Edge of Collapse (Edge of Collapse, #1)

by Kyla Stone

COLD. The four basic principles to keeping warm. C—Keep clothing clean. O—Avoid overheating. L—Wear clothes loose and in layers. D—Keep clothing dry.

raised three fingers above the horizon line: a trick her father had taught her. Each three-finger segment represented approximately an hour. Still three hours until sundown.

He would make the little slut pay.

This is exactly the kinda shit someone like this would think, even though it makes absolutely zero sense.

He saw red. She’d touched his clothes. Rifled through his belongings. STOLEN from him.

Lol dude literally stole an entire human being. The hypocrisy and absurdity of this situation was realistic but also had me laughing at the ridiculousness of his thought patterns.

He wasn’t worried. He was a skilled tracker. A stalker who’d honed his craft over months and years and dozens of victims.

The temperature had to be hovering near zero,

It's obviously much lower. Wtf.

What had she been thinking earlier, hoping for someone to come rescue her? As soon as she saw another person, she was reduced to a quivering mess.

DAY THREE

three days ago.

You mean two days ago. If it started on the 24th and it's the 26th that is not three days ago. Day Three and three days ago do not mean the same thing.

sixty miles to his homestead

It had taken him three days to travel almost two hundred and forty miles. He could make it the rest of the way in four days of trudging through heavy snowfall—less

It was two days ago. So his home is like half a day away. But a bit more snow multiplies that by 8? We sure?

but he always verified every assumption.

He kept a rubber doorstop in his go-bag for extra security when he traveled anywhere away from home. He used it now, wedging the doorstop beneath the cabin door so it couldn’t be forced open.

Of course she’d known. Over a thousand marks she’d scraped onto that concrete wall, day after day after day after endless day. She knew she was well into the fifth year of captivity.

How? Her marks would indicate 3 years. How'd she get 5?

they wouldn’t be delivering life-saving medicine to pharmacies or doctors’ offices either. Or hospitals. How many hundreds of thousands of people were going to sicken and die over the next weeks and months as their meds ran out?

“There’s two kinds of fear. Healthy fear keeps you alive. It’s that gut instinct we women tend to ignore. You listen to that, you keep breathin’. Fear warns you to pay attention. To get out. To stand your ground and fight. Fear’s the body’s warnin’ system. Without it, we’re the deer trapped in the middle of the road stunned by oncomin’ headlights. Roadkill every time.” “And the other kind of fear?” Hannah asked hoarsely. “That second kinda fear takes hold of you and don’t let go. It sinks its claws in and turns you into somethin’ you’re not. That fear destroys you from the inside out.”

Hannah shoved an entire cracker into her mouth

Um... Are we only supposed to nibble crackers? Wtf? It's a ritz, it's not that big. Later she takes multiple bites to eat one and that sounded really weird and would've made me think she wasn't hungry at all, except we had just been told she was very hungry. That made the nibbling even more confusing.

He’d gotten into the pantry while she was cleaning the bathroom, eaten half a jar before she’d found him.

This is not the endearing memory she wants it to be. I know kids get into stuff, but peanut butter takes a long time to eat. It sticks in your mouth and you need water breaks. This just makes me wonder how neglectful she was. Watch your damn kid.

What I do now won’t even be my fault. You’re making me do this, little mouse.

Anyone who preyed on women was a coward. Human garbage. That’s why he’d fled. He was nothing more than a gutless cur who couldn’t fight a man face-to-face but crouched and skulked in the shadows, preying on the weak and defenseless.

A little note on pregnancy. Every woman experiences it differently. I carried small and was active up until the week I was due. My best friend threw up the entire nine months. My cousin never had cravings. I couldn’t stop eating chocolate. Some of my friends glowed with energy through most of their pregnancies, others struggled to just get through each day. Hannah’s struggles are uniquely hers, just as every pregnancy is unique.