Sleepwalker

by Karen Robards

  “Almost out of sight,” she told him.

  He didn’t answer. Mick realized that it was because his teeth were now clenched, presumably to keep them from chattering. She eyed him with growing concern. His profile was classic: smooth forehead, straight nose, strong chin. Unfortunately, at the moment, it was rigid enough that it could have been carved from stone, and pale enough that that stone could have been white marble. He was breathing in a carefully controlled rhythm that she got the impression he had to think about to maintain. Instead of flicking glances at her as he had been doing, his eyes remained fixed on the shore.

  “We’re almost there,” she encouraged him. By way of answer his lips firmed and he grimaced. Mick understood from that that he was now too cold to talk. “Just a little farther.”

  Moving like Frankenstein, he kept going despite the obvious difficulty, his expression a study in grim determination. Mick held on and tried to stay as still as she could as the water sloshed around them with little sucking noises and the wind pelted them with flurries of snow. Time seemed to stretch out endlessly, but the reality was that in just a matter of a minute or so he reached the shallows. Gauging their progress anxiously, she saw the water drop to his waist, then the tops of his thighs, then his knees. Finally he splashed through the lapping surf to the snow-covered beach.

  “Good job,” she breathed.

  The effort it had cost him was easy to see. His face had changed, pale skin drawn taut over the underlying bone structure in a masklike effect that looked brittle enough to break. His mouth had compressed into a thin, straight line. His eyes were dark and impossible to read, and he was breathing hard and deep. All not good signs.

  “Quick, put me down.”

  Practically throwing herself from his arms when he was slow to release her, Mick instantly swung the bundle of dry clothing off her shoulder and dropped it on the beach. Fortunately the snow here wasn’t much more than an inch deep, probably because the wind blowing in off the lake had swept it up into big drifts piled against the line of trees. Ripping the bundle open, she grabbed the first absorbent-feeling piece of cloth she found—a sweatshirt, she saw as she shook it out—and started hurriedly rubbing him down as icy, muddy water poured from his lower body to puddle around his feet, turning the snow into dirty slush. Front, back, thighs, calves—mindful of the possibility that he might have been going into hypothermia, she tried to wipe him dry as fast as she could, in long, comprehensive swipes. For a moment he simply let her do what she would. Teeth and fists clenched, he stood silent, scarily white from the waist down, shaking like a paint mixer. When she went for his package, which had indeed, in proof of that pearl of common wisdom about the effects of cold water, shrunken noticeably, he shook himself like a dog emerging from the water, stepped out of the puddle he had created, and at the same time took the sweatshirt from her.

  “I got this,” he said, sounding like the words were being forced through his teeth.

  “Oh my God, are you modest? This is so not the time.”

  “Just hand me my clothes, would you?”

  Even as he worked on drying himself, she grabbed his shirt from the pile and pulled it over his head for him on the theory that the faster he was dressed, the better off he would be. He still shivered violently and was shifting from foot to foot now in an effort to protect his feet from the icy slush on the beach.

  “I got this,” he said again, thrusting his arms into the sleeves of his shirt and pulling it down over his chest and abdomen, grabbing his boxers as she passed them over and stepping into them, all the while shivering visibly and quick-stepping in place. Handing over his pants, she snatched up his socks and boots and crouched in front of him, ready to help him put them on just as he had helped her on the boat. His bare feet were long and narrow, and nearly as white now as the snow. She winced with sympathy as she looked at them.

  “Nice position.”

  That made her look up. He was zipping his fly, but the brief flash of his teeth and the gleam in his eyes as he met her gaze told her that, yes, he had meant just exactly what she’d thought and he wasn’t on the verge of dying from exposure any time soon.

  “Funny. You want my help or not?”

  “Not.” Taking his socks from her, he stood on one foot to pull one on and nodded at something behind her at the same time. “Grab the suitcase. We need to make tracks out of here.”

  With a single sock on, he shoved his foot into his boot, then balanced on it as he pulled on his second sock.

  Mick’s lips compressed. But arguing over the relative merits of running for one’s life versus running for one’s life weighted down by a large, heavy, awkward suitcase full of stolen cash was futile, she knew, so she didn’t bother.

  “Fine.” Hurrying toward the suitcase, which was visible as a dark rectangle against the snow maybe twenty feet away, she automatically checked the position of the nearest Jet Ski and felt her heart leap into her throat.

  It was at the top of their cove now, barreling down toward them, its headlight as big and round as a full moon. In just minutes that bright beam would reach their beach.

  “Ali.” Crouching beside the suitcase, struggling to untie the knot in the sleeves that secured the rain jacket around it, she looked over her shoulder for the thief. Her purpose was to warn him about the Jet Ski’s proximity, but she discovered that he had clearly already discovered the danger for himself. Fully dressed now, including the hoodie he’d been wearing on the boat, with what remained of the bundle of clothes tucked under one arm, crouched low, moving fast, he was almost at her side.

  “I see it.” Snatching up the suitcase, rain jacket and all, he grabbed her elbow. “Let’s go.”

  Without another word, they ran for the woods.

  Behind them, the sound of the Jet Ski went from a low growl to a full-throated roar in what seemed like a matter of seconds.

  “Our footprints.” Breathless as she plowed through the drifts that had piled up against the edge of the trees, Mick wasn’t helped by the fact that she kept compulsively glancing back to follow the progress of the Jet Ski. It was terrifyingly close now. In just a matter of seconds, the headlight would sweep the area they had just vacated.

  “Nothing we can do except hope he doesn’t see them.” His voice still sounded a little different, which she put down to the lingering effects of the extreme cold exposure he had suffered. Probably adrenaline was helping his body fight off the worst of the consequences: the need to move fast outweighed everything else. Ahead of her now, he reached for her hand as she struggled to negotiate the last, knee-high drift and pulled her through it into the safety of the trees. “Get down. Stay still.”

  Taking comfort from the stygian darkness that enclosed them, Mick did just that, crouching beside him in the lee of a giant, snow-laden pine, peering out at the Jet Ski from behind the shelter of the drift she’d just high-stepped through. Dislodged by their passage, a clump of snow fell from an overhead bough and hit the ground nearby with a soft swoosh. Mick jumped like she’d been shot, registered what it was, then went back to watching the oncoming Jet Ski with her heart in her throat.

  It was now so close that even through the veil of falling snow she could make out a number of details about its driver: big and bulky-looking on the sleek white machine, he was wearing a dark ski jacket tightly zipped up over his security guard uniform, along with gloves and a watch cap that left his face uncovered. Even as she winced reflexively, imagining how frozen the man’s poor face must have felt, she realized that he was Otis. For the space of maybe half a heartbeat she found herself calming down, because, after all, she knew him, and while she wouldn’t exactly classify him as a friend, he wasn’t anyone she would ever describe as an enemy or a threat, either. He was a good guy, someone she’d known casually for a long time, an acquaintance from the hood.

  Then the headlight touched on the mark in the snow left by the suitcase, and her heart, which was clearly more in tune with reality than her head, thumped in her chest
. To her eyes, the dark footprints they’d left in the snow were suddenly as obvious as if they’d glowed with neon lights. If he spotted them …

  Her throat tightened. Her stomach knotted. And that’s when she knew for certain that her world had changed out of all recognition: Otis was now someone to be feared.

  The headlight skittered along the beach, slid over the footprints, passed on. The Jet Ski, having roared past without pause, now curved away, following the shoreline, heading for the next cove.

  Mick let out a breath she hadn’t realized she had been holding.

  “See? You don’t spot what you’re not looking for. He’s hunting a boat, not footprints.”

  “Thank God.” Her words were heartfelt.

  “Let’s go.” He got to his feet, crouching to keep from hitting low-hanging evergreen boughs. His voice sounded more normal now, but he kept it low. It wasn’t that he was afraid of being overheard, she knew, because there was almost certainly no one within earshot. It was just that something about the cold, silent expanse of pine-scented darkness stretching out seemingly without end before them seemed to call for hushed voices and quiet movements. “We need to be long gone before they figure out we’re not on that boat.”

  “Yeah.” Mick was on her feet, too, ducking to avoid the snow-heavy branches, right behind him as he moved out from under the tree. Then she cast one last, quick look over her shoulder—and stopped dead.

  Chapter

  9

  “Wait. Look.” Mick grabbed his arm and pointed. He turned and looked, and she knew that what he was seeing hit him the same way it had her: uh -oh. The Jet Ski that had so recently been skimming the coves had abandoned the shoreline. It was now streaking out toward the cold, dark center of the lake.

  Following approximately the same path the Playtime had taken.

  The helicopter and its followers had changed direction, too. The small lights that marked their existence seemed to be moving at speed along a diagonal across the lake.

  “That didn’t take long,” he observed, and Mick knew he had come to the same conclusion she had: one or the other of them had spotted the Playtime, and they were now in full-fledged pursuit.

  “They’re going to come looking for us.” Voice hollow, Mick followed him out from beneath the tree. As tempting as it was to hang around and watch, the only intelligent thing to do was run like hell while the hounds were still distracted. Luckily, he seemed to be on the same page.

  “They’ll have to do a lot of backtracking. For all they know, we could have abandoned the boat anywhere.” Untying the jacket from the suitcase, he pulled the garment—a navy blue golf jacket—on and zipped it up.

  “The last time they can place us for sure on the boat is when you shot at them,” she said. By silent consensus they headed away from the lake, the sound of their footsteps punching through the thin crust of snow that lay beneath the trees excruciatingly loud to Mick’s ears. Giant oaks and maples and cypress and birch and who knew what else, denuded of their foliage now, filled the wintry landscape for as far as she could see, their trunks looking like tall, gray sentinels crowding close together and far outnumbering the cone-shaped evergreens. “If they start searching from there …” Her voice trailed off as she tried to put herself in their pursuers’ shoes. “We’ve got some time.”

  “If they’re smart, they’ll try to calculate where we got off by working backward from the boat’s position when they spotted it.”

  “Way to kill the mood.” Mick didn’t bother to express her opinion of the search party’s cumulative brainpower, because it ultimately didn’t matter. If it hadn’t happened already, she was sure the original crew would be supplemented by some brighter minds. Depending on whether or not they had yet gotten up the nerve to notify him about what had happened, their efforts were possibly even being guided by Uncle Nicco himself. Her heart lurched at the thought. As much as she wanted to, she just couldn’t come to any other conclusion than that he was guilty. Likewise, she couldn’t see him letting her go. Just like probably he couldn’t see her keeping her mouth shut about what she knew. They might love each other like family, but he would do what he had to do to protect himself. And she would do what she had to do, too.

  “The key is for us not to be here when—if—they come looking.”

  “They’ll find our footprints.” If Uncle Nicco knew what was in those pictures, which she had to assume he did, he would have an army looking for them. “If not tonight, then tomorrow, when it’s light.”

  “By tomorrow we’ll hopefully be long gone. In any event, our footprints should be hard to find. In case it’s escaped your notice, it’s snowing.”

  Given that they were now stranded on foot in the middle of a several-thousand-acre wilderness on an icy winter’s night, that should not have qualified as good news. But to Mick it did, which said volumes about the sad state of affairs in which she found herself.

  “Yay.” If she sounded a little dispirited, it was because she was. Being frightened and freezing tended to do that to her, she was discovering. Grabbing the makeshift mittens out of her pocket, she pulled them on as the one little bit she could do to alleviate the freezing part at least.

  “Silver linings.”

  “Always come with dark clouds,” she retorted.

  He laughed. “Way to be optimistic. That coat has a hood, by the way. Here.” Stopping her with a hand on her shoulder, he unzipped a small zipper in the back of the collar, pulled out a hood, and flipped it over the knit cap that was already nestled on her head.

  “Glad you came prepared,” she said as they resumed walking.

  “I’m always prepared.”

  She snorted.

  “All right, so maybe I didn’t foresee that a stray cop might decide to spend New Year’s Eve camping out in Marino’s house.”

  “Among other notable lapses.” Having tucked her hair into the hood, she tied the dangling strings beneath her chin. The extra layer was thin, but it helped: it kept the wind and snow off her neck and shielded more of her face. She realized something else, too: the hood, like the coat itself but unlike the cap she wore, was waterproof, while the hood portion of the fleece sweatshirt he wore as a middle layer, which he had pulled up over his own head, was not. Plus, he could have reclaimed his coat at any time; actually, he hadn’t had to give it to her in the first place.

  So maybe the guy was a gentleman in some respects. It didn’t change the fact that once they were safely out of the reach of Uncle Nicco’s crew, they were natural enemies, like a dog and a cat.

  “You know where we are, right?” he asked.

  “Sort of.”

  “Sort of?”

  Tramping along beside him, both of them moving as fast as they dared but hampered by the layers of unseen mulch beneath the snow, Mick focused on getting her bearings. She knew Muddy Flats fairly well. Also, the forest beyond it was not totally unfamiliar: she’d hiked through sections of it, including this part, on several occasions.

  Unfortunately, the last time had been almost a decade earlier. Plus it had been summer, and daylight. In the dark, with snow falling all around them, nothing looked the same as anything she remembered.

  “There should be a gravel road around here somewhere. And a little fishing store, kind of a shack that sells bait and things. If it still exists.”

  “Which way?”

  “I’m not quite sure. The last time I was here was about ten years ago.” Concentrating, she tried to remember. “I think it’s to the west. Yes, it is. The gravel road led down to a public boat ramp, so if we keep walking parallel to the lake, we’re bound to hit it.”

  “We want to get away from the lake, not walk around it. The lakeshore is where they’re going to start the search. And when they come looking, I’d say it’s a pretty safe bet they’ll check out any known boat ramps.”

  Mick shook her head. “This one’s just a small ramp, for people who tow their runabouts in by car then back their trailers down into the water so the boa
t can float off. The Playtime could never have used it: it’s too big. Anyway, if we walk away from the lake, we’re liable to get lost. This forest is huge. We could be wandering around in here for days. What we need to do is find the quickest way out.”

  He didn’t reply, and Mick didn’t say anything else. He had to be at least as cold as she was starting to be, and probably a considerable amount colder, considering that his core temperature had presumably been affected by his plunge into the lake. Apparently he realized the sense in her words, because he didn’t protest when, taking the lead now, she set a course following the lake.

  “Where does this gravel road you’re hoping to find go to?” he asked after a moment, catching up.

  “Route 92, which is the main road in and out of here. If I recall correctly, it’s a ways, but if we can get to that, we might be able to hitchhike out.”

  “Expecting a lot of traffic out here at this time of night on New Year’s Eve, are you?”

  “Technically, it’s New Year’s Day.”

  “Technically, it doesn’t matter. A cemetery has more life than where we are. Are there houses or cabins anywhere near here? A campsite? Anything? Because hitchhiking isn’t going to happen. Our best bet is to find some kind of occupied dwelling and steal a car.”

  “Oh, you steal cars as well as cash?”

  “When I steal us a car, baby, I’m betting you’ll be glad enough to hop in.”

  “Stealing a car is a crime,” she pointed out.

  “If it makes you feel better, you can arrest me later. Houses? Cabins? Anyplace where somebody might be spending the night so we can borrow their car?”

  Feeling it best not to respond to his crack about arresting him later, which she had every intention of doing, Mick shook her head. “Besides the fishing store, which I doubt will be occupied, I don’t remember seeing any cabins or anything. This is more of a wilderness area. You know, people come here in the summer to hunt and fish and camp. I’ve never been out here in the winter.”

  “Not surprised.”