Baby, It's Cold Outside

Chapter 2-1

Chapter 2

“They’re going to ask Michael to come back,” Ivy dictated into her phone app. “He’s pissed about it because he quit the team for a reason. But they’re going to ask, and he’s trying to dodge the call.”

Feeling an unexpected kinship with her recalcitrant hero, Ivy paused, fully aware of how much of herself she was putting into the story. After all, here she was driving four hours into the mountains, straight into an actual snowstorm, to avoid more calls from her own powers that be.

“So what extremes is he willing to go to in order to avoid these people? Somewhere remote. Rock climbing in the high desert. He’s totally the type who’d be into that craziness. Maybe even climbing without safety gear because he’s got that death-wish, guilt thing going on. And he gets to the top all in one piece, after some harrowing moment where he nearly fell to his death, and right as he’s enjoying the peace, a helicopter shows up and...he realizes this is the opening scene to one of the Mission Impossible movies. Damn it.”

Disgusted with herself, Ivy dug into the sack of road snacks she’d picked up at a gas station in the last town.

“Okay no high desert. Maybe he’s going on some backwoods fishing expedition. In Alaska. Less people in Alaska, harder to get to. So he’s on his way to…wherever he’s going, and he stops for gas at some little hole-in-the wall place with two pumps and moose antlers over the door. He grabs some chips and some Twinkies. Because, why the hell not?”

She unwrapped one herself from the stash on the seat. “As he goes back out to the truck, he gets cornered by Annika. Because he’s been under surveillance. Of course he has. And of course it’s her. He could never run fast enough or far enough to get away from her. She was always in his thoughts. Sloan knew that, the bastard. So of course he’d send her to talk him into coming back to work.”

Considering Annika’s arguments, Ivy snarfed down one of the Twinkies. “So how does she convince him? What can she possibly say to make him change his mind? Is that a Twinkie, or are you just happy to see me?”

Ivy groaned and turned off the dictation. Comedic was not the tone for the series. But no amount of trying had helped her stay in the zone of serious. Also, she’d ruined Twinkies for herself. She couldn’t sustain it because she just…didn’t care if Michael agreed to come back to work. The man was tired. He deserved a damned break. Leave him alone with his fishing tackle and over-processed baked goods.

She took a huge bite out of a second snack cake.

Of course, Michael Keenan had a choice. Blake Iverson, aka Ivy Blake, was too busy eating Twinkies paid for with advance money for this book she hadn’t written yet. And she was self-inserting into her plot way the hell too much. Probably inserting too much Hostess into herself, too.

She tossed the other half of the Twinkie back into the convenience store bag on the seat and put both hands on the wheel. Man, the snow was really starting to come down now.

As a girl raised in the Deep South, she wasn’t used to this. The big, fat flakes made her feel like she was inside her Mawmaw Opal’s prize snow globe. As a kid, Ivy used to shake it and stare for hours, praying for snow. Enough they’d get out of school and be able to build a snowman. Being within spitting distance of the Gulf Coast most of her life, it had never actually worked. But this—this was the real deal, and it was beautiful. Something she’d appreciate if she’d already made it to the inn and was standing inside it, beside a roaring fire with a mug of hot cocoa in hand. With marshmallows, because what was hot cocoa without marshmallows? But she was miles from the last town, and she was pretty sure she must have missed her turn while trying to navigate her missing plot.

Why hadn’t she packed her GPS? Oh, right. Because she’d barely made it out with more than a suitcase of random clothes and her toothbrush before running with no plan other than getting the heck out of Dodge before Marianne flew in from Manhattan to personally check on her and the Book That Wasn’t. Maybe she could pull the map up on her phone and figure out where the nearest sign of civilization was. She’d program in her destination and let her phone be navigator like a sane person.

“Siri, what is the nearest town?”

But the little iridescent blob on the screen never resolved into an answer. Not enough signal. Which meant there probably wasn’t enough signal for Google Maps either.

Stealing a couple of quick glances from the road, she opened her music. The silence was getting to her. Stabbing the screen at random, she managed to kick off her Eighties Power Mix. Lifting her voice, Ivy joined Pat Benatar, wailing about love as a battlefield as she slowed for a switchback. By the time she’d rolled through some REO Speedwagon and on into Journey—was there any better band for road tripping?—she’d climbed to a higher elevation and the snow was coming down hard enough she actually heard it hit the windshield. Did that mean there was ice mixed in?

The more nervous she got, the louder she sang, until the windows all but rattled with her battle cry that she wouldn’t stop believing. It was the best part of the song, and she lifted a hand off the wheel for a fist pump—just for a second.

The dark shape lumbered into the road.

Her high note turned into a scream as she hit the brakes. The Blazer fishtailed, the back end spinning to the front. Ivy wrestled the wheel, struggling to turn into the skid. She had a split second looking into the eyes of the bear before the SUV slammed into the guardrail, as if it were a stand of toothpicks, and went over the side.