On Thin Ice

by Susan Andersen

  “You mean that thing is real? She took several steps backward but there was really nowhere to go. The backs of her knees came up against the front row seats and she halted. ”I’ve never done anything to you, Karen. So what have you got against me?”

  “Aside from your personality? Not a blessed thing.” Karen looked Sasha up and down and the examination ultimately resulted in a smile that was fleeting and cold. She shrugged. “Don’t take it personally, dear. You just got in my way.”

  Lon hooked his foot around the leg of the nearest chair and dragged it forward. He transferred Connie off his lap onto it. “You know that someone’s been pressuring me to sell again.” It was flatly stated, not a question. “Sasha was the one to tell you, I assume.”

  Connie bristled. “She had to have someone she could talk to who didn’t have an agenda of their—”

  “Don’t get all defensive on me,” Lon interrupted. “I’m just trying to clarify the situation in my own mind. Where is Saush tonight anyway?”

  “She stayed at the arena with Karen Corselli to go over—”

  “Jesus Christ.” Lon shoved his chair back from the table with such abruptness and force it toppled to the floor. He surged to his feet. “Tell Vinicor,” he commanded hoarsely and took off at a dead run for the doorway.

  “Lon!”

  He checked briefly, turning back. “The person pressuring me?” he called softly. “It was Karen, Connie. Tell Vinicor.” Then he was gone.

  Connie went into an immediate panic. Oh God, oh God. Karen was the source of danger to Saush? She had to get Mick—Mick would know what to do. Grabbing her purse, she ran from the lounge. Lon was nowhere in sight as she crossed the lobby to the elevator, and she danced in place in front of the doors, her finger exerting continuous pressure on the floor-call button. The elevator finally arrived and she had already stepped inside the car before it struck her that she didn’t know Mick’s room number. She always knew what room Sasha was in, always . . . except that this afternoon when the rooms were assigned, she and Saush were in the midst of their argument and never quite got around to sharing that information.

  Swearing, she stuck her hand between the closing doors before they could shut entirely. They bounced a few times in their tracks but then reluctantly reopened, allowing her to step off. She ran up to the desk clerk, rudely pushing in front of a woman who was in the midst of either checking in or out.

  “Excuse me!” the woman said with shrill indignation.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, it’s an emergency.” Without awaiting a response, she turned to the clerk. “Quick! What room is Mick Vinicor in?” she demanded.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m not allowed to give you that information.”

  “Dammit, it’s an emergency! I need his room number!”

  “And I’m telling you that it’s against hotel policy to give out information that breaches the privacy of our patrons,” the clerk reiterated. “If you’ll go to the courtesy phone over there, however, I’d be happy to ring his room for you.” He waved at a white phone next to the bank of plants.

  “Yeah. Yeah, okay. That’s good—that’ll work.” Turning to the indignant woman still crowding up close behind her, she said, “I’m sorry lady,” then raced over to the phone and picked it up, waiting in an agony of impatience for him to punch the number. It began to ring.

  And ring. And ring.

  “C’mon, Mick, c’mon. Pick it up. Pick . . . it . . . up!”

  There was no answer.

  “Shit!” Connie slammed the receiver into the cradle and stood there chewing on the cuticle of her index finger as she stared wildly about. What now?

  The ding of the elevator caught her attention and she stared at the white overhead light that indicated the car was about to arrive. Fat lot of good that would do her. What was she supposed to do, go floor to floor until she found Vinicor? The police! Of course! She could at least call the police. She pushed upright and was about to pivot in the direction of the public phones when the elevator doors slid open. Mick stood framed in the opening, looking big, menacing, and thoroughly ill tempered.

  She’d never seen such a pretty sight in her life. Oh, thank you, God, thank you! Her voice, loud and desperate, rang out across the lobby. “MICK!!!”

  “It’s nothing personal?” Sasha stared in sheer disbelief at the woman holding the weapon on her. “Well, excuse me, Karen, but when someone sticks a gun in my face and tells me I should be nervous, I tend to take it very personally indeed.”

  Karen stared at her consideringly for several nerve-wracking moments, long enough for Sasha to reconsider the wisdom of having spoken her mind without first giving it some thought. Finally, the other woman bent her arm at the elbow, raised the gun up until it was aimed at the ceiling, and crooked the index finger of her free hand at Sasha. “Come here,” she said.

  Sasha stepped forward apprehensively, then stood cautiously still in front of her. There was an aura about Karen she found volatile. And perhaps it was nothing more than the fact that Karen was still perched cross-legged on the balustrade, which put her head on a higher level than Sasha’s, but she suddenly seemed much taller to her.

  Abruptly Karen lashed out, striking her with the butt of the gun. Sasha cried out at the pain that exploded in her left cheekbone and staggered as the blow knocked her backward. Catching herself on the armrest of the seats behind her with one blindly flung-out hand, her other hand flew with reflective protectiveness to cup her wounded cheek. Her knees threatened to crumple beneath her, but she stiffened her arm to prevent herself from falling to the floor and edged her rump onto the seat before her legs gave out entirely. She looked up at Karen warily.

  “You’ll keep a civil tone in your voice,” the blonde instructed her coolly. “I dislike back talk.”

  Sasha pulled her hand away from her cheek and looked at it. It was covered with blood. “What do you want with me?” she asked in a carefully neutral tone. “I don’t understand this at all.”

  Then suddenly she did. Oh, dear God. Lonnie’s silent partner.

  The partner who had messed with her costumes, fiddled with the screws holding her blades to her skates, run down a woman wearing her coat.

  The partner Lonnie had informed he would no longer sell drugs for whenever she commanded because he had given his word to Sasha.

  You got in my way. The words reverberated in her head.

  “Ah, I see you’re beginning to understand.”

  Sasha looked up at her. “It was you? You’re the one who got Lonnie into this whole convoluted mess with the heroin?”

  “Well, I don’t know that ‘mess’ is the word I’d choose. I prefer to think of it as an opportunity,” Karen replied. Sagely, she nodded. “Yes. A golden opportunity for Lon to make some serious spending cash. He was very hungry in those days. He wanted it all, he wanted it immediately, and I showed him a way to obtain it.”

  “It’s rather remarkable that he never breathed a word to implicate you when everything blew up in his face,” Sasha marveled quietly, and for the first time since she’d looked up to find Karen pointing a gun at her she saw the other woman’s expression soften.

  “Yes, Lon is extremely loyal.” Then her mouth hardened. Loyalty to her was one thing; loyalty to this woman something else, something not to be tolerated. “Too bad you had to get in the way of that.” She leveled the gun at Sasha once again.

  “Lon is my oldest friend—”

  “You used your influence with him to undermine me.”

  “I didn’t even know about you! I was just trying to prevent him from going back to prison.” Sasha’s cheek was throbbing wickedly and she concentrated on the pain to stave off the sheer terror that was threatening to engulf her reasoning powers. She hadn’t been discerning enough to be frightened before; even being pistol-whipped had seemed sort of fantastical. However she wasn’t totally lacking in intelligence or good sense. It was beginning to occur to her that in Karen’s eyes this situation could only
end one way.

  With her permanently out of the way.

  Oh, God, Mick, where are you when I need you most? Where are you with your bloody fast talk and your skill with a gun? Yet, who was to blame for that, truly? She’d picked up snippets of information here and there this past week and quite consciously had made the decision to share none of it with him, a punishment for breaking her heart. She’d showed him, boy; it should be some hot comfort indeed to take with her to her grave.

  No, the hell with that: she wasn’t going down without a fight. If she couldn’t talk her way out of this, then she’d simply have to run for it and hope to heaven Karen was a lousy shot. Shakily, she climbed to her feet. “May I ask you something, Karen?”

  Karen made a “be-my-guest” gesture with her gun hand. If her expression was anything to judge by, the power she held over Sasha was according her a wealth of enjoyment.

  “You’re a devout woman,” Sasha said carefully. “So, how do you justif”—bad choice of words, Saush!—“um, that is, reconcile your obvious faith to the fact that you’ve caused the deaths of so many people?”

  Karen had had years to justify the disparity to herself. “To a man,” she informed Sasha with cool arrogance, “they were sinners whose time had come to meet their Maker. I simply assisted them to a better world where they can walk with Jesus.”

  Well, what did you expect, Sasha wondered bitterly. That Karen would suddenly throw down her gun and repent her sins? She edged toward the aisle. It looked as though running was going to be her only option after all.

  A new voice boomed out from the backstage entrance. “You just couldn’t resist grandstanding, could you Karen?” Both women’s heads turned sharply toward the entryway. There stood a shadowy figure dimly backlit in the opening.

  “You’ve really done it this time, honey.” Lon stepped forward into the light. “Your incessant thirst for power is finally going to land the both of us right smack-dab in the slammer.”

  TWENTY–ONE

  Connie had never seen a man galvanized into action with quite the ruthless efficiency Mick Vinicor displayed. His face exhibited an utter lack of expression as she stuttered through an explanation of what she’d learned and a recitation of what she feared. But his eyes burned and a muscle in his jaw jumped rhythmically.

  “Nothing’s gonna happen to her,” he growled. Then he was gone, loping with long-legged strides down the stairs that led from the lobby to the banquet level. After a second’s hesitation, Connie ran after him.

  She saw him pushing through the exterior door out into the parking lot behind the hotel just as she hit the bottom of the stairs. When she arrived in the lot seconds later, it was to find him going rapidly from car to car, stooping slightly to peer into each one. Suddenly he grabbed the driver’s-side handle on an older model Ford sedan. It didn’t open and he swore. He glanced at Connie when she ran up to him.

  “Go get me a coat hanger,” he commanded. “And hurry.”

  She ran back into the banquet floor and located an empty cloak room. Grabbing a hanger, she tore back out into the lot. Mick dropped the rock he was about to heave through the window and rapidly straightened a piece of the wire hanger she handed him. He inserted it where window met door frame and jiggled it up and down. There was a faint snick and he tossed the hanger aside, reaching once more for the door handle.

  Connie had run around to the passenger-side door by the time he’d slid in and reached for keys that had been left dangling in the ignition. Her rap on the window was nearly drowned out as the engine roared to life. “Let me in,” she demanded.

  “Forget it, Nakamura.” Mick spared a single glance for her anxious face peering in at him through the murky glass. “No civilians.” He jerked the gear shift from park down to reverse.

  “You let me in, Vinicor,” she shouted, “or I’ll grab the first cab I can find to take me out there. That’ll add just one more civilian and God only knows how that might screw everything up.”

  Ignoring the threat, Mick backed the car from its slot, reversing in a quick, straight line. Connie ran alongside, banging her palm against the window, and he glared at her persistence. He pressed the brakes and had the gear shift slammed into drive before the car fully rocked to a halt.

  “You open this damn door!” she screamed at him.

  He let loose a string of obscenities. “No! Now let go of the handle or have your goddam shoulder dislocated!”

  “I won’t!” She trotted faster, her breath sobbing in her throat. But she didn’t let go of the handle.

  “Shit!” He stomped on the brakes and reached over to unlock the passenger door, swearing a blue streak as Connie ripped it open and dove into the front seat. Mick had the gas peddle to the floor before she could retract her nose from where it pressed into the cracked upholstery next to his thigh. “When we get to the arena, you’ll stay in the car,” he snapped. “You can make yourself useful by wiping it free of our prints or something.” He took his eyes off the road only briefly to glare over at her. “What you will not do is pull another stunt like this to try to gain admittance to the arena. You get in my way, Connie, and I won’t wait for Karen to take a shot at you. I’ll shoot you myself.”

  She picked herself up and fumbled for the seat belt. It was an old-fashioned lap variety but better than nothing, she fervently hoped. At a rough guess she’d say Mick was averaging seventy miles an hour, pressing his palm to the car horn and screaming through intersections whether the signal lights were red or green. The next time he turned right, cornering practically on two wheels, Connie grabbed for the flapping passenger door and slammed it shut. She hunched down in her seat, peering at Mick’s grim face.

  “Oh, God, I hope we’re in time,” she whispered to herself. “Please, please, let us be on time.” She looked up to find herself pinned in place by fierce blue eyes. In the next instant, the intense gaze was removed, his eyes once again watching the road.

  “We will be,” he said violently. “Nothing’s gonna happen to her. You hear me? Nothing.”

  Sasha was never so glad to see anyone in her life as when Lon Morrison walked into the arena, but the feeling was not a long-lived one. He walked past her without so much as a glance and went straight up to Karen. “You’re thinking with your ego instead of your head,” he told her brusquely. “And that’s not like you. If you had put some thought into this, you’d realize she was bound to tell her plans to Nakamura, who luckily for you brought them to me when she began to get worried—instead of taking them to Vinicor.”

  “Lon?” Sasha said uncertainly, climbing to her feet.

  He turned to her. “When I have something I want to say to you, Miller, you’ll know it,” he snapped. “Until then shut up and sit down!” He immediately turned back to Karen. “There’s still time for damage control but you’ve got to get your story down cold.”

  Shock reverberated through Sasha and she collapsed back into her seat. He wasn’t here to save her butt; he was here to prevent Karen from getting caught disposing of her body.

  Watching the exchange between Miller and Morrison, the corners of Karen’s mouth curled up with pleasure. Well, it was about time.

  Then she frowned. She’d messed up. The increasingly vocal voice in her head had interfered with her normally razor-sharp ability to plan, and she hadn’t plotted; she’d only reacted. Sasha had got in her way one time too many and she’d grabbed at the opportunity to get rid of her once and for all without planning beyond that moment. Praise the Lord for Lon’s intervention.

  On the other hand, she hadn’t come this far without questioning every single situation. She regarded him with inborn suspicion. “Why don’t you just take a few steps back there, big fella,” she suggested coolly, waving him away with her gun hand and exercising caution insofar as keeping it beyond his reach. “You expect me to believe you’re suddenly willing to sacrifice your precious little Sasha?”

  “I don’t see why not.” Lon shrugged with careless disregard. “Saush’s appe
al is a short-lived thing. Just ask Vinicor.”

  Betrayal upon betrayal; it was just one more in a long line of too many. But it was the determining one. Sasha felt something give way deep inside and she surged to her feet, impelled by a hot rush of fury. Emitting a sound like a wounded animal, she charged Lon, shoving him with all her might and crashing him into Karen who toppled over backward onto the ice. She used the impetus she’d gained to hurl herself over the balustrade, landing painfully on one knee upon the ice, but driving the other squarely into Karen’s stomach. Grabbing the other woman by the hair, she banged her head against the ice, once, twice. The gun skittered out of the Karen’s hands.

  Then Karen’s nails were raking at her face, clawing at her hair. Sasha jerked back reflexively when a fingernail gouged the already fiercely painful wound on her cheekbone, and Karen used the brief cessation to her own advantage. Pulling her shoulders off the ground, she joined her hands together and swung them like a club at Sasha’s head.

  The blow cracked across the same cheek that had been pistol whipped, causing her head to turn with a vicious twist and knocking her from her uneven perch atop Karen’s stomach.

  Yellow dots swimming before her eyes, nausea climbing her throat, Sasha lay curled on her side gasping for breath and watched helplessly as Karen scrambled for the pistol. Finally she forced herself up onto her hands and knees, head hanging and breathing deeply, trying to see her way past the sickly white mist that swirled in from the outer edges of her vision. Please, she couldn’t faint now. If she fainted now she was a dead woman. Another deep breath, and it began to recede, the narrow tunnel that comprised her eyesight expanding back to normal. She was so grateful to have it restored and to feel her nausea abate back to a manageable level that staggering to her feet in time to see Karen reach the gun seemed almost anticlimactic.