Cold Heart (25 page)

She started down the steps.

“Wait,” said Stan, disappearing back into the cabin.

He reappeared, carrying the ledgers.

“Evidence,” he said, hurrying down the steps.

“Of what?”

The books were trying to work their way out from under his arm. “I'll bet it's a diary.”

Maybe.

Serial killers often kept journals. But she didn't think she and Stan needed evidence at the moment. What they needed was help.

“Leave them,” she said, turning.

She glanced back over her shoulder to see Stan reluctantly slip the books under the porch. Then he hurried to catch up, panting alongside her.

Micky noticed how Stan kept glancing around, into the trees, then back over his shoulder. She was as worried as he was about the bear and about El. But Stan's face was open, curious, and frightened, all at the same time. And he stuck close to Micky. Very close. Again she was struck by his resemblance to a small, terrified child.

When they reached the creek, Stan waited for Micky's okay before sliding down the slope to the water's edge.

“How long have you and Marty been together?” asked Micky, trying to distract Stan.

“Twenty years,” said Stan. “Give or take.”

“Wow,” said Micky. “I never realized.”

She eyed the creek. It was a natural shooting gallery. Long and straight. It wouldn't take but a minute to cross.
But out in the middle they'd be balanced on slippery rocks, easy targets.

“I don't know what I'd do without Marty,” said Stan.

Micky caught his eye.

“He's going to be all right, Stan.”

Stan nodded, biting his lip.

“Really,” said Micky, praying she wasn't lying.

E
L SAT MOTIONLESS ON
the four-wheeler.

The snow had stopped altogether and, although Dawn couldn't feel the temperature rising outside, she noticed the increase of natural light in the store.

She now not only had quite a hoard of food, and water in a plastic canteen, but she had discovered a better hiding place right inside the store!

The upstairs bedroom was little more than an enclosed loft with a polished spruce floor and a steep ceiling of tongue-and-groove pine over rough-sawn rafters. But before the ceiling reached the floor it had been intersected on each side of the eave with five-foot-high knee walls, and those, in turn, were covered with vertical tongue-and-groove boards. On the wall opposite the bed was a full-length hanging closet that was open to the room except for a six-foot section where Rita had draped a wool blanket.

Dawn had considered hiding behind the blanket but when she crawled inside she noticed that she could still see the door and, besides, all El would have to do would be pull the blanket aside and she'd be dead.

But as she was climbing back out of the closet, she tripped and knocked a box aside. And suddenly her hand wasn't on pine. It rested instead on a metal cabinet handle.
She slid her head in between Rita's coats and Clive's snowmobile pants and found herself staring at a door, cut out of the pine siding that covered the knee wall. She tugged it open and discovered a dark, triangular tunnel that ran the length of the loft. The area was filled with cardboard boxes and stacks of more blankets and clothes as far as Dawn could see.

On the next trip downstairs she found a flashlight. She brought in cans of soda and candy bars from behind the counter. She moved the boxes around so as to make it seem as though the whole tunnel was filled with them, but in actuality there was a narrow maze for her to pass through to the tiny cave she had constructed at the far end. She could close the whole thing off with a false wall of boxes, clothes, and blankets.

It was perfect.

Even if El found the door, he might not search behind the boxes.

Not if I'm quiet.

But how would I know if he was inside the bedroom?

Maybe her hidey-hole wasn't perfect after all. In fact, even as she was stocking her nest she worried that she might not have heard his return from inside the well-insulated tunnel. She hurried back down to her spy station beneath the window.

But he was still there, down by the bridge, his back hunched over the handlebars as though he were regarding something incredibly interesting stuck to the front tire of the four-wheeler.

What was he doing?

M
ICKY'S LEGS STUNG LIKE
fire. They were soaked to her thighs and the icy water sloshed in her boots. She and Stan trudged along the trail, Stan kicking noisily as he walked, his pants snapping. They were both trying to shake off some of the biting cold. But a warm Chinook wind already buffeted the valley. The temperature was climbing over fifty now, the sudden cold front come and gone.

The clouds dissipated overhead like frightened gray birds, the sky between them so deep that on any other day Micky could have lost herself in it. Thin snow still crunched underfoot, but it was quickly turning to slush. The sticky flakes that managed to cling to the rough bark of the tall spruces laced the trees with streamers of diamond threads. The forest glittered in a white-and-platinum embrace.

There was no blood on this snow. There were no open, gaping wounds here. There were no moans or guttural gasps or beastly roars. Right here, right now, it was almost possible to believe that nothing had happened in McRay. That it had all been a ghastly dream.

But, not that far behind them, lay Marty, clinging to life.

And, behind him, lay Aaron.

And, up ahead somewhere, there was El.

“Stan,” said Micky, “have you seen Damon today?”

Stan shook his head. “You think, maybe—”

“He wasn't in his cabin.”

“He could be anywhere. I'm sure he's okay. You know Damon. He might be gone for days if he's prospecting. This is a good day to be gone.”

“Yeah.”

Micky kept the carbine at port arms, the red warning stripe around the safety button visible. Micky had reassured herself before leaving El's cabin stoop by ejecting all seven bullets and replacing them. They were large and heavy and solid in her hands. Bullets that could cut a man in half if he wasn't wearing body armor. And that, at least, she was certain El didn't have. Dawn would have noticed that. She would have commented on it. A man wearing full body armor in McRay would stand out.

Micky kept glancing around, and Stan stayed on the lookout, too. They didn't know where the hell El was and now there was a wounded bear somewhere in the neighborhood.

What next?

They were halfway to the clearing, past the Glorianus place, just about across from Howard's cabin, though it was still invisible over the lip of the creek and the trees.

On a whim, Micky reached down and turned up the volume on the radio. She only caught the last few words but she clutched at it, whipping it out of her jacket pocket.

“Guess you're gone…”

“No! Dawn! Are you there?”

“Micky?”

Micky's heart melted like the snow. Her knees went weak. Stan moved up even closer, listening.

“Yes! It's me! Where are you?” said Micky.

“I'm still in the store. I can see El.”

“Where is he? Are you all right?”

“I'm okay. I found a hiding place. But I'm at the front window now. El's been down by the bridge a long time.”

“The bridge? Can you see him?”

“Yes.”

“What's he doing?”

“He's just sitting,”
said Dawn.
“He's on the four-wheeler with his back to me and he just sits and stares.”

That made sense. Micky remembered Wade saying once
that spree killers often led lives of spartan self-denial. They found little if anything in the world around them to take pleasure in. They were delusional but many times could not explain, nor want to explain, their delusions. She thought of the barren interior of El's cabin. The single chair and the blackout setup of the windows.

Was that how he lived all the time?

Sitting in that chair for who knew how long?

Staring at the walls?

She shuddered.

“Dawn, we're coming.”

“We?”

“Stan and me.”

“Where's Marty?”

“Marty's hurt.”

“El?”

“No. We were attacked by a bear.”

“Are you joking?”

It did sound outrageous, didn't it? No human being in his right mind would expect that so much could happen to the citizens of McRay on one day.

“No,” Micky said. “I'm serious.”

“Wow,”
said Dawn.

That summed up the situation nicely.

“Dawn,” she said, “Stan and I are coming down the lower trail. I'm going to put the radio back into my pocket and turn it down so I can barely hear you and I won't be talking because I need both hands for my rifle. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”
There was fear in her voice. The girl didn't want to be left alone in silence again.

“I want you to tell me the instant El moves. Especially if it looks like he's heard us coming. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Tell her to keep her head down,” said Stan.

“She knows that,” said Micky.

She could see the clearing, only thirty yards ahead. She steeled herself for the confrontation, gripping the rifle tighter, but not too tight. She gritted her teeth and forced her breathing to slow.

“We're going to have to kill him,” said Stan. “Aren't we?”

“Don't let him get a shot at us, Stan. If he acts like he wants to surrender, okay. But watch yourself and don't let him get the drop on you or me. If you have to, do you think you can shoot him?” She stared into Stan's watery brown eyes, thinking that he hadn't even been able to shoot the bear that was attacking him. How the hell was he going to shoot El?

“Yeah,” said Stan, swallowing hard. “I think so. Yeah.” “All right,” said Micky, turning back to the trail. “Come on, then.”

T
HE SOW NUDGED THE
cub aside. He awakened but made no sound, sensing her mood. Her ears were peaked and her nose twitched as she sniffed the air. She was staring back down toward the creek, the way she had come.

The man's voice had snapped her out of her dull, painfilled semiwakefulness. It was one of the voices she had heard before she was hurt, and a new sense of urgency dulled the pain. The man was back. Back with his gun. She struggled to her feet, grunting, and nudged the nosy cub back farther into the alders.

There were two voices now, and she recognized both of them.

Coming toward her, just across the creek.

A
SLIVER OF LIGHT ENTERED
El's brain. A thin, tentative thing that tickled his consciousness. Off to his left.

It might have been caused by a familiar sound.

Faint as morning air.

Something requiring his attention.

He blinked.

Sensation seeped slowly through him.

Light in his eyes. Blue sky and pale blue snow reflecting it below.

Cold hands with fingers on cold steel. The gun and the handlebars.

His legs and butt stiff from sitting too long in an unfamiliar position.

The faint odor of woodsmoke.

Of gun smoke.

Of pine.

Of blood.

He licked his lips.

Salt.

Was that a voice, up the trail?

He turned to his left, unfastening the strap that held Clive's rifle without looking at it.

• • •

“He's looking your way,” whispered Dawn into the radio.

No answer. Micky had said she wouldn't answer.

But did she hear? Micky said to keep telling her if El did anything.

“He's turning to look toward the trail.” When Dawn let go of the button the radio gave a satisfying
squelch
, so she knew it still had power.

Micky stopped, just behind a small stand of spruce that blocked her view of the bridge and the store. Stan froze, directly behind her.

“How could he have heard us?” he whispered.

Micky wanted to slap him.

Was he an idiot?

She had no idea how El's hearing could be so acute. Maybe it wasn't. Maybe he was psychic. Maybe his brain was so different from a normal person's brain that he sensed them coming down the trail.

Does it matter?

She glanced over her shoulder at Stan but he wasn't looking at her. He was looking over
his
shoulder.

Across the creek.

The old sow didn't crash through the alders.

She fell out of them.

She stumbled down to the creek bank, through her rough-cut passage in the brush. Her left front leg gave out beneath her and she rumbled down the hill into the water like an eight-hundred-pound fur-covered cannonball. As she stood up on her three good legs she found herself staring directly into the eyes of one of the men that had hurt her.

And the woman.

For just a second the three regarded each other in shocked silence.

Then all hell broke loose.

M
ICKY TRIED TO TURN
at the same time that she raised the carbine. But Stan pushed past her, breaking into a run. Micky panicked, fired one shot, wild, over the bear's head, and turned to follow.

The worst thing I can do is run.

The bear could easily overtake her.

She knew that the bear could rip her apart just as it had done to Marty.

But none of that stopped her legs from pumping like pistons, her feet slipping in the slush and mud on the trail, wet and frozen limbs forgotten. None of it quelled the sound of her own breathing and the pounding, splashing noise of the three-legged grizzly, huffing to make up the distance.

It was a race and Micky knew that it was a race that either she or Stan was bound to lose.

“He's getting the gun!” screamed Dawn, into the radio. “Micky! He's getting the gun!”

Micky caught up with Stan, shoving him along. She felt the thrumping feet of the bear behind her, saw El raising the rifle ahead.