Page 73 of Face Her Fear

But there was nothing. Like Josie, Alice had removed all her belongings after Meg died and the blizzard had kept them to the main house. “Sandrine is wearing a dress under her jacket. She started tying it up near her waist so she could move around in the snow more easily but if you can loosen the knot, we can use the bottom of her dress,” Josie said. “See if you can tear some of it off. Then put her glove over it. It won’t be very sanitary but it’s the best we can do.”

Tearing fabric was not as easy as it looked in the movies. After struggling to untangle the knot that Sandrine had tied into her dress, it took both Josie and Alice several attempts before they tore a strip of it long enough to wrap her hand. Sandrine continued to shiver silently under their ministrations. Josie helped Alice to put her coat back on and then her gloves and hat. They leaned her against the wall and she slumped over onto her side, mumbling a thank you and closing her eyes.

Josie went to the window at the front of the cabin, but she didn’t see anyone approaching. Alice walked over to the wood-burning stove and picked up the long-necked lighter on top of it. “We should light the stove. There must be something we can burn. The shower liner.”

“It’s toxic,” Josie said. “And it won’t burn long enough to give off any heat. Besides, I don’t want to telegraph our position.”

Alice laughed. “Our position? For all we know, that crazy bitch watched us walk all the way up here. There are a finite number of places we could have gone. If her and Brian want to get to us, they’ll probably be able to do it.”

Josie turned away from the window. She gestured toward Sandrine. “Then we’ll need some rest. Let’s sit.”

They took their places on each side of Sandrine, huddling close together to share body heat. Now that they were away from the heat of the fire, the cold was relentless. Josie wondered if she should try to find some sticks outside, maybe break some small, low-hanging branches from trees and try to burn them. Alice was right that if Brian and Nicola really wanted to find them, it would take no time at all. Trying to hide was largely an exercise in futility. But Josie was desperately hoping that every hour that passed was an hour closer to being rescued. They should try to stretch the time they were hidden and secure in this cabin for as long as they could.

“Josie,” Alice said. “What happened with Brian? Why were you gone so long?”

Josie stood and quickly checked the window again. No sign of anyone. She resumed her place beside Sandrine and filled Alice in on what she’d figured out and confirmed by talking with Brian. Josie thought that Sandrine had slept through all of it but when she was finished speaking, she felt Sandrine’s body quivering against hers. Josie looked over at her. Tears rolled down her bloodstained cheeks and she mumbled “sorry” over and over again.

Alice slid an arm across Sandrine’s shoulders and pulled her close. “Wait just a minute,” she said to Josie. “You’re telling me that Sandrine’s mother, an actress who pimped Sandrine out as a child in order to get parts, gave birth to three other children and gave them up for adoption and that they found one another as adults and decided they’d use fake names to get onto this retreat, and that Brian claims the reason was so they could get closer to Sandrine?”

“Yeah,” said Josie. “But obviously that wasn’t the real reason they came. They wouldn’t have planted cameras or been pushing Sandrine so hard for information if all they wanted to do was ‘get to know her.’”

“Then why? Why did they really come? Why kill Meg? And what the hell did they do to Taryn?”

“I don’t know,” Josie said. “I suspect that Meg saw something or found something and was killed so she wouldn’t talk. I also think that whatever their plan was originally, after what Sandrine told us about her mother, Taryn didn’t want to go through with it anymore.”

Tremors shook Sandrine’s body. Alice gathered her closer. “So they killed her, too? Hid her body somewhere?”

Josie scooted closer to Sandrine, again trying to share her body warmth although she knew that Sandrine’s shivers were more due to shock than cold. “I don’t know if they did it. Brian made it sound like it was Nicola. Whether he knew about it or was in on it, I can’t say. The only thing I know for sure is that we can’t trust either of them.”

Alice tapped Sandrine’s shoulder. “You knew about this? These siblings?”

Sandrine blinked more tears from her eyes. “No, of course not. I don’t remember my mother ever being pregnant. Yes, she left me alone with virtual strangers for months at a time, but it never occurred to me she was going off to have a baby! I told you, I was only trying to survive. I didn’t have the bandwidth for much else.”

“But what do they want?” Alice said, her voice rising almost to a shout.

Sandrine shuddered and pulled away from Alice. Josie took one of her hands. “It’s okay. Alice is just frustrated. We’re not going to hurt you.”

“I’m sorry,” Alice mumbled.

They fell into silence. There was only the sound of Sandrine weeping quietly as she leaned into Josie’s shoulder. This time, Alice checked the window. “No one,” she said before returning to her seat. Josie’s feet had grown numb with the cold. Inside her boots, she flexed her toes, hoping to bring feeling back. Her mind returned to the imposters. The siblings. In Josie’s experience, most crimes came down to only a handful of motives. Drugs, money, heartbreak, to name a few. There was also revenge.

What had Nicola said to Sandrine before the revelations about Delilah Stowe?

You lived a golden life. I mean, look at you! The picture of success.

Brian had bemoaned the fact that Delilah had kept Sandrine, who she’d had while still a teenager, but given up her other three children. He and Taryn had had horrible upbringings. Josie still didn’t know Nicola’s story but if it was true that she’d been adopted by a family who had another daughter and that daughter had been abducted and killed, her childhood had not been very good either. Josie tried to imagine what it must have been like for them when they finally found Lola Stowe and saw that she was actually the super-successful psychologist, Dr. Sandrine Morrow. Not only had Delilah chosen to keep her while rejecting all of them, but she’d turned out extremely well. By all appearances, she had had a golden life.

They’d had no idea of the truth.

Josie said, “I think they came here for revenge.”

Alice pulled her knees to her chest and hugged her legs. “What?”

“I’m not sure how they hoped to achieve it,” Josie said. “But I think they wanted revenge on Sandrine for being their mother’s chosen one.”

“They were better off without her!” Sandrine cried. “They were! No matter what happened to them, it was better than being raised by her!”

“But they didn’t know that,” Josie said.

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