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Cujo’s familiar pant receded, leaving me to handle the assailant all on my own.

“Get up, Russo,” he commanded, yanking me to my feet by my hair. A man. Definitely a man, and a strong one, too.

Everything hurt so bad I couldn’t help but cry out. “What do you want? Leave me alone!”

“We already told you what we want, but you couldn’t keep your nose out of our business,” the man told me, but I couldn’t make any sense of it.

“Again,” another voice added. This one seemed to belong to a woman.

“You’re coming with us,” the man said, yanking me again.

Everything looked as if it were under water or part of a mirage. I strained to make out the features of either thug, but one them pushed a soft knit skullcap onto my head and yanked it down over my eyes.

“You move that, you’re dead,” the woman said, and I knew better than to test her on that.

“March,” the man said, pushing me from behind. The woman walked just before me.

We turned around and headed back through the woods toward that lonesome cabin. Was this how I died?

Marching blindly through the cold at the hands of an unknown pair who hated me enough to kidnap me? Not just once, but twice now?

I had no doubt in my mind that this was the same duo that had abducted Mags just a month earlier at the Holiday Spectacular downtown. She said they called her Russo and warned her to keep her nose out of their business, just like these two were doing with me now.

What did they have to do with the mayor and his missing golden retriever, though? I’d already seen that he’d taken the dog himself. That neither of them had ever been in any real danger.

Yet here I was, blindfolded and being marched to an unknown end. My bones rattled from the icy cold. My heart hammered with fear—too bad it wasn’t quite enough to get me warm.

If I ran, I wouldn’t get far—not with these two around and with my vision already so disoriented, whether or not I was blindfolded.

And if I stopped moving, who knew what they would do to punish me?

This left no option but to comply, so back to the cabin we went.

Sometime later they shattered the window, then unlocked the door and shoved me inside. The warmth of the fire immediately put me at ease despite the ongoing danger.

My kidnappers whispered hurriedly between themselves before finally tugging off the cap that had blinded me.

Marco the golden retriever stood nearby, his tail covering his privates as he whined questioningly. “Who are you?” he asked in a friendly yet fearful voice. “Why have you come to my playhouse?”

I wished I could answer him, but I still didn’t know who my attackers were or what they wanted. I had to play it safe. So I addressed them instead, hoping Marco would understand.

“Why are you here? Why am I here? What do you want?” I asked the questions in rapid fire, my jaw throbbing from where I’d been hit, blood gushing from my nose into my mouth. It was probably broken for all I knew. Maybe Mags could teach me a makeup trick or two if I even managed to get out of this alive.

But now I saw clearly that the first of my captors was a woman in her mid-fifties with elegantly coiffed hair and an expensive looking jacket. She seemed familiar, though I couldn’t exactly place her.

The man stood in front of the fire with his back to us, saying nothing as he let his partner make an attempt to answer my questions.

“You already know who we are. Why you’re here has yet to be determined. What we’ll do with you… Huh.” She laughed but didn’t bother finishing her answer.

I swallowed down a nervous lump that had formed in my throat. Were they really crazy enough to kill me? For what? Sure I’d put a few bad guys behind bars in my time as a PI, but—

“What are you thinking, Russo?” the man said, turning toward me suddenly.

Oh. This face I knew very well. His wrinkled skin had been pulled taut from an apparent cosmetic surgery. The white hair and strong jaw, though, looked the same as ever.

“Mr. Thompson?” I asked as all the pieces began clicking into place. Could it really be my former boss, the partner at the law firm now headed by my boyfriend, Charles Longfellow, III?

“The very same,” he said with a hideous smile.

“Why would you do this?” I squinted my eyes and willed myself to see anything but the horrible scene unfolding right before me.“And shouldn’t you be in jail?”

He chuckled again, this time bitterly. “You don’t do a very good job following up on your cases. Do you think they were going to hold me because some lady got hurt by her cats? No. My lawyer got me out of that one with a slap on the wrist and an accidental death decision. Minimal time served. Now I’m back, and I’m not leaving again.“

It still didn’t make sense. “But what do you want? Why come back here? Why follow me?”

“You think we followed you?” the woman asked, shaking her head. “Think again. You just happened to show up.”

“I don’t understand.”

“What’s new,” Thompson sneered. “You were a lousy paralegal, so it makes sense that now you’re a lousy P.I.”