She slipped once, falling hard onto her back, the cold punching the air out of her lungs as snow soaked through her clothes and spread like fire in reverse—stealing heat, stealing strength, stealing time. For a terrifying moment she lay there staring at the white sky, wondering if this was how people vanished. Quietly. Without anyone noticing.
Then she rolled over, pushed herself up with shaking arms, and grabbed the man again.
“You don’t get to stop,” she told herself fiercely, teeth chattering so hard her jaw ached. “I don’t care how big you are.”
The wind howled as if offended by her defiance.
Across the house, Samuel Carter woke abruptly, his heart pounding with a familiar dread he had learned to trust over decades of responding to alarms and screams—the kind of instinct that bypassed thought entirely and went straight to motion.
“Emily?” he called.
Silence answered.
The back door stood open.
Snow had begun to creep inside.
“No,” he breathed, already running.
By the time he reached the yard, the storm had thickened into a swirling wall of white. Panic clawed up his throat as he followed the small, uneven tracks leading toward the gate.
He saw her then.