Cora was nursing a cup of coffee in the kitchen, when the Jeep pulled up outside the cabin. When she opened the cabin’s door, the cold stole her breath away in a plume of vapor. She watched silently as Lars and Finn dragged a stiff deer though the snow, to the back of the cabin.

Finn came back a few minutes later, but not Lars.

“We’re leaving in ten,” he said, pausing just long enough to rake his gaze over her before disappearing inside.

Well, it wasn’t as if she had anything to pack. All she had in her possession were the clothes she was standing up in. She took her coffee with her as she picked her way to the back of the cabin.

The world had transformed into a monochromatic canvas overnight. Everything was white or a shade of grey; the snow, the firs, the gloomy sky.

There was a small lean-to built against the side of the house, beside the generator. She’d seen its roof from the upstairs window when she’d overheard Lars and Finn talking last night. From it, came a steady thump-thump-thump, like someone practicing their tennis stroke. A garish orange light glowed from behind the ajar door. Cora’s shoes crunched through the snow as she crept closer and peeked inside.

Lars stood over a wooden table. There was a bucket beside him, into which sluggish blood streamed from the lip of the table.

Air stirred inside the small room and brought with it metallic blood and the bittersweet stench of intestinal juices.

Cora forced a hard swallow, and stepped inside.

Lars paused, shifting slightly to the door but not looking at her. Then his arm lifted, and came down with a thump on the deer’s body.

It looked alien; stripped of its hide, pink marbled muscles standing proud. Lars severed a leg and tossed it to the side of the wide table.

“You need something?” he asked.

There was that strange lilt to his voice again.

“Where are you from?”

“Colorado,” he said without a pause.

“I mean…you speak with an accent.”

“So do you.” He turned, this time glancing at her before returning to his work. “What of it?”

She gave her head a shake. Did the military train each soldier to avoid personal questions at pain of death or something?

“Will it take long to get to Texas?”

“We’ll be there tonight.”

Her stomach tightened at the thought. Or maybe it was the way Lars was hacking through the deer’s spine that was making her queasy.

“Guess I’ll wait in the car.”

“No hard feelings, right?”

Cora hesitated, giving Lars a frown when he looked her way. “Excuse me?”

He began tossing salt over the deer’s severed limbs, enough to turn the flesh white with crystals. It almost looked like snow. “Most women consent to me tying them up.”

“Most?” she snapped, before she could stop herself.

Lars’s lips stretched into a wide grin. “I never said they complained.”

Heat worked its way onto her cheeks. She looked away, and shrugged. “I’m sorry, okay?”

“Say it like you mean it, bunny.” Lars straightened, wiping his hands down with a rag. They were so stained with blood, it was difficult to see if the rag helped.

“I’m ever so sorry, Lars.” It felt strange saying his name. Was she pronouncing it correctly?

The man’s quirk of a smile told her she wasn’t. Her cheeks grew even hotter, and she whipped her head to the door, chewing the inside of her lip. “I thought you were—”

“I know.” Lars came up to her, moving so fluidly she bumped against the door frame trying to get out of his way. “You’re going to have to work on your interrogation skills, bunny.”

“Stop calling me that!”

Lars’s pale eyebrows twitched up. They were close now, less than an inch between them. Lars didn’t seem ready to move away, and she was pinned by the door frame unless she slunk past him like a kicked dog. Instead, she straightened her shoulders and gave him her best glare.

“My name’s Cora.”

“I like ‘bunny’ better.” He gave her another one of those smarmy smiles, like he knew something she didn’t, and then shrugged.

“That’s not my name,” she muttered.

Lars grabbed his chin in a hand, studying her like a puzzle piece that had ended up in the wrong box. “Yet neither is Cora. It’s Eleodora, right?”

There was blood under his nails. It etched bright red half-moons across his fingertips. For a moment, the hut became insubstantial. She was back in the passenger seat of a car going too fast down a dirt road, her breasts bouncing painfully every time the car went over a bump. Except…there hadn’t been pain back then. She’d been floating on a cloud of apathy, its mists drenching her with some kind of anesthetic.

Noah beside her. Lifting her hand to kiss her knuckles. Red staining his cuticles. Blood. Whose blood?

Sangre por sangre.

It had been staring her in the face the whole time. His intentions with her. And she’d been the fucking fool who’d looked straight at it without seeing. Had he known? Had Noah known that she wouldn’t be able to put two and two together and get even close to four? Had he known it would be that easy to snatch her, drug her, and almost rape her?

Anger blossomed inside her, lava-thick.

She was so sick of being dealt with as easily as a little girl play-acting to be a woman. Lars hadn’t even bothered to pretend she’d scared him yesterday when she’d been pointing the Taurus at him.

Because she’d never actually been the one with the upper hand, had she?

“Show me,” she said, voice half-strangled with the effort of holding back a scream of frustration.

“I’m listening.” Lars jutted out his chin, eying her with a steady green gaze.

“How to interrogate someone. How to make sure they’re tied up properly. How to, how to do that thing you did.”

“What, a hogtie? Now?” He let out a half-hearted laugh. “Why? In a few hours, you’ll be someone else’s problem.”

With that, he shouldered past her and a flurry of snow swallowed him. Had it started up again while she was inside this death hut? She took a last look inside. Lars had strung up the deer meat on hooks dangling from the ceiling, and hung a net curtain around it. She wrinkled her nose. Was he planning on eating that meat after it had been hung out to dry in the middle of this dark shed?

Something caught her eye. She bent down and picked up the small, pale cube and squinted through the gloom to identify it.

A deer tooth.

Knocked out while Lars had been skinning it? She rubbed her thumb over the enamel. Strangely, there was no blood on it. It was the color of aged ivory, smooth, and warmed in response to her touch. La Flaca would love it, if she ever had the chance to set up another altar for the saint. She grabbed absently at the pendant around her neck.

What had happened to her bag, the one she’d left behind at the Rocky Mountain Inn? The one with all of Santa Muerte’s things in it? Her clothes. Her underwear.

She squeezed the deer tooth in her palm so hard that it bit into her flesh. The pain was good, but it did nothing to eradicate the tiny pinpricks of fear scattering over her skin. How was she supposed to protect herself, when no one wanted to take the time out to show her how? What Bailey had taught her hadn’t been enough. But could anything ever be enough?

She could run.

She could run so far that the cartels would forget she ever existed. But then what about Papá? He’d never be free of them.

Sangre por sangre.

“Close the door, would you?” Lars called out, snapping her from her reverie.

She yanked the door closed, dislodging a small heap of snow from one of the eaves.

In a few hours, you’ll be someone else’s problem.

No…in a few hours she’d be even deeper in the cartel stewpot. And if she tried to run again, what was to say another Noah wouldn’t spot her—a falcon snatching up a chick that had ventured too far from its mother’s wing?

Cora trudged back through the snow, arms wrapped tightly around her. Earlier, she’d put on one of Lars’s parkas, a pair of gloves, and a scarf…but the cold ebbing inside her couldn’t be warded off with layers of wool.

She could run. She could fight. But she’d never be free, would she?