by PJ Nunn
Dani gasped at the thought and he tightened his already firm grip on her hand.
“I suspect yours have too, but I didn’t look.” He paused and she waited. “The tires have been slashed on my truck and on the passenger side of your car.”
Dani exhaled slowly. “So it’s not the storm.”
“No, it’s not the storm,” he agreed. “The radio in my truck is smashed and I guess the cold killed the battery on my cell phone. There’s no sign of a break-in at the house, but it’s dead.”
She let it all sink in for a minute. “So, basically, we’re sitting ducks here.”
“I’m sure that’s what he’d like to think.”
“What do we do now?” she turned to him, eyes wide.
“That’s what we need to figure out. I’m not due in to work until six. No one will miss me before then,” he said, thinking out loud. “Either the guy is smart and has something planned for the next few hours, or he cut the wires while it was still dark because he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to once it was daylight.”
Dani tried, but she wasn’t following his train of thought. None of it seemed logical to her. “Talk English, Noah. I have no idea what you think.”
He looked at her sadly. “I really don’t know. It wouldn’t be hard to find out I’m scheduled to work tonight. If he wanted to take another run at you, I’d think he’d have waited until I left, then cut the power and…”
“I get it,” she shuddered. “But he didn’t. What does that mean?”
“My best guess is, it means he wants us both.”
“But… we were outside half the day yesterday. Why didn’t he just shoot us?” They both knew he could have if that’s what he wanted to do.
Noah shook his head. “Maybe he still thinks he can make it look accidental, I don’t know. Why didn’t he just conk you in the head instead of going to all the trouble of stealing snakes and locking you in the cellar?”
She nodded in agreement. It’s true. He was obviously lurking nearby. He could easily have slipped up behind her without her knowing. “Because he wanted to put the blame on someone else?”
“Hey, that’s pretty good,” he smiled briefly. “You’ve been hanging around me too much. You’re starting to think like a cop.”
“Then whatever he does, he wants to make it look like it was someone associated with Ophidian.”
“It’s only a guess, but it’s logical. There’ve been too many chances to kill us both.”
“Then, does that mean it’s not someone associated with Ophidian?”
Noah shook his head. “Not necessarily, but I’ll bet Atkinson would like us to think it was someone who’s still there so we won’t look too hard at him.”
“God, I’m tired of this,” she shuddered again.
“You and me both, baby.”
Dani sat, staring into the fire, then announced, “I’m not going to just sit here and wait for someone to come and try to kill me. What do we do?”
He smiled at that and tugged a strand of her hair. “Sometimes, waiting is all we can do, but you’re right. We need a plan. Let’s hypothesize. Assume you were planning to kill a school teacher and her cop boyfriend…”
Dani smiled, but appreciated his attempt to distance her from the danger.
“… you’ve eliminated their means of escape and contact with the outside world. Now they’re sitting ducks. What would you do?”
Thinking like a killer was hardly something she’d done much, but she’d read enough mysteries that the idea wasn’t totally foreign. “How did he kill the guy they found in the cellar?” she asked.
“Don’t know,” he answered. “Too decomposed to tell. And we can’t be sure it was the same guy doing the killing, although I suspect it was.”
“Well,” she said after a minute or two, “I don’t think he’ll try the snake thing again… and if he was going to shoot us, I think he’d have already done that…”
He nodded.
“I don’t know,” she said finally, drawing a blank. “There’s just too much I don’t know.”
“What I know is, we don’t want to panic and make it easy for him. He may be thinking we’ll try to walk out. That would give him a distinct advantage. We won’t fall for that.”
“That doesn’t leave many options,” she offered.
“No, it narrows it down some. But think of this. How many ways can he kill us when we’re in here and he’s out there? Especially when we’re armed.”
She thought about that for a minute, but he didn’t wait.
“As long as we keep the windows covered, he won’t try to shoot through them. He can’t know where we are.”
“But won’t he assume we’re close to the fireplace?” she reasoned.
“Maybe,” he conceded. “So I’ll board up this window. If he tried to break in, we’d hear him. If he tried to set fire to the house, we should know that before it ever got started good.”
“Even if he poured gas all around the foundation?” she asked. Fire hadn’t occurred to her.
“I think we’d hear him, but we probably should make a regular check of all the windows. Gas, I don’t think he could pull off either, unless he snuck in while we were sleeping and we won’t let that happen. Anything else, he’d either have to get in or get us out.”
“Ho, ho, ho,” she teased, feeling a little better about the whole situation. “Will they come when you don’t show up at work?”
“Yep,” he said with certainty. “So basically, we’ve just got to maintain for another…” he glanced at his watch, “…eight hours.”
“I guess going back to bed is out of the question,” she joked.
“I promise you,” he looked her straight in the eye, “it won’t happen in the next eight hours, but it will definitely happen.” He got up and headed for the kitchen. “Come help me find something to block that window.
Their search revealed nothing of value for the purpose at hand, so they finally pooled their efforts and propped the dining room table in front of the window and stacked video cabinets behind it to add depth and hold the table in place. It still wouldn’t stop a bullet at close range, but it would certainly slow the trajectory. With that done, they conducted a room-by-room search, making sure the blinds were closed and leaving the doors ajar to help them hear any noises from that area of the house.
Back downstairs, Noah secured all the windows, then pulled two guns and a box of ammunition out of his coat pocket. “I brought my spare,” he explained, seeing the question in her eyes. “Get me yours,” he added.
She retrieved it for him out of her coat pocket. He checked it and handed it back to her.
“Keep it with you, just in case.” He stood up and tucked his Glock in the shoulder holster he strapped on, then put the other one in the back waistband of his jeans. Noah smiled when he saw her expression. “Welcome to the wonderful world of armed and dangerous.”
“I guess it’s better than the alternative today,” she said.
“All right,” he rubbed his hands together. “Now to more primitive issues.” He disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a tray and a variety of kitchen utensils. “Get me a couple of wire coat hangers,” he instructed. “Hungry, much?” he smiled when she returned.
“What are you doing?” she asked, nodding.
“We’re going to have a good old fashioned wiener roast,” he smiled. “If you collect a few more things from the kitchen, that is.”
When she returned with a tray full of hot dog fixings, he was happily spearing foil-covered potatoes with hangers and arranging them around the embers beneath the grate. The glass coffee decanter was filled with water and sat on the hearth in front of the fire. He carefully threaded three wieners on a hanger and held them out over the flame.
Dani smiled, wondering if she’d have thought of any of this, or just been hungry until help arrived. It produced an odd brunch of hot dogs and chips with warm, weak tea, but she had to admit, it was good. The baked potatoes would ta
ke awhile, but they’d be good, too. With any luck, maybe they could go out to dinner.
After they’d cleared away the mess, Noah took a tour around the house, making sure all was secure, then dropped back down on the couch. “Only one problem I see,” he mused.
“No,” she shook her head. “We’re already up to our quota in problems.”
“Well, at the rate we’re going, we’ll have one more in a couple of hours,” he said, nodding at the rapidly dwindling stack of firewood.
Dani looked at the few remaining logs then at the fire that needed a few more. “Oh, no,” she said, “you’re not going outside.”
He raised his eyebrows. “It’s going to get mighty cold in here if I don’t.”
“Shit. I’ll put on my coat.”
“I went out this morning without incident, didn’t I?”
She frowned.
“I don’t have to go right now,” he said, conceding, at least temporarily, to her fears. “Got a deck of cards?”
She nodded and went to the closet to fetch them. They played Gin for awhile but Dani’s mind wasn’t really on the game. At Noah’s suggestion, she retrieved one of her mysteries to read and he played solitaire. As the afternoon wore on, Dani noticed Noah beginning to fidget more, casting furtive glances at the windows and making more frequent trips upstairs.
The gray, overcast skies had totally blocked the sun and even though it was only approaching four o’clock, it was much darker in the house than it had been even half an hour earlier.
The last of the logs had been added to the fire over an hour ago and it had dwindled to a collection of glowing coals in the bottom with an occasional burst of flame that sputtered out almost as soon as it started. The wood had been pretty wet when he brought it in yesterday and obviously hadn’t dried out fully. Consequently, the logs hadn’t been completely consumed, but they weren’t burning good either. From the look on his face, she knew what he was going to say before he spoke.
“Come upstairs with me for a minute,” he said. “No, wait.” He hurried into the kitchen and came back with a handful of cocoa mix envelopes. He took her empty mug and filled it with water from the coffee pot, then stirred in one of the envelope’s contents. “Now. Ready?”
No, she thought, but followed him up the stairs anyway. At the landing, she was shocked to see a ladder extended downward from the ceiling. She’d never even thought of exploring the attic.
“You first, or me?” he asked. When she wavered, he smiled. “You first, I’ll hold the ladder.” When she still didn’t move, he chuckled. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of heights.”
Dani knew she’d been uncharacteristically quiet all day, but she just couldn’t seem to find the words when she needed them.
“Heat rises,” he prodded.
She smiled and took a step, climbing the ladder slowly. When she reached the top, she was amazed. There was no way to tell how much room there was up there. The attic spanned the width of the house and had large windows on each end, making it surprisingly light in there. On both sides of both windows, Noah had hung large, black trash bags.
“Let me show you,” he said, setting her mug down on a beat up coffee table in the center of the room. Without making a sound, he glided across the room and slid behind one of the hanging trash bags. “I doubt if anyone can see this far in with no light on, but just in case, I hung these to hide behind. Come here, try it.”
Dani slipped in beside him and he backed around her. “See? You’re already wearing a dark sweatshirt. If you pull this stocking cap down over your face, you could even stand in front of this and he’d never see you.” He handed her a ski mask with cutouts for the eyes and mouth.
Dani was pretty impressed. From this angle, it looked like she could see for miles into the trees on three sides. If she needed to see the other side of the house, she just had to go to the other window. The only things she couldn’t see from either location were the areas directly in front of and behind the house.
“Come look over here,” he prompted, moving to the other window. “See my house? my truck?”
“Yes,” she nodded. In fact, she could see the whole trail that led between the two better than she could from the ground. “But why are you showing me this now?”
He smiled softly. “Can’t fool you, can I?”
She looked at him steadily, not returning the smile.
“I have to go for wood. We have no guarantee that this guy will move before dark, or that someone from the PD will come looking before dark. But when it gets dark, it’s going to get damn cold. Your thermostat stops registering at 50 and we’re there now.”
Dani felt tears beginning to well up in her eyes, despite the fact that she knew he was right.
“Don’t cry,” he whispered, his voice breaking for the first time. “I don’t have to cut down a tree. I already have a cord of wood beside the house. I just have to run over and get some. Ten minutes, tops.”
“Can I see the wood pile from here?” she asked.
“No,” he said apologetically, “but I swear, I’ll hurry.”
“And you want me to stay up here while you’re gone?”
“Dani, it’ll be over before you know it. Remember, this is what I do everyday?”
That wasn’t entirely true, but close enough. Still, she couldn’t stop the tears from flowing once he’d gone back down the steps. She wished she could turn up the volume and be certain that her ears recorded every sound. Dani sighed and checked her watch, then focused her eyes on the window.
True to his word, she soon saw Noah making his way through the trees from the back side. Forcing herself to take her eyes off him long enough to scan the area, she quickly located him again, moving ever closer to his house. She kept her gaze on him until his back disappeared into the trees next to the driveway.
Holding her breath, she raised her wrist so she could check the time, then concentrated on her watch for a moment fearing the second hand wasn’t moving anymore. It was. And it continued to move, but nothing moved in the trees below. At eight minutes, Dani knew Noah should have been on his way back. At ten, she started to cry. At twelve minutes, with no sign of him, she thought she saw a movement nearer the front of the driveway. Frozen to the spot, she waited until her heartbeat pounded in her ears. Noah wasn’t coming back.
Chapter Twenty Four
With feet of lead, Dani tore herself away from the window and moved toward the stairs. Her mind was in chaos and she shook her head, silently begging for help from somewhere, anywhere. Warily, with shaking legs, she navigated her way down the ladder, then hit the stairs two at a time. Trembling so bad she fumbled the buttons, she pulled on her coat and tried to fasten it, then slid her shaking hands into her gloves. The last glance at her watch showed that Noah had now been gone for almost twenty minutes. Far too long. She wished they’d taken time to make a contingency plan, even though at the time she wouldn’t have wanted to hear it.
Terrified that the movement she saw near the front of his driveway was the killer, she sucked up every ounce of courage she could find and headed out the back door. With ears finely tuned, she followed the path that Noah had taken, running in a crouched position, not realizing that she should have brought a flashlight until the cover of trees blocked out what little daylight was left in the sky. With her black sweats and jacket, the killer would have a hard time seeing her in here. Trouble was, she’d have a hard time seeing anything before long.
Walking more slowly, dodging the grasping arms of the trees that crackled and crunched as she nudged against them, she made her way across the ravine. The crunch of each footstep echoed in her ears and she wished she knew how to walk more quietly. Although the wind was bitterly cold, sucking the very breath from her nostrils when it hit her face, Dani was aware of only one thing. She had to find Noah.
At the edge of the woods, she stopped and surveyed the visible area. Not a sign of life anywhere. Taking a chance, since she’d never really noticed the woodpile that was
his destination, Dani headed left toward the back of the house. Sure enough, there it was, just around the back corner. But there was no sign that it had been touched recently. Actually, since the entire stack was covered with a three-inch blanket of snow, it was a safe bet that Noah never made it to the woodpile. Then where did he go?
Dani turned and retraced her steps, examining the ground as she went, fully aware that she was little more than a moving target. There, next to the house, she saw fresh footprints heading toward the back, but they stopped suddenly and it looked like he’d backtracked. The footprints disappeared at the driveway, but the wind had blown most of the snow clear from that area, leaving a thin sheet of ice over the frozen ground. Noah’s driveway, like her own, wasn’t paved, it was firmly packed dirt with a smattering of impacted gravel. Since the ground had been frozen hard before the snow fell, the snow didn’t stick much in the high wind.
Worried about a lot more than leaving footprints in the snow, Dani skirted the driveway with her gun in hand, fully cognizant that she might just have to use it this time and praying that she did so wisely. She was almost to the road when she spied something that threatened to stop her heart. Pausing just long enough to scan the trees that lined the other side of the road for a sign of movement, she ran across the road, nearly losing her footing twice on the way. Skidding to a stop, she stared at the ground.
A bright red splotch that could only be blood glistened in the snow it melted when it touched. Fresh.
Heart pounding and short of breath, Dani edged her way into the trees, not sure at first which way to go. Footprints, she reminded herself. Look for footprints. Shivering uncontrollably as much from fear as from cold, she scanned the ground and located what might have been footprints. A few steps further in she saw another spot of blood, not much more than a few drops this time, but enough to assure her that something was very wrong and she was moving in the right direction. Fortunately, she’d been in this part of the woods often enough searching for a truant Bandit to make it seem quasi-familiar.
Pausing long enough to pull the ski mask down over her face and let the safety off her gun, she proceeded cautiously with a death grip on the .38. The snow was too sparse and scattered beneath the trees to make out any consistent trail of footprints, so she just followed her instincts. When she’d lost sight of the road and any sign of footprints or blood spots, she stopped, breathing deeply, grateful that the stocking mask filtered some of the bitter cold from the air she breathed. It did nothing for the pounding of her heart, however, or the vise-grip of fear that encased her soul like concrete.