Chapter 1 - The Tracks in the Snow
The man outside Elena’s cabin moved like someone who expected no resistance.
He closed the door of the black SUV quietly, turned toward the trees, and studied the snow. Even through the frost-clouded window, I recognized the disciplined tilt of his head.
Caleb Voss.
For seven years, Caleb had driven me through New York streets where men twice his size crossed to the other sidewalk when they saw my car. He had stood outside hospital rooms, board meetings, funerals, and private dinners. He knew where I kept the emergency cash in my Manhattan penthouse. He knew which shoulder had never healed properly after a motorcycle accident in my twenties.
And now he knew where to find the cabin where I had awakened after my brother shot me.
“He works for you?” Elena whispered.
“He did.”
Her fingers tightened around the curtain.
Outside, Caleb opened the rear door of the SUV. A second man climbed out, broad across the shoulders, wearing a green parka. I didn’t recognize him.
That worried me more than seeing Caleb.
“You have a phone?” I asked.
“No signal here.”
“Radio?”
“A shortwave set in the shed.”
“How far?”
“Thirty yards.”
“Too far.”
Elena looked from the men to me. “Can you walk?”
I pushed the blanket aside.
Pain burned from my shoulder through my ribs so violently that the room tilted. My feet touched the wooden floor, but strength did not follow. I gripped the side of the bed and waited for my vision to clear.
Elena caught my good arm.
“I asked if you could walk,” she said. “Not whether you could prove something.”
“I can walk.”
“You can lie. That isn’t the same thing.”
A knock sounded at the door.
Not loud. Not impatient.
Three measured taps.
Caleb’s knock.
Elena’s gaze moved to the hunting rifle mounted above the fireplace.
“Loaded?” I asked.
“No.”
“Where are the shells?”
“Somewhere a stranger can’t reach them.”
Another knock.
“Ms. Santos?” Caleb called. “We need to speak with you.”
Elena went still.
I had told her only my first name. Whoever stood outside should have believed she was merely a stranger who had found me. Yet Caleb knew exactly who she was.
He knocked again.
“We’re with the county search-and-rescue service,” he said. “A man has gone missing in the area.”
“There’s no county team on this side of the mountain,” Elena whispered. “Not in winter.”
Caleb tried the handle.
The lock held.
Elena released my arm, crossed to the stove, and picked up a cast-iron pan.
I almost smiled. “You plan to cook him?”
“I plan to make him forget his name.”
The second man circled toward the window.
I saw his shadow pass across the snow. Elena pulled me away before he could look inside, but the sudden movement tore something through my shoulder. A grunt escaped me.
The shadow stopped.
Caleb’s voice changed. “Open the door, Elena.”
No more pretense.
Elena guided me toward the back wall, where a narrow pantry stood beside shelves of preserves. She shoved aside two burlap sacks, reached behind the lowest shelf, and pulled a concealed lever.
Part of the wall shifted inward.
Cold air breathed through the opening.
“You built a hidden door?” I whispered.
“The previous owner did.”
“And you kept it.”
“I told you. I’m afraid of people.”
A hard impact shook the front door.
The frame groaned.
Elena helped me through the opening into a passage barely wide enough for one person. Stone scraped my shoulder. Pain exploded through me, and I nearly fell.
She closed the concealed panel as the front door splintered.
Darkness swallowed us.
Elena’s hand found mine. “Follow me.”
We moved down a steep flight of stone steps. My balance was unreliable, my breathing shallow. Each footfall sounded thunderous inside my skull.
Above us came the crash of furniture.
“They know I’m alive,” I said.
“That was obvious when they came here.”
“No. Before this. They knew where to look.”
Elena stopped at the bottom of the steps and lit a small lantern hanging from a hook.
Its weak glow revealed a narrow tunnel supported by old mining beams.
“What is this place?”
“An abandoned silver prospect. The tunnel exits beyond the ridge.”
“How far?”
“Half a mile.”
In my condition, it might as well have been fifty.
We had covered perhaps a hundred yards when a muffled voice echoed behind us.
“They found the passage,” I said.
Elena lifted the lantern. “Then we move faster.”
The tunnel sloped downward. Moisture gleamed on the walls, and ice covered sections of the floor. I tried not to lean on Elena, but twice she had to steady me.
“You should leave me,” I said.
She didn’t slow. “No.”
“They aren’t here for you.”
“They knew my name.”
“That means you’re already involved.”
“I was involved the moment I found you.”
Behind us, a light appeared.
Elena extinguished the lantern.
We stood in total darkness as boots struck stone somewhere in the tunnel.
A beam swept across the wall behind us.
“Vincent,” Caleb called. “Your brother wants to talk.”
I turned toward the voice.
Elena pulled me forward.
“Your brother said this was a misunderstanding,” Caleb continued. “Come back, and nobody else gets hurt.”
My brother, Dominic, had said something similar shortly before pulling the trigger.
We moved by touch until the tunnel divided. Elena led me left. Moments later, Caleb and the second man passed through the right branch, their flashlight beams receding.
Elena relit the lantern.
“How did you know?” I asked.
“The right passage collapsed years ago.”
A distant curse echoed through the stone.
For the first time since waking, hope stirred.
It lasted less than a minute.
A rumbling sound rolled through the mountain. Dust fell from the beams. Elena’s face drained of color.
“What was that?”
“They’re trying to force us back.”
Another blast struck behind us, stronger than the first. Air rushed through the passage. One of the old supports cracked.
We ran—or Elena ran while I staggered beside her.
The tunnel ceiling groaned.
Elena pushed me forward just as a beam collapsed behind us, sending rocks crashing across the passage. Dust filled my mouth. The lantern fell but remained lit.
For several seconds, neither of us moved.
Then Elena crawled toward me.
“Vincent?”
“I’m here.”
She found my hand. “Can you stand?”
“With sufficient dishonesty.”
She gave a breathless sound that might have been a laugh.
The fallen rocks had sealed the passage behind us, but the tunnel ahead remained open. We retrieved the lantern and continued.
By the time we reached the exit, my shirt was damp with blood beneath the bandage.
The hidden door opened behind a curtain of frozen vines. Snow blew across a narrow ravine. Elena led me downhill to a small structure half buried beneath the slope.
“A ranger station?” I asked.
“An old fire lookout supply cabin.”
Inside were blankets, canned food, a first-aid kit, and a hand-crank radio.
Elena helped me sit, then cut away the loosened bandage. Her expression told me the truth before she spoke.
“You reopened the wound.”
“Can you stop it?”
“I stopped it once.”
She worked in silence, cleaning and wrapping my shoulder. Her hands remained steady, but something else had changed. The concern in her eyes now shared space with suspicion.
“Why did your brother shoot you?” she asked.
“Because he wants what I have.”
“What do you have?”
“Companies. Property. Influence.”
“And enemies?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“I stopped counting.”
She tied the bandage and sat back. “What kind of companies?”
“Construction. Shipping. Private security.”
“That sounds respectable.”
“Parts of it are.”
“And the other parts?”
I looked at the lantern between us. “You’re safer not knowing.”
Her jaw tightened. “Men just broke into my home and blew up a tunnel beneath it. Stop deciding what makes me safe.”
She was right.
I hated that.
“My family built its power through favors,” I said. “Some legal. Some not. I spent years moving us into legitimate business, but old arrangements don’t disappear because you change the names on the doors.”
“And your brother opposed that?”
“Dominic thinks fear is the only currency anyone respects.”
“Do you?”
“I used to.”
The radio produced only static.
Elena adjusted the frequency. A male voice flickered through, then vanished beneath interference.
She tried again.
This time we heard a local emergency broadcast warning of worsening snowfall and road closures. The storm would isolate the mountain by nightfall.
A perfect place for a murder.
Elena opened a cabinet and removed an old satellite phone.
“You had that the whole time?” I asked.
“The battery barely holds a charge. I save it for emergencies.”
“This qualifies.”
She switched it on.
One bar appeared.
I dialed the only number I trusted enough to remember: Evelyn Shaw, my attorney and oldest friend.
The call connected.
“Evelyn,” I said.
Silence.
Then a sharp inhale. “Vincent?”
“I need you to listen. Don’t say my name again.”
“You’re alive.”
“For the moment. Dominic arranged it.”
“I know.”
Those two words chilled me more than the mountain air.
“How?”
“He took control of Torino Holdings this morning using an emergency succession document. It bears your signature.”
“I never signed it.”
“I’m aware.”
“Freeze everything.”
“I tried. The board rejected my authority. Dominic told them you stole forty million dollars and disappeared after murdering a federal informant.”
Elena looked at me.
“He has evidence?” I asked.
“He has manufactured evidence. And there’s more. A warrant has been issued for your arrest.”
The signal cracked.
“Evelyn, listen carefully. Find Marcus Reed. Only Marcus.”
“He vanished yesterday.”
Marcus had been my chief financial officer for twelve years.
My stomach tightened.
“Then find his daughter,” I said. “She knows where he keeps his private records.”
The signal dropped.
I tried again, but the phone showed no service.
A twig snapped outside.
Elena extinguished the lantern.
Through a crack beside the door, I saw movement among the trees.
Not Caleb.
A woman approached through the storm wearing a red coat. She raised both hands to show they were empty.
“Elena!” she called. “I know you’re in there.”
Elena’s face changed.
Not fear exactly.
Recognition.
The woman came closer and pulled back her hood.
Elena whispered a name I barely heard.
“Marisol.”
The stranger stopped ten feet from the door.
“I came to warn you,” she shouted. “Gabriel knows Vincent survived.”
Elena’s hand closed around my wrist.
“Who is Gabriel?” I asked.
She didn’t answer.
May you like
Outside, Marisol looked directly at our hiding place.
“And he knows you still have the ledger,” she called. “If Dominic Torino finds out what’s inside it, neither of you will leave this mountain alive.”
