Maddie had seen evil up close; she’d witnessed terror and rage, and she knew better than most people the effect that pure hate can have on the human body.
First, in Maddie’s experience, it was terrible for your skin. (If there was one thing a zit loved, it was stress.)
Second, it could do awful things to your eyes. They got glossy, but not with tears, with wild and untamed fury.
Finally, that much adrenaline might make you strong enough to lift a Toyota off a toddler or whatever, but it could also make your hands shake and your heart race.
That’s how Stefan looked. His eyes were too wide, his lips were too dry, and his grip was too hard on the gun.
Maddie didn’t scream. Or plead. Or cry. She just rolled her eyes and said, “But I’m a teenage girl. We’re addicted to our phones, or haven’t you heard?”
She could feel the boulder at her back, and as Stefan stepped closer, she knew there was nowhere to go. So she tensed.
“You think you are so smart.” Stefan’s accent was thicker. The words were cold.
“Well, not to brag, but I am number one in my class. Does it matter if you’re the only one in your class?” she asked. “I don’t know about—”
“Shut up!” he yelled, limping closer.
Maddie glanced down at the leg that wasn’t moving quite right. The bear trap must have gotten him good, she realized. She tried not to smile. He’d wrapped rags around his hands, probably covering up some pretty nasty burns. Maddie thought about the pack that still rested on a ledge one-third of the way down the cliff and wanted to smile because Stefan no longer had his food or his phone or his map.
He didn’t even have Logan, and Maddie wondered if he’d been able to make a fire the night before. Honestly, for a second she was simply impressed that he was still alive. He didn’t just have a reason to kill, she realized. He had a reason to live. And that fact could prove very useful.
“Your boyfriend should not have left you here.”
“He’s not my boyfriend. I can tell because I don’t have his name drawn inside a heart on a single notebook. I swear. And who says he left me? Maybe I left him? Maybe we found someplace safe and I stashed him there.”
“I doubt that,” Stefan said.
“I’d totally leave him, you know. Boys are annoying.”
“True. But there is no safe place. And I am no fool. I knew you would come for the phone. I have been watching this spot since daybreak. I saw him go over the edge.”
Stefan jerked Maddie against him, sliding the barrel of the gun along the smooth skin of her cheek like she needed a shave. “Now you are going to be very still and very quiet, and when he gets back with my phone I promise I will not kill you.”
“You’re a real sweetie, you know.”
“Quiet,” he snapped, and placed an arm around her from behind. His big bicep pressed against her neck, but Maddie could look back at him.
“So what’s your story?”
Maddie didn’t try to hide the singsong lilt of her voice as she spoke. She didn’t want to. She’d learned at a very young age that nothing annoyed manly men more than girly girls, and if Maddie had one talent, it was truly exceptional girliness.
“Shut up and be quiet,” Stefan snapped.
“That’s just a tad redundant, FYI.”
“Shut up!” he hissed near her ear.
Maddie couldn’t help but shift her weight from foot to foot, almost pacing in place. She was careful of the ice and the snow, though. No use falling to the ground and having Stefan accidently pull the trigger.
“You really do give a lot of orders,” she told him.
He tightened his grip. “I’m the one with the gun.”
“Well, yeah. Sure. Technically. But I’m the one with the winning personality, and that should count for something.”
“You should be scared,” he said in the same tone a movie villain might use to say You should be dead when the hero materializes five years later, hungry for vengeance.
Stefan was confused, and Maddie couldn’t blame him.
So she turned back and shrugged. “Maybe. But I don’t think you’re a bad guy.”
He let her go and spun her around, grabbing Logan’s unzipped coat and pulling her closer.
“I. Have. The. Gun,” he reminded her.
Maddie smiled and pulled away. “And I have Taylor Swift’s signature scent. Doesn’t make me a pop star. It just makes me smell like Taylor Swift, which isn’t as great as it sounds because, to a bear, Taylor Swift smells delicious.”
Stefan stuttered for a moment, then fell silent. Maddie talked on.
“What makes you think he’s gonna care?” she asked. “He’s a smart kid. He’ll probably see you here, realize you still have the gun, and run for the hills.”
Maddie kept her gaze trained on the place where Logan was supposed to be. She only turned when she heard the laughter.
“What’s so funny?”
“You are.” Stefan actually smiled. It looked so foreign on his gruff face with its two days’ growth of beard, his dirty clothes. He looked … handsome. And Maddie was almost entirely certain that she hated him just a little more for it.
“I’m not funny,” she snapped. He’d knocked her down a cliff and held a knife to her throat and a gun to her back, but this was what Maddie found most offensive.
“Yes. You are. If you think he’s not going to move heaven and earth to get you back, you are as crazy as you are stupid. He’ll do whatever I say when he sees I have his woman.”
For a moment, she couldn’t reply. She was breathing too hard, like she’d just had to swim across the lake or climb a cliff or haul a whole elk carcass home by herself.
“If I mean so much to him, I would have gotten a letter at some point in the past six years, but thanks for the optimism. It’s been a rough couple of hair days. I appreciate the vote of confidence.”
She expected him to grunt something in Russian or threaten her with the gun again. But he just shook his head.
“You do not understand men.”
At which point Maddie decided to go ahead and get angry. She jerked away and snapped, “Well, that’s just silly, because clearly I’ve been around so many of them!”
She threw her arms out wide and spun, taking in the vast expanse of snow-covered trees and the ice-covered cliffs.
Down below, the river was running faster. The deepest portion hadn’t frozen and she could actually hear the roar of one of the waterfalls that cascaded down the face of one of the mountains, a never-ending flow of ice-cold glacier water.
But there were no puffs of smoke, no lights from high school football stadiums or movie theaters or any of the hundreds of things that Maddie imagined must dominate the life of a teenage girl.
There certainly were no teenage boys.
“What?” she snapped when she faced him again. “Why are you smiling?” She wanted to slap that smile off his face for reasons that had nothing to do with kidnapping.
“You remind me of someone,” he admitted.
This felt like progress to Maddie, proof that there might actually be a pulse beating beneath that too-broad, too-hard chest.
“Who?” she asked. “Is there a Mrs. Evil Assassin back in Mother Russia?”
“No,” Stefan said, pulling her back toward him, turning her to make her a human shield. It was like she could actually feel him freeze. “I have no wife. But I do have … a sister.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but the gun was pointed at her again, and Stefan was through talking.
But Maddie never quit talking, so she asked, “What’s she like?”
“Alive” was Stefan’s cold reply.
“She’s why you’re doing this, isn’t she?”
Stefan didn’t look scary, so much as he just looked scared. And something inside of Maddie actually hurt for him, in that moment. But she also hurt for herself and for Logan, because right then she knew there would be no stopping him. This wasn’t about money or politics or even terror. This was personal. And personal was the most dangerous thing of all.
“The president always liked me, you know. You might not even need Logan. I’m enough. Just forget about Logan. You don’t need him.”
“They do need him,” Stefan snapped. “Only him.”
Maddie pulled back a little. “They, huh? Not we?”
Stefan was silent for a moment. Eagles circled overhead, their shadows dark on the snowy ground.
But the darkest part was the look on Stefan’s face. “Maybe I will kill you after all.”
He raised the gun.
He shook his head.
And a shadow fell across them both as Maddie said, “Now.”
In the next moment, a haunting cry filled the air, and Stefan looked around like there must be a wounded bear or some other kind of animal, but there was just a shadow streaking across the sky.
Maddie was barely able to throw herself out of the way as Logan jumped from atop the outcropping of rocks, hurling himself toward Stefan and knocking him to the ground.
They hit the snow and started to roll, a tangle of limbs and ice and fury. Stefan was older and had some kind of training. But Logan was so terrified and so desperate that he didn’t seem to feel the cold or the force of the blows. He didn’t even notice how close they’d rolled to the edge of the steep ravine.
He just kept yelling, “Don’t touch her! Don’t you dare—”
“Logan, stop!” Maddie shouted. The snow was flying as they punched and kicked.
Stefan lashed out, trying to reverse their positions.
They were too close to the edge.
Logan was losing momentum.
So Maddie did the most obvious thing in the world: She ran toward the two of them and kicked Stefan’s shin, right where the bear trap must have caught him, because he howled in pain, dropping the gun and bringing both hands to his leg.
And then Logan was on top of Stefan, pressing his head over the edge, like he might just pop it off his neck like the head of a dandelion, let it float away on the wind.
“Logan, stop. Please!” Maddie yelled, but it was like she was far, far away.
Like Logan still had to get her back.
Like he might never get her back.
“Don’t you touch her,” he growled, looking down at Stefan.
“Logan, stop,” Maddie tried again.
But Logan didn’t face her. He kept his knees on Stefan’s arms and his hands around Stefan’s throat. Squeezing.
“He would have killed you.”
“Logan.”
Stefan’s face was turning red and he wasn’t making a sound anymore. And Logan seemed to squeeze harder.
Maddie picked up the gun that lay, forgotten, in the snow.
And she fired.
The shot seemed to echo in the cold air, reverberating off the snow and the ice.
Overhead, birds flew away—eagles leaving their nests.
Logan dropped his hold on Stefan, pushed back, and stared up at Maddie.
“What the—”
“Get up.” Maddie didn’t point the gun at them, but she handled it like someone who would if she had to—like someone who knew how.
“Get up. Both of you,” she said. “Before you make me angry.”
Stefan actually cut his eyes at Logan. “I’m starting to understand why you didn’t reply to those letters.”
But it was a bad call because Logan was lunging for him again. “You don’t get to talk to her. Or look at her. Or—”
Maddie fired again, the sound filling the air and cutting him off.
Logan jumped to his feet, but Stefan sank lower. He sat in the snow, and all Maddie could think was that his rear was going to get wet. Maddie knew how important a dry rear was to a person’s well-being in Alaska, but this probably wasn’t the time to say so.
“You might as well kill me,” Stefan said.
“Okay,” Logan said, reaching for the gun.
Maddie jerked it away. “Logan!”
From his place on the ground, Stefan laughed again. “Are you going to kill me, little girl?”
“No,” Maddie snapped. “I’m going to tie you to a tree and make you smell like Taylor Swift and then wait for the bears to find you. They’ll do it, you know. You’ll be praying for a bullet.”
Stefan actually shrugged. “Okay.”
Logan was lunging toward Stefan again, shouting, “Do not tempt me.”
Maddie could barely hold him back, but she did. Her arms were around him, squeezing him tight. She tipped up her head and tried to look into his eyes. “Logan, let him tell us why.”
“I think we know why,” Logan said, but he wasn’t fighting Maddie anymore. She kept one arm around him, though. Just in case.
“Logan, look at me. There are at least a half dozen perfectly good reasons why someone would want the president’s son.” She brought a hand to the stubble on his cheek. “I want to hear what his reason is.”
When she turned back to Stefan the gun was in her hand, cold from the snow, but solid. She wanted to throw it off the edge of the cliff but knew that would be foolish. Weapons were important in Alaska, even under the best of circumstances. And these were far from ideal.
Stefan had turned his head to look out over the river. The waterfall must have been close, just around the bend, because Maddie could hear it like white noise in her head.
“Well?” Logan prodded.
Stefan turned back to them and looked up, like facing the sun. A shadow crossed his face when he studied Logan. Then he raised his gaze to the sky, to the real sun that was just starting to peak through the heavy clouds.
“Oh, are you running late?” Logan asked. “Please, don’t let me stop you if there’s someplace you need to be.”
“It’s too late now,” Stefan said. “You win. Is that what you want me to say?”
Maddie shook her head and held Logan back again. “I want you to tell us who they are, Stefan. Do they have your sister? Is it supposed to be some kind of trade? Logan for her?”
But the Russian stayed silent.
“Why?” Maddie asked. “The United States doesn’t negotiate with terrorists. Whatever they want Logan for, it won’t work.”
“This has nothing to do with your precious United States.”
For the first time, Stefan’s hands were shaking as he brought them to his face. Maddie had learned six years ago that any kind of animal can be dangerous if it’s hurting or if its young is in danger.
Stefan was both. And even though Maddie had the gun, she was terrified.
“Stefan, she’s okay. Wherever she is, wherever they have her, I’m sure she’s just fine. I’m sure she’s …”
It was the look in Stefan’s eyes that made Maddie trail off, forced her to turn around. She felt Logan turning, too, but he froze just as she lurched toward the man who was bent and bloody and stumbling from the trees.
“Dad?”