Page 2 of Snow River

She used the flashlight on her phone to light her way.Somewhere, there was a headlamp that Bear had given her, but she was pretty sure she’d left it on the vintage whisky cask that served as a catchall.

The bedroom door creaked as she swung it open.She held her breath, listening for more sounds.Raccoon paws scrabbling against the floor, a human footfall, that sort of thing.All she heard was the soft whine of a rising wind finding cracks in the old siding of this creaky old building.

The wind.The noise must have come from wind knocking something over.She relaxed and took an easier breath.Her place had plenty of mining-days relics that a gust of wind could have blown to the floor.There was that snowshoe made from willows mounted on the wall.A hurricane lamp missing its wick.Many tin utensils.As long as it wasn’t her fishbowl, home to Goldilocks, there wasn’t much she was worried about.

With her light, she found the fishbowl—intact, on its perch on a vintage painted hutch from the nineteen-forties.A flash of orange told her Goldilocks was just fine.So what had made that loud crashing sound?

She made her way toward the light switch.Out here in the wilderness, there was no electrical grid.Everyone had either solar panels or a generator, or both.People tended to be quite conscious of how much power they used, and she usually preferred to use a lantern or a candle at night.

But investigating a strange sound in a dark house by candlelight seemed a little too “horror movie” for her taste.So electricity it would be.

She found the switch and turned on the light, and immediately stumbled backwards, luckily hitting a wall instead of empty air.

A dress form lay flat on the floor, face down, like a person who had been pushed from behind.That form had belonged to Allison Casey, who had lived here in the nineteen-eighties and loved to sew.

In fact, she’d made the dress that was currently displayed on the dress form—a faded blue housedress with flowers around the hem.

Lila knew all about that dress.So did everyone in Firelight Ridge.When Allison’s grieving husband had signed the house over to the township, he’d stipulated that the dress form stay exactly as it was.After all, his wife had been wearing that dress the day she died.The day she wasmurdered.It had bullet holes in the back, and a splotch of faded bloodstains.

Allison Casey had lain face down in the snow by the airstrip while her life drained away.She’d gone to meet the plane that brought the mail to Fangtooth Gulch.But a man who’d spent the last six months camped in the wilderness, plotting mayhem, had sent her life’s journey off the edge of a cliff.

Lila stared at the dress form, blood pounding in her ears.

Had Allison Casey appeared in her dream?Had a ghost somehow knocked over the form to get her attention?

When people asked Lila if she believed in ghosts, she never knew how to answer.Ghosts, to her, were residual energy.She sensed it all the time.But a ghost that could knock over a dress form?That was a level of supernatural that went beyond her experience of ghosts.

The wind had knocked it over.It must have.She was overreacting.Freaking out.

Gathering her courage, she walked over to the form and crouched next to it.Somehow it felt wrong to leave it where it was, although if she righted it, another gust might knock it over again.

At the very least, she could turn the form over so it wasn’t lying face down in a sad echo of Allison Casey’s last moments.

She took hold of the form—it was made of leather instead of plastic—and wrestled it over onto its back.There, that was better.More respectful.

Okay, now she was being ridiculous.More respectful of a dress form?What did that even mean?Laughing at herself, she released the form—except she couldn’t.Her hands would not drop away from the old cotton fabric of that dress.It felt as if they were welded there.

Emotion rushed through her.Hot, urgent emotion.Something is coming.Danger.Do something.

2

When fleeing Firelight Ridge,there were only two options.Well, three, if you counted rafting down Snow River.You could either fly in one of the single-prop planes that made regular trips from Blackbear to Firelight Ridge.Or you could drive.

If you wanted to drive, you could only do it until the first major snowfall hit.After that, the road was impassable.No one was going to plow a sixty-mile road to a town that shrank to barely two hundred residents in the winter, especially when it would have to be plowed over and over again, as more blizzards swept through.

But the first big snow hadn’t yet fallen, so a week after that dream about Allison Casey, Lila bought one of Gunnar’s old beaters with the money she’d saved from The Fang.She agonized over telling her friends, but in the end, decided to call them once she’d achieved escape velocity.It would be too hard to go through with this otherwise, and besides, they were all happily snuggled with their new loves.So she packed up her fishbowl and her two suitcases and left town just before daybreak.

She only made one quick stop at The Fang to leave a note for Bear.Bear had been unendingly kind to her, and her heart ached at the thought of abandoning her bartending job there.But with the summer season ending, he didn’t really need her anyway.She suspected he would have laid her off already if he didn’t know she needed the income.Of course she’d cleaned both The Fang and the hardware store thoroughly before she left.She always did that.It helped with the emotional transition.

The gravel road to civilization was lined with tall spruce and cottonwood trees, many of which had lost most of their leaves.Only a few flashes of golden-yellow leaves peeked through the dense prickly evergreen forest.She’d been so looking forward to watching the spruce branches load up with snow.She’d even picked up a pair of cross-country skis from Eve Dotterkind, who’d been clearing out her barn.

Was she doing the right thing?She didn’t want to leave.Ever since she’d first arrived in Firelight Ridge in April, she’d longed to see what it was like in the heart of winter.She’d been determined to stick around after all the summer visitors left.

But she couldn’t ignore the feeling that had swamped her when she’d put her hands on that old dress.Danger.The urge to flee had overpowered her.Trust your intuition.She’d learned that lesson early on and never ignored it.

She glanced down at Goldilocks, who was strapped into the passenger seat with a special lid on her tank to keep the water from sloshing.

“Are you ready for another move?You must be getting tired of relocating at your big age.How old are you, anyway?In human years, I mean?Are you more of a teenager or in your golden years?Maybe I should have left you behind like I did in New York.But I swore I wouldn’t do that again, so you’re stuck with yet another move.Sorry.”

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