Page 90 of Snowed In with her Mountain Men
“Fine then,” I reasoned. “Let’s wait until the others are back. Maybe the five of us could—”
He shushed me with a rapidly-clenched fist, then cocked his head to look around. He’d heard something I hadn’t. A moment later, I heard it too:
The sound of the front door, slamming closed.
“Camryn!?”
Oakley’s voice was music to my ears. I breathed in, presumably to scream, but I never got it out. A hand clamped over my mouth, followed by the violent screech of duct tape as my captor wrapped it twice around the back of my head. I growled and grunted, and even tried biting him. One of my teeth caught the back of his fingers, but it was too late. It was over in seconds.
“I should’ve hit you harder,” the man growled, clenching his bloodied hand. “I liked you a lot better before you woke up.”
With that, he slipped from the room and pulled the door closed behind him.
Oakley!
I raged and shrieked against the sticky gag of tape covering my mouth; and pulling at my hair. All that would come out were hisses and squeaks. I tried my bonds again, but they were too tight. There was just no way.
So I sat there in misery, scanning the room, cursing the crude taxidermy and terrible paintings that glared back at me. They looked as absurd as always. As mismatched and totally out of proportion as all the others hung throughout the cabin. I fixated on one in particular; dark and tremendous, the giant canvas stretched nearly from floor to ceiling.
I blinked at the stupidity of the painting, then blinked and blinked again.
And suddenly… I knew where the diamonds were.
~ 51 ~
OAKLEY
Two things worried me immediately, upon entering the cabin. The first was that the front door was unlocked. The second, despite being amply stocked with wood, Camryn had let the fire dwindle down to almost nothing.
And sheneverkept the fire anything but roaring.
“Camryn!?”
I poked my head back outside, and scanned around. It was dark now. Not fully, but close enough. She couldn’t have gone out, unless Jaxon and Ryder had come back in the Marauder. Maybe they picked her up, taken her stir-crazy little ass out for ice cream, or something equally innocent.
But there were only one set of tracks from the Marauder, leading out from earlier today. Which meant that Jaxon and Ryder hadn’t been back yet. And so—
“FUCK.”
I cursed myself for seeing them too late; a set of Camryn-sized bootprints, leading around the side of the house. They were fresh prints, too. For some reason, she’d come outside.
“CAMRYN!”
Putting my hands to either side of my face, I shouted into the crisp night air. The snow-covered pines stared back at mecuriously, deadening the sound. I was about to shout again when I heard it:
The creak of the floorboards,insidethe house.
Instinctively, I put my back to the wall. The creak was too loud to be Camryn, the footfalls too heavy. I waited until they grew nearer, slowing down once they approached the open doorway…
Then I rushed in; and tackled the shocked-looking asshole standing in my living room.
“Unngff!”
He was a big motherfucker; tall and thick, with muscles that coiled instantly as I wrapped my arms around him. Catching him by surprise knocked him clear off his feet. He fell backward, sprawling helplessly; but not before slipping one corded arm around my neck, and then squeezing with all his might.
The guillotine choke was deep — dangerously deep. If we hadn’t gone crashing to the floor at the same time, I might’ve actually lost consciousness to it.
“Motherfucker!”
