The Stranger Read Online Free

deteriorating conditions. In all my twenty-nine years of life, I’d never seen weather like this.
    “We’re not beating the storm, are we?”
    “This is just the beginning.” He tilted his head and surveyed the sky. “It’s going to get bad soon, thirteen hours of very nasty wind, snow, and ice.”
    My timing sucked. “And I thought this was bad.”
    “This is nothing.” He slowed down to maneuver over a bridge. “I don’t suppose you get blizzards in Miami. But don’t worry, we’re almost there.”
    “Goody,” I mumbled.
    I knew my chances of getting to a hotel tonight were nil, but I needed to keep it together, at least until we got to the cabin. With a little luck, it might be a two-room cabin, with a door and a lock between me and the rest of the place. A door chain would be nice, but I could always improvise.
    I eyed the man riding next to me. Maybe under all that hubris, he’d turn out to be a decent human being. After all, he had stopped to help me. I toyed with the idea of giving him a quick rundown of my condition, but my hackles went up. No way. He was a stranger and a guy and maybe even a little off, with all that paranoia. I knew from experience what would happen if I warned him. No need to add premeditation to humiliation.
    All of a sudden, my vision narrowed. My thoughts slowed down to a crawl. My body slacked and my eyelids slammed over my eyes like hurricane shutters. I ran out of time and energy at the same moment. Oh, crap. I knew exactly what was happening to me.
    “Hey, Summer.” Seth’s voice came from far away. “We’re almost there.” He shook me softly. “Wake up. Stick with me, girl.”
    I had no time to explain.
    “Make sure you lock the door,” I mumbled, before I conked out.

Chapter Two
    Some days, life was a cross-eyed bitch. It screwed with you so bad that you wanted to kick it in the ass and send it to hell. It slammed you like a goddamn RPG and then crushed you beneath metric tons of crap. As I parked in the garage and carried Summer out of the truck, I was sure today was one of those days.
    She wasn’t very heavy, but she was tall and long-limbed, and totally limp in my arms. I was glad for the elevator that took us up from the garage. Considering I’d been in a wheelchair when I first moved into the cabin, the elevator had never been a luxury. It came in handy again tonight.
    I took Summer to my room and laid her down on my bed. My military emergency medical training kicked in. I grabbed the flashlight from my drawer, lifted her eyelids, and shone the light in her eyes. Her pupils contracted into smaller dots. Good. I let out my breath. She hadn’t suffered head trauma or cranial bleeding.
    I checked her vital signs. Her pulse was strong and her breathing regular. She felt a little cold to my touch, but she wasn’t hypothermic. I took off her useless coat. Sure enough, her skirt felt damp to my touch and the insides of her shoes sagged with melted snow. Such was the fate of fashionistas in off-grid Alaska. With the flip of a switch, I turned on the fireplace then got to work stripping the rest of her clothes.
    I was still having trouble believing that she wasn’t one of Alex’s schemes. He’d like nothing better than to find a way to screw me publicly before the upcoming board meeting. Yeah, the motherfucker had tried worse before. That’s why I’d been so sure that the high-heeled, long-legged mirage strutting her stuff down the deserted road had been a setup when I first spotted her. Given the circumstances, what the hell was I supposed to think?
    But thirty seconds after meeting her, my gut told me Summer couldn’t be part of a scam. I trusted my gut. It’d navigated me through war and peace and it usually gave me reliable readings. Summer felt earnest to me, sincere, fiery and opinionated, but not fake.
    No, I didn’t think she was lying. The bruise that blotched her thigh confirmed her story, and so did the bump on her head and the smaller bruises on