He traveled light—he carried only two tools on his person: a flashlight and his weapon of choice. He produced the former, in case the moonlight subsided, as it was bound to do.
After picking his way through the trees that ringed the water for about a hundred yards, he at last came to a spot where he could sense that the ground was moving upward. Scowling inwardly and outwardly with the knowledge of how long this was going to take, he shone his flashlight around, looking for a route to take him higher. Scanning with his beam back and forth across the trees, a spot of darkness caught his eye—the light appeared to be reflecting off something hidden in the trees, though he knew that in this area, there was nothing to reflect. He began to move toward it, watching his footsteps.
Illumination from the moon, struggling through the clouds, showed him that there was a clear path toward the flatland that he had driven off the highway onto to get here. Between the field and the wooded banks of Cold Lake, there were two identical paths, almost hidden by the snow, leading—
Ordoñez allowed himself the indulgence of surprise. There was a car there—a silver, two-door sedan, which from the bare look of its interior and exterior, appeared to be rented. He wondered whether Alex and his group would have had a chance to get another car; but then realized that this was impossible, given that their "death" was their only cover from the police, and to approach any business would have been to break it.
This, then, meant two things—that there was a third major player on the scene, and that he was within walking distance. A thought crossed Ordoñez's mind: what if they had approached this hill for the same reason? What if they were both hunting Alex from higher ground? What if he isn't hunting Alex, but me…?
He knew it was not for him to think these thoughts, and forced himself to handle the situation according to his training. He took a deep breath, clicked the safety off the gun in his pocket, and silently approached the rising hill, taking care to step where there was solid dirt as opposed to snow or frozen grass—both of which would telegraph his position. Either Ordoñez or the other man would be the one hunting from the shadows, and Ordoñez was prepared to be sure it was him.
At the ready, Ordoñez stalked slowly through the trees, beginning to pant slightly as the land turned sharply upwards. Aware of what this might cause, he stopped to regain his breath before moving on.
The hike lasted for what seemed to be about five minutes before the trees at last began to thin out. Ordoñez was struck by the moonlight, piercing through a canyon in the clouds. The dominating feature of the area he had found himself in was the edge of a towering cliff of stone, about fifty feet high and chiseled all across its face with jagged marks and protrusions; as if somebody had inexpertly sliced the rock with a serrated knife. Below and beyond it was more landscape, and in the far distance, lights beside the lake.
In the center of it all stood a short man wearing a suit and hat inappropriate for the weather, already covered with small snowflakes.
"Alberto!" he said, almost jovially. "As fast as ever."
Alex refused to look at anything. He sat, grinding his face into his hands, turning Sarah's words over and over in his mind, hoping to see a different face, but finding the same ones yet again. Never. Never. Isn't. Never was.
"Ten years," he groaned at last, with his head still down. "Ten years of my life I let that man steal. I let him subjugate me. Beat me. Humiliate me. I let him rule me. I let him take my god…damned…childhood."
Sarah cautiously laid a hand on his shoulder. Still staring at the ground, he let it rest there. When he at last looked up, she was startled to see his dirty face streaked with tears. "What was the point!?" he spat suddenly, causing her to jump back. "Was it for some kind of sick pleasure? Some stupid point to prove?"
"None of those," Sarah replied flatly, and looked into his eyes. "All Roland wanted was to save himself."
Alex wiped the back of his hand across his face and brought the pieces of his mind back together—whatever she was about to tell him might be just as important as her first statement. "Then I need to know why," he told her, "exactly why. The only thing worse than knowing how badly I was manipulated is not knowing what the hell it was all for."
She had no idea how she was going to tell him. "Because…we don't know."
Alex collapsed his head again and looked through a gap in his arms. Through the reflections on the snow, he watched the moon dance and weave through the clouds. "Nothing?"
"Machry had an idea," she began.
"An idea!" Alex exploded. "I don't want a damn idea! I want to know!"
"I can't tell you!" she shouted back. "All I can give you is ideas! If you don't want them I won't give them to you!"
"Fine," he said, with an indefinite motion of his hand. "Fine," he repeated, shifting his positing on the ground to face her. "Forget it. I'll listen to your idea."
"Glad to hear it," she said, with a brisk air.
"Sarah, I—damnit! I'm sorry, okay!?" he shouted frustratedly. "I want to hear it. I really do."
The tone of his words was so genuine that Sarah instantly felt like a jerk for saying anything. "Yeah—I know. I was only making sure."
Alex grinned. "Really."
"Yes!" Sarah exclaimed, smiling herself. "Really!"
"All right then." He returned to his usual demeanor. "What do you think? Does it have something to do with my real father, this William guy?"
"Everything to do with him, as far as Machry and I can tell," she said. "It was basically a moneymaking scheme."
"Money," Alex said, in a voice that could have curdled water. "Ever-present, ever-useful. But it seems like a lot of trouble; I mean, ten years? Just for an inheritance? Nobody needs cash that badly."
"Roland might have," Sarah replied. "Machry thinks he may have taken out a big loan with the Moose Killers—to start his company—and found himself unable to pay it back."
"How much are we talking about?"
"William had about three million in the bank when he quit, so that sounds about right. But I have a theory—here's the most important part—I think that maybe the Moose Killers might have needed that money even more than Roland."
Alex sat up sharply, his interest piqued. "How do you mean?"
"I'm just thinking…there was something about that money, that particular sum of money, that the MK needed above all else."
Alex was definitely beginning to feel something. "Keep going! This is the right track, I'm sure of it!"
"And what if—" Sarah was beginning to sound just as excited, "—what if that's the reason they're trying so hard to kill you? What if it's because they need that inheritance?"
"Hold on." Alex, exhilarated just a moment ago, found the excitement jilted and replaced by strange confusion. "If they needed it that badly why didn't they just kill me as a baby? I would hardly put it past them."
"Umm…" Sarah had to admit, it was a strange thing. "I remember Machry saying something about special stipulations in the will saying that if you died suspiciously, as judged by his lawyers, the whole safe deposit box—along with whatever was inside it besides money—would be destroyed."
"A baby shot with a pistol would be pretty suspicious, yeah. But then why are they trying to do it now?"
"It's not them," Sarah corrected, "It's Ordoñez. He was supposed to bring you back alive, remember? But after Ridge City, it was all about proving himself. And after the train, it was all about revenge."
"And those guys shooting at us at the river…maybe Ordoñez never told them I wasn't supposed to die."
"But you are supposed to die," Sarah said, sadness creeping into her voice. "The only difference between Ordoñez and the rest of them is that the others want to wait a few months before murdering you."
"It's all about the bank account," Alex muttered grimly, his eyes turned toward the last vestiges of moonlight. Snow was now beginning to fall more heavily; flurries that might have showed up in a photograph. "I'm just a roadblock. Not even a pawn in their ga
me. Just a wall in the middle of the board."
He wrapped his arms around his legs and watched the lake until he could no longer see it. Sarah inched closer to him in the meager light, and he didn't resist.
"Potard, what the hell are you doing here!?" Ordoñez was bewildered, something he hated being. The sight of his mentor, silhouetted on the cliff, had thrown off his center enough to delay the drawing of his weapon. Potard had managed to go for his using the head start, and the two men stood locked in an armed standoff, neither daring to fire.
"Isn't it obvious?" Potard said, his voice masterfully amicable. "I came to see you, Alberto."
"Shut up!" Ordoñez screwed up his face and tightened his grip on the gun. "I didn't come here to be lied to, and your speechcraft is far from effective!"
"Alberto, don't you trust me?" Potard's facade appeared to be on the verge of cracking. "The man who found you? Trained you? Made you what you are?"
"What am I!?" Ordoñez roared viciously. "I'm a hand for holding a gun and a mind for not asking questions! There's something you need to learn, Monsieur Potard," he said, his eyes narrowing. "I do not take kindly to being thrown away when you believe my usefulness has expired. You humiliate me, expel me, in front of every witness on the Moose Killers, and now I suppose you expect me to walk on back in, as if nothing ever happened!?"
All vestiges of cordiality drained away from Potard's face. He leveled his weapon between Ordoñez's eyes, and hissed, "Well done, well done. You were the only man who could ever beat me at chess."
"So what are you here for?"
"It's quite simple, really. Your only remaining worth is your ability to lead us to the boy."
Ordoñez's disdain was evident in his eyes. "I'm through with your scheming, Potard. Your big plan, your big power grab. I'm no longer a part of it."
Potard's eyes widened. "Power grab? What—what do you know about this?"
"Never bothered to tell me, did you?" Ordoñez spat. "Always talking about how I was your favorite, your protégé. I knew there was nothing behind it. There's nothing behind anything you say. You disgust me."
"I disgust you!?" It was Potard's turn to snarl. "You are the one who shoots people dead for a living! I am simply a humble man, devoted to a humble cause."
"Your cause," Ordoñez grunted in distaste. "Your cause was manipulating that shell of a man, Roland Johnson."
"I have told you none of this!"
"Then I guess I've beaten you at chess again!" Both pistols were now fully leveled and loaded. A single slip of the trigger finger would have instantly ended the lives of both men. "I knew your game, Potard! I knew every move! It was never about that money, was it? It was all about what William Orson knew."
Potard's concentration faltered. "I spent years handling a fortune for that unscrupulous shark, and not a bit of it for myself. How wrong is it that I saw an opportunity and went for it?"
"It's impossible not to worry about the mind that will spend years masquerading as the mafia, kidnapping government officials and replacing them with your hired power! Especially when you have allowed that same mind to seduce you! But there's one thing I'm not sure about. The final part. The ultimate step…"
"Ah, think, Alberto, think! What did Orson have? What had he done!?"
At last, light flooded in.
"Insider trading," Ordoñez murmured, almost at a whisper. "Playing stock fraud with the future prime minister of Canada."
Potard's pride in his conspiracy was now clearly outweighing his incredulity at being discovered. "And what if it was known that he had been doing this? What if somebody who already controlled numerous government functions were to make it known that Martin Foster has a criminal past?"
Ordoñez grimaced; partly at the brilliance of the plan, and partly in anger at himself for being part of it.
"Well, then…" he said, a slightly maniacal bent to his words, "Then it would all go down in flames, now wouldn't it, Jean?"
The only light now came from a brilliant halo surrounding an ominously dark cloud. The moon, trapped behind it, was forcing light through as best it could, but succeeded only in pouring silver around the edges. The surrounding sky was black; and the snow, now spinning, dancing, leaping down from the clouds in earnest, as though eagerly anticipating the coming storm, was nearly invisible. In the center of it all, the waters of Cold Lake remained placid, and Alex and Sarah sat in an almost easy silence.
"Do you ever wonder why the world is so…wrong?" Alex half-whispered, searching to capture his spinning emotions.
"What do you mean?" Sarah replied, glad to say something.
"Everything," Alex said, in the closest thing to a contemplative tone he'd ever used. "You have people with such an immense capacity for—I guess, darkness. Why aren't there any simple characters anymore? Why is it that whenever I hear about humanity it always sounds to me like a snowstorm?"
"Didn't you tell me once," Sarah said, "that the rain and the snow are the most beautiful things you can see? Didn't you say that the only time things are really real is under clouds?"
Alex couldn't prevent himself from smiling. "The truest things in a false world."
"It's just like you say, then," she said, and even in the darkness he could tell she was turning to look him in the eyes. "We need to hold on to what we know is true. That's all we've got."
"But what the hell can you hold onto when you're where we are? What's left?"
"There's always love."
Alex waved his hand. "There's never love. People like me don't get love. Love is reserved for people who believe it."
In the darkness, it was impossible for him to tell what happened next. He only knew one thing—the moment he said that, he felt a leaping course through his soul; and when her lips touched his, as he'd been waiting for for months, it was not to be believed. All he could to was drown in the moment, drinking in the kiss as though it was the only way to breathe.
At last they separated. "Still don't believe it?" she said, and he knew instantly that she was laughing.
"Did you just—"
"Yeah—I just thought—it may be a while before we can talk like this again—so I'd better make it count."
"I'm—I didn't really—that stuff I said—"
"Look," she said, her voice betraying the flying of her soul. "I don't know if you're right about love. I don't know if you're wrong—but I know I wish I could tell you everything. I wish I could answer every question you ask. I wish—I wish we knew everything."
"No, no!" His voice rose, fell, drifted slowly. "The most redeeming thing about this world is that you can never know everything. Never."
She grinned and leaned in again; their second kiss was long, slow, and serene, but just as Alex would say, it could not last forever.
Ordoñez was fighting to hold his gun steady.
"You've been very impressive, Alberto," Potard hissed, "But I'm sorry, you're just too much of a liability. You cannot remain alive. Especially not while I am in power."
"You don't even know who I am, do you, Jean?"
"I know all too well!" Potard yelled.
"No, you don't. I am Ordoñez, the only man who ever beat you at chess. I am your surrogate son, your greatest tool, your worst enemy."
Potard's arm wavered.
"I'm going to walk away now," Ordoñez said, as calmly as he could, "And I guarantee that you will be unable to shoot me in the back."
He pivoted, and turned slowly downhill, away from the cliff and the gun, silently praying to nobody. Potard let out a strange, terrifying sound, somewhere between a cry and a roar, and fired three shots five feet to Ordoñez's right. The assassin had judged him perfectly; however, he wasted no time in vanishing into the trees. If he had any ammo remaining, one bullet that had not found Alex would find Jean le Potard.
Alex had forgotten how dangerous it was to forget about the world out here—ingrained stimulus responses took hold in both of them; the moment they heard the shots, they sprang to their feet and pl
aced their hands on their weapons. "We have to go," he said, more forcefully than he felt.
"Which way!?"
"Which way did they come from?"
Sarah closed her eyes for a moment. "That way," she said, pointing her arm.
"Where?"
Sarah rolled her eyes at her own foolishness and switched on her flashlight, then pointed again.
"You don't have an extra one, do you?" Alex asked.
"I do, actually," Sarah replied, and took one up from the ground. "I didn't think you'd have one, so I brought one."
Cold Snow: A Legal Thriller Page 29