I smile at him. He’s so fucking handsome standing there in the water up to his knees. He’s wearing a pair of jeans and nothing else. His chest is muscular and tanned to just the right level of bronze. The river splashes up against his legs and some of it reaches his lower torso. I follow the drips as they make their way into his waistband, the weight of the water tugging it down a little, revealing that little happy trail of hair that I love so much.

“Hey, Syd?” he says with a grin. “Eyes on my eyes.”

I do find his eyes. They are a dark green from where I stand. But they are bright in all the ways that count. “I’m ready,” I say.

He grins at me and casts out his fly, talking me through all his motions. I can’t even begin to understand what he’s trying to teach me. Or, I mean, I could. Probably. But he’s so handsome, I lose all thoughts of fishing and concentrate on how his muscles move as he weaves the line back and forth into the air.

A fish takes his bait almost immediately—this place is a fly-fisherman’s wet dream—and then he’s laughing. “That was too easy. Now you try.” He reels in and unhooks the fish and tosses it onto the bank, and then extends his hand, asking me to join him.

I take it and let him guide me out onto the rocky shoreline of the Yellowstone River. The water isn’t too deep, but it runs fast up here.

I slip on a rock, but Garrett catches me before I fall. “Easy,” he says, as I gather myself. “The water’s too cold for a swim today, Syd.”

“Sorry,” I say, straightening out my lifejacket.

“You OK?” he asks me in that gentle voice he uses when he knows I’m out of my comfort zone. “Ready for this?”

I nod. “I am.” And then I laugh. “I’m tired of watching. Well…” I blush and correct myself. “Not really tired of watching you fish. But it really does look fun.”

“It is,” he says, kissing me on the cheek.

The blackness is back and my throat is drier than ever after the memory of the cool river. I reach up and touch my throbbing face and realize I’m no longer tethered down.

Someone was in here with me. Who? I rack my brain. How many enemies do I have?

My laugh bursts out into the darkness and then resonates in my head like an echo as the stillness settles back in. The blackness is overwhelming and my breathing spikes as the familiar panic starts to take over.

No. Not now, Syd. “Hush,” I tell myself. “Hush.”

I take long draws of air into my lungs, willing the fear away like a pro. I don’t know how long it takes for my own heavy breathing to allow the small sound to creep into my consciousness, but one second it’s not there, and the next it is.

Dripping water. My throat tightens up as I imagine what it would be like to drink again.

I sit up and stave off the wave of dizziness, but my head spins for minutes before I can swing my legs over the side of the hard wooden platform. I lean over and close my eyes tightly, not sure why this helps, since I can’t see anything anyway. But it does help.

The dripping is coming from the right. I reach down with a foot and find the floor, then drop to my knees and crawl in that direction. I reach out in front of me, but the room is empty save for a drain in the middle of it. Why would there be a drain here?

I let it go. I have no clue. Maybe I’m in a slaughterhouse and they hose the room down? So I just crawl. Nothing to bump into until I get to a wall. The dripping is to my left now, and I let the wall guide me until I reach out and feel the unmistakable cold of a porcelain sink.

I use the lip of the sink to stand myself up and feel around for the source of water. There are no knobs, just a single spigot with a steady drip.

When you have nothing, you take what you can get. So I lean my head into the basin and open my mouth. It takes whole minutes to let enough water pool inside my mouth to swallow it. But it’s the best feeling in the world when my constricted throat opens up. I repeat this again and again, and then my legs are shaking from standing so long. I slump to the floor and take it in.

Concrete. Not the smooth concrete you find in a home. Rough, unfinished concrete like a sidewalk. Or a slaughterhouse. And very cold.

The wind whips outside. I listen for any other sounds but all that comes is a chorus of howling in the distance. Not the high-pitched yipping of coyotes, but the low, deep, mournful howl of wolves.

I swallow down the fear. But there’s no denying it. I’m somewhere no one will find me.

The wall is behind me. Every room has four walls. So I get on my hands and knees and begin to crawl along it. My fingertips find a few dried leaves as I make my way forward. Webs too. And when I stop crawling for a moment, I hear a scuttling sound. Bugs, probably. I crawl a few more paces and then scare the shit out of myself when my hand hits a metal dish and it clangs loudly, breaking the silence. I sit back on my butt and close my eyes, my heart once again beating fast.

And then I bend over and reach around until I find the dish. There is nothing in there, but when I bring it to my face I can smell it.

You don’t grow up in Wyoming and never smell the stench of house mice. There are far more house mice in my home state than there are homes. I toss the dish aside. If there was food in there, it’s gone now. Eaten by the rodents.

The dish, the water dripping, and the discovery that I am untethered is my signal to call out in the dark. Who’s there? That’s a good one. What do you want? is another.

But I’m not the kind of girl who cries out pointless questions.

A shuffling noise off to my left stops me dead.

Someone is in here with me.

Whoever it is made that noise on purpose, trying to make me react. But I’m not the kind of girl who reacts, either.

Instead I stand up and press my body against the wall. My heart rate jacks up again—anything seems to trigger it right now—and I have to hold my breath to make the room go silent so I can listen.

“I know you’re there.” It’s my only option. Whoever it is is waiting for me to react. But it’s a statement, not a question, so that puts me on the offensive.

I wait in the stillness, my arms at my side, my eyes closed so I can concentrate on listening.

But I stand there so long I grow tired, and after some indeterminate amount of time, I slump to the floor. My head becomes heavy and I realize my mistake too late. The water was drugged.

I fall asleep wondering why they’d bother letting me wake up if they were only going to put me back to sleep again.

Garrett and I are in the woods now. Not on the river. It’s fall, which is winter up here in Montana, because summer is absolutely over by late August. I look over at him in his green camo camp gear, then look down at myself. We match and that makes me happy for some reason.

He flashes me hand signals and I nod, moving off to the left of him. There’s a moose up ahead. We’ve been tracking it for most of the day. If we can get a moose, we’re set for the winter.

Those are Garrett’s words in my head, but they are mine now too. Because we need food.

I move off, as silent as I can, as Garrett does the same in the opposite direction. The moose is directly in front of us, hidden by a thick group of pines.

A twig snaps, and for a second I panic. But it’s not me. It was Garrett and the moose is on the move.

Don’t let it get away, Syd. Garrett’s voice in my head again. You know what will happen if you do.

We’ll starve out here. We are sixty miles from the nearest ranch. We have a snow machine but no gas. We have firewood, but no food. We have water. That’s about it.