He paused, not for the first time, to gain some bearings. For as thorough as he'd been with snatching me, he seemed uncertain. He consulted no map or GPS. While I knew very little of the terrain here, likely not much more than him, even I felt totally lost. Eventually, if we kept moving north, we'd hit the river that the highway followed. That's all I knew. The forest could be disorienting on a clear, warm day. With so much snow and quiet, we might as well have been in a different world. Still, I thought I knew the vague direction of Adventura, and that was behind us.
If I could just get this shivering under control and his attention to lapse, I could try to break free. But it was far more likely I'd freeze first.
“J-j-josh,” I struggled to say around the gag. “I'm f-f-freezing.”
He grunted. Likely the only thing that would save me was to keep moving. My feet were totally numb except for a painful crash through my hips whenever I took a hasty step behind him. Perhaps the movement would be enough to stall the inevitable hypothermia. I'd only been submerged for a few seconds. Surely, it would take hours for a real effect to happen if we kept walking.
That would at least buy time for Mark to find me, assuming we stumbled around the forest that long. Joshua must have a car hidden somewhere. A plan. Something.
Without a word, Joshua angled us toward a dense canopy of trees on a ridge with rockfall. Navigating those rocks wouldn't be easy with this wet, dense snow. With my hands tied, I'd probably fall and bash my face.
Not that I'd be able to feel it.
With relentless determination, I pushed off the abject fear that lived like a wild thing in my stomach. No, this wouldn't be the end of Stella Marie. Grandma would not bury her last loved one. Mark would not save Adventura without me. This is what we did. We saved each other.
Mark would save me.
With that burning hope inside my almost-frozen body, I followed behind Joshua as we stumbled toward a towering outcropping of rocks. Before we made it halfway up the rock field, an unearthly scream broke the silence. My blood, already cold, turned to slush.
Joshua stopped. “What,” he muttered, “was that?”
“M-m-mountain lion,” I tried to say, but it was garbled through the gag. The eerie sound came again, this time directly ahead of us. It seemed to widen and echo across the air with painful wails. The grating noise made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. A movement drew my gaze up, and my heart crashed into my stomach.
On a ledge of the rocks above us appeared a long, lithe animal. A sinewy tail became a large, catlike body that stood on a tree branch and peered straight at us. The upper lip twitched as the mountain lion sniffed our direction.
Fear pooled in my trembling stomach. Of all things I'd expected, this was not it. Not that ridiculous mountain lion. The insanity was almost too much to bear.
New questions and fears ran through my mind at top speed. Was I supposed to look bigger or smaller? Bigger, I thought. But how? The cat slipped to the edge of the branch and onto nearby rocks without taking its eyes off of us.
Joshua stumbled back a step.
“It’s massive,” he whispered.
Massive didn't do the beast any credit. While I didn't know much about mountain lions, this one appeared so thick I had little doubt it was mature. It licked its lips. Corded muscles moved on its front shoulders as it prowled down the rocks and toward us. The snow continued to fall between us. Was this the creature that had been prowling around Adventura?
Undoubtedly.
Not for the first time, I both wished for Atticus and feared for him also. How thorough had Joshua been in his attempt to steal me? Had he killed Atticus? The thought brought hot tears to my eyes. I didn't dare ask as I blinked them back. Hope was too precious to destroy.
Part of me wanted to throw myself closer to the cat—surely Joshua would leave me behind then—because I wasn't sure which was the greater danger anymore. I could bumble my way back to the lake on our trail and hope to get there with my frozen limbs.
But would the mountain lion let me go?
Also doubtful.
Joshua stumbled back another step when the mountain lion stepped onto a lower rock, whiskers twitching. Joshua grabbed onto the back of my coat, keeping me in front of him as we backed away. A rock slid out from beneath him and we both almost went down, but I righted us at the last minute.
“Easy there, lion,” Joshua crooned while the cat growled. For every step back we took, the mountain lion took another one forward. Snow fell on top of my already frozen head as we skimmed through trees. A new sort of numbness moved through me.
This is good, I thought, foraging through my brain for any positivity that would keep my dimming hope alive. The mountain lion had certainly slowed us down. If we could hold still, Mark would find us all the sooner.
Although he may not have realized yet that I was gone. Without movement, the cold would set in with surprising force. In which case, there were three things trying to kill me tonight.
My whole body shook in another round of shivering as Joshua crouched down and picked up a fallen branch. The mountain lion stalked toward us, body low to the ground, paws deliberate with every step. It let out a low growl that turned into another scream.
Joshua waved the branch so wildly it almost crashed into my head.
“Get back!” he screamed. “Back!”
For just a moment, he'd let go of me. I took a step to the side but fell to my knees as
