by Lukens, Mark
What if Joe Blackhorn didn’t want to help them? What if they would be putting the old man in danger just by trying to find him?
But what choice did she have? She had to help David, not just for his own sake, but for everyone’s sake. This monster wouldn’t stop after David was dead; it would just keep killing and killing, and there would be no way to stop it once David was dead.
This was their only option, and that meant traveling south. And since this road was the only one that led south around here, they had no choice but to go right through the town of Cody’s Pass again.
It seemed likely that cops in this county would still be on the lookout for the bank robbers, but maybe they would be widening their search now, figuring that the criminals were already long gone from the area. But she and Cole still needed to be careful; they needed to be smart.
It would probably be better to drive right on through Cody’s Pass, but the roads were still so bad and they needed to find a vehicle they could drive out of the town; they couldn’t use this snowmobile all the way to the next town with the three of them on it. And they desperately needed a few hours to rest, and they needed some food.
Stella’s face was cold, but at least Cole was blocking a lot of the wind with his body as he drove the snowmobile. He drove fast, the trees and hills of snow flying past them in a blur. They had grabbed Frank’s hat and gloves for David while they were boarding up the windows last night in their preparations to leave the cabin. They’d also found another hat and pair of thick gloves in Tom Gordon’s bedroom for her. But even with the extra gloves and hats, it still didn’t feel like enough protection against the biting wind as they raced down the road.
She watched Cole’s wide back, his gloved hands gripping the handlebar grips, and her thoughts turned to him. What was his next move? How long was he going to stay with them? She suspected his primary goal had been escaping the cabin and the terror that had stalked them. Now that they were away from the cabin, what would he do? He had a good share of the stolen money shoved down into his socks and coat pockets. Would he just ditch them now or would he travel with them part of the way? He also still had his gun. Would he hurt them? Would he demand the money back that she had stuffed into her own coat pockets and socks? He seemed like a good man deep down inside … he hadn’t turned on her and David in the cabin when he’d had so many chances to. But she had to remind herself that he was a career criminal, and she would have to be wary of him. She would have to be ready for anything.
She didn’t really expect Cole to go all the way down to New Mexico with them. This wasn’t his fight. Yeah, he’d lost his little brother at the cabin, but this monster was too big to fight. Too dangerous. But she also didn’t expect him to ditch them just yet. At the very least, she figured that she and David were good cover for him to get out of this area of Colorado. Once they were farther south, he might leave them, but she would make damn sure that he didn’t hurt them. She hadn’t gone through everything that she and David had gone through just to have Cole put a bullet in their heads once he felt he was safe.
She didn’t really have any other choice than to trust Cole for now, but she needed to think of things from his point of view. He was a man wanted for robbery and murder. She’d seen his face, she knew his name, she knew details about the bank robbery. He would ultimately be a suspect in the pile of burnt bodies left behind at the cabin. It was only a matter of time before the police got to the burning cabin, discovered the bodies and realized that at least one of the criminals was still at large in the area. It was only a matter of time before the local police, the state police, and maybe even the FBI, were combing the area for him. And that would make Cole a desperate man … and desperate men were dangerous.
She would hold onto the gun Cole had given her back in the cabin, and she would hold onto some of the money stuffed down into her socks. If Cole wanted to leave, then fine. But she wasn’t going to be stranded with David. She wasn’t going to let that happen to them ever again.
CHAPTER 15
Cody’s Pass, Colorado
Cole pulled the snowmobile up into some trees off from the side of the road and drove the vehicle farther into the woods, whipping around the trees at a nerve-racking speed, but also with expertise. They traveled through the trees for ten minutes until they came to a ridge. He slowed the snowmobile down and stopped it right at the edge of the ridge. He cut the motor and the only sound they heard was the freezing wind whipping through the tree branches.
Stella pried her cramped fingers off of Cole’s arms and got off the snowmobile. Her boots sank down into the snow up to her calves. She flexed her fingers inside her gloves, and then shook her hands, trying to force the blood back into them. Her muscles were sore, and she was running on fumes now, running on the last reserves of adrenaline that she had.
Cole got off the snowmobile and lifted up the pair of goggles from his eyes. He’d swiped them from Tom Gordon’s garage this morning before they left. He walked over to the edge of the small ridge and stood beside a pine tree. He stared down the hill and then looked back at Stella and motioned for her to join him.
Stella stuffed her hands down into her coat pockets. She closed her fingers around the gun’s handle nestled in the right front pocket. Her gloves were bulky, but she would try like hell to shoot Cole if he tried anything. He might try to push her down this ridge, or club her with the butt of his pistol, or even shoot her right here in the woods.
“The town’s down there,” Cole told her as she walked towards him. He watched her. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said as she got closer to him, seemingly reading her mind.
When Stella stood beside Cole she saw that what she’d thought was a ridge was really just the sharp crest of a hill that sloped gently down into a massive clearing below. The town of Cody’s Pass was nestled down in that clearing between the mountains.
“I’m not going to hurt you or David,” Cole said again. “I wish you would believe that. If I wanted to hurt you two, I would’ve done it back at the cabin, or at any point between there and here.”
Stella nodded, but she wouldn’t let herself become too relaxed around him. He could be lying just so she and David would go along with him and provide cover until they were far enough south where he could get rid of them. He was a thief and possibly a murderer, so lying wouldn’t be out of the question for him.
“We’ve got a few options here,” Cole said. “After we robbed the bank we stashed our snowmobiles a few miles back in the woods, about a mile or so off the road.”
“I don’t know how to ride one of those things,” Stella said right away, lying to Cole.
He stared at her for a few seconds, and she could tell that he didn’t believe her. But he didn’t challenge her on it. He looked back down at the town below them. “It’s too risky, anyway. Those snowmobiles might’ve been discovered by now. Cops might even be watching them.”
Stella looked down at the town. Even though the town of Cody’s Pass was in a clearing, a lot of the suburbs were built on the foothills of the mountains surrounding it. Roads wound up into those foothills, meandering through the buildings and houses where lights burned in a lot of the windows. The traffic lights blinked from green to yellow to red and then back to green along the main road through the town and on several of the major cross streets. Apparently the storm hadn’t knocked out the electricity to the town, or the power had already been restored.
“We need some kind of vehicle to get out of here,” Cole said. “Preferably some kind of truck, since the roads still look pretty bad. Looks like some plowing has been done on the main roads down there.”
Stella just nodded.
“We need a place to stay for the afternoon. Maybe even the night.”
“There’s a motel in town,” Stella said. “You can’t see it from here, but it’s way down that main road a ways. I stopped there for a few hours on my way into town. We slept in my truck for a few hours until it got too cold for us.”
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p; Cole seemed to consider the idea. “Motel could be kind of risky. Maybe we could find an empty house.”
Stella didn’t think any of the houses were going to be empty.
Cole thought it over for a moment. “A motel could work if you and David checked in by yourselves, and then I could sneak in later.”
Stella just nodded again.
“We’ll ride down closer to the town and stash the snowmobile in those bushes over there.” He pointed at a stand of brush and trees far off in the distance. “Then we’ll walk to this motel you’re talking about. Use the cash you have on you for the room. But first we’ll stop at a store, pick up a few things. We need some food and water. And we need some rest. And lastly, we need some information. I need to see what the weather’s going to be like and find out what the cops know about us so far. Then we’ll work on getting a vehicle and moving south again.”
Stella didn’t ask how Cole planned on procuring a vehicle. Maybe he would pay cash for one at a car lot, or buy one for sale in someone’s yard. But it seemed more likely that he would steal one. Or maybe even carjack one, like he’d done to her and David.
If they could make it to the motel without the police stopping them, maybe they would have a few hours to rest, clean up, eat, and make some plans. But they couldn’t wait too long. The police were going to ramp up their search in the next few hours when they got to the burnt cabin and saw the dead bodies inside of it.
And they couldn’t forget about the Ancient Enemy chasing them.
No, they could never forget about that.
CHAPTER 16
Outside Cody’s Pass, Colorado
Something woke Nora up out of a sound sleep this morning, something that she could’ve sworn sounded like some kind of explosion. It was far enough away to sound like a muffled thump in the distance, but she felt the explosion rumbling through her house, along the floor, rattling the old bones of her home. She got up and wrapped herself in her heavy robe and slipped her socked feet into her favorite slippers.
She’d always been an early riser, so she would’ve normally been awake an hour later anyway. It was almost dawn and the sky was beginning to lighten up in the east. She walked through her house, turning on a few lights along the way, still trying to be quiet because her teenage son and daughter were probably still sleeping. She walked through the kitchen to the sliding glass doors that led out onto the wraparound wooden deck outside the house.
Nora looked out the sliding glass doors and saw the smoke rising up over the trees towards the northeastern end of her property. The smoke was black, but she could still make it out against the dark sky that was rapidly lightening with the rising sun.
“What are you looking at?”
Nora jumped and turned around. Her daughter Nicole stood right behind her. She was dressed in wool PJs and her hair was messed up from sleep.
“I heard something,” Nora told her. “I was just checking to see what it was.”
“I heard it, too,” Nicole said, knuckling sleep from one eye. She was fifteen years old, but Nora still thought of her as her little girl. “What was it?”
“I don’t know, but there’s something on fire a few miles away.”
Nicole moved closer to look out the sliding glass doors, getting close to the cold glass so she could see the smoke in the sky just out of the edge of her vision.
Nora hadn’t been sleeping too well these last few nights, not with news that dangerous criminals were still on the loose—the bank robbers who had killed poor old Jed.
Poor Jed. She hadn’t been great friends with the old man, but her husband had known him. And now both Jed and her husband were gone.
She thought of her husband, dead six months now. But at least she didn’t live here alone—she still had her children with her. She had Nicole, and she still had Travis, her son, who was nineteen years old now. He hadn’t gone into the military or off to college, he seemed content to work part-time at the Olsen’s farm. He didn’t really seem like he knew what he wanted to do with his life, and she wasn’t going to push him. Travis wasn’t like Nicole, who already had her life mapped out. She made straight A’s in school (another difference between her and Travis), and she wanted to get a scholarship to go to a good college. She wanted to be a psychiatrist.
Nora was proud of her daughter. But she was proud of Travis, too. She was sure he would find his way in life soon enough. She was in no hurry for Travis to leave. Now that her husband was gone, it was comforting having a man in the house still. She loved having her son around. She felt safer with him here. She knew the day would come when he would leave, and the day would come when Nicole went off to college. It wouldn’t be fair to hold either one of them back, but she dreaded the thought of being all alone in this house deep in the Colorado woods. She had loved it here when her husband was still alive, but these last six months since he’d been gone had been miserable for her. Every room, every stick of furniture, every TV show, every tool in the garage, his truck (that Travis drove now)—they were all reminders of him, constant and painful reminders. Maybe it was time to think about selling the place. She knew that Travis had hoped to have the property handed down to him one day, so she would need to discuss it with him. Maybe if he agreed to keep living here with her …
Normally she would’ve started a pot of coffee as soon as she’d gotten up, and then she would’ve turned on the TV, maybe to the local news or Fox News. Maybe she would’ve even got some breakfast going by now. But instead, she walked to the front door in the living room and grabbed her heavy coat from the old-fashioned coat rack. She also kicked off her slippers and slid her feet down into a pair of tall rubber boots that were three sizes too big for her … her husband’s old rubber boots that she couldn’t bear to throw out.
“What are you doing?” Nicole asked.
“I want to get a better look at it,” Nora answered as she walked back across the room to the sliding glass door.
Nicole didn’t even grab a coat; she just hugged her arms and followed her mother out onto the deck.
It was freezing outside. Two back-to-back snowstorms had passed through in the last few days, dumping several feet of snow on the ground and grinding life in these parts to a halt. At least her electricity hadn’t gone out—thank God for that.
They stood on the wood deck and stared at the ever-lightening sky. The smoke continued to drift up into the sky over the tree line.
“Something’s wrong,” Nora muttered.
“I think someone’s house might be on fire,” Nicole said.
Nora nodded. She was thinking the same thing. Could’ve started from a grease fire, or even Christmas decorations. But people were usually very careful in these parts, and she couldn’t help thinking that this fire had sinister origins.
And that led her to think of the criminals on the run. She glanced around at the woods all around them, listening for any sounds of movement out here in the quiet morning. The deck around her home was covered by the edge of the roof, but some snow had managed to drift onto the floorboards. The rest of the world was blanketed with snow … so much snow, more snow than she could ever remember seeing since they’d lived here. It was beautiful, but she knew it was also dangerous.
A cracking sound in the woods to her left demanded her attention. It sounded like something big was moving around in there. She stared at the woods for a moment, and she was convinced that she saw a blur of movement in the darkness between the trees.
“You hear that?” Nora asked her daughter.
“It was probably just an animal. Maybe a deer or something.”
“I don’t know,” Nora said, still staring at the thick woods.
“Don’t worry, Mom, those bank robbers are long gone by now.”
Nora nodded, but she wasn’t convinced. She looked back at the smoke in the sky. She was sure that those bank robbers were behind that fire somehow. The fire was maybe five or ten miles north of them, she guessed—somewhere between her property and the town of Dest
in. She tried to remember the names of the distant neighbors around here. Her husband could’ve recalled the names immediately and listed them off to her, but she couldn’t remember any of them.
“That might be Tom Gordon’s place,” Nicole said. “It’s in that direction.”
“What about Tom Gordon’s place?” a male voice asked.
Nora and Nicole spun around and looked at the open sliding glass door where Travis stood.
“Travis,” Nora breathed out and then smiled. “You scared the bejesus out of me.”
“What are you two doing out here?” he said as he stepped out onto the deck, but then he saw the smoke drifting up above the tree line in the distance. “Oh shit.”
“We think Tom Gordon’s cabin might be on fire,” Nicole said. “Either that or he woke up before dawn and decided that he wanted to start one hell of a bonfire.”
Travis wore only a pair of long john pants and a thick, long-sleeved shirt, but the cold didn’t seem to bother him.
Just like his father.
Oh, to be young again, Nora thought. Young enough when the cold didn’t bite into her bones and sting her flesh.
Travis bolted back inside their home.
“What are you doing?” Nora asked as she followed her son back inside the house.
“Probably going to check it out, I’m sure,” Nicole muttered, but her mother wasn’t paying attention to what she was saying. She closed the sliding glass door and then slid the vertical blinds shut in front of it.
Travis ran back to his bedroom, yelling over his shoulder at her: “I’m gonna get dressed and check on Tom. You call the sheriff’s office; let them know someone’s house might be on fire.”
Nora turned to head for the kitchen but Nicole already had the cordless phone in her hand, offering it to her mother. She took the phone from her daughter and dialed some numbers. She didn’t dial 911. When there was an emergency out here, they called the sheriff’s line to his office.