Hold Me (A Katie Winter FBI Suspense Thriller—Book 7)

PROLOGUE Sherrie Blair was panting for breath. She ran, terrified, taking a headlong route into the darkness. Bruised from the fall, her knees skinned, her hands bleeding from the struggle to escape, she couldn’t believe she’d gotten away. He had held her prisoner. For a long time. Many hours. “I’m going to kill you,” he’d promised her when she’d screamed to be let out. “Just like all the others. I’m sorry. You’re not working out. You have to die.” She remembered how strange, how implacable his voice had sounded, and reliving those creepy words now gave her the strength to start running even faster. She had no idea where she was. It was in the middle of nowhere and it was an utterly dark night. She was forging her way through deep, uneven snow. Pine trees towered above her and the air felt fresh and icy cold. Stars blanketed the night sky, frigid pinpricks in the blackness. Wind blew around her, cold as steel. She knew she had escaped into an icy world of nothing where danger lurked. It could be deadly, but anything - anything - was better than being locked in that cage to wait until he made good on his threats. The problem was that she was now entirely lost. And it was freezing. Sherrie whimpered. She was so cold. Achingly cold. She’d had only a light jacket on when he’d taken her. She hadn’t expected to be out in these frigid temperatures. She stumbled and fell, twisting her ankle, then got up and kept on at a limping run, slipping on the snow, falling, getting up to run again. She wove through the trees, but now she was realizing that hiding was pointless. She couldn’t hear anyone behind her and didn’t think he was chasing after her. But there was nothing around except darkness. Trees surrounded her, their trucks cold, their branches festooned with snow. Ice crunched under her feet. She was shuddering with cold. "You have to find a road," she told herself. “Or a house. You have to find shelter.” She listened, but could hear nothing. The utter silence was broken only by the whisper of the wind in the branches. As she stumbled along, trying her best to work out where she’d come from and where she should go, Sherrie realized she was utterly disoriented. She'd escaped him, she'd gotten away from her captor. But now, another enemy surrounded her, its icy fingers clutching at her, sapping her strength and burning her skin. The cold. The cold would kill her and he'd known that. Perhaps it was why he hadn’t chased after her for as long as she’d feared. She had to get help. But it was hard to move. Sherrie stumbled forward, quaking with the chill, unable to feel her hands and feet as she wove her way through the icy trees. “Let me find a road,” she told herself. “Let me find a house.” But there was only the dark forest, swallowing her up. With her limbs quaking, the ice invading the core of her body, Sherrie feared that soon, her hiding place would become her tomb.