by Laurie Cass
“Keep going,” I said, mimicking Stewart’s voice.
Stewart. The muscles in my jaw bunched at the thought of him. He had a lot to answer for, and it was up to me to make sure that happened.
“Just go,” I told myself, and went, counting steps and using my fingers as an abacus of sorts. Every step used up roughly a second. Ten steps and I extended one finger. Another ten steps and I extended a second finger. Six fingers out and I’d walked for one minute. How far? Sixty feet maybe, since I was tramping through snow and stepping over branches and downed trees.
So not very far and not for very long.
I took a deep breath, coughed as the cold seared my lungs, and walked for sixty feet. Did it again. And again.
When I’d reached ten minutes—with my right hand now full of the twigs I’d picked up to track the time since I’d run out of fingers—I started veering back toward the road.
Or where I thought the road was. Fifty steps later I wasn’t so sure. Another fifty and I was sure I was completely lost and doomed to die a frozen death. Then, through the trees and their wind-whipped tops, came the most beautiful noise I’d ever heard, faint yet indubitably distinct.
“Mrr!”
I shifted direction immediately, turning a bit to the right, and twenty paces later I could see, ahead and high up, a lightening in the darkness. The road, a wide swatch cut out of the cedar forest, lay directly ahead of me.
“Thanks, Eddie,” I whispered.
As I edged out of the tree line, I heard another unexpected noise—the bookmobile’s engine starting up.
“No, no, no . . .” I hopped into a run.
Stewart was trying to get the bookmobile out of the ditch. He wanted to drive it somewhere else to throw the suspicion in another direction. But Eddie was in there. Alone with Stewart.
I couldn’t let it happen, couldn’t let anything happen to my cat, my fuzzy friend, my pal.
Panting, I hurtled through the blizzard, running toward the man who’d just tried to kill me, running toward the cat who’d saved me in so many ways. “Eddie . . .” I gasped out. “Hang on, bud, I’ll get you. Just hang on.”
Large taillights appeared through the snowy murk, rocking back and forth, back and forth.
Perfect.
I slowed and, with an eye on the bookmobile, jogged over to Stewart’s SUV. He’d slid it into the ditch, but it wasn’t in all that deep, and I bet he’d left his keys in the ignition. With his four-wheel drive, I’d be out of there in no time. Less than ten minutes of frantic driving and I’d be at Buster’s, where I’d break in if I had to and use his phone to summon help. Ten minutes from that point and help would arrive. Twenty minutes and Eddie would be safe. Twenty minutes were all I needed.
It was an excellent plan and I was almost smiling as I reached the SUV and took hold of the door handle.
“No . . .” I whispered, staring. “He didn’t. He couldn’t have.”
But he had. The SUV’s door was locked.
* * *
• • •
Bad words circulated in my head as I frantically tried the other doors. Rear driver’s side door, back door, both passenger side doors—all locked. What kind of person locked his vehicle before setting off to commit murder? Who did that?
I thumped the heel of my hand against the front passenger door, the door most hidden from the bookmobile—I didn’t want the gun-holding Stewart to have any inkling where I was—hoping against hope that the thing was just frozen shut, not locked, but it didn’t budge.
More bad words trickled into my brain. But saying them out loud wouldn’t help anything, so I let them go and tried to think. Was there another way in? Maybe I could smash a window . . . I knelt on the snow and scrabbled around for a rock.
The third time I grabbed an icy chunk of snow, I gave up. There were rocks down there, but I didn’t have time—Eddie didn’t have time—for me to find something suitable. Besides, if he’d locked his vehicle, he’d probably taken the keys. There had to be a different way. And if there wasn’t a different way, I had to make one.
A shiver roiled through me, from bottom to top, a shiver so strong that I almost fell to my knees. I’d been doing my best to ignore my shivering body, but I wouldn’t be able to do so much longer. Maybe Stewart had been closer than I’d thought with his half-hour estimate.
The bookmobile’s engine revved up and down as Stewart did his best to move it forward and backward. After one look at how deep the tires were ground into the snow, I could have told him it would be no use, but I wasn’t about to tell him, and even if I had, he wouldn’t have listened to me. He was that kind of guy.
I stood there, on my tiptoes to peer over the top of the SUV, trying to think through the numbness of every body part I owned. With escape in Stewart’s vehicle out of the picture, the number of possible options had been cut in half. The only thing left was to sneak aboard the bookmobile, incapacitate Stewart, and figure out some way to summon help.
Piece of cake.
“Keep going,” I said, and forced myself to smile at my own inside joke. Not that it was funny, but poking fun at Stewart made me feel a little better, and at this point, that was enough.
I hunched down low enough to be fairly sure the top of my head was out of sight of the bookmobile’s side mirror and crab-walked across the road to the bookmobile’s rear bumper. If I tried to get in the side door, the door we used ninety-nine percent of the time, odds were good that the motion of opening the door would catch Stewart’s attention, which was pretty much the last thing I wanted to do since he was bigger, stronger, and almost certainly still had that gun.
That left the door in the rear of the bookmobile, the door that provided access to the handicapped lift. Most people didn’t even know it was there, and I prayed Stewart was one of them.
I reached up with shaking fingers and flipped open the tiny door, revealing the keypad, and also revealing my complete inadequacy as a human being. Because I couldn’t remember the code. Couldn’t remember the last time I’d used the code. Couldn’t remember when I’d last used this entrance. I couldn’t remember anything, I was going to freeze to death out here, Eddie was going to freeze and—
“Stop that,” I whispered.
And then remembered the four-digit code. It was the day I’d started working at the library, June 14, better known to the keypad as 0614. How could I have forgotten? I tapped out the numbers and waited for the quiet chunk of an unlocking door.
Nothing happened.
“Don’t do this,” I muttered and tapped the numbers again.
Still nothing.
On my third time through, it occurred to me that my fingers were too freaking cold to make the thing work. It seemed like I was pushing hard enough, but I’d lost most of the feeling in my fingers long ago and it was hard to tell. I considered and discarded the idea that the cold was a problem for the mechanism, because I had no way around that. But if it was just me . . .
Still hunched down, I inched backward into the dark. When I was convinced that Stewart wouldn’t be able to catch my movements through any of the mirrors, I skittered across the ditch and into the cedar trees, where fallen branches were strewn across the snow.
I picked up a stick that was a half inch in diameter, stepped on it to break off a foot-long length, and hurried back to the bookmobile. With one end of the stick positioned against my shoulder, I aimed the other end at the keypad and pushed 0.
A glorious beep filled my ears. This was going to work; it was really going to work! Grinning, I punched the rest of the code and heard the sweet sound of the lock unsnicking. “I’m coming, Eddie,” I breathed softly. “Just hang on.”
My fingers still weren’t working for beans, so I pushed at the door handle with the side of my palm, lifting it up. It clicked open so noisily that I crouched down even smaller.
All I heard was
a string of curse words coming from the front, words that sounded a lot like what had gone through my head when I’d found Stewart’s SUV locked. His dealt more with the uselessness of snow tires and the weight of books, but the gist was the same.
He shifted the transmission back and forth, back and forth, but there was nothing for the tires to grip except icy snow, a substance notorious for being gripless.
I slowly cracked open the back door, waited until he was in the middle of a shift, and slithered inside, or with as close to a slither as I could do being nowhere near the skinniness of a snake and half frozen to boot.
The mechanism of the wheelchair lift provided some visual shelter from Stewart’s view, but as soon as all of me was on board, I clicked the door shut and scurried behind the rear desk. For a moment I hunched back there, panting as quietly as I could while a semblance of warmth crept back into my limbs. It wasn’t exactly toasty back there, but at least it was out of the wind. I tried to flex my hands and was cheered to see my fingers obey my mental command by moving all of an inch.
Excellent. Though it would take more time for my fingers and toes to warm up than I had to spare, at least I had some control.
“Mrr?”
I heard the double thump of Eddie’s feet as he jumped up onto the desk and looked up to see him looking down at me. With an index finger that I couldn’t completely straighten, I made the universal Shhh! gesture. Of course, since I was making it to a cat, there was a large chance the gesture wasn’t nearly as universal as I’d like, but there wasn’t much else I could do.
“Mrr,” Eddie said softly.
We’ll get out of this, I promised him silently. Don’t know how exactly, but we’ll be fine.
Up front, Stewart was still focused on shifting back and forth. I tried not to think about the damage he could be doing to the transmission and unhooked the bungee cord that held the desk chair in place. The warmer I got, the more my brain was starting to work. If I was lucky, soon I’d be able to do simple addition. And since that was the only kind of addition at which I was competent, that would clearly mean my mental ability was at full capacity.
Two plus two is four, I thought to myself. Four plus four is eight. A plan was starting to gel, but what if it was a horrible plan conjured up by a panicking librarian? If I waited a little longer, would I come up with a better plan?
Eddie oozed down to the floor. His mouth opened in a silent “Mrr” as he whacked my ankle with the side of his head.
I let my hand rest on his back for a short moment, thinking how sorry I was to have gotten him into this mess, but at the same time I was grateful for his presence. His warmth seeped into my palm, and my fingers started to tingle with what would be a painful coming-back-to-life process.
But there was no time to think about that. At some point Stewart would abandon his pointless efforts, and when he turned, he would see me. I had to make my move and I had to make it now.
Taking a deep breath, I rolled the chair in front of me and, on my knees, started the long journey forward.
Since Stewart was taller than I was, I couldn’t be sure what he could see in the rearview mirror. Would he see more floor or more ceiling? If it was ceiling, I was fine. If it was floor . . . well, if he glanced up, it would take him a moment to register why the chair was there and why it was moving, and I’d have to take advantage of that pause.
I tried to work out the mirror angles in my head but didn’t like the conclusion, so I stopped thinking about it.
Inch by slow inch, I moved ahead, around all the fallen items, past the children’s books and puppets, past the magazines and DVDs, past the young adult books, and into the nonfiction and adult fiction. The plastic runner we put down on the carpet in winter was blessedly quiet under my knees and I moved as fast as I could.
Questions kept popping into my head, questions for which I desperately wanted answers but had no way of getting:
Where was the gun?
What was Eddie doing?
How long was Stewart going to keep trying to rock the bookmobile?
What would he do next?
And back to, Where was the gun?
The bookmobile lurched backward. “Hah!” Stewart shouted. “I knew I’d get it!”
My mouth went dry. This was not part of the plan. The plan could not be carried out if the bookmobile was moving. If that happened, I’d have to come up with another idea and this one was already on the outside edge of possible. What could—
There was another lurch. The bookmobile rolled back to where it had been and settled in for a long winter’s nap.
Stewart cursed a long colorful streak, then growled out, “If I did it once, I can do it again,” and dropped the transmission into Drive.
It was now or never.
I shoved the chair away from me, spinning the seat so that it would make as much noise as possible. I was still on my knees, trying to stay out of his line of sight. This was the first tricky part. I needed a few seconds, just a few seconds was all, but wasn’t sure I’d get them. If Stewart kept turning around, he’d see me. If he had the gun handy, it was all over. If, if, if . . .
Stewart’s head snapped around. “What the—” His gaze fastened on the chair. It zoomed toward the passenger’s seat, thumped against it, and toppled to the floor.
I was already moving, but Eddie was faster.
“MRR!!” He jumped on top of the passenger’s seat headrest and faced Stewart. “MRR!!” He spat and hissed and growled.
“Shut up,” Stewart said. “Why do people have cats anyway? Dogs are the only pets people should have. Cats are useless, all they do is—urk!!”
I tightened the bungee cord I’d slid around his neck. “Oh, I don’t know about that,” I said breathlessly, hauling hard. “I’d say he was quite useful in distracting you while I snuck up from behind.”
“You . . . can’t . . . do . . . this,” Stewart gasped.
“Pretty sure you’re wrong about that. Oh, look, your face is turning a lovely shade of red. Do you think it’ll turn blue soon? How about I take your gun and then I’ll think about not choking you to death.”
“It’s . . . in the . . . SUV.”
I tsk’d at him. “Try again,” I said, pulling a teensy bit harder, which made me feel queasy.
“Pocket,” he said in a . . . well, in a choked voice. “Right pocket.”
I put both ends of the bungee cord in one hand and reached for the gun with the other. “Oh, my favorite, a Beretta. Is that the PX4 Compact? How handy that you have the same kind of gun I always use on the gun range. Now we’ll—”
Stewart jabbed out with his elbow and knocked the gun out of my hand.
I dropped the bungee cord and lunged for the gun. Stewart was doing the same thing, but I was ahead of him, reaching. He grabbed my ankle and hauled me backward. “No little girl is going to get the best of me,” he snarled, and elbowed me in the ribs so hard that I cried out in pain.
“MRR!!!”
“Oww! Get off me, cat!!”
Stewart’s grip on my ankle released and I scrabbled the last few feet for the gun. When I had it in my hands, I kept moving away from Stewart, farther out of his reach, but I needn’t have gone to the effort, because when I turned around, Stewart was still wiping the blood out of his eyes, proof that Mom was right when she’d told me that scalp wounds bleed a lot.
Eddie, for his part, was already sitting on the console licking his front paws.
“Here.” I tossed Stewart the roll of fishing line I’d picked up from the floor, very pleased that we’d started lending ice fishing equipment that winter. “Tie your ankles together.”
“I will not.” He rubbed his sleeve over his face and started to get to his feet. “Because you’re not going to use that gun. Even if you know how to use it, you wouldn’t be able to shoot a human being. The pain you’d inflict? T
he mess you’d make?” He shook his head. “Just don’t see it happening.”
The gun’s barrel wavered as I thought about it. Maybe he was right. But then I thought about what he’d done to Rowan. What he’d done to Neil and Collier and Anya. What he’d tried to do to me. What he almost certainly would have done to Eddie.
I clicked off the safety and pointed the gun at his chest. “Are you willing to take that chance?” My voice was calm. Measured. Confident. “Sit down and tie your ankles.”
For the merest fraction of a second, he hesitated. And then he did what I’d told him to do.
Ten minutes later, I’d bound his hands together, taken his phone and car keys out of his coat pockets, and was starting his SUV with Eddie at my side. It didn’t take much to get out of the ditch and then we were up and away.
At the top of the next hill, I called 911 and did my best to tell them where I was and what had happened. As soon as the dispatcher said deputies were on their way, I thanked her and said I needed to call someone else.
“Please stay on the line, ma’am,” she said. “I’d like to make sure you’re okay until the deputies arrive.”
“Thanks, but I have to go.” I ended the call, started the next, and reached out to pet Eddie, his purrs filling my ears and heart.
“Minnie?” Rafe asked. “Where are you? I thought we were meeting at six. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said. “We’re fine.” And then, suddenly and unexpectedly, I began to cry.
Chapter 20
My aunt looked at me across the kitchen table, which was practically groaning under the weight of the food she’d piled onto it. Scrambled eggs, bacon, and waffles. Hash browns, sausage, and biscuits. And then there was the sourdough toast and fresh-squeezed orange juice. The four of us sitting at the table hadn’t a chance of eating it all, but I was going to do my best to do justice to my aunt’s post-traumatic cooking. “So would you have done it?” she asked. “Shot him, I mean?”