Deep in the Snow (Alaska Cozy Mystery Book 2)

by Wendy Meadows

  “I really don’t think Hank is the killer,” Sarah told Conrad. “Let him up. We have no charges to hold him on.”

  Conrad stared deep into Hank’s eyes. “I’m going to catch you.”

  “We’ll see,” Hank shoved Conrad off of him and stood up. “I’ll be in touch,” he said to Sarah, and then escaped out the back door.

  Conrad slammed the door shut. “What are your thoughts?” he asked Sarah.

  “This,” Amanda said from beneath the kitchen table. Sarah lifted up the tablecloth. Amanda smiled and held up a key. “So I learned to pick pockets as a teenager. Every girl hangs out with the wrong crowd at some point in her life.”

  Sarah took the key. “It’s the key to the snowmobile,” she realized. She tossed the key to Conrad. “Amanda, you are my hero.”

  Conrad caught the key and examined it. “When Hank realizes he doesn’t have the key, he’ll pay us a second visit. Let’s get ready for him.”

  “Hank isn’t the man we’re after,” Sarah reminded him as she helped Amanda up. “But,” she added, “Hank is after the man sent to kill Sophia. This man has Sophia’s diary. Only a man would call a diary a book. When Steve said the FBI agents were fussing about finding a book, I considered the possibility the book in question was a diary.”

  “So who is the man that was sent to kill Sophia?” Amanda asked.

  Conrad slid the snowmobile key into his front right pocket and focused on Sarah. “Detective Garland, who has Sophia’s diary?” he asked calmly.

  “A man who wants every one of Sophia’s enemies dead,” Sarah answered. “Conrad, I’m going to need you to make a call to New York and perform a check for me. Can you do that?”

  Conrad nodded his head. “Write down what you need, partner.” He glanced at the back door. “And make it quick. Our friend will be returning soon.”

  Sarah stared at the back door. “Hank is desperate and probably running very low on funds. You saw the way he ate our food. I don’t believe he’s a threat, Conrad. The man just wants revenge on Gatti and the FBI agent who was with Gatti on the night he was ambushed in front of Sophia’s apartment.”

  “So Gatti and the Feds know Hank is alive... and they think he has the diary?” Conrad began pacing the kitchen.

  “They know he’s alive,” Sarah agreed. “And most likely, yes, they believe Hank has the diary. But Hank said Gatti was smart to get himself arrested... guys, maybe it wasn’t the Feds who sent us those two bullets. Conrad, get ready to make that call.”

  Conrad quickly held up a hand. “Hold it,” he said, “if the Feds didn’t send us those gift-wrapped bullets, then who do you think...” He stopped talking. His eyes went wide and then narrowed.

  “What?” Amanda begged. “Speak up, man. Time is ticking away and my Jack is going to be returning home next week. It would be nice if he found his wife breathing and alive.”

  Conrad bit down on his lower lip, nodded his head, and dashed to the back door. Before Sarah could stop him, he grabbed his coat off the coat rack and raced outside into the snowstorm. “Conrad!” Sarah yelled, running to the open back door. “Conrad!”

  “That man is crazy,” Amanda cried, hurrying over to the back door and peering into the dark, stormy night. Shielding her eyes against the screaming winds that were reaching into the warm kitchen, she searched for Conrad. “There,” she said and pointed to a shadowy figure disappearing into the woods.

  Sarah spotted Conrad struggling through the knee-deep snow at an impressive speed. “He’s following Hanks boot tracks,” she observed. “The wind and snow haven’t completely covered them yet.”

  “What’s the plan?” Amanda asked, fearing that Conrad would die in a snowstorm.

  Feeling the winds cut into her face with razor-sharp claws, Sarah slowly pushed the door closed. “It’s foolish to go out into the storm,” she told Amanda, “and that’s why you’re staying inside.”

  “Oh, no.” Amanda shook her head. “If you’re going out into the storm, so am I,” she informed Sarah stubbornly. “I’ll get our coats.”

  “Listen,” Sarah begged, “I need to go alone. I love you dearly, June Bug, but... you’ll just get in my way. Please, stay here in the cabin. If I’m not back by sun-up, call Andrew and have him send out a search party.”

  Amanda searched Sarah’s eyes, struggling to see what her best friend was thinking. “Is this a cop thing?” she asked.

  Sarah took her coat off the rack and put it on. “Yes,” she said, pulling her hat and gloves out of the left pocket of her coat.

  Amanda watched Sarah put on her gloves and pink snow cap. “The winds are going to really chew you up,” she said in a worried voice. “What chance do you have in this storm? Please, stay inside where it’s safe and warm.”

  Sarah opened the back door once more and looked out into the dark snow. “Sophia’s brother is out there in the snow,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “There’s another creepy snowman out there in those woods, and this time, it’s after Conrad instead of me. Stay here.”

  Before Amanda could say another word, Sarah rushed out into the snow. With shaky hands, Amanda reached out and reluctantly closed the door behind her. “It’s going to be a very long night,” she sighed, and began praying for Sarah’s safety.

  Knowing that a flashlight would easily give away her position, Sarah depended on her sharp eyes to carry her through the snow. Keeping her sight directly on the snow-covered ground, she carefully followed Conrad’s boot tracks, which the winds and snow were quickly destroying. After working her way to the end of the backyard, Sarah paused and glanced over her shoulder. The cabin sat behind her like a warm lighthouse begging her to return. “I have to fight for Conrad,” she whispered through shivering lips. Knowing that the winds would cut her in half if she stayed immobile for too long, Sarah bravely looked forward, examined the dark woods standing before her, and cautiously stepped into the mouth of a horrible, vicious, snowman.

  Chapter Eight

  “Keep moving forward,” Sarah said through chattering teeth as she maneuvered her way past one dark snowy tree after another. The tall trees permitted some relief from the winds and snow, allowing a longer lifespan for Conrad’s tracks. “Hank wouldn’t have parked his snowmobile too far from the cabin...”

  Feeling her feet becoming hard blocks of ice, Sarah paused. The snow was deeper in the woods than in her backyard. The air was much colder and much more deadly, too. Even though the trees were offering mild protection from the winds and snow, they were also acting as an icy canvas, holding in the cold. Looking upward, Sarah studied the dark mouths of the trees with scared eyes. “If I’m not careful, I’ll get myself lost out here,” she worried as every fiber of her being begged her to turn around and return to the cabin. “I have to keep moving... once a cop, always a cop,” she said determinedly.

  Lifting her gloved hands up to her ears, Sarah began to move forward again. Walking past one snowy tree and then another, following Conrad’s tracks, she tried to think but found that any thought she formed quickly dropped from her mind into the snow. It was taking every ounce of her energy just to walk forward through the dark woods, and Sarah knew that she had to shut down her mind and allow her instincts to take over. Stepping through the deep snow, one miserable, frozen step at a time, she pushed her body forward.

  Bang! A gunshot rang out not more than twenty feet ahead of her, Sarah immediately stopped walking and dropped down onto one knee. Pulling out her gun, she studied the darkness.

  “Get down!” she faintly heard Conrad’s voice yell. “Get down now! Face down!”

  “Don’t shoot!” Hank's frantic voice raced over the winds.

  “He’s caught up with Hank,” Relieved to hear Conrad’s voice, Sarah began to stand up. But as she did, a vicious hand exploded out of the darkness and knocked her unconscious with a broken tree limb. As she fell face first into the snow, Sarah drifted off into a cold darkness... drifting... drifting... so much snow... so much wind... Why did my husband divorce
me?... What did I do wrong?... so much snow...

  “Sleep tight,” a deadly voiced hissed at Sarah, then slithered off into the dark snow.

  Two hours later, Sarah woke up on her couch with a white bandage wrapped around her head. Amanda was standing by the fireplace sipping on a cup of coffee. “June... Bug...” Sarah struggled to speak as her eyes fluttered open. Incredible pain immediately punished her for daring to speak. “My... head...”

  Amanda set her coffee mug down on the wooden mantle and ran to Sarah. “You’re alive,” she said happily. Kneeling down next to Sarah, she lovingly hugged her best friend’s arm. “I was afraid you might die.”

  “I...” Sarah tried to speak as her head exploded in more pain. “My head...”

  “You have a concussion... I think. Some coward hit you in the back of the head with a tree limb. I found pieces of bark in your hair.”

  “You... found...” Sarah repeated, confused.

  “After you ran out to play in the snow, I decided to wait in the kitchen for about twenty minutes and then... well, you’re my best friend... I couldn’t just stand around and do nothing,” Amanda explained.

  “You went out into the snow after me?” Sarah moaned as her eyesight swayed back into a cloud of blurriness.

  “And it’s a good thing that I did,” Amanda fussed. She let go of Sarah’s arm and, with the manner of a loving nurse who was not pleased with her patient, checked Sarah’s head bandage. “At first I thought the winds were going to kill me,” she confessed. “There I was, little bitty me, walking through the big dark woods, barely—and I do mean barely—able to follow your boot tracks. And what happened, you might ask? Well, I’ll tell you what happened: I found you lying face down in the snow, like a drowned woman floating face down in a pool.”

  “You... saved my life,” Sarah said gratefully. “June... Bug... my hero.”

  Amanda quickly took her hands away from Sarah’s head and wiped at the warm tears that had begun to stream down her cheeks. “I was very scared,” she admitted. “Los Angeles... what happened? Who hurt you?”

  Sarah struggled to focus but then dropped away into a warm darkness. Gray beams of light coming in from the living room windows woke her up six hours later. “Amanda?” she asked.

  “Right here,” Amanda said. She was cuddled up in a warm blanket in the sitting chair next to the couch. “The storm is worse, Los Angeles. Nothing is moving out there.”

  To Sarah’s relief, her eyes were no longer blurry and the pain in her head had become tolerable. “You went out into the snow after me...”

  “Don’t remind me,” Amanda yawned. “Try and rest. I’ve been taking little cat naps. I managed to get some aspirin into you an hour ago. You can have another dose in three hours.”

  “Is Conrad—” Sarah began to speak but stopped when someone knocked on the front door.

  Amanda threw the warm blanket covering her to the floor and jumped to her feet like a cat that had just been doused in a bucket of icy water. “Who is it!” she yelled.

  “Please, let me in,” a woman’s voice begged.

  Amanda crept over to the front door. “Be careful,” Sarah begged, forcing her body into a sitting position.

  “Who are you?” Amanda yelled through the front door.

  “My name is Sophia,” the woman standing out in the storm answered. “Please, I’m in horrible trouble and I need Detective Garland’s help.”

  “She’s alive? Let her in,” Sarah instructed. She began to reach for her gun but found her ankle holster empty. “My gun...” Images of the dark woods flooded into her mind. “I had my gun in my hand when...”

  “Calm down,” Amanda begged Sarah.

  “Please,” the woman named Sophia cried from outside, “I’m freezing out here!”

  “Let her in,” Sarah ordered.

  “Jack is never going to let me stay home alone again,” Amanda fussed as she unlocked the front door. “Here we go,” she said uncertainly, and she pulled the front door open.

  A beautiful woman with dark black hair, covered with snow from top to bottom, appeared. “May I come inside?” she begged.

  “Hurry,” Amanda said. She pulled the woman inside and slammed the front door shut. “Go to the fireplace.”

  Sophia ran to the fireplace and began warming her bare hands. She wasn’t wearing a coat or a hat. An oversized gray sweater and a pair of blue ski pants tucked into black snow boots were the only items covering Sophia’s body. “You’re supposed to be dead,” Sarah whispered, placing her left hand on the back of her head.

  Sophia looked at Sarah. The woman’s beauty was mesmerizing. Her eyes resembled blue diamonds that could cut through the heart of any man. “I did what I had to do,” she said in a sharp voice that quickly turned into sorrow. “It was Frank’s idea to hire that poor woman.”

  “Where is Conrad?” Sarah demanded.

  “Frank has him... he has Mitch, too.”

  “Who?” Amanda asked.

  “Mitch is Hank,” Sarah moaned as a sharp pain lunged through her head.

  Sophia continued to warm her hands. “Please,” she pleaded with Sarah, “you have to help me. Agent McQuire is going to kill us all if we don’t stop him.”

  “Agent McQuire is the FBI agent who was with Gatti the day they decided to throw Mitch into the river, right?” Sarah asked.

  “I begged them to spare Mitch’s life... Mitch isn’t a bad guy, honestly. I admit that I manipulated him. Gatti threatened to kill my brother if I ever tried to leave him. I had to create a way to destroy Gatti, and Mitch was my chance.”

  “Your brother set this all up, didn’t he?” Sarah asked.

  “Yes,” Sophia admitted regretfully. “Frank thought of a plan to get Gatti, McQuire and that lying ex-husband of mine into one place. We knew Conrad would figure it out that the woman who died in my place was a fake... he had to die.”

  “Only you didn’t want Conrad to die, is that it? That man has been tormenting himself over your death,” Sarah said accusingly.

  “Who knew that jerk loved me that much?” Sophia exclaimed. “I went behind my brother’s back and called Mitch. I begged for his help in return for my diary. That’s all Mitch wanted anyway.”

  “Maybe not,” Sarah told her, “but keep talking.”

  “I asked Mitch to help me escape from my brother. I love my brother, I really do... but he’s a deadly man, Detective Garland. If he kills Gatti, do you know what will happen?”

  “A mafia war,” Sarah said.

  Sophia nodded her head. “Frank was going to make it look like Sarti killed Gatti and that the Feds were involved. Conrad... was personal.”

  “Mitch didn’t play your game, did he?” Sarah asked.

  “Mitch refused to help me unless I gave him the diary up front,” Sophia confessed. “He wasn’t the same Mitch I knew from Boston... he had changed... become hard... dangerous... empty. I knew from the moment I saw his eyes that I had made a horrible mistake asking for his help. I begged Mitch to leave, but he threatened to go to my brother and expose my betrayal... so I went to Frank and confessed everything.”

  “What happened?” Amanda asked, still standing at the front door.

  “Natalie Delanie was summoned,” Sophia said shamefully. “Frank had been making trips to visit Natalie in Fairbanks. He hired her to come to my cabin and pretend to be me... first to lure Mitch in and kill him... and second... to kill her in order to lure Gatti, McQuire, and Conrad to Alaska.”

  Sarah forced her legs to work. She stood up, eased her way over to the fireplace and looked Sophia in her eyes. “You wanted Mitch to kill your brother.”

  Sophia stared into a pair of brilliant eyes. Unable to look away, she slowly nodded her head. “Frank is insane. He wants to kill Gatti and Mr. Sarti and take over both families. McQuire is a dirty Fed, and he has a lot of dirty friends under him. With McQuire out of the way, Frank will be able to expose the dishonest Feds to whoever cares.”

  “And Frank intends to kill
you, too, right?”

  Sophia couldn’t look away from Sarah. “My diary... that’s all he cares about. My diary is keeping me alive.”

  “Does your brother have your diary?” Amanda asked.

  “No one does,” Sophia replied. She pulled up her dress sleeve and exposed her left arm, revealing ugly scars. “For two weeks McQuire tried to get me to give him my diary. I refused. He put me here and threatened to kill me if I left. My Subaru has a tracking device on it and my cabin is bugged. I have one credit card, which McQuire tracks.”

  “You were put on ice,” Sarah said.

  “Yes. But Frank is smart. He found me by bribing a dirty Fed.”

  Sarah walked away. “Keep talking.”

  Sophia pulled her sleeve down. “Mitch must have become suspicious because he stopped making contact with me. So Frank started sending Natalie into town to see if Mitch would take the bait. Mitch is a smart, guy, though. Anyway, on the day the storm hit last month, Frank sent Natalie to the grocery store hoping Mitch would make contact. While Natalie was gone, Frank became very drunk on vodka. When Natalie returned from the grocery store with only a single bag of groceries and no Mitch, Frank exploded.”

  “Of course he did,” Sarah said, “because you made your brother believe that Mitch had your diary.”

  “You’re a very smart woman.” Sophia looked at the fire playing in the fireplace. “Yes, I told Frank that Mitch had stolen my diary. I hid my diary under the fireplace floor... no one thought to look there. It was very difficult to break a hole through the floor, but I did. I guess my repair job wasn’t the greatest, but when I burned a few fires, no one could tell that a hole had been dug.”

  “Except Steve Mintfield,” Sarah said. “Sophia, you don’t have your diary now, do you?” she asked urgently. “Your diary is missing.”

  “Yes,” Sophia said in a scared voice. “When Natalie returned back to my cabin with no word on Mitch, Frank tied her up and marched her into the woods at gunpoint. I begged him to spare her life... I couldn’t go through with his plan. Frank threatened to kill me if I didn’t shut up. I... stayed at my cabin. When night came, Frank kicked open the back door and ordered me out. He drove me to a rental cabin he was renting under a false name and tied me up. For three days Frank kept leaving... on the third day he came back and told me Natalie was dead.”