If you leave that stray cat in your house, Martha, you'll be smelling her dead owner till spring, the deputy told me on the porch.
The sun, low and weak, was already starting to dip behind the skeletal trees. I walked back towards my cabin, the surveyor’s words echoing in my mind. Julian knew. He had known Clara was my sister, my *Gable* sister, and he had preyed on her.
The fury gave me a strange kind of energy, a warmth in my veins that defied the deepening cold.
But that warmth didn’t last.
I noticed it first when I reached the side of my cabin, near the foundation where the fuel oil tank sat. A dark, oily sheen marred the pristine snow, snaking away from the tank in a shimmering, sickening trail.
My breath hitched.
I knelt, ignoring the bite of the ice through my jeans. The thin copper line that ran from the tank into the house, supplying my furnace, had been cleanly severed. Not just broken, but cut. The sharp, metallic tang of heating oil filled the air.
Every drop was gone, bled out onto the frozen earth.
Julian Kross wasn’t just intimidating me. He was trying to freeze me out, literally. The forecast had called for temperatures dropping to three degrees Fahrenheit overnight, with wind chill making it feel much colder.
My landline was already dead, the power out. Now my heat.
I got to my feet, my joints protesting. This was a siege. He wanted me out of the way before I could contest Clara’s claim, before I could expose him. He thought I was old, frail, easy prey.
I grabbed the thickest pair of gloves I owned and my trusty axe from the woodpile. The furnace was useless now, but the woodstove in the kitchen was still a lifeline. It consumed an alarming amount of firewood to keep the small cabin livable in these temperatures.
My muscles ached with every swing of the axe, splitting logs that felt heavier than they should. Each fresh log I carried inside felt like a small victory against Julian’s assault. My breath plumed in front of me, thick and white.
Barnaby sat by the cold hearth, watching me with his intelligent yellow eyes. He seemed to understand the urgency, the desperation of each trip to the woodshed.
I stacked the logs as high as I could, filling the woodbox, then making another pile on the rug near the stove. The cabin needed to be a fortress of warmth. But my body, all sixty-eight years of it, was already starting to give out. My fingers felt stiff, my toes numb even through two pairs of socks.
I knew, with a terrifying certainty, that I couldn’t last more than a few days without proper heat. Julian had chosen his moment well, during the deepest freeze of the winter. He was betting my age and the cold would break me.
But he didn’t know the Gables.
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