Chapter 1

I died just outside my own front door, frozen solid in the Colorado snow.

The last thing I saw was Ethan' s face, my boyfriend, framed in the window of my mountain cabin. He was warm. He was eating my food. He watched me scratch at the door until my fingers bled, then he just turned away.

His family, the Scotts, were with him. His father, a man who smelled like stale beer and sweat, had laughed. His mother, a woman whose passive aggression could cut glass, just adjusted the curtains to block me out. His younger brother probably broke something of mine to celebrate.

They left me to die. And I did.

Then, I jolted awake.

The air was warm. The sheets on my king-sized bed were 1200-thread-count Egyptian cotton. Sunlight streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows, showing the pristine, green and brown slopes of the Rockies. My cabin. My perfect, luxurious cabin near Aspen.

It was clean. Untouched. Not the pigsty the Scotts had turned it into.

On the large flat-screen TV across the room, a NOAA weather alert banner scrolled across the bottom of the screen.

"UNPRECEDENTED POLAR VORTEX EVENT EXPECTED TO HIT THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN REGION IN TEN DAYS. RESIDENTS ARE ADVISED TO PREPARE FOR RECORD-BREAKING LOW TEMPERATURES AND BLIZZARD CONDITIONS."

Ten days.

I was back. I had ten days.

A wave of nausea hit me, and I ran to the bathroom, throwing up into the toilet. The memory of starvation was so real I could feel my stomach eating itself. The memory of the cold was so intense my teeth started chattering, even in the heated room.

I looked at myself in the mirror. Gabrielle Smith, 24 years old. Healthy. Alive. Rich. My tech-mogul parents were always too busy for me, but they made sure I never wanted for anything. This cabin, with its fallout-shelter-grade basement, was a testament to their paranoid generosity.

Last time, that generosity got me killed. This time, it would be my weapon.

I walked back into the bedroom, my bare feet sinking into the plush carpet. I went to the kitchen and pulled a bottle of expensive, filtered water from the fridge. I drank the whole thing in one go, the cold liquid a shock to my system. It was the most incredible thing I had ever tasted.

Then, my phone rang.

The custom ringtone, a cheesy pop song Ethan loved, sent a jolt of pure fear through me. It was a Pavlovian response, a leftover from a life of trying to please him, of dreading his moods.

I remembered his call from the last life.

"Hey, babe! Guess what? My parents want to meet you! And with this crazy storm coming, I was thinking, why don't we all come up to your cabin for a little family vacation? Get away from the city, you know?"

I had been so excited. So naive. I agreed instantly. I even remembered asking him how he knew about the cabin' s remote location, since I' d never told him the exact address.

"Oh, Molly told me all about it," he'd said casually. "She said it was your secret getaway spot."

Molly. My "best friend." My co-worker at the non-profit where I volunteered to feel like I was doing something with my life. Molly, who listened to all my problems. Molly, who was secretly sleeping with my boyfriend and feeding him information about my wealth.

The phone kept ringing.

The fear was gone now, replaced by something cold and hard. Fury.

I took a deep breath, smoothed my face into a mask of sweet, simple Gabby, and answered the phone.