Chapter 1 Chloe Takes an Unlicensed Taxi
The Tuesday after Martin Luther King Jr. Day was brutally cold in the small Minnesota town. Every breath turned to white mist and froze on people’s lashes and brows.
Just after six in the morning, the Greyhound station was already packed.
The long weekend was over, and everyone who had gone home was now rushing back to the city. People crowded the ticket machines, stamping their feet against the cold, dragging suitcases through dirty snow.
Chloe Frost pulled her luggage out of the station and stared at the line, already knowing she was out of luck.
She had gone drinking with friends the night before, had one too many, and missed the bus she’d booked for that morning. Now every later ticket was sold out.
Perfect.
As she stood there in the freezing dark, a man stepped in front of her.
“Chicago?” he asked. “Thirty bucks a seat.”
Chloe looked him over. Mid-thirties. Down jacket. Ordinary face. Not handsome, not scary, just forgettable.
“When do you leave?”
“As soon as the van fills.”
He jerked his chin toward the parking lot.
Chloe hesitated.
Back in college, she used to take these unlicensed rides all the time to save money. But after she started dating Nathan Archer, he banned it outright. He hated the idea of her getting into some random car with strangers. Once, she’d done it anyway for the cheap fare, and he’d lectured her for days.
“Twenty-five,” the driver said quickly, catching the look on her face. “I’ll knock five off.”
Chloe bit her lip.
Nathan would definitely be angry if he found out.
But she missed him so much it almost hurt.
“All right,” she said at last.
If I don’t tell him, he won’t know.
She followed the driver to an old Ford E-350 parked near the curb. The middle row was already packed with passengers in thick coats. Chloe climbed in and took the seat behind the front passenger side, the one she always chose because it made her less carsick.
A crystal photo frame hung from the rearview mirror. Inside was a picture of a child with round cheeks and huge eyes—probably the driver’s. Cute enough to lower a person’s guard.
The heater was barely on. The cold hit her the moment the door shut.
Chloe rubbed her hands together, then took out her phone.
Two missed calls from Nathan.
The station had been too loud for her to hear it ring.
Her heart lifted instantly. She tapped his number and called back, but after several rings, no one answered. She checked the time—just past nine. He was probably in class or in the lab already.
So she opened her messages and typed quickly:
Honey, I should be home around four or five tonight. How about Popeyes for dinner? I want the Cajun chicken sandwich, four spicy tenders, and a large red beans and rice. Love you! XOXO!
Smiling, she hit send.
Just thinking about Nathan made her cheeks warm.
She still found it a little unreal sometimes—that she had actually managed to marry him. Back in college, Nathan had been the brilliant one, the top student, the quiet, handsome boy everybody noticed and nobody quite dared approach. And yet in the end, he had become hers.
After graduation, they had rushed straight to City Hall and gotten married without even holding a proper wedding. They had both been absurdly in love, absurdly impulsive, and secretly afraid that if they waited too long, real life might interfere.
If Nathan’s lab project had not been at a critical stage, he would have gone back with her to visit her parents.
Last night, over the phone, he had urged her to come home soon.
That single sentence had made her stupidly happy.
He missed her.
The van finally pulled away from the station.
Slowly, the heater coughed out a little warmth. Feeling returned to Chloe’s frozen fingers and stiff legs. She leaned back and closed her eyes.
The thought of Popeyes waiting at home made her mouth water.
Nathan always disapproved of her fast-food cravings. After they got married, he insisted they cook at home like responsible adults. The problem was that neither of them actually knew how.
At first she let him do the cooking, only to discover that Nathan cooked like an eighty-year-old cardiologist—no butter, no sauce, barely any salt. Half a month of his bleak, joyless food was enough to send her back into the kitchen for good.
Sometimes, when she caught that faint, sly smile at the corner of his mouth, she suspected he had done it on purpose.
But every time she saw his long fingers working carefully over lab instruments, or those clear, innocent eyes behind his glasses, her heart melted again.
What could she do?
He was the husband she had chased down herself.
She could only spoil him.
The van rocked gently down the road. Last night’s alcohol was still lingering in her system, and the warmth inside the car made her drowsy.
Before long, Chloe drifted off to sleep.
She didn’t notice her phone battery dying.
She didn’t know the driver had left the highway and was cutting through remote back roads to avoid tolls.
What should have been an eight-hour trip stretched into ten, and they still weren’t halfway there.
The van passed through several tunnels in the state forest.
One of them was especially long.
Too long.
Even half-asleep, Chloe could feel it—the strange, dragging wrongness of it. The overhead lights flickered nonstop, flashing through her eyelids in broken white pulses. The painted lines on the walls and road blurred and twisted into something warped and unreal.
Then came the sound.
A shrill, violent scream of scraping metal, threaded with the crackle of electrical static.
Chloe jerked awake.
And in the next instant, the world outside the van seemed to tear open.