It might be summer, but the snow was still thick on the ground on the rise. She was slogging through it, sinking and falling and trying to right herself. She staggered and fell—thinking of the times she had mocked horror movies, those that featured victims who seemed to trip over their own feet.
And then, over another rise, she saw it. The Alaska Hut.
Help! Help would be there.
Producer, director, fellow actors, makeup artists, costumers and...security! All she had to do was reach it.
But...was anyone left alive? She hadn’t waited long enough at the Mansion to find out, not after she’d seen what she’d seen and heard movement upstairs and then...
Coming down the steps.
She’d run.
She should have stayed to help Larry.
No, how could she have helped him—against all that carnage? She didn’t even have a plastic butter knife on her!
She could see it...the Alaska Hut...just ahead.
Hope allowed her to redouble her efforts. She heard the sound of her breath, and the squish of her footsteps as she ran the best she could over the snow. Her legs burned, her lungs were now pure fire.
Suddenly, a voice called out to her. She nearly lost her footing in the snow as panic swept through her anew.
“Stop! Stop now!”
Stop? What insanity was that?
She ran all the harder!
She didn’t hear footsteps following so close behind her—she didn’t hear or feel anything at first, just that pounding of her heart, the ragged and desperate rise and fall of her breath...
And then, it felt as if she was hit from behind by a semi.
She went down, flying, her face smashing into the coldness of the snow, a mouthful of the stuff nearly choking her. There was someone on top of her...or trying to drag her up.
And all she could picture was the blood spattered over the snow-white landscape, the woman cut in half...pieces connected by a pool of blood.
And so she fought. She fought with every remaining ounce of energy within her; she fought for her life.
2
Thor was at a disadvantage.
The young woman he tackled hadn’t paid the least bit of attention to his words or his tap on her back, and she’d gone completely ballistic when he’d tried to stop her.
Now she fought and kicked like a banshee.
“Miss, miss, please!” he tried again.
Maybe she was deaf.
He was trying hard not to hurt her, but she had the athletic agility of a cat and managed a right hook to his jaw that would have done a boxer proud.
She was in panic—and he understood. But, hell! At some point she had to realize...
“Stop!” he snapped, catching her shoulders and straddling her. “Stop, please! FBI. Special Agent Thor Erikson. FBI! Stop!”
And then, she did, at last.
She stared up at him, blinked, her expression unchanging.
He immediately wondered who she was; the woman beneath him had fair skin, brilliantly blue eyes and a long mop of golden hair beneath the hood of her snow jacket—hair that tumbled around her face in wild strands after their altercation. He found himself tensing; she looked like a fairy-tale princess, a Sleeping Beauty beyond a doubt. Her features were delicate and well-formed, her lips were full—more blue out in the cold than red, but rich and full—and he imagined they could curl into the perfect bow of a smile.
She wasn’t smiling. She stared at him blankly.
“FBI,” he repeated. “You’re safe,” he said.
She seemed to digest that for a minute and then breathed softly. “Really?”
He didn’t get off her, but he sat back carefully on his haunches to produce his credentials.
She looked at them.
He had a feeling, though, that in her mind it was the fact that she was still alive more than his identification that convinced her of the truth.
“Really,” he said.
She stared at him suspiciously—and stared at the documents again. “Thor?” she said.
“Yes, Thor. Thor Erikson.”
“It sounds made up.”
“It is made up. My parents—Heidi and Olaf Erikson—made it up when I was born!”
Again, she was silent for a minute, and then she said, “If that’s the truth, perhaps you wouldn’t mind getting off me? It’s very, very cold.”
He quickly rose and offered her a hand. She seemed to hesitate before accepting it, but then she did, trying to dust some of the snow off herself after she had risen. “Have you seen...?” she asked then.
“Miss...?” he began.
“Avery. Clara Avery,” she said. “Have you seen... Oh, God. The film crew—they’re all dead. Some at the Mansion...and now...here.”
“Miss Avery, I was just at the Mansion. I’m afraid that you’ve been misled because of a sick prank. The scene you discovered there was completely fabricated by set and scene designers for an episode of Gotcha.”
“No,” she murmured. She blinked, as if unable to assimilate that anyone could do such a thing as a prank.
Frankly, he couldn’t begin to understand it, either.
“Yes, Miss Avery. But, I’m sorry to say—”
“Even the—the body in the snow?”
He’d meant to tell her about Natalie Fontaine, but before he could do so, she had interrupted.
“What body in the snow?” he asked.
Her brows hiked up. “You didn’t see it?”