Marked by Wolves, Owned by the Mafia

POV: Maya Winters

The rearview mirror had become the most terrifying object in Maya Winters's life.

She checked it again, and again, because three days of driving had wired the reflex into her nervous system like a survival instinct. The dark highway was behind her, pine trees pressing close on both sides. There were no headlights, no silver Audi, or Marcus.

She released a breath through her teeth and made herself keep her hands loose on the wheel.

The mountain road had narrowed forty miles back, switchbacking upward through forest thick enough to swallow sound, and the Honda's heater was losing its argument with the November cold coming through the door seal. The GPS had given up signal twenty minutes ago. She was navigating from memory of the printed confirmation email folded in the cupholder that read: "Sanctuary Resort, Cascade Territory, Staff Arrival Welcome", and the conviction that remote was exactly what she needed. Remote meant she would be harder to find, and no one who knew her name.

Three days since Seattle. Maybe he won't think to look this far north.

She had been telling herself that every night at whatever roadside motel she stopped at. She was starting to believe it, which was either a good sign or a dangerous one.

The memory surfaced without invitation: the weight of Marcus's hand on her arm, his thumb pressing into the soft tissue just above her elbow. He held her arm with enough pressure to not hurt, but to remind her that he could. She had stopped being able to tell the difference between those two things somewhere around month eight, and that terrified her more than the pressure itself.

You'll never leave me.

She had not answered him. Instead, she smiled, nodded, and three hours later she was in the car with her emergency bag that she had packed in secret over six weeks ago, and the phone she had bought with cash. The last call she'd received on her old number was from an unknown caller two days ago, and like the calls before it, she had not picked up.

The trees broke open.

Maya pulled her foot off the accelerator without meaning to, the car coasting forward on its own momentum while she stared through the windshield at what had appeared in the clearing ahead.

Sanctuary Resort was enormous.

It was three stories tall, made of Timber and stone covered porticos that wrapped the entire front face and warm light spilling from windows tall enough to frame the mountains behind the building. The parking area curved in a gracious arc, lit by low copper lanterns, and even at seven in the evening with the cold pressing down and her whole body stiff from the drive, the place looked like the answer to her problems.

She sat in the lot for a moment after she turned off the engine. The silence was extraordinary. Wind rustled through pine needles, the rush of distant water somewhere, and the tick of the cooling engine were the only sounds she could hear. There was no city noise, and most importantly, no one knew she was here. She pressed her forehead briefly to the steering wheel, then got out of the car.

The lobby was warmer than she expected. A huge fireplace dominated the far wall, it was not decorative, but genuinely massive, built for mountain winters. The light from it moved across a floor of dark stone, thick rugs and very expensive furniture. Antler chandeliers hung from the vaulted ceiling. A reception desk of polished pine stretched across the right side of the room, and the woman behind it was already smiling.

"Welcome to Sanctuary. Checking in?"

"Maya Winters. I have a reservation." She set her driver's license on the counter, then caught herself checking the entrance behind her from habit and made herself stop. "I also saw something on your website about a staff vacancy. A guest services coordinator?"

The receptionist's expression brightened with the particular warmth of someone who has been short-staffed for a while. "We do have that open. I can leave your information with our manager." She began tapping at her keyboard. "He may come by tonight, actually he tends to do a walkthrough."

Across the lobby, a man was standing at a reading table near the east corridor, reviewing a folder of documents. He was tall, dark-haired, wearing a suit that cost more than Maya's car, and he was not, in any immediately visible way, paying attention to her.

She felt his eyes on her, but it was not the same cold weight she had spent two years cataloging. This was something different. She felt warmth spread over her as his gaze came up from the folder and found hers across forty feet of firelit lobby.

He had dark eyes, italian features, and a quality of stillness about him that had nothing to do with relaxation.

She looked away first. She always looked away first now.

"Everything's ready for you," the receptionist said. "Room 14. Marco will take you up."

The bellhop was young, cheerful, and clearly happy to have something to do. He carried her bag without being asked and kept up a light narration about the mountain, the trails, the restaurant's hours, the view from the east-facing rooms at sunrise. She half-listened and watched where she was walking and found herself genuinely, unexpectedly grateful for the sound of another person's uncomplicated voice.

At the staircase landing, he paused.

"Oh, one thing." His cheerfulness shifted with a seriousness that sat oddly on his young face. "You saw the beautiful forest out there as you came in. The trails inside the resort boundary are all marked. But past the boundary stones, especially after dark..." He seemed to choose his next words with care. "The locals say the forest... It's safer to always stay on the marked paths."

Maya looked at him. "Safer from what?"

He smiled again, but the smile came a half-second too late. "It is just local superstition. You know how it is with old mountains."

Room 14 was on the second floor with a window that looked north, over the treetops and up the slope toward the ridge. The room had a king sized bed, a stone fireplace, a bathroom with a soaking tub and cedar walls. She stood in the middle of it with her bag at her feet and registered, for the first time in months, that her shoulders had dropped.

She unpacked methodically, everything she owned fit in a single duffel and a backpack, a fact she refused to feel sad about. While she hung her two good shirts in the narrow wardrobe, the sleeve of her left arm pulled back, and she caught a glimpse of the small mark on the inside of her wrist. She paused as she looked at it.

It had been there as long as she could remember. It looked like a faint discoloration, no bigger than a thumbprint, shaped vaguely like a crescent. She had asked her mother about it once, as a child. Her mother had gone very still and said, Some marks are just birthmarks, Maya, in a voice that closed the subject permanently.

She pulled her sleeve down and finished unpacking.

Afterward, she moved towards the window, and watched the last of the light drain out of the sky over the northern tree line. The forest below the ridge was already dark, dense, and impenetrable from this distance, the kind of darkness that had depth to it.

That was when she saw them.

Two points of amber light, low in the trees, twenty meters from the resort's perimeter. It was not a flashlight. It also did not look like an animal's eyes catching passing brightness, because there was no passing brightness. They simply existed in the shadow, and they looked like they were pointed directly at her window.

She blinked, and they were gone. All she saw was wind moving through branches.

Maya stood at the window for another moment. Then she told herself, carefully and with conviction, that the drive had been long, she was exhausted and the forest played tricks with light. She told herself this was the kind of old mountain where you saw shapes in the dark and mistook them for things.

She drew the curtain.

As she sat on the edge of the bed, elbows on her knees, she noticed that for the first time in seventy-two days, the space behind her ribs felt like empty space rather than a held fist. She ate the granola bar from her bag and checked her blocked contacts list out of habit. Marcus's name sat there inert and harmless, unable to reach her. She was asleep before she finished the thought that followed it.

What Maya did not know, lying in that warm dark room, was that the amber lights in the treeline were not her imagination, had never been her imagination, and would be back the following night. What she did not know was that the man who had looked at her across the lobby was watching her room number on a security monitor right. 

Underneath the resort bar downstairs, behind three bottles of aged whiskey and a stack of seasonal cocktail menus, there was a framed photograph she had walked past on her way to the stairs. She would notice it eventually, and when she did, what she would see would rearrange everything she thought she knew about why she had ended up here, because, the woman in the photograph had Maya's eyes.