Page 46 of Ms. Fortune
I could scream my head off for hours, and the only person who might hear me would be a wayward hunter who had wandered too far out of their designated area.
I was on my own. I told myself taking on a man who wore dress shoes to the mountains wouldn’t be that difficult, but so far, I hadn’t found a breakthrough point. He was holding on too tight and flailing that knife around wildly. It was sharp enough that I might injure myself unintentionally if I fought too hard.
“You’re going in the river. You’reaccidentallygoing to fall in. The temperature of the water will make you hypothermic in a matter of minutes—that is, if you don’t drown first. Banner told me you aren’t a strong swimmer. With your history of having two left feet, people will just assume you tripped and fell in.”
I would’ve snorted at him in amusement if I hadn’t been on the verge of suffocation. My vision was getting blurry, and I felt lightheaded. The tip of the knife stabbed into my thigh, almost taking me to my knees. Banner’s lunatic husband nearly choked me out, but he was out of his ever-loving mind if he thought he could haul us both down the mountain without serious injury. The snow was up past my knees on the top of the trail. It was double that down in the basin. It was clear this plan was ill-conceived, and this guy had no idea what it was like to live in the mountains.
It didn’t take long for the cold and the slippery slope to throw my captor off-balance. His elegant shoes did little to help him keep his traction as he slid one way, and I tumbled the other. I gasped for breath, clutching my throat and trying to get myslightly injured limbs to cooperate. I heard Grant swearing and scrambling to get to his feet. The knife in his hand flashed in front of my face as he randomly flung his arm in my direction. I rolled away, but the tip of the blade managed to catch my shoulder, and a searing pain immediately shot throughout my body.
I rolled onto my back with a wheeze and blinked rapidly until the sky came into focus. Not a second after I got my breath back, Grant was on top of me, his weight pinning me down as he held the knife with both his hands and aimed it at the center of my chest. It didn’t matter where he struck; this close, any blow was bound to be fatal.
I kicked my feet into the ground, throwing up snow and mud. I lifted my hands to try to fend him off, but I only had full mobility in one arm. It finally occurred to me that I should be scared. Terrified. This situation was far beyond my control, and this man really wanted me out of his way. Logic wouldn’t work on him, and I no longer had the upper hand of using my knowledge of the mountains against him.
“If you stab me, no one will believe it was an accident,” I grunted and pushed against him as the knife came closer. “If you kill me, you’re going to be next.”
I had no doubt Risky would wipe Grant’s existence off the face of the Earth if I died at his hands. I felt a twinge of regret for Banner. It would really suck for her if she lost her best friend and her husband, all because of unchecked greed and entitlement.
Grant had a crazed look in his eye. He was no longer the well-groomed lawyer who tried to negotiate and intimidate. He was desperate. And the only way he could achieve his goals was to put that knife through my heart.
I was panting, losing the strength to fight and struggle. The blade got closer to my chest, and my breathing stilled. In the back of my mind, I heard Risky telling me not to let anyone takeaway what belonged to me, my life being at the top of the list. I felt like he would be disappointed in me if I gave up, so I never stopped trying to shake Grant off of me, even as the tip of the blade tore through my flannel shirt.
Just as my life flashed before my eyes and hope started to fade, a loudpopechoedthrough the valley. I recognized the sound from the day someone had shot at me down by the river.
A perfect hole appeared right between Grant’s eyebrows, and his body stiffened and slowly tilted to the side. I kicked my way free from his falling body, a startled shriek escaping before I could control it. The snow around the scuffle began to turn red from my various wounds and his fatal gunshot.
I turned my head and froze at the sight of a beautiful, dark-haired woman standing a few feet away with a handgun pointed in my direction. She wore dark sunglasses and was dressed all in black. The leather gloves on her hands reminded me of the ones worn by Karsen, whom I assumed was her mother, when she had cornered me at the bar. Even though my mind was a convoluted mess of fear and relief, I had enough sense to put together that this woman had to be the person who didn’t want to let Risky retire. I had no trouble seeing her as someone who could orchestrate a murder for hire and feel no remorse over it.
“Tell Risk the slate between the two of us is clean. He’ll understand the fact that I saved your life just now outweighs me trying to take it.”
I fought to get to my feet. I could feel the wound on my shoulder leaking blood at a scary rate. I was still fuzzy-headed and confused, but I managed to ask, “Whydidyou save me?”
It made no sense since she’d spent so much effort to take me out recently.
She shrugged and moved to put the gun out of sight. “You’ve been fighting so hard to live. If you’d given up, I might’ve been able to shoot you. But you never did. You have that in commonwith Risk. He never gives up on what he wants.” She turned to walk away but called over her shoulder, “Tell him his resignation is accepted.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I simply watched her walk away, feeling lucky for the first time in my entire life. It was a miraculous occasion. One that might call for a celebration anytime this day rolled around on the calendar.
I had a hunch I’d narrowly escaped death, not once, but twice.
I landed back in the emergency room, and the mountainside property was once again crawling with law enforcement officials. I was relieved I didn’t have to deal with the sheriff again, but I was less than thrilled there was another dead body that needed to be addressed. I began to wonder if it was the land that carried the curse of being unlucky and not me. The soil and snow seemed to have been soaked in blood ever since I had come home. Or rather, since I’d brought Risky home with me.
I tried to explain how Banner’s husband had ended up with a bullet hole between his eyes, but I knew I sounded crazy when I claimed a strange woman had appeared at the critical moment and saved my life, then promptly disappeared. I could’ve handed them Karsen Booker’s name and mentioned my savior was related to her, but my gut told me it was best to keep that family out of it and consider myself fortunate to be alive.
Charley Booker had decided to let me and Risky move on. It took a minute and some heavy-duty painkillers for me to meander to the realization that she finally knew that even if I was out of the picture, Risky was never going back to being Risk. She could’ve just let Banner’s husband do the dirty work for her and hoped Risky would return to his roots—and her. Something about watching me fight to stay alive and for what was minemust’ve convinced her the man who loved someone like me was not the same man her family had created.
I evaded the probing questions and disbelieving looks until Risky appeared and ran interference for me. I could tell he was skilled at getting people to believe and see what he wanted them to. The inquiries surrounding the mysterious stranger died down almost instantly once he started answering for me.
I was happy to see him, not only because he could act as a smoke screen. I was in pain and honestly struggling pretty hard with coming to terms with how close I’d come to meeting my maker. I didn’t want to be alone. Since we probably loved each other, I was going to lean on him when it felt too hard to stand steady on my own. I’d never had that sort of support in my life before him. It was a relief to share the weight of the world and my wounds, both old and new, with someone else for a change.
The injury on my shoulder was nasty. That hunting knife had torn through skin and muscle, down to the bone, just like it had been designed to do. I had lost a fair amount of blood and knew I wasn’t going to have full movement of my arm on that side for weeks to come. Some of the other stab wounds needed to be stitched up, and my neck was bruised to high hell from being hauled around by the throat. However, nothing was serious enough to keep me in the hospital for longer than a day.
When Risky took me home, he was back to being quiet and broody. It was hard to differentiate if he was relieved Charley had left me alive, or furious she had been on his turf after he explicitly told her there would be a war if she didn’t back off. I wanted him to let sleeping dogs lie. Even though Karsen Booker had said she wouldn’t get in the middle of any conflict her protégé might have with her daughter unless she had no other choice, the scary man with the scar on his face hadn’t made the same promise. He didn’t strike me as the type of fatherwho would let his child be on the losing side of any argument. Especially one with lives on the line.
Starting over meant letting go of the past and focusing on the future for both of us.
It took a few days, but eventually, the playful, relaxed Risky resurfaced. I was happy to have him back.
It was more traumatizing to watch the remnants of the lodge get bulldozed and hauled off the side of the mountain than I’d thought it would be. Part of me felt like a failure, seeing all my grandfather’s hard work disappear. Another part of me was weak with relief, feeling like every mistake and misstep I’d made was erased. I’d never planned to be in a position to create something from scratch, something that would force me to find my vision, but I wasn’t about to let the opportunity pass me by. Even if I was back to being the talk of the town and the odd man out in Blue River.
