“Definitely.” Dread told her she was getting closer to the truth about herself, her life, and that none of these problems would go away until she knew what was going on. She needed to go forward, to follow the fear and uncover whatever her brain was hiding from her. There must be reasons she couldn’t remember, and the way her whole body wanted to shut down each time she came close to remembering something suggested she shouldn’t push this. But she had no choice, not if she didn’t want to find herself cornered again. She needed to trust that God would help guide her.
Michael started the engine again and headed in the direction she’d come on her way down the slope earlier. They were off the trail now, moving slowly as they climbed through the trees. The wind died as they moved through the mist of the clouds. Ellie searched for something familiar as they wound through boulders and stands of pines, but all she saw was more snow. Wisps of cold found their way through the sleeves of her jacket and along her back as they traveled through the forest.
Michael slowed as they passed a jumble of boulders jutting out of the snow. “Does this look familiar?”
She scanned the veiled landscape, waiting for that jolt of recognition. It didn’t come.
“I don’t think so.”
“We’ll keep going.”
The snowmobile continued up the mountain, passing stands of tall trees and snowy ledges. Michael slowed at each outcropping of rock, but they all looked the same. The trees disappeared as they climbed above the misty clouds, revealing steep, rocky peaks with pockets of snow clinging to their sides. Ellie’s heart sped up. She knew this place, but no memories came.
Michael ascended a steep incline and stopped at the top of a snowbank left by a season’s worth of plows. Below was the road, two lanes, well-traveled, even in the blizzard. On the other side, the mountain continued, bare, with rock and soil clinging precariously to the face. They had climbed high enough to where the snow was measured in feet not inches. It was where the clouds hit the peaks and released everything they had, smothering the landscape. There was nothing familiar here, nothing that sparked a memory, so why was her heart pounding?
“We’re getting closer. I can feel it,” she said, forcing her voice to steady. “Where are we?”
He gestured to the right. “That direction leads toward a ski resort and, if you keep going, you’ll hit town,” he said. Then he pointed to the left. “Around that curve is the new development I was talking about.”
Every instinct told her to turn back, to head downhill, far away from the direction Michael was pointing now. Ellie swallowed back the dread that was creeping up her throat. “The new development. That’s where we need to go.”
“What do you think about taking the road?” he asked, indicating the packed snow at the bottom of the bank. “No one knows we’re on a snowmobile, and you’re not identifiable in those clothes. There’s no reason anyone would recognize you if we passed him.”
That was true. And if she was going to find her car, they needed to follow the road. Still, driving out in the open felt like a really bad idea. So did going toward the new development.
Trust Michael, she told herself. She needed to trust that they could navigate whatever came next.
“Let’s do it,” she said.
“Speak up the moment you see anything familiar.”
The snowmobile engine sputtered as Michael maneuvered them down the snowbank. Fresh tire tracks marked the road in both directions and, as they rounded a corner, a fancy red Jeep bumped past in the opposite direction, setting her heart racing.
Calm down. Focus.
As the first mailbox came into view, her heart took off again. She knew this place. It wasn’t her home but—
“Anything?”
“It’s familiar. We’re definitely going the right direction.” She was panting she realized as she tried to slow her breaths. “What’s the plan if we see the truck that stopped in front of your ranch?” The truck almost certainly belonged to the two men who’d attacked her. “If I’m familiar with the area, someone is likely looking for me here.”
“We’ll go off-road as soon as there’s an opening. This area used to belong to another rancher before he sold, so I can navigate the mountain.”
That eased the building fear a little.
Michael slowed further as they passed another driveway, but she could barely make out the shape of the house through the snow. She peered down the next driveway and caught a glimpse of the front corner of a white truck.
She gasped into the intercom.
“I saw it, too,” said Michael. “Should we turn back?”
“Maybe it’s a coincidence,” she said, swallowing her fear. “Let’s see if it follows us.”
They continued forward and, after they passed the next mailbox, Ellie forced herself to focus on the road in front of her. That’s when she saw it. A silver SUV smashed against the snowbank of someone’s driveway, covered in snow.
My car.
“That’s it!” she cried through the microphone.
Michael pulled up next to the Cadillac and slowed to a stop as her memories came crashing in...
The business meeting of the three owners of Green Living Construction: Aidan, his father, Clint, and Ellie. Her refusal to approve the next stage of the company’s new Pine Ridge development until she read over the entire environmental report herself. As an accountant, she’d been coming at it from a financial perspective, but the moment she had refused to sign, she’d known she was on the trail of something. Then there was the glare of open bitterness from Clint when he’d said, You have no right to Sean’s part of this business. You haven’t heard the last of this. The warning Aidan had given her after he’d followed her out to the parking lot and stared her down with cold eyes, crowding her against her car door. Leave the business decisions to me and live your life as you did before, or your life will never be the same. We’ll never leave you alone. We’ll ruin your life, just like you want to ruin ours.
Someone had appeared on her tail as she’d driven back to the cabin. She had a cabin? A vision of the place came back, an enormous wooden house along a row of near-identical houses. It was so much bigger than the one she’d grown up in, and it wasn’t even their primary residence. But someone had followed her, inching closer and closer. She had taken a different route, so how had they found her? And then... Nothing. The memories ended there.
Ellie climbed off the snowmobile. The desire to keep this connection to her memories, this lifeline to herself, was strong enough to make her knees wobble. Am I having a mental breakdown? Is any of this real? There was one way to find out. She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out the key fob. This would tell her whether her recollections were real. She pressed it, and the car beeped as the doors unlocked.
“That’s my car,” she whispered as glimmers of the past reeled through her mind. “I know what happened—”
But before she could finish her sentence, a motor revved behind her and she caught a flash of metal out of the corner of her eye. When she turned around, the white truck they’d seen earlier was roaring straight for them.
Michael did a double-take as the white truck skidded straight for them. They were at the center of something, and Michael had no idea what it was. All he knew was that he had to get Ellie out of there.
“Get on!” he shouted, grabbing the sleeve of her jacket.
She froze and, for one long moment, he wasn’t sure if she’d come. Help her. But she came to life and leaped onto the back of the snowmobile, her arms tightening around him.
He gunned the motor just as the truck swiped the corner of the buried silver Cadillac, right where Ellie had been standing seconds ago. He glanced over his shoulder and caught a glimpse of the truck fishtailing. Michael took off down the narrow road, the snowbanks rising up on both sides. The snowmobile was old, better suited for winter inspections of their ranch property, not for outrunning trucks on the street. But he was grateful for what they had as he took the curve hard. Now he just needed to find a way off the road. Ellie leaned into him as the snowmobile sputtered then shot forward.
