Chill by Stephanie Rowe Page B

sweatshirt that had been laid next to it. How many times had she worn clothes like that to school? Pulled out of a Dumpster. Washed repeatedly to try to get the stains out.
    The money had all been spent on making her mom look good. On the short skirts. The makeup. The wigs.
    Isabella ground her teeth, yanked the oversize sweatshirt over her head, and headed for the door.
    To Luke.
    She would try one last time to pay him to help her, and if he refused, she was done. She was out of there. She knew it would be futile, knew his hatred for Marcus ran too deep, but there was no harm in trying, right? The fact that he’d taken her to the doctor had touched her, had given her hope that maybe he would change his mind. If he said no, then she would move on. She would figure out something else, because there had to be someone else, somewhere else she could turn.She always found a way, and with Marcus’s life at stake, she would not stop until she succeeded.
    Or until Leon and Nate killed her.
    She banished the thought from her head as quickly as it came, but she couldn’t fight off the pall that sank over her, like a gossamer veil of danger and death.
    She pressed her lips together. She would keep moving. Ditch Luke and his hatred of Marcus. Find another option. But even as she thought about it, her mind came up blank.
    Her lack of ideas was a temporary condition.
    All she needed was to get away from Luke and her mind would clear. But when she shoved open the door and saw what was outside, she realized her plans meant nothing.
    They were surrounded by woods in all directions. The only vehicle in sight was Luke’s plane, sitting silently by the woods.
    She was trapped—entirely at the mercy of a man who believed his father should rot in hell.
    “Luke!” If she’d had any idea how to fly a plane, Isabella would have marched over to the decrepit-looking aircraft and flown herself out of there.
    But she didn’t, which meant she had to find Luke and get what she wanted from him.
    Unfortunately, she had a feeling a man like Luke didn’t do anything he didn’t want to do.
    No matter what.
    “Luke!” She shouted his name again, getting antsy to find him. To take action.
    “Southwest at ninety degrees.” Luke’s deep voice drifted out of the trees. It rolled through her like therumble of a distant thunderstorm: a dark threat laced with the kind of energy that made the world tremble in response, a promise of a bright flash of lightning to thrust electricity right into the depths of her soul.
    A loud crack followed his reply, and she jumped.
    She realized almost immediately it wasn’t a gunshot, but it took her heart a good minute before it agreed with her.
    “Like I know where southwest at ninety degrees is,” she muttered, as she tried to pinpoint the direction of another loud thwack. “Right or left?” she yelled back.
    She heard what she thought was an amused laugh, and she bristled at it. Just because she wasn’t a master scientist with more sense about nature than about the importance of family didn’t mean he had the right to judge her. She had heard enough about him to know he was brilliant, but clearly anyone who could make the choices he’d made couldn’t have all the marbles in his drawer, right?
    “Go right,” he called back.
    “Right,” she muttered as she stalked across the clearing. “Would it have been so difficult to just say that the first time?” She almost laughed at her comment as soon as she heard it. Feeling out of her element always made her cranky, and trampling across an Alaskan clearing with no sense of direction wasn’t exactly her area of expertise.
    She liked being in control of her surroundings and knowing exactly what was going on, and out here…she had nothing.
    Which was why she had to get back.
    A loud whack sounded again, and Isabella adjusted her path slightly to the left. “What are you doing?”
    But as she emerged from the woods, she didn’t need an answer.
    It was