New The first thing Dr. Nathan Pierce saw when he opened his front door was a little girl dying on his porch.

They laid Sarah on the cushioned bench in the back of the warm snowcat. Ray fired up the engine and reversed out of the yard just as the cabin's roof collapsed in a shower of sparks and black smoke.

Nathan immediately went to work. He opened his advanced medical kit, placing a oxygen mask over Sarah’s face and starting a fast warm IV line to combat her severe shock and trauma. Her heart rate was dangerously unstable—arrhythmia caused by extreme hypothermia and head trauma.

"Hold on, Sarah," Nathan urged, monitoring her pulse with his fingers on her wrist. "You stay with me. Do you hear me? You don't get to die today."

"Marcus..." Sarah murmured through the mask. "He took... the truck..."

Ray glanced in the rear-view mirror. "Doctor! The blue pickup just pulled out of the side trail! He's heading up the ridge road toward your estate! He knows the kids are up there!"

Nathan’s blood ran cold. Marcus knew he was cornered. With his home burned and the law coming, a desperate, dangerous man had nothing left to lose. He was heading for the glass house—heading for Lily, Owen, Ethan, and Rosa.

"Drive faster, Ray!" Nathan ordered, his voice cold and deadly. "Push this machine to its limit!"

The snowcat roared up the winding mountain trail, its heavy tracks tearing through the drifts. Ahead, they could see the blue pickup truck fishtailing wildly on the icy road, its rear wheels spinning out as it tried to force its way up the incline.

Suddenly, the truck hit a massive drift created by the night's storm. The wheels spun fruitlessly, shooting rooster-tails of white snow into the air, before the engine gave a loud clunk and died, smoking heavily.

Marcus jumped out of the cab, brandishing a heavy hunting knife, and began trudging through the deep snow on foot, taking the private walking path that cut directly up toward the glass mansion's rear terrace.

"He's going through the woods!" Ray yelled, slowing the snowcat down behind the stalled truck.

"Take care of Sarah!" Nathan commanded, jumping out of the snowcat before it had even come to a complete stop. "Keep her warm and stabilized! I'm going after him!"

"Nathan, wait for the sheriff!" Ray shouted, but Nathan was already gone, plunging into the thick snow forest, following the deep boot-tracks left by Marcus Kane.

The trees groaned under the weight of ice. Nathan ran through the knee-deep drifts, driven by a raw, ancestral instinct to protect his family. For seven years, he had lived as a ghost in an empty house, surrounded by dead luxury. Today, he was a brother and an uncle defending the lives that truly mattered.