Chapter 1
December 1, somewhere on Highway 22x, Alberta
Madison Joy cranked up the volume right as the drum solo hit, the deep bass reverberating throughout the interior of her car. She bopped her head decisively, dancing in her seat even as she resisted the urge to play a set of air drums.
As much fun as wielding invisible drumsticks would be, darkness had fallen hours ago, and with the iffy winter road conditions, two hands on the wheel was a far smarter idea.
Satisfying the urge to move by continuing to wiggle enthusiastically, she peeked at the expected arrival time on the GPS.
“Woo-hoo. Look at that. ‘Less than twenty minutes from your destination.’”
Headlights appeared over the hill as a truck barreled toward her. Its lights flicked from high to low a second later than they should’ve, and Madison’s eyes watered as she narrowed her gaze against the glare.
Nighttime driving had never been her thing. Or maybe she was just reaching her limit for the day. Considering it was a thirteen-hour drive from Vancouver to Heart Falls, she’d been on the road since very early that morning.
Still, one entire audiobook and a whole lot of music had helped pass the time, and now she was closing in on the next important part of her new adventure.
Madison turned down the music and sighed happily as she relaxed into her seat. Ten years ago, her college education had been cut short when her dad was killed in an accident and her mom fell into a deep, dark depression. With two much-younger brothers potentially being dropped into social services, Madison had stepped in and taken over raising them.
She never regretted it, but now that they were grown up and her mom was doing well, it was time to move on.
Her phone went off, and she hit answer via Bluetooth. “Miss me?” she asked Little Brother Number One.
“Never.” At eighteen, Joe’s voice still edged into youthful innocence at times. “Since you told me not to text while you were driving, I had to call. Where’d you hide the air popper?”
“Oh, so you can live without me but not your popcorn?”
“Damn right,” he agreed.
“Joseph Maxwell Joy, no swearing in this house.”
Madison snickered as her mother’s voice rang in the background. “Yeah, Joseph. No swearing,” Madison teased.
He laughed. “Any ideas on the popper, Mad?”
“Try the front hall closet,” she suggested. “What are you guys watching tonight?”
“Kyle wants to start a Lord of the Rings marathon.”
“Again? And on a Tuesday night?” Good grief. “Well, thankfully I’m not there to have to join you.”
“But you totally would have, and you’d have ended up reciting every Gandalf speech verbatim, so thanks for not being here and making us witness that. Again.”
“Brat.”
“Found the popper. Front closet.” Joe lowered his voice. “And don’t tell anyone else, but I do miss you. But we’re all glad you’re gone—not only because I’m taking over your room, but because you deserve to have some fun.”
“Yeah, driving cross-Canada is going to be a blast,” she drawled. “Saskatchewan will be a thrill a minute.”
“Who’s the brat now?”
She laughed. “Give Mom a hug, punch Kyle for me, and call me again, but not until tomorrow. Jeez, you’re so needy.”
“Love ya, Mad.” He hung up, leaving her with a warm glow of happiness inside.
She could picture the activity at home. Her mom had obviously hauled the second of her eighteen-year-old twins in to help clean up after dinner. Joe would make an enormous batch of popcorn, and all of them would crowd around the TV. Impossibly long, teenage-boy legs would be propped up on the coffee table. Butter and salt scents on the air, and the movie turned up loud enough to make the walls vibrate.
Home.
Madison might have poked Joe about missing her already, but the truth was the knot in her belly said she was the one feeling left out. Which was a terrible and weird thing, since she also felt happy and excited.
Emotions were so damn complicated.
While she’d been talking with Joe, the light hint of snow had thickened. It whipped past her window, huge flakes catching in the headlights and turning the road ahead into a blur.
She caught herself mid-sigh, the noise turning into something between a hiccup and a laugh. Time for a pep talk.
“You’re headed to see one of your best friends in the whole wide world, and you got another full month before you start your new job. From where you’re sitting, life is looking fine.”
Bonus: her GPS announced she was closing in on her final destination.
She’d never been to Ryan’s house in Heart Falls, but she wasn’t worried about not being welcomed. They might have fallen out of touch over the past couple of years, but their friendship was rock-solid. Forever friends, that’s what they were.
They’d pinkie-sworn on it and everything back when they were twelve.
Still, she’d booked a motel for a couple of weeks so she could visit in the spare moments he could give her. She hadn’t wanted to announce she was coming, just in case she’d had to call it off at the last minute.
Something in the back seat began buzzing. Or rather, something inside one of the boxes stacked in her back seat. She’d never been a pack rat. It hadn’t taken long to bundle everything she owned into the car with room to spare. And one of those things was now making excited noises.
Madison reached back to blindly bang on the cardboard in the hopes it would stop.
Of course, the instant her attention wasn’t fully on the road, she missed the warning for the right-hand turn she was supposed to make.
Heart Falls was small enough that there were no overhead streetlights this far from the center of town. She was stuck on a dark, narrow swatch of pavement that seemed to curve around the shadowy silhouettes of the buildings to her right. Nothing was visible to her left except wide-open fields and, in the far distance, the shadowy outlines of the Rocky Mountains.
“Please a legal U-turn make,” her GPS requested in a familiar nasal tone.
Yoda as a copilot usually amused her, but right now Madison would just like to get where she was going, thank you very much.
She slowed, looking for a place to make that legal U-turn, and her tires slipped. An adjustment to the steering wheel had no effect on her vehicle. She tapped her brakes, but nothing.
Forward motion continued, the car sliding farther to the right, and Madison swore. She wasn’t going to be able to fix this in time. Madison braced both hands on the wheel as her front passenger tire hit the ditch, and her vehicle left the highway.
As her car bumped madly over the uneven ground, she tugged the wheel from side to side, guiding her descent as best she could. A gentle slide instead of a straight plummet seemed like a good idea. Fortunately, there were no trees or massive rocks in her way. Or at least none that she could see in the limited illumination offered by her headlights.
A barbed wire fence shot into view, offering barely any resistance as her Honda Civic smashed through it. Wires snapped, the loose strands scraping against the car’s paint job like fingernails on a chalkboard.
When the vehicle jostled to a stop, Madison gasped for air. Other than her heart pounding in her ears loud enough to deafen her, everything, including her, seemed to be in one piece.
She leaned back in the seat and tried to calm—
The steering wheel airbag went off, smashing into her with breakneck speed, stealing a scream from her as pain shot to high.
So much for her luck holding.
**
Up on the highway, Ryan Zhao parked his truck as far to the edge of the asphalt as possible and hit the hazard lights. The wind just about took his door off the frame, snow crystals slamming against his skin as he quickly but cautiously made his way across the road and into the ditch.
Snow flickered in front of his flashlight. The icy-cold December wind stole his breath as he waded through the tall, dry grass barely touched with the recent inch of snowfall.
What a contrast. Less than thirty minutes ago, it had been absolutely calm, and he’d been sitting in quiet contemplation in the Heart Falls cemetery. With his ten-year-old daughter, Talia, out for the night at a friend’s, he’d taken the evening to do some serious thinking.
And while his wife, Justina, wasn’t buried in the small community graveyard, Ryan had a habit of going there when he wanted to honour her memory. When he needed to think.
When he needed to make decisions.
He’d left the cemetery with a new goal in mind, but all of that was swept away as he focused on the potential disaster he was striding toward.
The red taillights on the car in front of him faded as the engine cut out, and Ryan picked up the pace. He tapped his pocket to make sure his phone was still there. As a coordinator with the Heart Falls volunteer fire department, he was one of the best people to act as first responder at the scene.
Still, no matter his training, the sight of a bloody handprint on the inside of the driver’s window shot adrenaline through his system. He peered inside and spotted a single figure slouched behind the wheel, motionless. “Hey. I’m here to help. I’m going to open the door—don’t move.”
A woman groaned loudly then swore as the cold wind whipped into the passenger space. “Dammit, that hurt like hell.”
The deployed airbag was one clue, but Ryan wasn’t going to make any assumptions. He pressed a hand to her shoulder to keep her in place. “Don’t move for a minute. Let’s make sure it’s safe to get you out of there.”
“Ryan?”
Her voice sounded far too familiar, and the fact she knew his name meant he needed to take a closer look. But first— “Don’t move means your head as well. You’ve been in a car crash. You might have a neck injury.”
“I didn’t crash,” she insisted. “But holy hell, that airbag packs a punch. My teeth feel like they’re loose. Is my wrist still attached to my arm? My fingers are numb.”
He made sure the car was solid before doing anything else. It was firmly wedged in position, so he leaned in to do a quick check on the woman’s neck and shoulders. That put him face-to-face with a bleeding nose, reddish-brown hair, and a pair of familiar bright-green eyes.
“What are you doing, Madison Joy?” Ryan asked without really expecting an answer, but she gave one anyway.
“Bleeding?” She ran her tongue over her teeth. “Yay for safety systems, but damn it, my nose hurts.”
Her voice had gone nasal as the swelling accelerated. Ryan eyed the inside of the vehicle, but the lack of any other damage plus the position of the car seemed to follow her claim of not having any impact injuries. “Let’s undo your seat belt and get you out of there.”
“My hero,” Madison mumbled. “Back up a bit so I can swing my legs out. Then you can give me all the help you want.”
The tattered remains of the airbag were pushed aside, and Madison twisted toward him with a groan. She offered her right hand, cradling her left against her chest, and an instant later, she was standing, Ryan’s arm around her back.
She swayed briefly, but he held her in place until she patted his arm. “Just a bit of a head rush. Honest, nothing hurts too bad except for not being able to take a deep breath. And my wrist feels as if it was stepped on by an elephant. They weren’t lying when they said those damn airbags can be nearly as dangerous as being in an accident without them.”
“I don’t think your nose is broken,” Ryan told her. “But we’ll get them to take a look at it in Emergency. Your wrist as well. Arms and wrists are the other things that usually get damaged.”
She snorted then groaned. “Ouch. Remind me not to do that again.” She touched her nose gingerly then attempted another tentative body shimmy. “I think my ribs are okay. The boobs, on the other hand, are feeling rather tender. Like after a good old groping.”
It was Ryan’s turn to snicker, guiding her back up the embankment toward his truck. “I’ll take your word on that.”
“Hey, a good groping can be a lot of fun,” Maddy insisted. “Fooling around with an airbag, a little less so.”
The wind was shrieking by now, but Ryan took his time. He got her safely to the side of his truck and into the passenger seat. He buckled her up before closing the door.
By the time he got behind the wheel, Madison had flipped down the sun visor and opened the mirror and light to examine her face. “Well, shit.” She turned to face him, her pale skin nearly grey under the feeble interior light. Blood from her nose had smeared her cheeks, turning her into a rather gory sight. Still, she managed a smile and, in a perky voice, announced, “Hi, Ryan. I’ve come for a visit.”
“Seriously?”
“I would’ve called, but then it wouldn’t have been a surprise.” She made a horrible face, wiggling her jaw before reaching up to double-check her front teeth. She glanced at him. “You surprised?”
“A little. A lot.” Ryan carefully pulled out onto the highway. “Hospital?”
She took a deep breath then wiggled in her seat. “I assume you’re still first-aid certified. So am I. I do not have any broken ribs. The nose, probably not either. Everything else is just bruises and adrenaline at this point. Damn airbag,” she grumbled before glancing over at him. “Skip the hospital. Just take me to my motel. I’ll get cleaned up so I don’t scare your daughter.”
“You’re not staying at a motel.” It wasn’t a question. “I have a spare room at my place. You won’t scare Talia once you no longer look as if you’ve gone ten rounds in the ring. Besides, she’s not home tonight, so there’s time for you to get showered up.”
“There we go. That means I finally get to see your home sweet home here in Heart Falls.” She relaxed back in her seat, still making little stretching motions and groaning as she moved. “I was so close to making it in one piece.”
“We’ll deal with your car tomorrow,” he promised before glancing to the side. “You okay otherwise? I mean, is there a reason for the surprise visit other than curiosity or old time’s sake?”
She breathed deep and let it out slowly. “Mostly it’s a visit because you’re my friend, and I’ve missed you. And we did say that anytime, anywhere, we could drop in on each other.”
She was totally up to something. “We did say that,” Ryan agreed. “Spill the beans, Maddy. What sent you to me, car full of everything you own?”
“Change of circumstances,” she admitted. “I’ll tell you the rest of it after I’ve washed the blood off. But it’s nothing terrible, I promise.”
Which meant Ryan could relax a little, because the one thing Madison had never done was lie to him. So, whatever weird bullshit had happened to send her back into his world out of the blue, it wasn’t dire.
Which meant he could focus on driving the short distance to his home on the outskirts of Heart Falls.
Madison Joy. His best friend throughout junior high and high school. Heck, his best friend for the first couple of years of college before she’d had to leave school suddenly. She was the one who introduced him to his wife, Justina.
Madison might not have been around much for the last ten years, but they’d kept in touch off and on. Having her back seemed strangely right.
Ryan pulled into his driveway.
She leaned forward to look up at the mostly dark outline of his home. “Cute place, far as I can see.”
He parked the truck in front of the garage and gestured toward the entrance. “Come on. Let’s check out the damage so you can get washed up.”
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