Read a preview
Chapter 1
Chapter One: Boardroom Blizzard
Camille Hartman watched the animated sales graph climb like a sunrise. The projector’s hum joined the buzz in her skull. Twelve screens were open on her laptop. The boardroom was warm, too warm, the kind of artificial heat that made winter feel like a rumor.
“We’re on track to triple Q4,” she said, steady as the slide changed. She’d been steady for three years—through fundraising rounds, launch nights, and a thousand fifteen-minute “quick calls” that bled into dawn. Steady was her skill. Steady was her armor.
An executive coughed. Another glanced at his phone. Camille kept going. She lifted the remote for the final slide. A golden bow wrapped around a line of text: Holiday Blitz Strategy.
The letters blurred.
She blinked hard. The edges of the room caught fire, not from flames but from bright, floating sparks. Her chest tightened. Her hand, the one with the scar from building her first prototype, shook so violently the remote fell, a tiny clatter that sounded like a dropped dish in a silent house.
“Cam?” Her COO, Terri, stood.
Camille smiled, or tried to. “Just—” She didn’t finish. The sparks filled her vision. Breath wouldn’t come.
Then the world went soft, and she went out.
When she woke, she was on the conference room carpet with her blazer folded under her head like a pillow. Terri knelt beside her with a plastic water bottle. The board chair, Harold, stood at the window, looking older than he had an hour ago.
“You fainted,” Terri said gently.
“I’m fine,” Camille whispered. She pushed herself up. The room tilted. She gripped the table and kept her face even. “We need to finalize the holiday placements.”
“Camille,” Harold said, not unkindly. “No.”
She blinked at him. “No?”
“The board convened while Terri called your doctor,” he said. “Two weeks. Effective immediately. Paid sabbatical.”
“Christmas is our busiest—”
“Two weeks,” Terri repeated. “Or we make it longer. Non-negotiable.”
“I don’t…” Camille touched her throat and found it sore. She noticed, in a far corner of her mind, how quiet the room was without the hum of her laptop. “I’m not a sabbatical person.”
“Then try being one,” Terri said. “Just for the holidays.”
She looked at the slide frozen on the screen—Holiday Blitz Strategy—and felt, for the first time, the weight of the words. Blitz. Attack. Crush. Win. No wonder she was tired.
She swallowed. “Fine,” she said. “Fourteen days. Then I’m back.”
Harold nodded with relief. “Go somewhere quiet. No phones. No email.”
“Sure,” she said, already opening a browser on her phone with her thumb.
Terri reached out and gently turned the phone face down.
Later, alone in her office with a headache pounding like a second heart, Camille typed: “Isolated retreat winter.” Photos of spas, snow-laden lodges, and sleek wellness centers filled her screen. She scrolled, unwilling to choose, until a small listing caught her eye.
Reindeer Ridge Ranch—Family-run reindeer rescue and winter cabins. Northern Wyoming. No Wi-Fi. Wood heat. Snow guaranteed.
No Wi-Fi. It made her itch. It also made her feel, strange as it was, safe.
She booked the only cabin with a click, shut her laptop, and went home to pack.
