He glanced up briefly. There were more big, soft flakes spiraling down. The sky was a dirty dark gray and he could tell they were in for another dump. Which meant, if Mikkelitz did make his escape into the wilderness, as he assumed he was going to, there would be no trail to follow.
His thighs were burning with the repetitive skating motion. The boots, a little too tight, were painful on his feet. He gritted his teeth, lowered his head and concentrated on the savage rhythm of movement that he’d developed. Step, pole, step, pole, thrust, step. To an onlooker, it would have appeared easy and graceful. Only Jesse knew how much effort was going into it.
In spite of the cold, his shirt was already damp with sweat, and drops of perspiration were running into his eyes. He shook his head angrily to clear the salt sting. Just keep it going. Couldn’t be more than half a mile to the weather station. Maybe less. Don’t look up. Don’t see how much farther you have to keep up this pace.
His upper body rolled from side to side and he was grunting in time to the movements now—a visceral, primitive sound that was dragged from him by the effort and the adrenaline and the need to keep going. To make it to the weather station before it was too late.
Now he was off the groomed trail, deep among the trees where the snow was softer and the going was much, much more difficult. He fought the snow, thrusting, stepping, dragging huge, gasping draughts of knife-cold oxygen into his lungs.
At last he had to stop. He stood gasping, shoulders heaving. The building was visible now through the trees, barely two hundred yards away. He could see the darker tones of the timber walls against the snow. His view was still partly obscured by the trees, and he had no way of knowing if Mikkelitz and Abby were already there. He waited till his breathing steadied a little, then listened. The snow was falling more heavily now, seeming to blanket out sound around him. He was listening for the high revving note of a snowmobile engine but there was nothing. He’d lost all track of time and a glance at the Seiko on his wrist meant nothing to him. He didn’t know when he’d last seen them. Didn’t know how long it was since he’d dangled under the chairlift like a hooked mackerel.
The ominous thought was forming in his mind that he also didn’t know for sure that this was where they were heading. Abby’s message may have simply been the confused words of a terrified, disoriented woman.
Maybe they were heading somewhere else. Maybe they had already been here and left. Maybe they were yet to arrive. He simply didn’t know. All he did know was that he had to keep going now until he found out, one way or another.
It took him another hundred yards.
He plowed on through the soft, deep snow, wishing he’d been able to commandeer a set of cross-country skis. Then, without any warning, he was in the open, barely seventy yards from the old weather station. The trees receded behind him and the slope of the ground in front of him dropped away so he could glide forward once more. The skis made no noise at all in the fresh falling cover of snow, already several inches deep.
He skied forward carefully, aware that he was in the open now. Aware that if Mikkelitz were inside the building, watching him, he was an easy target—a dark figure against the white background. So far, however, there was no sign that anyone was in the building. The windows and doors that he could see were closed and shuttered, although he knew that, on the far side, there was a garage-type roller door that gave access into the storeroom and workrooms of the building. Now, as he came closer, he became aware of something just visible around the right-hand corner of the building—dark object that was gradually becoming covered by the falling snow. An object that didn’t seem to be part of the building itself, didn’t seem to belong.
And then he recognized it as the front section of the Polaris.
He let his momentum die and coasted silently to a stop. The building was barely forty yards away, with no sign of Abby or the man Jesse had been hunting for the past two weeks. He let the ski poles drop, shucking the retaining straps from his wrists as he did so, and reached behind his back to where the Colt nestled.
He felt its familiar weight in his hand as he brought it up to cover the building, easing back the hammer to full cock as he did so. He shuffled forward in the skis, then realized that, in spite of the present mobility they gave him, they could quickly become a liability-and a fatal one. Lifting his right foot clear of the snow, he angled the tip of the ski out to the right and stepped down with the base onto the quick release of the left binding.
The binding clunked open and he stepped free of the ski, keeping his weight on the right foot. Now he stepped back on the right binding and released that as well. Stepping free, he sank knee-deep into the snow, and started wading awkwardly forward.
Abby and Mikkelitz emerged around the corner of the building by the snowmobile. Abby saw him immediately. Her reaction was totally involuntary, torn from her by the shock of the moment.
“Jesse!” she called, and instantly Mikkelitz swung around, saw him and dragged her back as a shield in front of him.
Hindered by the deep snow, unable to shoot for fear of hitting Abby, Jesse began to blunder forward. He saw Mikkelitz’s arm come up, heard the dull report of the Walther, strangely muffled by the heavy falling snow, then felt a sledgehammer slam into his right thigh.
For a few seconds there was no pain. Just a numbing shock and a terrific impact that knocked the leg from under him. His heart raced suddenly and his breath gagged in his throat as he was hurled sideways into the deep snow. Falling, he heard another shot and the angry crack of the bullet whipping over his head. He scrambled sideways in the snow, dragging the useless right leg with him, grateful now that he’d gotten rid of the cumbersome skis just a few minutes earlier. Another shot, and something zipped into the snow a few feet from him.
A few yards to his right, there was a snow-covered tree stump, all that remained of a pine that had been felled when the area was cleared. It reared some three feet out of the snow, its solid bulk offering protection. He switched his gun to his left hand now and lay on his right side, pushing with his left leg and dragging himself with his right arm into the cover provided by the stump. Lying low in the snow as he was, he couldn’t see Mikkelitz or Abby. He guessed that the gunman’s view of him was obscured as well, as the deep snow provided at least some shelter.
He reached the stump and lay back against it, breathing heavily. And now the first wave of pain from his leg hit him, like a red-hot torrent pouring through his body. He doubled over and groaned aloud with the agony. Of the leg itself, he could feel little. He was merely conscious of pulses of pain ripping through his entire being. And of the warm feeling of blood seeping slowly from the wound.
Gritting his teeth against the pain, he risked a look around the stump to see if Mikkelitz had moved. He was still in his original position, still with Abby held helplessly in front of him as a shield.
Obviously, Jesse figured, the killer couldn’t be sure whether or not he’d hit him with that first shot. Or if he had, how badly he was injured.
Bad enough, the deputy groaned to himself. Each movement sent more pain tearing along his nerve endings.
For the moment, Mikkelitz seemed content to stay as he was, shielded by Abby, until he could figure his next move. Until he saw some sign as to whether Jesse was still in the game or not.
He glanced down at his right leg. The bullet had gone into the flesh and muscle. It seemed to have missed the bone. But there was a steady leak of blood seeping out of the entry hole. Steady, not pumping, so no artery had been hit either. He’d once heard that relatively minor wounds caused the most pain. He was grateful for the first fact, less so for the second. He unbuckled his belt and tugged it loose from the loops in his jeans, then quickly fastened it around his thigh, above the wound. He jerked it tight and fastened it again, noticing that the flow of blood seemed to have lessened.
That seemed to be the extent of the first aid available to him. The pressure of the belt somehow seemed to localize the pain of the woun
d. It still hurt like hell, but the constant waves of pain were lessened. Now there was just an insistent throbbing in his thigh itself. Using the stump for purchase, he dragged himself to a half crouch, resting his gun hand across the top of the old severed pine.
“Well, Deputy, you do seem to keep turning up at awkward times, don’t you?”
He focused on the two figures by the side of the building, the Colt’s muzzle wavering slightly. His voice, when he spoke, was a croaking rasp.
“Turn her loose, Mikkelitz. And drop the gun.”
“Fuck you, Deputy. I don’t think you’re in any shape to do anything about it if I don’t.”
Jesse brought the Colt up to an aiming position. Even with the stump to rest it on, the sights wavered and trembled as he tried to get a clear bead on Mikkelitz. There was little of him to see, just his head. And at thirty yards, shocked and injured, with a handgun, Jesse simply couldn’t take the shot. The odds were high that he’d hit Abby.
Or miss entirely.
“Turn … her loose,” he croaked again. He kept his forefinger outside the trigger guard, desperately willing the sights to settle, knowing they wouldn’t. Remembering another time, years ago, when a panic-stricken Tony Vetano had blundered into his line of fire.
And as that thought came to him, Jesse knew that he couldn’t shoot, couldn’t take the chance again. And he knew that by not doing so, he was condemning Abby to death.
“Not feeling so good, Deputy Parker?” Mikkelitz’s voice was more cheerful now, as he began to feel on top of the situation. Now he realized that Jesse was injured, the whole thing took on a different look. Up until now, they’d been heading toward a dangerous standoff—one where he couldn’t predict the outcome.
He had the major trump card in the deck—Abby. But, ironically, the card only remained a trump as long as he never played it. He could threaten her life to hold Jesse back. But if he actually had to kill her, there was nothing to stop the deputy coming after him. Had Jesse been fit and uninjured, Mikkelitz couldn’t risk having him pursue him into the wilderness. Somehow, he would have to have killed him. And he knew that wouldn’t have been easy.
But now, with Jesse injured and unable to follow him, he was firmly back in control. It wasn’t exactly how he’d planned things. Originally he’d intended that the final killing would be Opie Dulles, the ski patrol commander who’d humiliated him. But this was even better. Abby was a celebrity-the TV reporter who’d told the world what a bang-up job Parker was doing. It was fitting that she’d be his last victim, and that Parker would be left to know how badly he’d failed.
He could see the way the deputy’s gun wavered as he tried to aim. Could see the frown of pain and concentration as he tried to keep focused. He sensed that Jesse wouldn’t dare shoot. So did the girl he was holding. She called out to the man across the clearing.
“Shoot, Jesse! Take the chance! I’m dead anyway!”
With a snarl of anger, he rapped the muzzle of the Walther along the ridge of bone above her eye. He was expert at finding painful spots for the short, savage blows he kept dealing her. The impact hurt, and the blade foresight cut the skin there, setting up an ooze of blood. In a low voice, meant for her alone, he rasped, “Shut the fuck up, you bitch, or I’ll kill you here and now!”
Abby’s head had sagged with the pain of the blow across her eyebrow. Now, she seemed to gather herself and raise her head. He felt her take a deep breath and knew she had submitted to the inevitable.
“All right, you bastard,” she said, making an immense effort to be calm. “Go ahead and shoot me.”
He didn’t answer immediately, because he wasn’t paying attention to her. He’d seen the involuntary movement from Jesse when he’d hit the girl. The big Colt .45 he was holding had jerked back up to an aiming position again … and then lowered. He smiled grimly when he saw it, then replied, “In my own time, sweetheart. I’ll kill you when it suits me.”
Then, in a louder voice, he called mockingly to Jesse, “You’re really not feeling too good there, are you, Parker?”
Dragging Abby with him, his arm like an iron bar around her throat, he began to move sideways toward the parked snowmobile. The figure crouched behind the tree stump followed their movements—the gun in his hand trained at the ground somewhere between him and them.
“In fact,” Mikkelitz continued, “I figure I could just mount up on this snowmobile and ride away from here and you could fire every bullet you own and you’d never hit me, would you?”
“Maybe he wouldn’t,” said Lee, stepping from the trees to the right of the clearing.
“But I might just give myself a chance.”
SIXTY-NINE
The weather station had been deserted when Lee stepped down from the Jet Ranger. Crouching slightly, even though she knew the rotor blade was well clear of her, she moved away from the helicopter and waved Ray off.
The jet engine wound up to a whistling roar and the pilot lifted the aircraft up, swung to the northeast and headed, nose down, out over the snow-covered ranges of the wilderness area. She took out the comm unit and tried to contact Jesse once more. She’d already tried several times since his last transmission, without any success. She tried to tell herself that it simply meant the radio was malfunctioning, but she couldn’t get rid of the thread of fear that whispered Jesse wasn’t answering her calls because he couldn’t.
There was an outside ladder from the rooftop helipad down to ground level. She climbed down now and stopped to listen. There was no sound, other than the surf of the wind through the pines. Then even that died and snow began to fall.
Jesse had said that Mikkelitz was heading toward Storm Peak and she assumed that he meant the top of the Storm Peak chair. It was half a mile away through the snow, but at least it was downhill. She unzipped the front of her sheriff’s office parka, reached inside to her shirt pocket, where she found the sixth .44 Magnum slug she always carried there, and loaded it into the empty chamber of the Blackhawk. Then she re-zipped the parka and started out down the hill through the snow.
She’d gone maybe two hundred yards when she heard the whining buzz of the snowmobile, and caught a glimpse of metal and fiberglass as it roared up the slope toward the weather station.
The little snow bike was below her, on the western side of the slope as she headed down the crest of the ridge. It rapidly moved past her, then climbed to her level and swung toward the building. The quick glimpse of shining pale blond hair was enough to tell her that Abby was on the back of the snowmobile. She guessed the driver was Mikkelitz.
She blundered through the thick snow, back up the slope to the building. She’d barely gone fifty yards when she heard the two-stroke motor pop and splutter and die away. She redoubled her efforts, hampered by the fact that, with every stride, she sank at least knee-deep into the snow.
There was no sign of Abby or Mikkelitz when she reached the building. The Polaris was parked outside, at one corner of the station. She guessed they’d gone inside, but had no idea where. She stopped in the tree line and slowly circled the weather station. Her first instinct was to go crashing in. She considered the idea for maybe five seconds before discarding it. She had no idea where they were inside. She had no way of gaining access to the inside without making noise. By charging in, she risked not only Abby’s life, but her own. Mikkelitz would have all the advantages on his side and Lee was too good a hunter to consider that acceptable. So she stayed inside the tree line, maybe forty yards from the building, and found a position to one side where she could watch the snowmobile.
Briefly, she considered the possibility that Mikkelitz might kill Abby while they were in the building. Then she shrugged. This was still her best course of action. Instinct told her that the killer would keep Abby alive until he was absolutely certain he was home free. That wouldn’t be till he left the building and went wherever it was that he was headed.
If she was wrong, she was wrong. Getting herself killed as well wouldn’t do Abby the slig
htest bit of good. So she waited, hunkered down in the cover of the trees, allowing the lightly falling snow to cover her shoulders and upper body, helping conceal her from any eyes that might be watching from the building. It was nothing new to Lee. She’d hunted since she was eleven years old, and if need be, she could sit here all day, legs drawn up, collar zipped right up around her ears, in the shelter of a wide-branched pine.
By positioning herself where she could watch the snowmobile and the door on that side of the weather station, she’d unknowingly placed the building between herself and Jesse. Accordingly, she had no warning of his arrival, was totally unaware that he was less than a hundred yards away when the door opened and Mikkelitz emerged, pushing Abby roughly in front of him.
He had a survival pack and a set of cross-country skis slung loosely across his left shoulder. As Lee watched, he let them drop to the snow, then, still holding Abby, moved to the Polaris.
Moving slowly and carefully, Lee eased the .44 forward, crouching low and holding a two-handed grip. She didn’t have a clear shot yet. He was too close to Abby, and besides, there were several trees between her and the edge of the cleared space. She started to move forward now, angling for a better shot.
When all hell broke loose.
Mikkelitz suddenly lunged at Abby, grabbing her around the throat with his left arm and pulling her back against him, hard. Lee froze instantly. She knew he hadn’t seen her. He was looking in a totally different direction. Maybe she’d made some noise. Or maybe … then Abby called something. Just one word that Lee didn’t catch. And then Mikkelitz was firing at something on the downhill side of the building.
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