Chapter 5: Road to the Ridge

The trunk of Julian’s car was massive. Elena knew that because she’d seen him load a bunch of heavy timber frames into it two weeks ago, laughing about how he liked old-school German engineering because everything modern felt like cheap plastic. Now she was sitting in the passenger seat of that same car, watching the windshield wipers smear a greasy film of rain and crushed bugs across the glass.

It was five in the morning. Or maybe closer to six. The dashboard clock was broken, stuck permanently at 12:14, and Julian had her phone somewhere in the pockets of his heavy leather jacket.

He hadn't tied his hair back today. It hung down around his jaw, dark and slightly damp from the mist outside the loft when they walked down the back stairs. He drove with one hand on the bottom of the steering wheel, his thumb tapping a slow, irregular beat against the leather wrapper. He hadn't spoken since they crossed the river.

"Julian," she said. Her throat felt dry, like she'd been swallowing sand all night. She hadn't slept. Every time she closed her eyes in the dark loft, she kept hearing that woman’s laugh through the door crack.

He didn't look over. "Eat your sandwich, Elena."

There was a squashed foil wrapper sitting on the dashboard between them. He’d stopped at a twenty-four-hour drive-thru near the highway entrance, ordering two breakfast biscuits without asking her what she wanted. It was cold now. The grease had hardened into a pale yellow film along the wax paper.

"I need to use a restroom," she said.

"We’ll stop in an hour."

"I need to go now."

He didn't brake. He didn't even shift his weight in the seat. "There’s nothing out here for thirty miles. Just trees and old logging tracks. Hold it."

The landscape out the window was just gray smudge. The city had finished about twenty minutes ago, dissolving into those weird, half-abandoned industrial parks where people store old boats and rusted shipping containers, and then the pine trees started. They were thick, growing right up to the gravel shoulder of the state route. It felt dark even though the sun was supposed to be up by now.

Elena looked down at her lap. Her hands looked strange in the gray morning light, pale, a little dirty around the cuticles from when she’d been sitting on the floor of his studio trying to find a loose floorboard or something she could use. There hadn't been anything. Just dust and old staples from canvas stretching.

She wondered what Clara was doing right now. Probably at the clinic. Clara always worked the early shift on Thursdays because she liked getting home before the afternoon traffic on the bridge. She’d probably seen that text message last night while she was making her tea. Did she notice the punctuation? Elena never used periods in her texts to Clara. She always used those stupid little exclamation points or left the sentence open. Julian wouldn't know that. He was too precise. He wrote everything like he was filling out an insurance form.

"Why the eastern border?" she asked. The question just slipped out. She hadn't meant to say it, but the silence in the car was getting so loud it made her ears ring.

Julian’s thumb stopped tapping. His knuckles went white against the wheel, just for a second, before he loosened his grip. He didn't look at her, but his shoulder muscles tightened under the leather jacket.

"You shouldn't think about things you don't understand," he said.

"I understand three territories," she said, her voice sounding braver than she felt. Her stomach was doing a weird, fluttering dance. "I understand a bet. With Lilith. And Thomas."

Julian didn't look angry. That was what made it weird. He just looked bored, the way he looked when the art store clerk told him they were out of the specific linseed oil he liked. He reached down and changed the radio station. It was just static at first, then a country song came through, low and scratchy through the dashboard speakers.

"Thomas is an idiot," Julian said after the song finished. "He thinks because he has four blocks of the city center he can dictate terms to the rest of the county. He’s sloppy. His people are always getting picked up by the local sheriffs for stupid shit. Drunk driving. Fighting in bars."

He spoke about them like they were employees. Or cousins he didn't like.

"And you're not sloppy?" Elena asked.

"No." He turned the wheel slightly, guiding the heavy car around a long, sweeping curve that went up into the hills. The asphalt was getting rougher here, full of pothole patches that made the front end clunk. "I don't leave things to chance. I told you that the first night we went to that place by the docks."

She remembered that night. It had been raining then, too. He’d spent forty minutes talking about the architecture of the old grain elevators, his eyes going all bright and intense under the streetlamps. She’d thought he was just passionate about things. Now she realized he was just measuring the space.

The road went higher. The pine trees changed into old oaks with moss hanging down from the branches like gray hair. The mist was thicker up here, rolling across the hood of the car in long, white ribbons.

They passed an old wooden sign that said *Ridge Road - No Winter Maintenance*. The paint was peeling off the letters, leaving the dark wood beneath looking rotten. Julian turned the car onto a narrower lane that wasn't paved at all, just crushed river rock and packed dirt that rattled the teeth in her head.

Elena gripped the door handle. "Is this it?"

Julian didn't answer. He reached into his pocket and pulled out her phone, throwing it onto her lap. The screen was black.

"Turn it on," he said.

"Why?"

"Your sister called three times while I was at the gallery yesterday. I answered the first one, but she tried again an hour ago. Tell her you’re in Chicago. Tell her the reception is bad because of the high-rises."

Elena’s fingers closed around the cold glass of the phone. The battery icon was at twelve percent. Her thumb hovered over the power button, her heart thumping against her ribs so hard she was worried he could hear it over the rumble of the tires on the gravel.

"What if I don't?" she asked.

Julian stopped the car. He didn't slam on the brakes; he just brought it to a smooth, heavy halt right in the middle of the track. The trees were so thick here that the light was almost gone, like they were driving through a tunnel made of wet leaves. He turned off the engine. The silence came back instantly, thick and heavy, broken only by the click of the cooling metal under the hood.

He turned his body toward her, his large arm resting on the back of her seat. His face was very close. In the dim light, those golden rings around his irises looked brighter, almost yellow, like an animal caught in the high beams of a truck.

"Elena," he said. He didn't shout. His voice was very soft, almost gentle, the way he spoke when he was trying to get her to sit still for the charcoal sketches. "You think you have options here. You don't. If Clara comes looking for you, she won't find you. But Marcus will find her. And Marcus isn't like me. He doesn't care about art. He doesn't care about pretty things. He likes things that break."

He reached out and touched her hair, tucking a loose strand behind her ear. His fingers were cold. "Call her. Be nice. Tell her the apartment in Chicago has a view of the river."

Elena’s hand was shaking so much she dropped the phone onto the floorboards between her feet. She leaned down to grab it, her face burning with a sudden, hot shame. She wanted to hit him. She wanted to take that stupid foil breakfast sandwich and throw it in his face. But she knew what would happen if she did. He’d just catch her wrists and hold her until she stopped moving.

She turned the phone on. The little white logo came up on the screen, bright enough to hurt her eyes in the dark car.

There were four missed calls from Clara. And a text from an unknown number that just said: *Is it done?*

"Type it," Julian said, watching over her shoulder. "Don't call. Just text her. Say you're busy with the move."

Her fingers felt like sausages. She typed out the words: *Hey Clara got here okay. Super busy with the new place. High rises make the signal weird. Love you.*

She hit send. The little blue bar went across the top of the screen, then stalled. For three seconds, she thought it wouldn't go through, that there wasn't any signal out here in the woods, but then it made that little clicking sound that meant it was gone.

Julian took the phone out of her hand before she could check the other message. He didn't look at it; he just dropped it back into his jacket pocket and turned the key in the ignition. The engine roared to life, loud and vibrating through the floorboards.

They drove for another ten minutes before the house appeared.

It wasn't what she expected. She’d been thinking of something old and creepy, one of those Victorian places with the wraparound porches that you see in old pictures of the logging towns. This house was modern. It was all flat gray concrete and huge sheets of dark glass, built right into the side of a steep hill that looked out over a deep valley full of fog. It looked like a museum or a bunker.

There were three other cars parked in the wide gravel driveway. A big black pickup truck with mud all over the doors, a silver sedan that looked brand new, and an old jeep with the doors taken off.

Julian parked the car near the entrance, right next to the truck. He turned to her, his hand reaching over to click her seatbelt open for her.

"Stay close to me," he said. "Don't talk to Marcus. Don't look at Thomas if he's inside. Just go up the stairs to the room at the end of the hall."

"Are they here for the bet?" she asked.

Julian didn't answer. He got out of the car, slamming his door so hard the glass rattled in its frame. Elena sat there for a second, her boots resting on the rubber floor mat. She looked at the front door of the house. It was a massive slab of dark wood with no handle, just a little digital keypad on the side that glowed with a faint blue light.

She got out. The air up here smelled different than the city. It didn't smell like car exhaust or restaurant grease; it smelled like wet dirt, rotting leaves, and something else, something sharp and metallic that made her nose twitch.

Julian grabbed her by the elbow before she reached the gravel. His grip was tight enough that she knew she'd have another set of bruises by tomorrow morning, but she didn't try to pull away. She couldn't. Her legs felt like water.

The front door opened before they reached it.

A man was standing in the doorway. He wasn't as tall as Julian, but he was wider through the chest, his skin very pale under a short, blond haircut that looked like he’d done it himself with a pair of kitchen shears. He was wearing an old flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up, exposing thick arms covered in small, dark tattoos that looked like numbers or letters she couldn't read from the driveway.

"You're late," the man said. His voice was high for his size, slightly nasal.

"The traffic on the bridge was bad," Julian said, pushing Elena slightly ahead of him into the house.

The inside of the house was cold. The floors were polished gray concrete, completely bare without any rugs or carpets, and the walls were just white plaster with nothing on them, no pictures, no paintings, nothing. It didn't look like anyone lived here. It looked like an office that hadn't been leased yet.

"Is that her?" the blond man asked, his eyes moving down Elena’s green sweater to her muddy boots. He didn't look at her face at all. He looked at her the way the guys at the butcher shop looked at the sides of beef coming out of the back of the truck.

"Go upstairs, Elena," Julian said, his hand releasing her elbow. He pointed toward a set of floating iron stairs that went up to a balcony on the second floor.

Elena didn't move right away. She looked at the blond man. "Are you Marcus?"

The man let out a short, sharp barking sound that might have been a laugh. He looked over at Julian. "She talks. Thomas said she was one of those quiet ones from the university."

"Upstairs," Julian repeated. His voice had that flat, dangerous edge again.

Elena turned and walked toward the stairs. Her boots made a loud, hollow *thud-thud-thud* against the iron steps that seemed to echo through the whole house. When she reached the top balcony, she looked down.

Julian and Marcus were standing close together by the front door, their heads down as they talked in low voices she couldn't catch over the hum of the house's heating system. Marcus was gesturing with his hands, pointing out toward the driveway where the other cars were.

She walked down the long hallway. There were four doors on either side, all made of the same dark wood as the front entrance, all shut tight. The floor up here was dark wood, but it didn't have any shine to it. It looked old, like it had been taken out of a barn and laid down without being sanded.

She reached the door at the end of the hall. It didn't have a lock on the inside, just a small brass latch that looked decorative. She pushed it open.

The room was big, with one entire wall made of that dark glass she’d seen from the outside. There was a bed in the corner, a simple mattress on a low black platform with a gray wool blanket pulled straight across it. No pillows. No nightstand. No lamps. Just the bed and a single wooden chair near the glass window.

In the middle of the room, sitting on a small wooden crate, was her blue suitcase.

Elena walked over to it, her heart jumping. She knelt down and unzipped it. Everything was there, her jeans, her socks, her books from the college library, even the little silver alarm clock her mother had given her when she went off to school. They’d packed it neatly, everything folded down like she’d done it herself. It made her feel sick. The thought of Marcus or some other stranger going through her drawers, touching her underwear, putting her shoes into boxes while she was sitting in the studio cooking eggs, it felt worse than the lock on the door.

She sat down on the edge of the mattress. The wool blanket was rough against her bare hands, scratchy and smelling of cedar and old wool.

She looked out the window. The fog was starting to clear now, rising out of the valley in huge, white clouds that moved through the tops of the pine trees. Far below, she could see a river, a thin, gray ribbon of water twisting through the rocks. There weren't any houses down there. No roads. Just trees going all the way to the horizon where the mountains started.

A door slammed downstairs. It was loud enough to vibrate through the floorboards under her feet.

Then she heard voices. People were shouting. Not Julian, his voice was too deep to mistake, but someone else, someone with a loud, boisterous laugh that sounded like he’d already had a few drinks this morning.

"Where's the painter?" the voice yelled. "Where's the prize?"

Elena stood up and walked toward the door of the room, opening it a crack so she could hear better. The hallway was dark, the light from the large windows downstairs not reaching up here.

"Shut up, Thomas," Julian’s voice came back, sharp and tight. "The paperwork isn't finished yet."

"Oh, come on," the loud voice, Thomas, laughed. "Marcus has the seals. Lilith signed the waiver from the city precinct last night. It's done, Julian. You got the eastern blocks. You should be buying us a drink, not standing there looking like someone died."

"We do the signing first," Julian said. "Then you can leave."

"I want to see her," Thomas said. "I want to see if she looks like those drawings you had in the office. Marcus said she looked skinny."

"She’s fine," Julian said. "And you're not going upstairs."

There was a pause. The hum of the house seemed to get louder for a second, then the sound of chairs scraping against the concrete floor down below. They were sitting at the big table in the main room.

Elena leaned her head against the doorframe. Her chest felt tight, like someone had wrapped a wet leather strap around her ribs and was pulling it tighter every time she breathed. She looked down at the blue suitcase in the middle of the floor.

She had to get out. Not later. Not when Julian came back up the stairs with his quiet voice and his cold hands. Now. While they were downstairs with their papers and their liquor.

She walked over to the window. She pressed her face against the glass, looking down at the side of the house. The concrete wall went straight down into a patch of wild blackberry bushes and sharp gray rocks. There wasn't a ledge. There wasn't a pipe she could grab. If she broke the glass, she’d just fall twenty feet onto the stones, and even if she didn't break her neck, Marcus would hear the sound before she could even stand up.

She went back to the door and looked out into the hall. It was completely empty.

She started walking down the hallway, her bare feet making no sound on the old wood now that she’d taken her boots off. She didn't want the noise of her heels alerting them. She reached the top of the iron stairs and peered over the railing.

The main room was bright because of the big windows, but the three men were sitting at a long steel table near the back wall, under a row of black pendant lights that hung down from the ceiling. There was a big sheet of thick white paper spread out between them, full of tiny black print and red wax circles at the bottom.

Thomas was older than the others. He had gray hair cut very close to his skull, and a thick, red neck that looked like it belonged to a weightlifter. He was wearing a dark suit jacket over a black t-shirt, his large hands resting on the table like two pieces of meat.

Marcus was leaning over his shoulder, holding a small metal stamp that he kept pressing into a pad of purple ink.

Julian was sitting opposite them. He had his jacket off now, his bare arms flat against the steel table. He looked different here than he did in the studio. In the city, he always looked slightly out of place, too big for the small rooms, too heavy for the wooden chairs. Here, he looked like he belonged to the concrete and the iron.

"The border runs along the old creek bed," Thomas was saying, his finger tracing a line on the paper. "Anything south of the mill belongs to the city pack. You don't hunt there, Julian. Your people stay on the ridge."

"We hunt where the game goes," Julian said flatly.

"That wasn't the deal," Thomas snapped, his face going a darker shade of red. "The deal was the three blocks near the rail yard and the storage units. We didn't say anything about the valley tracks."

"The valley tracks are mine anyway," Julian said. He didn't raise his voice, but there was something in the way he sat, perfectly still, his shoulders straight, that made Thomas stop talking for a second. "Lilith agreed to that last winter."

"Lilith doesn't speak for the council," Thomas muttered, but he didn't look at Julian's face. He looked down at the paper, his fingers tapping against the red wax.

Elena gripped the iron railing. Her fingers were cold. She looked toward the front door. It was only about twenty feet from the bottom of the stairs, but she’d have to walk right past their line of sight to get to it. And even if she did, there was the keypad. She didn't know the code. It was probably five or six numbers, and if she guessed wrong, it would probably make a noise or lock her out completely.

There was another door near the kitchen corner, a smaller, simpler door made of metal that probably went out to the back garage or the trash area.

She began to slide down the stairs, one step at a time, her body pressed flat against the iron wall. Her heart was beating so fast she could see her sweater moving over her chest.

*Step.* *Step.* *Step.*

Thomas laughed again, a loud, wet sound that drowned out the tiny click of her toes against the iron. "You really had her sitting there for three weeks? Doing those stupid paintings?"

"It takes time to fix the scent," Julian said. His voice sounded different now, more like Marcus’s voice, rough and dry. "If I brought her in too early, the local boys would have picked it up before the lease was signed. You know how the sheriff is about missing girls from the college. He’s got that cousin on the town board."

"Yeah, well, she's here now," Thomas said. He picked up a pen and scribbled something at the bottom of the page, his signature large and messy. "Sign it, Julian. Let's get this over with. I have to be back in the city by noon."

Elena reached the bottom of the stairs. She was in the shadow of the concrete pillar now, just ten feet away from the metal door by the kitchen. The kitchen smelled like old coffee and bleach, the counters clean and gray.

She took a step forward.

A floorboard clicked under her foot. It wasn't loud, just a tiny *tick* of wood moving against a nail, but Julian’s head snapped up instantly. His eyes didn't look toward the stairs; they looked straight at the corner of the counter where she was standing.

Elena didn't run. She couldn't. Her body just went stiff, her arms hanging down at her sides like they belonged to a doll.

Julian stood up from the table. The chair didn't make a sound when he moved it; he just rose up like a shadow. Thomas and Marcus looked up too, their eyes following Julian’s gaze toward the kitchen.

"Well," Thomas said, a slow, ugly smile spreading across his red face. "Look what we have here."

Elena backed up until her heels hit the metal door. She reached behind her, her fingers searching for the handle, but there wasn't one, just a flat brass plate with a small keyhole in the middle. It was locked.

"Elena," Julian said. He walked toward her, his bare feet making that same silent movement across the concrete. He didn't look angry. He looked disappointed, the way he looked when she spilled the coffee on his sketchbook last month. "I told you to stay upstairs."

"Let me go," she whispered. Her voice didn't have any strength left. It sounded like a little girl's voice.

Thomas stood up too, leaning his hands on the table. "She's a pretty little thing, Julian. A bit pale, though. You should feed her some steak. Get some blood back in her cheeks."

"Get out, Thomas," Julian said. He didn't look back at the table. He kept his eyes on Elena, stopping three feet away from her. He was so big he blocked out the light from the big windows, leaving her in his shadow again. "You got your signatures. Take Marcus and go."

"We haven't had our drink yet," Thomas said, but Marcus was already gathering up the papers, sliding them into a leather folder with a quick, nervous motion.

"We're leaving," Marcus said to Thomas, his nasal voice sharp. "The Alpha said we're done."

Thomas muttered something under his breath, something about younger men having no manners, but he followed Marcus toward the front door. The sound of the digital keypad beeped four times, *4-9-2-1*, and then the heavy wood door clicked open, letting in a blast of cold, wet air from the driveway before it shut again.

The deadbolts turned automatically. *One.* *Two.* *Three.*

The house was completely quiet now. Just the hum of the heater and the sound of Julian’s breath, slow and steady in the dark kitchen.

He reached out and took her by the hand. His fingers were large, wrapping completely around her palm until she couldn't move her fingers. He pulled her away from the metal door, leading her back toward the center of the room where the steel table was.

"You heard the code," he said. It wasn't a question.

Elena didn't answer. She kept her eyes on his chest, on the gray wool of his sweater that had a small oil stain near the second button from when he’d been working on her portrait.

"It doesn't matter if you know it," Julian said, his voice dropping into that soft, low tone again. He lifted her chin with his free hand, forcing her to look up at him. Those golden rings in his eyes were still there, but they looked duller now, like old coins. "The gates at the bottom of the track are electric. They don't open without the transponder in the car. You can't walk out of here, Elena. There are thirty miles of woods between here and the highway, and the dogs live on the lower ridge."

"What are you?" she asked. The word felt heavy in her mouth, like a stone.

Julian looked at her for a long time. He didn't answer right away, his thumb brushing over her lower lip, which was dry and cracked from the cold air.

"I'm the man who bought you dinner," he said softly. "I'm the man who paints your eyes. Nothing else has changed, Elena. You still have your books. You still have your clothes. You’ll just live here now."

"Like a dog," she said.

"No," he said, his lips twitching into that small, cold smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Dogs are allowed outside."

He turned and led her back toward the iron stairs, his grip on her hand unyielding. Elena followed him, her bare feet cold against the gray concrete, her eyes fixed on the back of his broad shoulders as they went up into the dark hallway together.

The room at the end of the hall was colder now. The fog had completely cleared from the valley, leaving the mountains looking sharp and blue against the gray sky. Julian led her to the bed and sat her down on the edge of the mattress, then walked over to the blue suitcase and zipped it back up.

"I'll have Marcus bring up some fresh wood for the stove later," he said, walking toward the door. "Eat the sandwich. I don't like it when you're thin."

He shut the door. The brass latch clicked into place with a small, sharp sound that felt like the end of something.

Elena didn't move. She sat on the rough wool blanket, her hands in her lap, watching the light change on the dark glass window. The dashboard clock in his car had been wrong, but she knew it was later now, maybe seven or eight. The city would be busy. Clara would be at the clinic, talking to the other nurses about the traffic or the weather, completely unaware that her sister was sitting in a room at the edge of the world, watching the trees move in the wind.

She reached down and pulled her green sweater tight around her chest, burying her face in the collar. It still smelled like her apartment. But the smell was fading, replaced by the scent of the rough wool blanket and the cold concrete under her feet.

She stayed there until the room went dark again, the blue mountains turning black against the sky, and the only sound left was the wind howling through the pines outside the glass.