Calm down, Kristina, I tell myself. Surely a crazed killer wouldn’t announce his arrival by shining a powerful flashlight in front of him? And surely the odds of encountering a murderer the one time you find yourself trapped in a remote cabin in the middle of the woods are fairly slim. I turn around and look back into the living room, but the roaming beam is gone and only the murky night lies beyond the windows. Could I have imagined it? Is this the beginning of a total loss of my faculties? My head, like my heart, is throbbing; I hit it badly when I fell and could be concussed.

I hear something. A sharp cough. A man’s voice muttering. Then the muffled thud of footsteps on snow, approaching. I tighten my grip on the pickax’s wooden handle, biting into my bottom lip to stop myself from crying out loud. Then someone grabs the door handle and shoves it hard without knocking, and because I must have forgotten to lock it when I dragged myself into the cabin earlier, it shoots open inward, bringing a surge of icy air.

Part III

POINT-BLANK

61

Kristina

The pickax is wrenched from my hand by someone much stronger than me and dropped to the floor. I am picked up, gently, and carried. I am held. I am rocked back and forth, my face pressed into a broad chest, the sound of a hammering heart beating directly into my right ear.

‘Jesus Christ, Kristina,’ says my husband, over and over. ‘Jesus Christ.’

Eirik has placed me on the floor by the hearth on top of a sheepskin rug and a thick down duvet taken from Leah’s bed. He swiftly and expertly examines me, running his fingertips across my bruises and my bones. I watch him, feeling a flood of love rush into me, as if it were being injected directly into my veins. His hair, still wet from the snowstorm, glows in shades of chocolate and amber and coffee in the flickering light of the flames. His face is serious and concerned and I have to fight the urge to laugh. It must be shock. He found me. Eirik found me here against all the odds. I’m not going to die up here by myself.

‘Broken,’ I hear him say.

‘What?’

‘The ankle is broken, in two different places. I think your cheekbone is fractured, too.’ My husband’s eyes shimmer with tears and he looks around the cabin. He runs his hand through his hair and presses his thumbs into his eyes. He must have driven straight here after I messaged him. I feel giddy with love for him, this man of mine who drove through the night to my rescue, like a hero.