by Jean Barrett
She shook her head mutely.
“Smart. Outside now.” He kept behind her as they moved into the open. “Close the door, lock it and pass the key back to me. Carefully.”
Dorothy and the lantern were left behind on the floor as Lane followed his directions, shutting and locking the door.
“Up the steps, and remember my gun is right here behind you.”
She found her voice then, though it was a dry croak. “Where are you taking me?”
“To get back what you stole from me in the caves. We both know what that is, don’t we? So let’s go and find him.”
Lane stumbled up the stairs and around the corner of the building, the revolver in her back directing her movements. As she mounted the shallow steps to the arcade, her mind screamed a silent plea. I need you, Jack. Wherever you are, I need you.
She refused to consider that it might be too late, that Jack was incapable of coming to her because this madman had killed him.
He stopped her at the guesthouse door and snarled, “Far enough. Is it locked?”
“Yes.”
“Where’s the key?”
When she didn’t answer him, the revolver dug into her back. There was no possibility of stalling him. “In my coat pocket.”
“Which?”
“Right side.”
“Don’t move,” he warned her. Her flesh crawled as she felt his hand slide into the pocket of her parka. He removed the key and handed it to her. “Open up.”
She had no choice. Her shaking fingers inserted the key, turned it in the lock. He was still close behind her as she spread the door inward and preceded him into the guesthouse.
“Stand over there against the fireplace,” he ordered her.
She did as she was told, grateful that the gun was no longer pressed into her back. She watched him as he closed the door, locked it and pocketed the key. She could see him now, though not that well. The light from the oil lamp and the candles was too dim. Besides, the white ski mask was still drawn over his head, effectively covering his face, just as the white jumpsuit concealed his body.
“Stay there and don’t move.”
He began to search through the guesthouse, as she knew he would. She kept her gaze away from the cupboard bed, praying that he wouldn’t learn its secret and that neither occupant of the trundle would choose this moment to regain consciousness.
There was little enough for him to check. The bathroom, several closets, a ponderous wardrobe. He cursed savagely when he didn’t find what he wanted. Thank God he didn’t suspect what the cupboard bed contained.
“Where is he?” he demanded, moving toward her menacingly. “Where did you put Chris Beaver?”
“I don’t know,” she lied.
He raised the gun, pointing it at her head.
“It won’t do you any good to threaten me.” She tried to bluff him. “Jack hid him somewhere safe and didn’t tell me.”
A pair of vicious eyes inside the ski mask burned into her face. Lane trembled, expecting the explosion of the revolver, the searing pain of a bullet tearing into her flesh.
An eternity passed before he uttered brutally, “We’ll see what Donovan has to say on the subject. I think he’ll talk when he knows I have his woman.”
That meant Jack was still alive! Her heart soared with relief. “That won’t do you any good, either,” she told him rapidly. “Jack and Stuart are gone. As soon as the wind quit, they started across the ice to get help.”
“They haven’t gone anywhere, either one of them.” How could he be so sure of that? What did he know? “All right, move.”
“Where?”
“Outside again. We’re going to give the paleontologist a little surprise.”
He fished the key out of his pocket, unlocked the door and waved her back into the open with the gun. Seconds later Lane found herself out in the clearing in front of the brush pile.
“What now?” she wondered.
“There’s just enough light off the snow to convince him,” he said behind her.
“Of what?”
“This, bitch.”
His arm came roughly around her waist, squeezing her tightly back against his body. Lane sucked in her breath in revulsion. And with her sharp inhalation came the peculiar odor that clung to her captor and made her even more certain of his identity. It was an aroma she associated with Nils, though in her fear she couldn’t remember why.
“Stop squirming,” he growled.
She did as he asked. His other hand was holding the revolver against her head.
“Now we’re ready,” he said. And with that, his hard voice lifted in a ringing shout. “Donovan, I know you’re out there somewhere. I have her, Donovan. Can you see her with me?”
There was silence.
“Come on, Donovan. Come on out and talk to me. If you don’t, I’ll kill her.”
Long seconds passed. Nothing moved. The silence stretched on without reply, tense and unbearable.
When it came, it was unexpected and startling. Not a voice but a glow bursting out of the darkness of the woods. A fire that arced high overhead, then descended with an angry hiss. A flaming arrow buried itself in the brush pile.
Chapter Fourteen
Lane’s captor bellowed an obscenity, then rushed forward, dragging her with him. His booted foot began to stomp out the tiny flames already licking at the dry pine.
She understood his alarm. There must be no signal to alert the mainland. No risk of outside interference before he fulfilled his purpose on the island. She understood, and she was thrilled. Jack was out there, and he was using his own cunning method to free her.
The fire was easily extinguished, but another sizzling arrow immediately followed the first one, slicing into the other side of the brush pile. Again her crazed captor hauled her with him to smother the crackling flames. Lane made herself a deadweight, hindering his efforts.
Before he could suppress the second blaze, a third hot arrow bit into the mound. This time her enraged enemy released her in order to swing his revolver toward the source of the arrows. He fired wildly, repeatedly in the direction of the woods, his curses blistering the air.
Lane held her breath for the space of several heartbeats. There was an awful stillness in the dark woods. Then Jack answered the barrage of gunfire with a fourth burning arrow. After it came another, and still another, released in rapid succession.
Tongues of fire sprang from the pyramid on all sides. The killer momentarily forgot about her in his race to kill the blaze. Lane knew what she had to do then. Without hesitation she broke and ran for cover. Behind her she left a furious white devil leaping around a roaring conflagration that was already beyond his control as orange flames climbed into the night sky.
She sped blindly toward the woods, expecting a burst of gunfire behind her. But apparently he had emptied the revolver in that panicked volley aimed at Jack. She knew he still had her pistol, but in his wild rage he must have forgotten it was in his pocket. She reached the trees, began crashing through the undergrowth. Fighting snags, she plunged deeper into the woods. A figure that was not a tree loomed out of the darkness in front of her.
“I’m here, Lane.”
No voice had ever been more welcome. With a ragged sob she flung herself into his arms.
Jack permitted her to cling to him for mere seconds before he held her away, asking angrily, “Did the bastard hurt you?”
“No,” she answered, recovering herself, “but he has Dorothy. She’s unconscious in the generator room.”
“The pistol?”
“He has that, too. But not Allison and Chris. They’re still hidden in the cupboard bed.”
“And I’m out of arrows. That means we have no weapon left. We’ve got to get away from here before he reloads or goes for his rifle.”
“But the others—”
“Lane, we can’t do anything for them now.” He was already drawing her off through the evergreens. “They should be all right for the time
being. His priority will be to deal with us, since we’re on the loose, and as long as we remain free there’s a chance for all of us. This way.”
“Where are we going?”
“Down to the shore.”
She didn’t question him any further. She stayed close behind him as they worked their way through the woods, not daring to use his flashlight. How Jack managed to find his way in the darkness amazed her.
They moved rapidly in the direction of the dock trail. Lane blindly following. Finally, after what seemed like an inordinate amount of time and distance, she asked, “Stuart?”
“Lane, I tried, but I lost him. I don’t know what happened to him.”
They reached the dock trail and began to cautiously descend toward the bay, checking behind them at frequent intervals. There was no sign yet of pursuit.
“Here,” Jack said, finally stopping her beside a grove of dense evergreens.
“What is it?” she whispered. They had been speaking in undertones since leaving the clearing.
“Time to leave the trail. It’s too open.” He risked a fast use of the flashlight to make sure of his intention. “See. The pines here are so thick there’s no snow under them. Won’t leave any footprints to show we left the trail at this point.”
She followed him through the grove with its thick carpet of needles and spicy aroma of pine. They traveled as swiftly as the terrain and the darkness would permit, moving along a stony ridge that sloped diagonally toward the shore. The pines were behind them now. There was snow again on the ground. In some places it was deep, making it an effort to wallow through it. Lane began to grow winded.
“I hate to ask it,” she called to him softly, “but I need to rest for a minute.”
“This looks like a good place to take a break while you catch your breath and we figure out what comes next.”
They had reached the edge of the bluff. It was much lower here, less than fifteen feet above the bay. A quick scan with the flashlight revealed a crevice created by an old rock fall. The tumbled boulders filling the crevice offered a way to the beach.
Jack went first, picking his way with care down the rough incline. Lane followed, using both her hands and her feet.
“Over here,” he directed as she slid the last few feet to the stony shore.
He had chosen a safe spot for them under the concealing overhang of the bluff. They settled side by side on a gnarled driftwood stump. Scattered along the beach in front of them was more driftwood, weathered dock timbers and bleached planks that had washed up over the years. There was a luminous quality to the night that permitted her to see them fairly well. Lane told Jack in detail about the nerve-racking wait in the guesthouse, Allison’s brief return to consciousness and the sudden loss of light when the generator had failed. She shivered when she recalled the events that had followed Dorothy’s departure.
“Cold?” he asked.
She shook her head, suddenly distracted by a puzzling display. Far across the sea of ice, in the direction of Ephraim on the mainland, was a parade of slowly moving lights. Like winking fairy lamps, she thought. They reminded her of something. She tried to remember exactly what it was. It somehow seemed important.
“Look,” she said.
“Headlights on the highway over there,” was Jack’s explanation.
“No, it’s something else.” And then she understood. “This is Sunday night.”
“Meaning?”
“The festival of lights. They celebrate it in Ephraim the evening after Christmas. Nils told me about it the other morning when he was getting ready to leave.”
The memory of that moment was suddenly fresh to her. Nils had joined her by the window. He had been standing very close to her, and—
“Yes,” she whispered.
“What is it?”
“Nils Asker! There was an unusual odor I smelled on him when he held me in the clearing. The same odor that was on him yesterday morning in the kitchen. I remember about it now. He told me it came from a homemade chap preventive he’d slathered on himself for his crossing in those severe winds. This confirms the killer’s identity.”
She waited for Jack to share in her certainty, but he was silent.
“It has to be Nils,” she insisted.
“Maybe not,” he said. “Maybe there’s someone else.”
“Who?”
“The one who’d profit by murder. Think about it, Lane. That’s what I’ve been doing ever since you told me the things Allison said to you this morning just before she rushed out of the house. Put it together with what we heard Friday night at the dinner table and then what you just told me Allison mumbled when she regained consciousness for a few seconds tonight. It wasn’t just nonsense. Allison knows.”
A motive for murder. Lane concentrated on that. “The island,” she said slowly. “That’s what Allison was talking about. How she was selling Thunder Island to the state to be preserved as a wilderness park. It was all to be finalized next week. We heard that much at the dinner table. And her rambling tonight was the reliving of an argument with someone who objected to the sale and then ended up agreeing to it. Or pretended to. And that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?”
“I think so. The island has to be a valuable piece of property, worth a lot more than what the state is willing to pay for it.”
“And the man who benefits from its sale, say to a much higher bidder, is someone who made certain we would never suspect him. How could we suspect him if he was dead?” Lane stared at him, astounded by the solution. “Jack, is it possible? Is it Dan Whitney?”
“It’s not only possible, I think it’s right.”
“Which means Nils is dead, after all, because that’s actually the body we found under the ice, isn’t it? He substituted Nils’s body for his own and dressed him in his blue jumpsuit, even put his ring on him.”
“And Nils was shot in the face to make his features unrecognizable, and the ice made him even less identifiable. Probably Dan took the chap preventive from him or found a supply of it in Nils’s truck when he ambushed him. It would have been useful to him, since, from that point on, he had to be out in the weather most of the time.”
“It’s horrible. The whole thing is horrible.” She was still finding it incredible that the killer could be Allison’s gentle, understanding cousin, Dan. “Then he lied to me that first night about not realizing the freak winds could trap all of us here, pretended it was someone else in the group who promised him the weather would be safe.”
“He needed to keep himself from being suspected,” Jack agreed. “He has a lot at stake with his cold-blooded scheme. What worries me is that, at some level, he also has to be demented. That makes him not just desperate and lethal but unpredictable.”
“Yes, but why did he find it necessary to eliminate all of us if it was Allison who—”
“Lane,” he interrupted, “there’s a lot to be understood about this whole elaborate business. That includes having hard evidence that the killer actually is Dan Whitney, because all of it is still only conjecture. But this isn’t the time to figure it out.” He got purposefully to his feet. “We need to get moving again before he picks up our trail.”
“Where?”
Jack hesitated. “You’re not going to like this.”
“Tell me.”
“We’re going to try to cross the ice to the mainland.”
“No! The signal fire—”
“Could go completely unnoticed over there with this spectacle they’re holding. Or it might be mistaken for our own contribution to the festival of lights. Lane, we don’t have a choice about it anymore. We can’t go on playing hide-and-seek on the island, not when he’s armed to the teeth and we no longer have a weapon.”
She couldn’t deny the wisdom of his argument. At this point, it would be suicide to remain here. She got slowly to her feet and faced him. “All right,” she conceded in a shaky whisper, “let’s risk it.”
Jack, better than anyone, understood h
er terror of the ice and the effort it would cost her to venture on foot over those treacherous reaches. He put his arms around her, drawing her against his solid length.
“You can do it, sweetheart,” he murmured. “After what we’ve faced these last two days, there isn’t anything you can’t do.”
“It isn’t just that,” she cried. “It’s having to abandon the others, Allison and Chris and Dorothy.” Maybe Stuart as well, she thought, if he had somehow survived, if he was still here on the island.
“I know. I hate that, too. But Whitney isn’t going to stop to take care of them when he’s out to get us first. What we have to do is reach help and bring it back before he learns the secret of that cupboard bed.”
“I’m with you.”
His mouth tenderly caressed her forehead as she pressed against him, savoring his vital closeness.
“All the way,” he agreed, acknowledging that they were equal partners.
Now, she thought. Now was the time to tell him how much he meant to her, how deeply she loved him. But she lost that opportunity when, to her dismay, he abruptly released her.
“We have to go. We’re losing precious time.”
She read the sudden need for haste in his voice. “There’s something else you’re worried about, isn’t there?”
“Yes,” he admitted. “Remember the last couple of nights? The moon is full. It’s going to be up soon, and the sky is as clear as glass.”
He was right. The moon would be both an ally and an enemy, helping to guide them over the ice while at the same time revealing them to their pursuer. They had to move.
“Ready, Eastman?” he asked, his gentle humor exactly the support she needed in this taut moment.
“Right beside you, Donovan.”
Leaving the shelter of the overhang, they crossed the beach and headed across the frozen expanse. Their progress wasn’t hindered much in the beginning, except for occasional snowdrifts that they had to plow through. But once away from the protective bulk of the bluff, they faced the hazards of ice ridges and the threat of rotten patches. Lane, fighting her uneasiness, tried not to think of the fearful depths below them as they picked their way around the obstacles.