Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six(78)

His words made no sense. Get through what? Who was this guy? How had she never seen the darkness in him, the coldness? It was all he was now, like a switch had flipped. A frightening stranger. She tried to remember the man who’d made love to her in the car just hours ago. He seemed like a fantasy.

His grip on her shoulder was hard, painful. She tried to wrest away from him, but he wouldn’t let her and he was impossibly strong, bringing his hand to her other arm. He pulled her closer to him, hard.

She wanted to plead with him to bring the Joshua she knew back. The one who made her smile and feel safe. What happened to him?

She’d been right, hadn’t she?

She had known in her deepest heart that he was too good to be true.

“Just do what I say now and no one else is going to get hurt. Okay, Cricket?”

“Why would anyone get hurt?” Confusion wrapped around fear, muddled her thinking. “What do you mean no one else?”

Josh reached past her and unlocked the door, letting the worsening weather and the other stranger inside.





32


Bracken

The rain beat on the roof of his truck as he powered down the dark, winding roads. The storm had come on harder and sooner than he’d expected.

Bracken had been on his way to Overlook when he’d gotten the call from the angry guests. Angry or scared? Hard to tell the difference sometimes. When people were afraid, sometimes it made them rude, or unthinking, or both.

Power out.

Someone missing.

Someone hurt.

No electricity meant that the cameras weren’t working, couldn’t send their signal through the router. There was no way for him to visually check in on the group. He was cut off from them and he didn’t like it.

And what had happened to the generator? He’d just inspected it himself. It had been in perfect working order earlier in the week. Was there someone else up there?

He had a strange sense that darkness had come to Overlook. Again.

His big truck made light work of the swamped roads. There were some smaller trees down and branches littered the blacktop, but the pickup rolled over those as if they were twigs. Gusts of wind buffeted the sides of the truck.

When he got closer to Overlook, up ahead he saw the tree down. A young oak, charred and splintered, twisted across both lanes, lay in the beam of his headlights as he approached. He brought the truck to a stop, wheels whispering in the water.

Bracken had placed a couple of calls to guys he knew were game to come out in any weather to deal with problems. You needed a rough-and-ready team when you ran rentals in an isolated area. But his calls had all gone to voicemail, which might mean that people were hunkered down or that cell signals were bad tonight.

He regarded the tree. He wasn’t going to even bother getting out of the truck. It was too big to move alone. He’d need a plow, a bigger vehicle. He’d have to get help.

He only knew one person with a truck and a plow big enough to move that tree.

He sat a moment, thinking, listening to the rain beat on the roof of his car, watching it sheet down his windshield.

He thought about going back to May where he’d left her sleeping. How many years had he spent watching people, their lives and dramas unfolding before him? All the while, failing to live his own life.

He was about to turn around when he saw a large form disappear into the trees. Deer.

He kept watching. Where there was one, there were more. Not a breath later, a large buck and a smaller doe passed through the beam of his headlights. They both stopped to stare in his direction, eyes glowing, tawny fur shining in the wet, before bounding out of sight.

He sat, thinking about the people in the house. The pretty yogi. The party girl. The stay-at-home mom. The tech mogul. The computer wonk. The mystery man. All players on his stage. What had they gotten themselves into?

He’d help them. That was his role as their host, wasn’t it? The code he’d established.

The road to Old Bob’s was swamped but he made it up the winding, isolated drive. Lights glowed inside the tiny cabin. Nights like this it was a good thing to be off the grid, making your own power. He saw Old Bob’s truck sitting under the covered garage, plow already attached. He must have anticipated road clearing.

The door swung open and Bob’s big form filled the frame. Bob wasn’t that old, just prematurely gray. And Bracken was pretty sure his name wasn’t Bob. He’d come to town a few years ago, kept to himself. Bracken knew he was a vet; had seen combat in the Middle East. He was a widower, rumor had it. He had the flat stare of a soldier, and the build of a heavyweight fighter, a head of slate hair worn long to his shoulders. He reliably did the work he was hired to do, and barely said a word.

Now Bob stepped out onto the porch holding a rifle.

Bracken climbed out of the driver’s seat and approached; the rain had turned to drizzle.

“Hey, Bob,” he said, climbing the steps.

“Bracken,” he said, lowering the gun to his side. “What brings you out?”

“Power’s out at Overlook,” he said. “I have a tree down and can’t get to my guests.”

“Don’t you have a generator up there?”

“It didn’t kick on. Not sure why.”

Bob frowned. The truth was that no one local liked going up to Overlook. Bracken had trouble with builders, tradesmen, groundskeepers. Even May didn’t like to be there alone, brought someone with her if she could find the help, claiming it was too big to clean alone quickly. But Bob wasn’t the type to spook.