24 | think it through

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SNOW FELL IN soft flakes, a gentle flutter that came to rest on the pine needles like a dusting of icing sugar. The wind had died down enough to let the flakes tumble down from the sky uninterrupted by the gusts that stopped them from settling. The world was quiet. The trees hushed their whispers, silenced by the snow that weighed down their branches and anchored their roots, and the birds had ceased their caws as though the whole forest was on high alert, listening to every word inside the cabin.

Ainslie was the first to burst into action, tugging on the boots she had shed in favour of the fire, and she threw open the back door. "Come on!" she cried out, jerking her thumb at the garage. "If there's anything, it's down there. Come on."

"Give me a sec, Ains," Adele said as Caleb gave her a hand, steadying her on his feet. He helped her put her coat back on and he winced when she did: he felt stab of pain in her lower back, her bones bruised and her skin dented, and he wished he could do more to help her than simply take her mind off the pain.

That wasn't easy when every conversation on the table only hurt her more.

"We're going to figure this out," Ainslie said. "I know it. I can feel it in my bones."

"You know what I can feel in my bones?"

"What?"

"Creighton's wrath," she said, her words as blunt as the thudding in her head. "We need to be careful."

"We are being careful: we're only going to your bunker. You're the one who wanted to go into town half an hour ago."

"Well, I'm kind of struggling to think straight at the moment," Adele said. "I really thought I'd heard it all when this one dropped the whole mate bombshell, but this is a whole other level. I can deal with having a mate. I don't think I can deal with being a killer and not even knowing it."

"You won't have to," Ainslie said. "Because it's a load of rubbish and there'll be a perfectly good explanation. One that may involve Creighton being sectioned for being a total psychopath who invented a sister for an excuse to hate you."

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