She hired him to find her sister. He planned to keep her instead.
Clara Hayes doesn't belong in Alaska. She belongs in Manhattan, behind a desk, managing other people's millions. But her sister vanished into the frozen wilderness outside a town called Blackwood, and Clara made a promise — the kind you don't break, the kind that drags you across a continent with nothing but guilt and a rolling suitcase.
Thorne is the only guide willing to take her into the deep backcountry. Silent. Massive. Built like the mountains he navigates. He knows these woods better than any man alive.
He also knows her sister left voluntarily. He watched her board the plane.
He says nothing. Because Thorne doesn't want the sister.
He wants Clara.
What begins as a rescue mission becomes a calculated descent into isolation. A sabotaged GPS. A shattered satellite phone. A storm that seals them inside a one-room cabin where the temperature drops to forty below and the only source of warmth is him.
As the days blur and the cold strips away everything she thought she knew about herself, Clara discovers that survival in the Alaskan wilderness requires surrender — to the elements, to her own darkest instincts, and to a man whose devotion is indistinguishable from obsession.
He built the trap. She became the reason he locked himself inside.
