Those Who Wish Me Dead Read Free Page A

they wouldn’t need a map, because it was just going to be a quick hike, right?”
    Those were the kinds of decisions that usually drew Ethan into the mountains in the middle of the night. Particularly the late-season storms, when the weather had been temperate enough for long enough to lull people into a false sense of security.
    “May every fool stay indoors,” Allison said, and kissed his arm, shifting for a more comfortable position, her voice already sleepy.
    “Optimistic wish,” he said, pulling her close to his chest, relishing her warmth. The cabin had cooled quickly once they let the fire in the woodstove burn down. Beside them, the window rattled with a steady drilling of sleet. On the shelf above the bed, next to the weather-alert radio, the CB was silent. It had been a good winter—only one call-out. Winters were usually better than other seasons, though; most tourists stayed away from Montana in those months. Ethan didn’t like the feel of this storm. Last day of May, summer looming, a week of sunshine and fifty-degree weather just past? Yes, some of the fools Allison mentioned might have taken to the mountains. And once they got stuck, that radio above Ethan Serbin’s head would crackle to life, and his search-and-rescue team would assemble.
    “Got a good feeling,” Allison said into the pillow, fading fast the way she always did; the woman could probably sleep on the tarmac of an active airport without trouble.
    “Yeah?”
    “Yeah. But just in case I’m wrong, turn off your radio. At least the fool frequency.”
    He smiled at her in the dark, squeezed her one more time, and then closed his eyes. She was asleep within minutes, her breathing shifting to long, slow inhalations he could feel against his chest. He listened as the sleet changed back to snow; the rattle against the glass faded to silence, and eventually he started to fade too.
    When the radio went off, Allison awoke with a groan.
    “No,” she said. “Not tonight.”
    Ethan got out of bed, fumbled the handheld unit from its base, and walked out of the bedroom and across the cold floorboards to the front window. It was fully dark inside the cabin. They’d lost power just after sunset, and he hadn’t bothered to use the generator; there was no need to burn fuel just to sleep.
    “Serbin? You copy?” The voice belonged to Claude Kitna, the Park County sheriff.
    “Copy,” Ethan said, looking out at the white world beyond the dark cabin. “Who’s gone missing, and where, Claude?”
    “Nobody missing.”
    “Then let me sleep.”
    “Got a slide-off. Somebody trying to get over the pass just as we were about to shut it down.”
    The pass was the Beartooth Pass, on Highway 212 between Red Lodge and Cooke City. The Beartooth Highway, as 212 was also known, was one of the most beautiful—and dangerous—highways in the country, a series of steep switchbacks that wound between Montana and Wyoming and peaked at over ten thousand feet. It was closed for months in the winter, the entire highway simply shut down, and did not reopen until late May at the earliest. The drive required vigilance in the best weather, and in a snowstorm in the dark? Good luck.
    “Okay,” Ethan said into the radio. “Why do you need me?” He would roll with his team when someone was missing. A slide-off on the highway, or, as Claude liked to call the really nasty drops, a bounce-off, might require paramedics—or a coroner—but not search-and-rescue.
    “Driver who thought it was a wise idea to push through says she was on her way to see you. Park service bumped her to me. Got her sitting in a plow truck right now. You want her?”
    “Coming to see me?” Ethan frowned. “Who is it?”
    “A Jamie Bennett,” Claude said. “And for a woman who just drove her rental car off a mountain, I have to say, she’s not all that apologetic.”
    “Jamie Bennett?”
    “Correct. You know her?”
    “Yeah,” Ethan said, confused. “Yeah, I know her.”
    Jamie Bennett