Cold Snow: A Legal Thriller

by John Nicholas

  "You're better than me," he said, and then his face turned serious. "We—we can't go together."

  Sarah's face was crossed with surprise. "Why not?"

  "It's—well—we're both targets. If we're together, one of us gets found, both of us have minutes or seconds left."

  "You can't be serious!" she said angrily. "Together, we have two guns. Alone we have one. And we don't know how many of them there are."

  "But two people are twice as easy to track, and twice as hard to hide! With both of us it would be tough to stay in the shadows."

  "Well—we don't even know who it was! If it was just Hart and Anthony, we won't need any shadows to fool them. They're idiots. And even if it is the Moose Killers, look how dark it is!"

  Alex's mind was working furiously on a response. Something new occurred to him then, however. What if I don't need to defeat her every time I talk to her?

  Carefully, he said, "You're right."

  She looked even more surprised than before. "I'm what?"

  "You're right. Leaving you now…well…it would be stupid. It would be wrong. And I might have done it a month ago, but not now."

  Impulsively, she threw her arms around him. Taken aback, he encircled her in response. They stood like that for a long moment, the final perfect moment of their lives. At long last they broke apart.

  "Make sure your safety is off," Alex said, and began walking.

  "Hey!" Sarah yelled, grabbing him and turning him around. "You're going the wrong way! That's where the shots came from!"

  "No, I'm going the right way," he told her, and found himself gripped by a strange mirth. He shone his flashlight toward a hill, a mile away along the shore.

  A terrible thought struck her. "You don't really mean…"

  "This is why I wanted to split up," he said, still walking. She hurried after him. "I'm tired of running, Sarah. We're armed. We have a chance to end this. It's going to end, no matter who's dead."

  "Dead—wait—nobody's going to die." It was easy to say. However, just then, she remembered a boy lying beside a road, a loaded gun pointing at his head, an echoing crack that ended him forever. "All right, but—I'm still coming with you."

  "That I didn't expect, but if you want to, you can."

  "I want to, and I will."

  He continued walking, and she followed him, both of them uneasy, calculated, as if every step was an act of faith. Footsteps bore them through the minutes, and their beams of light showed them that the arboreal cover was thickening—and that the ground was turning upward.

  "I love you," he said, by way of breaking the silence. His flashlight beam revealed on her face a mixture of shock, disgust, and happiness.

  "You've got to be kidding," she laughed.

  "Yeah," he replied, wishing he could capture his words and drag them back into his mouth. "Let's just say that."

  They kept moving, and Alex felt a hand clasp his.

  Ordoñez waited.

  Sitting against a tree with his flashlight on the ground, still switched on, and his gun in his hands, he ran his eyes over the forest again. Looking for Alex, he'd realized, was not the way to find him. To find Alex Orson, you had to make him come to you.

  He could hear, drifting from far away, Jean le Potard cursing the moon and the lake in French. His ears passed over the sound, and settled on something much more interesting.

  Rustling. Disturbed leaves. Rattling twigs. Something far-off, and yet nearer to him than his own hands.

  Silently, he made for the path.

  The moment that came then was one of the worst of Alex's life. It grabbed him, threw him against a wall, watched as he rolled helplessly onto the floor. Directly into the beam of his flashlight, less than twenty yards away, stepped Alberto Ordoñez, as coolly calculated and efficient as Alex remembered him. In a rehearsed motion, he turned to face them, and Alex could tell exactly what would happen next.

  "Hide!" he shouted wildly. He grabbed Sarah's arm with both his hands and dragged her off the slightly worn section of grass they had been following, into a heavier cover of trees to the right of the path.

  "Alex, what—"

  A staccato explosion tore through the forest, ravaging the air where they had been seconds before. "It's him!" Alex yelled. "We found them, all right! Run!"

  She needed no further convincing. They hurried onward, dodging between trees, watching a foreign beam of illumination sweep across the scene. Ordoñez knew exactly where they were, and the moment they were caught in the light, they would become sitting ducks. Both of them forced their way through thickets and bushes, heading towards unknown goals. Alex was again losing himself in running; he scraped against a tree, tripped over a thicket, scratching his legs in a nest of thorns. Ordoñez crunched twigs yards behind him, and he rolled over quickly, inadvertently crying out as a bullet ricocheted off a tree three feet above him. He rolled onto his feet and ran again into the darkness, terrified, his heart pounding in his throat, ready to spill out. Ordoñez was giving him no time to react—shots were landing to his left, to his right—if he could only have some time to reach the rifle—

  --he was heading downwards, into darkness, stumbling along the quickest way he could find. Something was lost, he knew it—his running was leading him away, Ordoñez was chasing only him. He reached out for Sarah's hand—and touched air. She was gone. She's just gotten lost. We've just gotten separated. She's fine. Shining his flashlight behind him, he found that Ordoñez had gotten turned around in the darkness. Suddenly, he remembered something he'd said only minutes ago—that he was tired of running; and yet here he was, doing it again. His long-awaited moment had finally arrived.

  He slung the rifle over his shoulder and held it at his waist; then, with a full unleashed of the fury in his spirit, he pulled the trigger and held it down, spraying the forest with bullets. He was filled with an overtaking rage; and suddenly was not only shooting at Ordoñez, but at the Moose Killers, at his father, at the world which had taken Jake and ruined the greatest part of his life. It was mirthful, almost freeing, to see Alberto Ordoñez diving for cover from his wrath.

  After a few seconds, he dragged himself down again, so as to save ammunition. Ordoñez wouldn't risk moving until he knew the coast was clear, so Alex had gained an advantage of a few seconds. He veered sharply to the right, and headed towards the central path again; he needed to get to an open area, where he could find his way—and where they could be evenly matched.

  Sarah didn't know exactly what had happened—she had been running from Ordoñez, and turned uphill, heading for light. The next thing she knew, she was standing alone, in a wood that could have passed for idyllic. She searched the trees, knowing better than to call out, but eventually had to face the fact that she had lost sight of Alex—and could only hope that a long burst of rapid gunfire exploding from the lower trees did not find its target. With nothing else to do, she headed slowly upwards, looking to find her way to relative safety.

  She came to the outer ring of the small wood, and was almost dazzled by what she saw—snow. She was overcome, as if she'd never seen it fall before; she wondered how she could have never noticed the intricate patterns, the swirling dance of the blizzard, the blanket of white. The sky had opened up, and the white was cascading, almost like rain. She crouched behind a bush and gazed out at, wanting nothing more than to be part of it, to be it.

  And yet she was still watchful. Through the snow she saw a dark shadow; with a deep intake of breath, she realized that it was a human figure. He was too large to be Alex and too short to be Ordoñez; the only conclusion Sarah could reach was that he was one of Ordoñez's thugs…and if that was true, there was only one possible course of action. Gritting her teeth, trying to shield herself against what she was about to do, she pulled the trigger.

  Nothing. An empty click. She let it fall from her outstretched hand.

  Anthony. He knew. I should have known he'd emptied it.

  All she had managed to do was alert the figure. Th
e man turned rapidly around—and an ancient memory clicked into the center of Sarah's mind. An old photograph, from a newspaper article read through a fog of tears. The night she learned that she was an orphan.

  Jean le Potard, the caption had read. Believed to be a leader of the Moose Killers.

  Potard's eyes found her; the evil behind his face pierced her. He yelled, raised his own weapon.

  Do what Alex would do. Change the world.

  She roared, screamed, and charged out of the thicket, hurling her full weight into Potard's torso. Potard grunted in pain and involuntarily stretched out the hand that held his gun. Sarah leapt at his arm and knocked it backwards, causing the weapon to fall out of sight. Enraged, Potard swung his arm at Sarah, knocking her backwards through the snow. She sprang up as quickly as she could, and threw her arms around Potard's neck, dragging him to the ground. They rolled apart in the freezing layer of white, and Sarah dove it him again, punching, clawing, and biting whatever she could reach. Potard kicked with his leg and launched her away from him. Upon landing, she felt herself skid, and clawed for a hold—but not before sliding long enough to feel her legs dangling over an abyss.

  There's only one way to win this fight.

  She rolled again and launched herself into Potard's knees, bringing him down once more. They both stood up, and found themselves in the same positions they had held at the beginning, Potard with his back to the cliff.

  Sarah rushed towards him. She had time for one, final thought.

  He said it. I wish I could have.

  Then her body struck his, and in one final, insane instant, Sarah Jones and Jean le Potard fell backwards into the spinning storm of white.

  CHAPTER 26

  Cold Snow

  Alex burst off the hill at his fullest speed, without looking or caring where he was going, and hurled himself into the rapidly intensifying winter storm. The snowfall had a different quality to it now—it was falling less like a group of dancers and more like a marching legion, driving inexorably toward the ground. Alex fought to remain on high alert as he stepped as quickly as he could through the white cover, watching flakes spitting from the sky in waves. Wind howled through the sky, across the lake, through his mind; everywhere, inside and out.

  Certainly a great place for somebody to die.

  At that moment, his flashlight flickered, glowed feebly for a moment, and extinguished. He swore violently, and threw it to the ground, not daring to stop and hide it. He then began looking around with his own power. From what he could tell, the clustered trees on the hill thinned out here, opening onto a rolling area of unobstructed lakeshore with less life than where they had been. The highway was nowhere to be seen.

  Other than that, the landscape here was imperceptible, and that, he knew, was good—the less he could see, the less Ordoñez could see. His skin was being pinched and bitten by the frigid air, which seem to strike everything that was him; every thought was cut through by frigid snow, every movement buffeted by winds. It was annoying but somewhere short of oppressive, the way heat could be. In fact, it was almost freeing. He felt as if Alex Orson was being eaten away. The boy who had run away from his home, pursuing a childish dream of freedom, might be lost now—in this freezing dark night of the soul, he could become a new man.

  The rifle was icy against his hands, but he clenched it tightly, knowing it was loaded, following it as the only piece of fire in this world of fog and ice. For a moment he worried that his hands would freeze to it—irrationally, he knew, as even this wasn't that cold.

  He at last came to a place where he thought he crossed a small change in the field; a small ridge that rose and dipped again just as quickly. This was it, then—the place where he would make his stand. He vaulted over it, plunging one hand into the snow as a fulcrum point, feeling it turn to ice, pulling it out again, clutching it, and blowing on it vigorously to warm it up. He rolled over into a kneeling position, shifting his weight to his knees behind the woefully inadequate protection of his jeans. He placed his body against the small slope, determined to make the best use of the cover he could find, and rested the rifle horizontally, aiming across the field. Defended for now, he scanned the open area.

  His eyes slowly adjusted, and he saw that the darkness had made the snow seem thicker than it was. The most noticeable feature was, of course, the beam of light that Ordoñez was foolishly using to telegraph his position. Alex, not believing that it could be this easy, stared down the barrel of the rifle and closed his eyes. This was it—he was about to make it all end…

  He squeezed off the shot. There was no yelp of surprise, no shriek of pain. Alex clutched his face with his hand and grimaced. Of course he's not there.

  Now facing an enemy who was little more than a shadow in a storm, Alex began looking for a sign, as calm as he could be in the face of his clawing fear. The area was scattered with trees and protruding rocks. About fifty yards from him, and several to the left, he could see the chiseled stone face of rock; to the left of that, spanning his western field of vision, was Cold Lake. Ordoñez seemed to be nowhere—and Alex realized then that he was not sure he had even been followed…

  A flash of fire erupted and vanished in the field, and the snow exploded inches to his right, causing him to recoil in terror. The next shot cracked only a few seconds later, from an area yards away from the first. Alex ducked lower, shielding himself even more, and fired several times without looking. Ordoñez was moving at an eerily rapid pace, evidently unsullied by the conditions. At that moment, Alex felt his first true surge of fear, accompanied by desperation.

  Ordoñez materialized out of the storm, dangerously close, with every intention of shooting him. Alex took his position again; but Ordoñez anticipated the shot. Before Alex could fire the rife, Ordoñez dove to the ground, rolled over, and propelled himself to a standing position. Alex covered himself against the next burst of fire, once again cut off from any opportunity to aim. Terrified of exposing any weak spots, he emptied the rifle blindly, not letting go of the trigger until he heard the hollow click.

  Ordoñez raised his gun, preparing for the final shot.

  There was something extremely disconcerting about sitting in the back of a police car; though Machry knew he was there as an ally of the law, it wasn't hard for him to imagine himself in handcuffs, sitting behind the steel grate. This, added to the fact that police generally did nothing to make any impression of comfort in the back seat, served only to heighten his sense of unease.

  The moment Gary Henderson had made the request, Machry wanted to know why they needed him. You're closer to this case than any of us, he had said. You need to talk to him. You'll need to get him out of the house, and get him to let something slip. Machry had argued that he was possibly the target's least favorite person in the world, excluding his son, but Gary would have none of it. Your testimony gives us enough evidence to incarcerate the guy for life, he had told him. If you can do that, you can get him to where we can arrest him.

  The detective and patrolman driving the car were respectively a stoic woman and a stoic man. They maintained an enforced quiet, and Machry was unable to figure out what was causing it—orders? Distrust of him? Trepidation about arresting the most powerful man in town? Whatever the reason, the silence left him alone with his apprehensions.

  At long last, they turned onto the street that held their destination. Machry, trying to calm his stomach, drew a long breath, and blew it out just as slowly. At that moment, the silence was finally broken.

  "Oh my god…" the male patrolman exhaled.

  Machry's first perception was of a bizarre, flickering quality of light, drenching the ground in faint webs and beams. The female detective had already stopped the car, and opened the door, calling for Machry to follow her. He planted his palms on the leather seat and pushed himself up—then, unable to exit as he had planned, he could only sit and stare. Only when the patrolman knocked on the window and beckoned for him was he able to exit and take a closer look at what he w
as seeing.

  "No!" he exclaimed, and then again, louder. "No, no!"

  It had to be a joke—whoever was pulling the strings had to be messing with his head. Before this he couldn't possibly have imagined a worse setback that what had already happened to him. Now, however, he could hear Alex's voice in his head. Machry, he said, Machry, you should have realized by now. The world always finds a way to make itself worse.

  Where the house used to stand, a wall of blinding white chaos was tearing through feeble floors and ceilings. Tongues of flame reached everywhere, no sense of order or direction holding them in place. Most of the front and left walls were already burning rampantly, less house than fire and probably unsalvageable. With a sinking of his heart, Machry realized that anybody in there was probably dead. He clutched his hair with a shaking hand and watched part of the roof give under attack, collapsing and leaving a gaping hole through which what was once a room could be seen. The patrolman had already jumped back into the car and was shouting into the dispatch radio.