My late sister's son was our ring bearer—at the altar, he refused to hand over the rings, pointed at my fiancé and said, "Mom told me not to give them to him until you see this."

Pain exploded across my scalp as Douglas dragged me across the pine planks. His face was twisted in a mask of pure, unadulterated hatred.

"You stupid bitch," he hissed through clenched teeth, his injured leg dragging uselessly behind him. "You think you’re special? You think you were anything more than a signature on an insurance policy?"

He pinned me to the floor with his weight, his heavy knee pressing down onto my sternum until the air vanished from my lungs. His hands found my throat. His fingers were icy, digging viciously into my windpipe.

Black spots danced across my vision. I clawed at his face, tearing long, bloody furrows down his cheek, but his grip only tightened.

"Judy died choking on her own blood on the side of a mountain," he whispered directly into my ear, his breath hot and putrid. "And you’re going to join her."

I couldn't breathe. My lungs screamed for oxygen. The ceiling of Judy’s cabin began to dim into a dark, spinning tunnel.

*No.*

The thought burned through the fog in my mind like white phosphorus. Judy hadn't died so that I could surrender on her floor. Judy had spent her last hours fighting to protect Bruce, fighting to leave a trail of breadcrumbs from beyond the grave.

My right hand blindly swept across the floorboards. My fingers brushed against the cold, heavy steel of the tire iron he had dropped.

With the last reserve of strength in my body, I curled my fingers around the iron bar, arched my back, and brought the sharp curved end slamming directly into the back of Douglas’s skull.

A dull, wet thud reverberated through the cabin.

Douglas’s eyes rolled back. His grip on my throat slackened instantly, and he collapsed forward like a sack of wet sand, his full weight crashing down on top of me.