Wait. There. Through the trees. Definitely two sets of boot prints. One made by someone either too drunk to walk, or fighting every step of the way.
“I think I’ve got them, Daniel. Heading up toward the second cabin. I need to go to radio silence in case this trail’s legit.”
“No! Do not—!”
With the turn of a button, she silenced the walkie-talkie and zipped it back into her coat. Then she pulled her gun, braced the flashlight on top of it, and made the steep climb up to the cabin.
The boot prints led right to the door with the busted lock.
This was it. Leaning her back against the door frame for a few seconds to steady her breathing, she steadied her Glock and her flashlight and swung around, pushing the door open and sliding inside in one swift movement. The entryway was clear.
She shone her light inside the first door. Bathroom, clear.
Bedroom, clear.
She turned the corner into the main living area. Nothing seemed disturbed from the last time she’d been in here with Daniel. She was about to lower the beam of her flashlight when she heard the soft scuffle of sound to her right.
Instantly on alert, she walked a wide circle around the stools and island that separated the kitchen from the living room. Slowly. One step. Two.
And then her light hit the reflection of wide, frightened eyes. “Victoria?”
Bound and gagged with duct tape, the startled young woman scooted back against the refrigerator. Her hair was a mess, her jacket was torn, her cheek was bruised and she’d been crying. But she was alive.
Kylie holstered her weapon and hurried to her side. “You’re safe. Let’s get you out of here.”
Victoria screamed beneath the tape. Her eyes darted to the side.
Lou Sullivan.
Kylie leaped to her feet, reached for her gun. She saw the rush of a shadow from the entryway behind her. But she turned too late.
Something hard slammed into her temple, knocking her off her feet. A Tilt-A-Whirl spun inside her head as she tried to get her hands beneath her and push herself up. The object struck her again. Darkness swallowed her as she crumpled to the floor.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE FLOOR WAS SO COLD, like ice beneath her cheek.
Kylie tried to wake up, but her eyelids were heavy steel curtains. A headache buzzed like the grind of a chain saw carving through the ice to drop a fishing line.
Ice.
So sleepy. Her bed was hard, icy.
Ice Lake.
Ignoring the chain saw, she opened her eyes to a grayish light. Everything around her was white, yet somehow dark. She struggled to shake the cobwebs from her brain and bring her surroundings into focus.
Snow. Sky… A Cheshire cat smile of a moon overhead reflected an eerie light off the wintry scene around her. Why was her bed outside?
She rolled over onto her back to look straight up at the moon. The ball bearings pinging around inside her skull cleared away the last of her grogginess.
Not her bed.
Outside.
Search for a killer.
Victoria found.
Lou Sullivan.
“Lou?” She pushed herself up onto her elbows, and the night spun round her. What had he done to her? Hit her from behind. “Where’s Victoria?” Kylie rolled over onto her hands and knees, ignoring the lurch in her stomach. “Lou?” Where was she? And why could she still hear the snaps of ice cracking? “Lou?”
“There’s no Lou here.”
She froze at the man’s voice behind her. She placed it immediately—add a stutter and raise the tone half a pitch and it was her former friend Louis Sullivan. The voice didn’t surprise her.
The fact that she was kneeling out on the surface of Ice Lake did.
“Oh, my God.” The swaying she felt wasn’t entirely in her head. He’d dragged her out here next to the wrecked snowmobile. And the snapping sounds weren’t in her head, after all. The ice might be thick here, but it was weak, cracking beneath her knees. Gingerly, minding the treacherous ice and her shaky balance, she got her feet beneath her and stood. Turned.
And looked straight into the barrel of her own gun.
Lou stood on the bank twenty feet away. He’d traded his big orange parka for a formfitting ski outfit. The thick scarf that normally wound around his neck hung open over his chest, exposing his throat and revealing the angry red marks of a dying woman’s hand.
Rage burned inside Kylie. “Stacy Beecham put up a hell of a fight, didn’t she, Lou?”
His glasses reflected the dim moonlight, masking the focus of his eyes. But there was no mistaking the contemptuous set of his mouth, or the steady aim of a gun she knew held fifteen bullets.
The cracking sounds beneath her feet picked up a rhythm like a distant drumroll.
“Where’s Victoria, Lou?” Kylie had to get him to talk, to put down the gun. She had to get off this ice. “Is she all right?”
He didn’t answer.
“How long was I out?” The bastard just stood there and stared at her with those glasses that kept her from reading his expression. “Damn it, Lou. You don’t want to do this.”
He shifted his stance, diverting her attention to the cross-country skis and backpack at his feet. Smart move. Now that the blizzard had died down, he could follow the highway out of here. And if they couldn’t get phones or long-distance radio back before a sympathetic road crew picked up the stranded man, Lou would be dropped off in the nearest town before she could get an APB out on him. Very smart move.
Of course. He wasn’t thinking like Lou Sullivan anymore. She was trying to reason with the wrong man.
“Burney?” she asked. “Burney Novak?”
He grinned. “Yeah, D-Deputy?”
She looked at Lou Sullivan, but spoke to the man inside his head. “You don’t want to hurt me, Burney.”
“Oh, but I d-do. And I have to d-do it before your boyfriend figures out where we are.”
Daniel. Oh, God. If something happened to her here, and he found her…? Fight, Kylie. Do not let this man win. She needed to live. For Daniel’s sake as well as her own.
So get the man talking. And while he was distracted by a little conversation and the extra voice in his head, she’d slide a subtle step forward. “Where’s Victoria?”
“I left her in the c-cabin. She can freeze to death for all I c-care. I knew you’d come to save her. You’re the one I really want. I don’t c-care about her. She’s too freaked out to fully c-c-comprehend what I can do to her.” When Kylie took another step, Lou shook the gun, aimed right at center mass of her chest. Even though the Kevlar she wore beneath her coat would stop a bullet, it couldn’t prevent her from getting knocked off balance and hitting the ice hard enough to crack it. So she stopped. He was definitely a more observant, more ruthless entity than meek Lou Sullivan had ever been. “But you understand, Deputy. You know just how d-dangerous I am.”
She raised her hands, respecting the gun if not the man. “But you like to strangle your victims, Burney.”
“You think I’m an idiot like Lou? You’re a professional, trained in hand-to-hand combat, I’m guessing. You think I’m going to get c-close enough to you to let you g-get the drop on me?”
“Lou would let me get off the ice.” She risked another step. “He and I could talk.”
“Lou isn’t here. That w-w-weak idiot isn’t here.”
This was her chance. “Lou? I need your help. The ice is thin here. I need—”
“Stop!” He raised the gun and fired a round off over her head. “Stop moving!”
Kylie jerked at the loud report. But she stopped. Burney was back. And he might just have silenced Lou Sullivan forever.
“Why didn’t you strangle me when I was unconscious?” she asked.
“Because your eyes weren’t open. I couldn’t see the fear in them. I c-couldn’t hear you beg for your life.”
Kylie lowered her arms. “I won’t beg.”
He steadied the gun. “You
will.”
“Shooting me won’t give you the satisfaction you crave.”
He looped the scarf around his neck and licked the evil smile on his lips. “Who said I’m going to shoot you?”
He pointed the gun down at the ice. The breaking ice suddenly cracked like thunder in her ears. “Burney?”
“That’s the fear I’m lookin’ for, bitch.”
Bang. She tried to run to safety, but the shots were too close to her feet. Bang. Bang. The hard surface of the lake groaned in protest.
“Burney!”
Two more shots drove her back from the shore. If she was going down… She unzipped her coat and yanked it off her arms. If it got wet, the weight would surely drag her under. More shots rang out like thunder in the night. A crack raced across the ice from the snowmobile toward her feet. She tossed the coat. Three more shots and the snowmobile exploded behind her. A wave of heat knocked her off her feet. Flames shot up into the sky. Roiling black clouds of oil and gasoline stung her nose.
“Burney!”
The bastard was climbing up the hill, sticking the gun into the waist of his pants, shrugging into his pack as he found one handhold after another to pull himself up to the road.
Kylie’s feet slipped when she tried to stand. Her knees came down hard on the ice. The fire burned. Her world tilted.
Crawl, Kylie! Move!
The distant, low-pitched roll of a kettle drum echoed in her ears, surrounding her, engulfing her.
Get on your feet!
She stumbled back to her aching knees. Another crack in the ice. He was up on the road now, sliding his feet into the clamps of his skis.
“Burney!”
The ice opened up beneath her and gravity sucked her down into the icy waters of the lake.
The drenching cold shocked her into stillness as she sank into the freezing darkness. And then the instinct to live shocked her again. She reached with her arms and kicked back up to the surface.
But her hand hit ice. Where was the hole she’d fallen through?
She reached up again. Frozen solid.
Circling in the water, her lungs protesting in her chest, she kicked one more time, swimming toward the thin spot where she could see the moon’s half smile through the ice. But she bumped her hand.
Don’t panic.
She’d grown up here. She knew the dangers of ice and winter and water. Think!
She pressed her lips up beneath the ice and inhaled the last pocket of oxygen there. And then she punched at the ice with her fist. But her muscles were getting so stiff.
The hole was already freezing over and she was already so cold. So tired. Every cell of her body could feel the frigid tomb that claimed her. She gulped in a mouthful of water, which hastened the chill from the inside out. It was hypnotic, really.
The last thing she saw was the moon.
The last things she heard were the drums, and the wind shouting her name.
“KYLIE!” DANIEL CROUCHED over his skis and straightened his run, picking up speed over the choppy snow as he neared the bottom of the slope.
Flying snow bit into his cheeks beneath his goggles. The spotlight anchored to the hat he wore gave him some idea of where he was heading. But he was moving too fast to make out landmarks beside the trees to his left and the ski lift to his right. He was relying on memory and instincts and twenty some years of skiing this mountain to guide him down in one piece to reach the woman he loved.
“Kylie!”
He’d hit the slope at the first gunshot. He’d heard nine more since. Ten gunshots in the space of a minute, reverberating through the crisp, clear air on Mount Atlas. Sending shock waves into the snow and deep into his heart.
Bringing the world down on them all.
Ending his world if even one of those bullets had struck Kylie.
The slope flattened out and he skipped over drifts as the lodge, outbuildings and parking lot came into view. He spotted a short figure coming out of the trees by the cabins, pumping his arms and legs in the slow, familiar rhythm of a cross-country skier. Lou Sullivan. That bastard. Kylie had found him. Or he’d found her.
“Kylie!”
The instinct to fly at the man burned through Daniel. He’d have the advantage of speed and surprise. But he’d already chased one dead-end trail where Sullivan had led him astray. And the need to get to Kylie was stronger.
With his downhill speed still carrying him along at a swift pace, Daniel angled his skis toward the lake, where she’d been when she’d last made contact.
He spotted the fire on the ice immediately. The ghosts of his past tried to lure him in different directions. But the blaze burned like a beacon in the night, calling him straight to it.
Once his skis became more of a hindrance than a help, he kicked them off and ran toward the flames. The boots made it awkward to climb down the rocky slope to the lake, but he didn’t slow. Most of the frozen lake was solid white, covered with the recent snow. But the bluish tint of a patch about ten feet out from the shore told him the ice had broken there.
He pulled out his flashlight to track the strip of thin ice from the rocks to the burning snowmobile, and prayed his instincts were wrong. But he saw her pale face come up beneath the surface. Oh, no. Hell, no.
“Kylie!”
He pulled the pickax from his pack and slid out as close as he dared. “Kylie, baby, you stay with me. You hear?” He brought the ax down once. He swung it again and water bubbled up over the surface. “Kylie!”
Lying on his belly, Daniel crawled forward and thrust his arm deep into the hole he’d made. The ice wobbled beneath his weight. The water soaked into his glove and sleeve and the front of his coat.
“Kylie! See my hand. Come to me, baby. I’m here for you.” He splashed the water to keep it from freezing over again. Please, baby. Please.
The mountain rumbled with an ominous omen behind him.
But this was not the Middle East. This was not some innocent boy. This was Kylie Webber. His strong, brave, beautiful Kylie. The woman didn’t know how to give up.
She swam a little closer, and as soon as Daniel felt the brush of her fingers against his, he latched on to them and pulled. He hooked her arm onto the edge of the ice as she surfaced with a loud gulp for air. She sputtered, spit water, shivered and jerked, until her other arm was out of the water, too.
“Kylie? Babe?” He touched her pale cheek and turned her eyes to his. Oh, man, she was way too cold.
Her lips were blue. She was shivering hard. “D-D-Daniel?”
“I’ve got you.” Staying flat on his belly, he backed across the ice, pulling her a little farther out of the icy water.
“Lou?”
He shook his head. “I had to save you.”
And then he was on his knees, pulling her free. He crawled to the shore and carried her onto the rocks. He pulled her sopping hat off her head and tossed it aside, replacing it with his own warm, dry stocking cap.
“Where’s your coat, babe?” he asked, knowing he had to get her talking.
She was shaking hard, going into hypothermia. “Too heavy.”
Daniel unzipped his own coat and wrapped her inside. He needed to get all those wet clothes off her and get them both inside, someplace warm. But they didn’t have that kind of time. “Can you walk?”
The thunder grew louder.
Holding tightly to his arms, wrapped tightly around her, Kylie nodded. “I can try.”
He slipped the spotlight off the hat she now wore, and looped it over his own head, freeing his hands to help her up the slope onto the road. But her knees gave way and she collapsed after a few steps.
Daniel knelt down and pressed his lips against her icy mouth, blowing his warm breath into her lungs and keeping her alert enough to focus on him. “Don’t you die on me, Kylie Webber.” He kissed her again just to kiss her. “You promised.”
“I w-won’t.”
He scooped her up into his arms and carried her through the snow. The ground sho
ok beneath his feet and he turned his eyes toward the mountain. Night hid the top of the peak from him, but he knew what was coming. He felt it in his bones.
Kylie’s shivering arms tightened around his neck. “What’s that sound?”
“The wrath of Mount Atlas.”
He was already moving. But with Kylie in his arms and ski boots on his feet, Daniel knew they’d never make it to the lodge in time. He could see Lou Sullivan nearing the first of the outbuildings now. The man might think he’d outsmarted them all. But nobody was smarter about this mountain than Daniel Stone.
Reading the trembling beneath his feet, he switched course and plunged into the deep snow off the side of the road. Kylie tumbled from his grasp. But he quickly had her back on her feet, back in his arms, and then he stretched his long legs out, moving them through the drift to higher ground.
“Can you get the walkie-talkie from my coat?”
“I think s-so.” It took her several tries to get her fingers to lock on to the zipper. “My hands are so cold.”
“I’ll get you someplace warm. I promise.” She held the radio up to his mouth and pushed the call button. “Avalanche! Kent!” Daniel cried. “Answer your radio. Get everyone away from the north windows of the lodge. Eagle One to home base. Avalanche!”
Static crackled in response. “Home base to Eagle One. Daniel?” Kent’s voice sounded justifiably concerned. “Did you say avalanche?”
“Roger. Get everyone away from the windows.”
“Did you find Victoria? Where’s Ky—?”
Kylie’s fingers shook and the radio dropped into the snow. Daniel didn’t stop to pick it up.
“Where are you going?” Her hold on his neck was slipping. “We need to get to safety.”
“We will. Just hang on, baby. We will.”
He hit slightly shallower snow once he reached the open space of the ski run. Swinging Kylie behind him piggyback-style, he caught her thighs beneath her frozen pant legs and climbed at a diagonal across the slope.
Ice Lake: Gone ColdCold HeatStone Cold Page 24