Snow Blind

by Jim Heskett

  Wilfred’s eyes bulged and flicked around. Desperate. Color already draining from his face.

  At that moment, Layne knew Wilfred would die. Blood gushed out, down his long underwear, and Layne knew he’d lost too much blood already. In ten seconds, maybe fifteen, he was going to bleed out.

  No way could help arrive in time to save him. No amount of emergency treatment Layne might administer would replace all the blood he’d lost.

  Layne let go of Wilfred, lifted the pistol, and aimed for the wall next to the bathroom doorframe. He pulled the trigger, and the shots punched through the wall. Bits of wood and plaster ejected into the air like confetti, but there were no accompanying screams from the target.

  She didn’t wait for him to fire off more rounds. As Wilfred staggered and fell forward, Layne heard glass crashing in the bathroom.

  He needed her alive. If she died or escaped, he would have nothing. So he ran after her. Three steps to the bathroom, and he saw her lower half sticking out of the open window to the outside. Split second decision, to shoot, or grab. He opted for grab.

  He lunged forward and wrapped a hand around her foot, but she was too slippery. In an instant, she was gone.

  “Harry!” he shouted. “Get ready.”

  Layne assumed she wasn’t trying to flee. She was going to retreat and regroup, maybe to access a stash of weapons somewhere nearby. She would come back with more than knives, now that her plan to kill or capture them all with stealth had been foiled.

  Layne rushed back into the living room, and he retrieved a second pistol from inside the jacket. “Wilfred is dying in the hallway. Save his life, if you can.” Probably, this was a futile effort, but they had to do something.

  Layne also removed the Agram 2000 submachine gun and tossed it toward Harry, who stared at it dumbly as it landed on the rug in front of him.

  “You’re going out to get her?” Harry asked.

  Layne nodded. “Shoot her if she comes back before I do.” He paused, and then added, “don’t shoot if it’s me.”

  “Got it.”

  Layne almost ran straight out the front door, but then thought better of it. With all the adrenaline pumping through his system, his body told him to jump into action. But he needed to be smarter than that. He needed to approach her from an angle she wouldn’t expect.

  Instead, he leaned toward the window next to the front door, and he squinted out into the front yard. With the porch light illuminating a small circular area, he couldn’t see much beyond that.

  But he did note the mouth of a shotgun barrel. She was prone, about thirty feet away. She had scattered snow on her back and legs to blend in, but Layne could see the bump her body made.

  That shotgun barrel was pointed at the front of the house.

  At thirty feet, she probably wouldn’t kill him. She would only wound him, which had to be her intention. It’s why she’d killed Wilfred first, thinking she could then capture Layne and Harry.

  But why? Why did this woman want him alive? If she’d been targeted by the white jacket assassins at the SMRC, then why was she here now, trying to attack?

  He peeled away from the window and crept toward the back hallway. Staying low, he entered the bathroom and slinked out the same window she’d escaped from, then he noted a ladder sitting against the side of the house. He had planned to hike a few hundred feet out to flank her, but this was better. She might hear him out in the woods. A snapping twig, crunching through a block of ice; any number of things could give him away.

  Layne climbed to the top of the cabin. On his knees, he shuffled forward through the snow, as slowly as possible, so his clothes wouldn’t scrape on the shingles covering the roof. Using the porch light as a beacon, he crawled until he could see her in the front yard.

  Her eyes were down, watching the front of the house.

  Layne lifted the pistol. Aiming down the sight to snipe at her was a poor option, but he wasn’t about to risk meeting her in an open field. Pistol versus shotgun wasn’t much of a fair fight. Plus, he reminded himself, the goal was to neutralize her, not to kill her. Better to do this quick and clean, from a distance.

  He breathed slowly and evenly, one eye closed, letting his vision adjust to the level of light and distance. This close, he didn’t need to account for the wind.

  Layne pointed the sights at her right thigh and wrapped his finger around the trigger. He had to be perfect to hit such a small target.

  With an even breath, he pressed the trigger.

  But, as his finger moved to shoot, she shifted. The pistol roared in his hand. Bright light and a burst of sound momentarily made him shut his eyes.

  The shot tore across the field and pierced her back.

  “Shit,” he said, growling.

  Janine dropped the shotgun, gasping for breath. She lurched forward, trying to crawl.

  Layne dropped from the top of the house, landing in a small snowdrift. He raced forward. By the time he reached her, she was slowing, no longer trying to escape. He flipped her over. The bullet had gone in and out. A spot of red dotted the middle of her chest, slowly spreading, becoming a wide circle.

  Her eyes fluttered, her mouth trying to form words.

  “No, damn it,” he said. “Who were those people back the SMRC?”

  Her eyes froze as her chest stilled. Janine died in the snow, trying to say something with her last breath, and failing.

  Part III

  Creme-Filled Donuts

  39

  Serena sighed as she clicked on the next image. Nothing there. She leaned back in the chair, stretching until she could feel it all the way down her spine. The way this chair forced her into the proper posture both annoyed her and also made her think she should buy one of these for her apartment. An odd love-hate relationship.

  Her fingers touched the window behind her, feeling the cold bleeding through the glass. On the other side of the second-story window, Seattle rain pelted the building. Hardly any sunshine, all week long.

  A young man in a dress shirt and tie leaned into the office. “I’m going on a coffee run in a few. Need anything?”

  Serena glanced at a wall clock and hitched a sudden breath. She’d had no idea how late it was. “Oh, wow. I mean, no, thank you. I’m all set.”

  “No problem. You, uhh, been in town long?”

  She shook her head. “A few days. I’m almost done here, though. One way or the other, I’m about to head home.”

  “Oh,” he said, frowning, “that’s too bad. But, I know what it’s like. You roll into town, hoping to get a little time for yourself in the evening or the morning to experience a place, then you end up seeing only offices and your hotel room until it’s time to go home.”

  “That’s the truth.”

  He paused, mouth open as if about to deliver a difficult piece of news. “I don’t know who your boss is, but she made our ASAC leave his kid’s basketball game to arrange this space for you.”

  “Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to be trouble.”

  The young agent snickered. “It’s no sweat off my sack. I know I’m not supposed to ask you anything about your operation or even who you report to, but let me say: I’m impressed. I’ve never seen the ASAC jump like that before to do a favor for anyone from a different agency.”

  Serena smiled politely. The young man tapped on the doorframe a couple times and then swished his lips back and forth. He hovered for a second, maybe trying to devise a new line of conversation, but it appeared the words wouldn’t come to him.

  This was Serena’s first time at the FBI field office in Seattle. Daphne’s team had no official relationship with the FBI, but she’d made a phone call, and they gave Serena carte blanche to use their databases and even set up an office for her.

  Serena herself didn’t know the scope of Daphne’s clout.

  But maybe the clout didn’t extend to spending all night long here, especially if these agents were waiting for her to leave before they could go home. Nobody wants to be the
person making everyone stay late at work.

  She gazed again at her phone, sitting dormant on the desk. Awaiting a return call from Layne, who she still hadn’t been able to reach. Whatever was going on up there, Layne and Harry were on their own. Daphne hadn’t been willing to share much about it.

  Serena’s finger clicked on the mouse to move to the next image. She’d spent the last few hours scanning through all known surveillance photos of Victoria Overton a.k.a. Shelby Waterston. There weren’t many since Victoria had a relatively clean record. The parts that weren’t spotless looked like they’d been scrubbed of any damaging details, but there was never anything conclusive to prove that fact. She’d been involved in some business deals that appeared dirty, but Victoria always came out with no black marks on her.

  Since Serena still couldn’t get a handle on the blue-eyed Asian named Z, she had no choice but to keep on Victoria. Follow the key players, as Daphne had ordered.

  The next picture in the surveillance assortment showed a black-and-white image of Victoria at a fancy gala dinner in the ballroom of some hotel/conference center. She projected elegance with a glittering Christian Louboutin purse that had to cost more than Serena’s rent. She wore pearls and her hair in an upsweep. Matching pearl earrings, too.

  Next few photos, same gala event. Victoria schmoozing with various people, toasting glasses of champagne. Whispering into the ears of handsome men in tuxedos. Exchanging business cards. Interacting with her phone in moments of solitude.

  And then, the next picture, Victoria glaring across the room. Fire in her eyes. Her posture said she was both repulsed and enraged.

  Serena blinked a few times, leaning closer to the computer screen. What had Victoria been looking at? Her line of sight led to somewhere beyond the edge of the image.

  Serena clicked to the next picture, taken probably a few seconds later. Victoria was still in the same spot, the same group of people around her. But now, Serena could see Victoria’s clear line of sight. She was glaring at an overweight Asian man with a bald head and light eyes. He was near the bar, leaning on it, his bulbous belly pushing the limits of his tuxedo shirt.

  Serena couldn’t discern the eye color because of the black-and-white picture. But they had to be blue.

  This was him. Finally.

  “Hello, Z,” she said, clenching her teeth. “I found you, you piece of shit.”

  Serena snatched a Post-It note and wrote down the ID number of the picture, then she escorted the little note out into the cubicle farm. This late, only a handful of people occupied the workstations.

  She approached the young man from before, sitting at his desk, tossing bits of wadded-up paper at a trash can in the next cubicle.

  “You change your mind about the coffee? I haven’t gone yet.”

  “No,” she said, pushing the Post-it note into his face. “Will you get me everything you can about this photo? Specifically, the Asian man on the right-hand side. The big guy in the tuxedo.”

  “Right now?”

  “Right now, please.”

  The agent sat up straight as he accepted the Post-it note and stuck it to the corner of his monitor. “No problem. Give me a few minutes, and I’ll see what I can do.”

  Serena returned to the office and played with her phone for a bit. She loaded up the webcam video of her cat back home, watching him bat around a toy mouse for a few minutes.

  When the cat’s eyes closed, and she grew tired of watching his little chest rise and fall, she rotated the chair and looked out over the city skyline. The rain streaking the window obscured the buildings, turning everything into a blurred light show. She liked cities at night.

  The FBI agent had been right; she did wish she could spend a few days here, wandering around, letting the city prove her wrong about her west coast bias. A decade had passed since she’d been to Seattle.

  Ten minutes later, the young agent came strolling back into the office, a proud grin on his face. “Got him. That’s Zinan Watanabe, originally from Okinawa. Been in this country legally for about thirty years, most of that time in Tennessee. He’s the ex-husband of the previous person you asked us to find, Victoria Overton.”

  Serena felt a chill run down her back. “Z is her ex?”

  The agent nodded. “That’s right. I just emailed you a link to our database on him. We don’t have much, really, but he was involved in a federal investigation about three years ago, for human trafficking. Evidence disappeared, and some witnesses did too, so he was never formally charged. His lawyers managed to quash most of the documents.”

  “But not all.”

  He grinned. “Nope.”

  The email appeared on the computer screen. She clicked it. A full profile for Zinan Watanabe appeared in front of her face.

  “Ex-husband,” she said, musing.

  “Real nasty divorce,” the agent said. “Reality TV kind of stuff.”

  Serena leaned closer to the screen. “Interesting.”

  40

  Layne looked down at the dead assassin in the snow below him. Janine, the flirty wife of Grant, a man who had come at Layne twice with a baseball bat. Her eyes were stuck open, staring up at the grayish night sky above them. The snow around her motionless frame darkened with red.

  "Layne?" Harry said from inside the cabin. "Are you dead?"

  "No, I'm still here."

  "Then, check her for a tracker. She's probably sending our location to her friends."

  Good idea. Layne dropped to his knees and searched through Janine’s pockets. He found her phone and the location services were indeed enabled. The cell service indicator flickered between no bars and two bars, so no telling if they’d be able to read the signal or not.

  He had to assume they could. That meant he had to act as if there were more coming. Soon.

  Layne gritted his teeth, still mad about the fact that he hadn't been able to get any answers from her. But it didn't matter now. They were in the same spot they’d been all day long. His gloveless fingers removed the SIM card from her phone and then powered it down.

  He paused, staring at her lifeless body. Jaw clenched, he berated himself for not seeing this coming. He had known something was wrong with Janine from the start, but not like this. Had she known his identity the whole time, or did she realize it later, maybe even earlier today when she’d seen him returning to the SMRC?

  Layne knelt and examined the bullet graze wound across her temple. It looked real enough, which meant the white jacket assassins at the SMRC probably had been chasing her and trying to kill her. But why? Who were they and who did they work for?

  And, if she worked for someone else, who the hell did Janine work for?

  With no answers, Layne trudged back into the cabin. Harry was sitting next to the fireplace, staring at his mug of cocoa. Blood all over his hands.

  “Wilfred passed,” Harry said. “I tried, but he was already too far gone.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “It’s not your fault, either. She came out of nowhere.”

  Layne nodded. “There’s nothing we can do about it now. Grab food, maybe another layer of clothing. Anything that looks useful. We’re out of here in two minutes.”

  Layne dashed into the kitchen, opened the cupboards, and nabbed a couple of granola bars. He figured they would sleep outside tonight, but hopefully, only for one night.

  Then, he and Harry bundled up in some extra layers and prepared to flee the cabin. First, a quick check of the area. As he stared out the windows, there were no assassins directly in the vicinity, but Layne could feel them coming. Probably within minutes, instead of hours.

  Janine was still in the same spot, unmoved. For a moment, he considered the possibility of waiting, letting them come. He could use Janine’s body as bait. That plan would work fine if a team of five of them arrived. Layne could take five. But, if fifteen of them descended on the cabin, with automatic weapons and an organized attack plan? He and Harry would perish within the first minute of an
assault.

  “Harry, hit the lights,” Layne said, peeking through the curtains.

  The inside turned dark, and the porch light flicked off. Layne paused a moment to let his vision adjust. A light breeze made the branches of the nearby trees ruffle, and Layne forced his tired eyes to focus.

  “Anything?” Harry whispered.

  “No, but it doesn’t mean they’re not out there.”

  “That’s not very encouraging. You’re not thinking of trying to draw them in, are you?”

  “It crossed my mind,” Layne said.

  “I’m not a big fan of that plan, to be honest.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “What are we going to do?” Harry asked.

  “I think we’re still clear, for the moment. So, we leave right now and get as far from here as possible. Then, we head back to the SMRC tomorrow.”

  He took a set of snowshoes hanging on the wall. An antique set, like giant tennis rackets. Better than nothing.

  Next to the front door, Layne noted a set of keys hanging, with a keychain bottle opener with the phrase “Snowmobile BC” emblazoned on it. That reminded him of the tracks outside, leading to a nearby shed. He took the keychain and hid it inside a decorative cup sitting on the mantle. Maybe when the assassins arrived, they might not think to steal the snowmobiles. Layne didn’t want to ride out of here on them, though. Too loud.

  But having vehicles might come in handy later.

  Outside, Layne cautiously guided Harry toward the hills, keeping his pistols out and ready. His ears tuned to every sound, head whipping around to spy for anything strange.

  But, they did seem to be alone out there, outside the cabin. The breeze stopped, and snow hadn’t fallen in a couple of hours.

  They opted to travel north. Layne hoped they might locate another cave like the one that had housed the beacon, which had presumably been there to guide the assassins to the SMRC in case of bad weather. But, he would settle for dense tree cover, if that turned out to be the best they could find within the next hour or two. Layne’s body screamed at him to stop pushing it so hard.