Stone Cold Fear | Book 3 | Ice Burn

by Fawkes, K. M.

  “Don’t. Move,” she said quietly.

  She handed him one of the guns, threw the sheet over the cart to cover him, and then started pushing the cart toward the door, grunting at the weight of it.

  Pete had just enough time to wonder how she was going to manage pushing him all the way down the hall to the elevators without looking like she was pushing a 250-pound man before the door’s handle started rattling and someone from the hallway started shouting.

  Chapter 27

  “Why the hell is this door locked?” someone from outside the door shouted, banging on the door in question and sounding both very young and very high on their own power.

  Pete gulped and grew as still and as quiet as he possibly could, his finger on the trigger of his gun.

  Marie was a reporter. He hoped she already had a story in mind for those guys.

  She pushed the cart up to the door and threw it open.

  “I didn’t want him getting out, did I?” she asked, her tone deceptively sweet. “I figure he’s asleep anyhow, but I don’t want to take a chance of him making a run for it when I’ve got my back turned. You boys wouldn’t like me very much if I let your prisoner out, now, would you?”

  God, she actually sounded respectful. It was unlike anything he’d ever heard from her before.

  She was getting really, really good at this whole thing. If the real military still existed, they should recruit her immediately. Train her as a spy.

  Because it was already working on the guys at the door. He could practically hear the tension melting out of the room.

  “Not smart to lock yourself in the room with a convict, miss,” the first guy said. “What would you do if he attacked you?”

  “Attacked me? You don’t think he’d do such a thing, do you? After all, I’m just here to help him feel better.”

  He could practically see the look she’d be wearing on her face right now, and he smiled at the thought. Those soldiers didn’t have a prayer.

  “I think he might,” the soldier said, his voice growing concerned. “What’s your name?”

  “Missy,” she said smoothly. “What’s yours?”

  “Lieutenant Corporal John H. Williams,” he said formally. “Most people just call me Johnny.”

  “Well, Johnny, I sure do appreciate you looking out for me,” she replied. “But I’m about to get off work and I don’t want to run into overtime. You know they never pay it like they’re supposed to. You going to be here tomorrow?”

  “Unless they kill him first.”

  The line was shocking. The smile behind it told Pete that the guy wasn’t thinking about what he was saying, though. He was too busy flirting with Marie.

  She gasped. “Well, I’ll hope they don’t do that. I don’t like killing.”

  “Me either. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

  “Sure,” she breathed, sounding more like Marilyn Monroe every second and starting forward with the cart.

  Pete had to stifle his laugh. It was a whole lot easier knowing that if he gave in—if he so much as moved—that guy would go from flirting with Marie to trying to kill them both.

  He might not like killing. Pete didn’t think that’d stop him if he realized the nurse was currently sneaking the prisoner out on her cart.

  And at that thought, he grew even stiller. What the hell had she done? The moment they looked into that bed, they were going to figure out that he was no longer in it. They were going to take one look and—

  “Hey!”

  The confused shout sounded out from behind them, and seconds later, he could feel their pace increasing, Marie pushing the cart harder and harder down the hallway.

  “Hey!” The voice was louder now, like the guy had been in the room the first time he called, and was now out in the hallway. “Wait, Missy, we’ve got a problem!”

  Marie didn’t wait. She started running, throwing herself against the cart with what had to be every ounce of her weight.

  Pete leaned forward, trying to help her move the thing, praying that he was wrong about what was going on. And knowing that he wasn’t. There was no way he could be. He could hear the boots pounding in the hall behind them and feel the cart going faster and faster, and there was only one reason for that.

  The soldiers had figured out that he wasn’t in bed anymore. And they’d also figured out that Marie was wheeling a cart that might very well include Pete himself. If they hadn’t known it before, they’d sure as hell figured it out when she started running with said cart rather than stopping and asking what it was they wanted.

  The fact that she was struggling had to be making it even more obvious.

  He leaned forward even further, wondering if that was actually going to help or if it would just put his weight in a different position. When he realized that the thing probably wasn’t meant to support weight like his and he might actually unbalance it with that move, he quickly leaned back again.

  Then he started wondering why he was even still bothering to hide when the soldiers were already chasing them.

  The second after that, someone shot a gun and Marie screeched.

  “Pete, we’ve got a problem,” she muttered.

  “Right,” he said quietly. “And I’ve got the solution.”

  He ducked out of the cart, rolling when he hit the ground and coming up ready to shoot at the guys that had been chasing them, forcing his eyes to focus on the moving bodies no matter how much the world was spinning. He zeroed in on the first guy, brought the gun to a steady position, and pulled the trigger in one quick movement, then swung the gun over and took out the second guy before he could so much as react to the addition of another man in the hallway.

  Then he was on his feet and racing after Marie, who had abandoned the cart and was now racing for the door into what he assumed was the stairwell.

  “What’s the plan?” he huffed when he caught up with her.

  “I really don’t have much more than what we’ve already done,” she answered, grabbing the door and throwing it open, then racing toward the stairs. “Honestly, I didn’t think I’d even get into the same room with you.”

  He jumped after her and hit the stairs leading downward at a run. “Doubting your capabilities? That doesn’t sound like you.”

  She snorted, grabbed the rail, and spun herself around the turn to hit the next flight of stairs. “You try breaking into a military compound by yourself and plotting to take their star prisoner, and we’ll see how your confidence does.”

  “Where are your clothes?” he asked, jumping right to the most important thing on the list. “We can’t go outside with you in a freaking Halloween costume.”

  “I know, right? You’d think nurses in military hospitals would wear grown-up clothing. They’re in a floor in the basement. I don’t know if we have time to get there.”

  He shot past her and took the lead, knowing already that there would be soldiers coming up from the bottom floors in search of whatever that shooting had been, and wanting those soldiers to get to him first.

  “I’m not taking you out into the snow in that,” he ground out. “We need your warm clothes. And we need them quick. Tell me how to get there.”

  They raced down three more flights of stairs before they hit the bottom floor, and then he paused next to the door into the hallway. Putting his back to the wall, he moved enough for one eye to peek through the window in the door, and scanned the hallway.

  Unfortunately, he couldn’t see much. This was such a restricted view that there could be one hundred guys in that hallway and he’d never know about it.

  “Oh my God, we don’t have time for this,” Marie said, casting a nervous glance up the stairs toward the roof. “They’re going to be after us at any moment, Pete.”

  She was right.

  “Dammit,” he breathed. “Okay, here’s how this is going to happen. I’m going to go out there and clear the hall of any soldiers while you run for the room where your clothes are. Change as fast as you can, you unde
rstand me? I don’t care if we have to run outside with you half naked still. You grab your clothes and get the hell out of that room.”

  “If you wanted to see me naked, there are easier ways to do it,” she joked.

  There was no humor behind the joke.

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” he answered, also without any humor. “You ready?”

  “Ready to run out there into what might be a storm of bullets, just to get my clothes? Sure, why not?”

  He shook his head once, marveling again at her ability to make jokes at the worst time, and then threw open the door. Two steps and he was through it and spinning, his gun up and ready to take out whatever enemy he saw in front of him.

  There was no one down here.

  “My God, what sort of outfit is this that they don’t guard the exits when there’s shooting in a building?” he marveled. “Who are these kids?”

  Marie grabbed his hand and started running. “Not real military, I don’t think. I know they keep saying that there’s an army base nearby, but I don’t think they actually came from it. I think they’re just more of Clyde’s followers, dressed up like military. And there’s worse.”

  She got to a door and yanked it open, already pulling off the nurse’s dress as she ran toward what looked like a cot and dresser in the back of the room. On the floor, he saw a woman’s body.

  The nurse, he realized. The one Marie said she’d knocked out.

  Marie herself ran right past her, succeeded in getting the dress off before she got to the cot, and finished the run in nothing but her bra and panties. She started getting dressed again immediately in the warmer clothing she’d left behind.

  Pete forced himself to turn away and watch the hallway. The last thing he wanted was to get caught by a soldier—or a kid pretending to be one—sneaking up on them.

  “What’s worse than the situation we’re already in?” he asked, going back to the last thing she’d said as he stared up and down the hallway, looking for any sign of movement. “Are we also secretly being filmed or something?”

  Marie appeared at his side, flushed and out of breath but somehow completely dressed already. She was pulling on her boots, her face creased with concentration, but stopped now to look up at him.

  “Not that I know of. But I did hear a bunch of guys talking after I knocked out the nurse. And you know that warehouse we were looking for? The one we thought had all that cool stuff in it?”

  “Yes,” Pete answered, already afraid he knew where she was going with this.

  “Well, they already got to it. Nolan knew about it and came here specifically for that, and they’ve already cleared it out. I have no idea where they put all the stuff, but I don’t think we can exactly go around looking for it. They’re going to be after us the moment they figure out we’ve escaped.”

  Pete took a beat to come to terms with the death of his entire plan.

  Then he moved forward. Things changed. He just had to think of something else, then.

  “Let’s worry about getting out of this hospital,” he said. “Then we’ll worry about what we’re going to do afterward. Where’s the exit from here?”

  “About fifty feet to our right,” she said.

  “We turn right and we run,” he said sharply. “Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  He nodded, took her hand, and shot out the door, his eyes already going right.

  The moment they were through the door, the shooting started.

  Chapter 28

  They went screaming—literally—out of the hospital, managing to somehow get out without anyone on their tail, and a moment later, found themselves in the bright afternoon sunshine, blinking against the glare of the light off the mounds and mounds of snow in what had been the parking lot and breathing heavily.

  Pete rounded a corner, threw himself up against the wall, and reached out to yank Marie back next to him when she went running by.

  Then, their backs at least covered now, he snuck one eye back around the corner, allowing it to scan not only the parking lot itself but also the door they’d just come through.

  They’d been shooting hard, but it was over their shoulders and without aiming. He was only 50 percent sure he’d hit anyone he’d been pointing at. Not sure he’d killed them, but hoping that he’d done enough to at least take them out of the game. He’d seen Marie’s shooting over the past week and was willing to say the same for her.

  Except, of course, that she hadn’t been able to see any better than he had. She’d had her gun up behind her back and was firing as quickly as she could manage, but he wondered whether she’s been able to hit anything at all, given her lack of experience with weapons.

  Now, however, she was all business, her gun clutched up in front of her chest, her finger on the trigger, her eyes narrowed in concentration.

  Not a whisper of the woman who had thought the prisoners had deserved a fair shake, back in Mueller. These days, if anything seemed like it might give her even a breath of threat, she would shoot it.

  My, how the times had changed, he thought, allowing himself a wry smile.

  Then he went back to looking over the parking lot. Because he really was only hoping that they’d done enough damage back there to keep those soldiers busy for a little bit. He didn’t think he could expect anything more than that. And even if they had managed to hit everyone who’d been after them, there was a 100 percent chance that other people not involved in the battle had heard the gunfire. It wouldn’t take those other guys long to arrive.

  They might not have been obvious in that basement, and he might have thought it was a sloppy outfit that didn’t respond to gunfire, but it turned out he’d been wrong. They’d just been waiting for their chance.

  “We can’t stay here,” he said with a grunt. “It’s only a matter of time before the backup squad gets here.”

  “And yet you’re the one who stopped us and is currently standing there staring at the parking lot like it’s about to explode into gold coins for you to collect,” Marie pointed out drily. “If we need to get moving, let’s get the hell out of here. I don’t know about you, but I don’t exactly want to stick around. This place is moving right up on the list of places I don’t feel too good about.”

  Pete huffed and turned to her. “You’re not the one who was just thrown in the air by a gas explosion, on top of the cracked ribs he’d already managed this week.”

  No, he didn’t feel that badly, and he’d already realized when he rolled off the cart that he’d be able to do whatever it took to get out of here. He was okay for right now—probably thanks to the pain medication still coursing through his body. The big problem would come when the adrenaline wore off.

  At that point, he was going to be of relatively little use to himself or anyone else.

  They needed a better plan than just running away. Because he wasn’t going to make it, running away.

  “Well then, what do you want to do?” she asked, her voice—for once—missing the sarcasm he’d come to expect from her.

  He thought about it for a moment, but it didn’t take long to figure out that the way forward from here was pretty clear. At least, the start of it was.

  “Get off the hospital property,” he said quickly. “Get to a place where we don’t have to worry about a soldier coming from around every single corner.”

  “From what I’ve seen, it’s not much better in town,” she noted quietly.

  Pete couldn’t argue with that. Partially because he’d seen that much when they were on their way to City Hall, and partially because she’d been out there while he’d been stuck in that hospital room, unconscious. She was the one who’d gone into town to get help from their new friends.

  She’d have seen the current state of things. And how active the soldiers were out there now that the town had fallen in on itself.

  “Not like we have a choice, though,” he pointed out. “We can’t stay here. Unless you’ve changed your mind and gotten all sentimental about
the hospital.”

  “No chance,” Marie snorted. “I vote for Option A. Get the hell out of here.”

  Pete nodded. “Right. We get off the property and out into the streets, and from there, we head for the first deserted building we see. We hunker down there until nightfall. And then…”

  “Then,” she said, taking up the narrative, “I say we find supplies and get the hell out of Dodge. Find a place to hole up for the rest of winter. Surely there are vacation cabins around here. Places that people aren’t going to be using anymore. We find a place and make it our own. Drop the rest of the way off the grid until winter is over. Let the world reset. Once spring gets here and it’s warmer, we can try again. What do you think?”

  Pete turned all the way around and looked at her fully, his mind rushing through the idea. Stay until it was warmer. Hunker down and wait out the cold. Try again in the spring.

  It was almost word-for-word the very thing he’d been thinking when they were at that ranger station in the middle of nowhere. If they could find a safe place and stay there until the weather thawed, give the government time to get control of the situation again, wait for Nolan and his men to stop looking for them…

  He’d never have thought it would appeal to him. When he first met this woman, she’d spent most of her time tap-dancing on his last nerve. But in the week since, they’d gotten out of a prison together, braved snowstorm after snowstorm, beaten a pack of wolves, outsmarted a pack of convicts—and the maniacal doctor they were after—and then escaped an equally maniacal cult that had murder on their minds. She’d saved his life back there at the military compound by shooting the general when he was going to kill Pete.

  She’d moved heaven and earth to find a way to get to him in the military hospital, and saved him from that, too.

  He never would have guessed it, but this woman had now saved him more times than even his best friends in the Guard had.

  And she was a whole lot easier to look at than those guys. She also had a better sense of humor, and more intelligence.