Bridget must be hallucinating. An old man in clanking armor, a sword at his waist. A girl dressed like an elf and holding a mace. A man wearing wings and knee-high boots, hoisting a shovel like a baseball bat. All three turning their heads back and forth, like they were ready for a fight.

And then the snowmobiler pulled off his helmet and Bridget knew this must be all a dream. Because it was Ajay.

He ran to her, already pulling off his coat. He put it around her shoulders.

“You came,” she whispered as he pulled her close.

“I would have been here earlier, but you sent all that information in an email.” He tried to laugh, but it sounded more like a sob. “What person our age actually looks at their emails?”

Meanwhile, the fans—for that’s what they were, Bridget realized, fans—were kneeling in the snow next to Bob’s still figure.

And far in the distance, she heard a sound. A siren.

But were they all too late?

SEVEN MONTHS LATER

BRIDGET

Freedom

“Yes, the person in the pink wings?” Bridget pointed toward the back of the full auditorium. “What’s your question?” Forty-five minutes ago, when she and Bob had first walked on stage, she’d expected to feel nervous with hundreds of people staring at her. Instead, the experience had turned out to be oddly serene.

“My question is for both of you. Was it hard to write Eyes of the Forest together?”

She and Bob looked at each other. Portland was the first stop on the nineteen-city tour for the new book, which bore both their bylines. Eyes of the Forest had only been out for a few days, but it had landed on top of every bestseller list, lauded as the must-read for summer. Even the audiobook, which Bob had insisted Bridget narrate, was smashing sales records.

But the book that had garnered eight starred reviews wasn’t the Eyes of the Forest Derrick had tried to sell on the dark web. It wasn’t even the book Bridget had read in the cabin, the one that had made her weep. The book Bob had urged her to save instead of him. The one that had burned up with the cabin.

It was even better.