance, a last gasp for a final breath.

When the trunk popped open, Jolee screamed in triumph behind her duct tape mask. She had time to see a gun metal expanse of winter sky and fat flakes of snow still falling outside, her nostrils flaring as she filled them with a sharp, cold intake of air, before the car stopped.

But it didn’t just stop. The impact was so sudden Jolee was tossed toward the front of the BMW, hitting her head against the car jack. She felt something floppy on her forehead, wetness flooding her eye, stinging, but then she was flying and couldn’t think about that anymore, thrown out of the open trunk into a foot of heavy snow.

The landing was hard, so hard she couldn’t breathe, but her head hurt the most and the last thing she remembered was hearing a scream, a wild animal cry of pain and death and horror, and she wondered briefly if she was making that awful noise before the world went black.

* * * *

Silas had been following the animal for over a mile. His father taught him long ago that hunting should be something a man did honorably, so tracking in the snow seemed a bit unfair, but he was carrying a bow, not a gun, and the elk had a good quarter mile head-start. Besides, the animal was a thousand pounds and bulls were known to charge any hunter forced to get too close. Silas was careful to stay downwind. He had two arrows ready-elk often ran, even after a kill shot, and he was ready to track it for the second if he needed to-but it turned out he only needed one.