Page 276 of Heart of Frost and Scars

“And those of the present were obsessed with the past.” Monty finishes.

“I guess Rurik knew I would become obsessed with the past.”

“Whose handwriting is on the notes you sent?”

“I approached a homeless kid in San Francisco and paid him twenty bucks to write the words I gave him.”

Jesus Christ. To what lengths will this whack job go?

“Did Denver know you were tracking him?” I ask.

“Yeah.” Rhett inhales. “I don’t know how, but he sensed me following him and showed up at my apartment in Anchorage one night. This was around the time I met Frankie.”

“Why didn’t he kill you?” Monty narrows his eyes.

“Same reason I didn’t kill him. Mutual respect. I asked him to mentor me, and in exchange, he asked me to track down Gretchen Stolz. It was a test. One I passed.”

Wolf doesn’t respond to the mention of his mother. Not even the tiniest puff of air passes his lips.

Without moving a single muscle above my ankle, I slowly prod my foot into the slipper Monty passed to me. Size twelve. Same as me. Long enough to conceal a nine-inch fillet knife.

I don’t know how Monty snatched it from the doorframe without Rhett spotting the movement through our cameras. Monty angled his body just right, slipped it beneath his clothes, and kept it hidden until we destroyed our phones.

Walking in here with it tucked inside his slipper was a risk.

But it paid off.

Curling my toes around the knife’s handle, I carefully ease it out of the shoe and lower it to the floor beside Wolf’s foot.

He feels it there, his toes twitching against mine.

My chest constricts, the tension unbearable, as I step down on the blade.

I hold the knife in place, my eyes on Rhett, as Wolf maneuvers the handle between his toes and grips it.

Transferring it from his foot to his hand will be the impossible part.

But he has it. The knife. The element of surprise.

Whatever his plan is, he’s armed.

64

Monty

—

My hands fist so tightly on my naked lap that my knuckles crack.

The cabin reeks with the stench of decay despite Rhett’s assurances that the bodies don’t stink. They do. It’s not a smell that lingers in the air but one that seeps into the soul. The kind of stink that rots the living from the inside out.

Frankie lies on the table before me, her eyes wide and body rigid with that damn drug pumping through her veins. She’s supposed to be paralyzed, supposed to be helpless.

Yet I saw it. Just a twitch, but it was there. Her lips moved. She said something, but I didn’t understand it.

In my periphery, Wolf sits between Kody and Leo. His head lolls on his shoulders, his hair dangling in his face. He looks dead.

But he’s not.

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