Page 2 of Married With Malice

My fault for escalating our constant war.

My fault for failing to see what she really wanted.

My fault for not understanding her, for letting her believe I didn’t care.

I do care, Anni. I care so fucking much. Forgive me.

Regret has the most bitter taste. Right now there’s no other option than to swallow the bile and keep moving.

She’s out here somewhere.

Lost. Maybe injured.

I won’t be able to hold onto my sanity if I acknowledge a more terrible outcome.

“I think we’re just parallel to the road.” I point to a vague clearing on the right.

I’m guessing. We’re all guessing. The three Gentry men were right behind me when I confronted the manager, demanding the keys to the resort’s best emergency vehicle.

If the manager hadn’t cooperated then I would have grabbed his skinny neck and pushed a gun to his temple. Good thing he knew better than to argue. He was trembling when he escorted us to the garage and pointed to the largest Utility Terrain Vehicle.

Too much powder had already fallen and the road was tough to follow. With Creed’s brother Cord at the wheel of the cramped UTV, we followed the tire tracks to a bend in the road where the recent tire tracks disappeared. We divided up into teams of two and proceeded on foot.

Desperation is starting to set in. Frozen white garbage keeps falling from the sky. At this rate, any evidence Anni left behind will be covered in no time. This fact summons a fresh wave of dread, unlike anything I’ve ever felt in my life.

“ANNALISA!”

The wind eats up her name no matter how loud I scream it.

There’s a small possibility that we’ve got this all wrong. Maybe Anni made it down the mountain after all and she’s safely waiting in the town of Sleepy Rock. My brother could have found her. At this very moment she might be sitting by the fireplace in the ranch house Cale shares with his very pregnant wife.

I check my phone but the spotty signal hasn’t improved. Before we took off from the resort, I called my brother to let him know what was happening. Cale said he’d go straight to the police chief to see about checking the trail cameras. If Anni drove by, the cameras would have picked up her movement. This is a small hope but it’s there.

Creed uses a pocketknife to cut a notch in the trunk of a nearby pine, just as he’s been doing every ten feet to make sure we can find our way back to the UTV.

My foot bumps into an object and I drop to my knees to claw away the snow. Every other time I’ve done this there’s only been a rock or a fallen tree trunk. This time there’s a tire but it’s an old tire, left behind by some other misadventure.

Creed Gentry’s boots crunch into view. When I look up, the lines of his face have deepened with grim sympathy.

He doesn’t want to say the next words but he says them anyway. “We need to head back.”

I shouldn’t feel furious with him for speaking the truth and yet I do.

Still on my knees in the snow, I make yet another desperate effort to use my phone. Creed’s gloves make my fingers clumsy and I briefly tear them off.

No calls or texts will go through. Not to Anni. Not to Cale. We’re cut off from the world up here and the phone might as well be a teacup for all the fucking good it does.

The glow of the useless phone screen swims before my eyes. Every passing second sucks another ounce of grey daylight away. The wind moans through the treetops and the snow falls faster.

Creed sighs and nudges me to my feet. “Come on. We’ll check in with the radio.”

I can barely hear him. I don’t want to turn around but he’s right.

Making our way back to the UTV is a tougher hike than the one that led us this far. The fact that my feet are growing numb only feels like a big deal when I think about what Anni must be going through. Whenever I shout her name into the wind, Creed shouts it with me.

His brothers, Cord and Chase, have already returned. They wait beside the UTV in their bulky jackets, their faces covered by thick colorful scarves supplied by Creed’s wife.

Trudging those last few yards in snow that’s up to my knees, the faint glimmer of hope that drove me back here is crushed by the dejected posture of the Gentry men. I see how their eyes go straight to their brother. Creed’s stiff head shake is the answer to an unspoken question.

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