Cold Snow: A Legal Thriller (34 page)

"Hart, what the hell are you doing? We need all of those," Anthony said angrily.

"Christ, Anthony, I'm on your side, but do you want him to die?" Hart replied. He pushed the rifle toward Alex, who grabbed it. Instantly, the knife shot up and pressed against his neck.

"Hold a gun on him," Anthony ordered, and Hart obeyed, producing one of the other two pistols from his pocket and cocking it. When Alex looked down the barrel, cold reality struck him in the face, and he turned on the spot so as not to be subjected to any more.

"Start walking," he heard Anthony bark. "If I ever see you again, that'll be the last time that bleeding heart of yours ever beats."

Alex was indeed walking, and looking up into the sky to see that the sun was now gone under a heavy bank of approaching clouds. It would be snowing soon—could the snow clean him? Cure him?
Can it, at the very least, disguise me?
Can snow hide this crap all over my soul?

He turned around and saw Hart still aiming the pistol at him, and Anthony with the knife arm still raised, silently ordering him to keep walking.
How did it happen? How did I fall so low? How did I fail?

And with that last word, it was as if his bones had been plunged into quicksand and pulled back out, as if his entire being was strapped with weights. Walking through the windswept field became a death march, and the gathering clouds rose father.
Failure
, he thought.
Pain, suffering, death, all kinder words. Failure is an evil word.

And as his thoughts disintegrated, unable to comprehend their own destruction, he was left only with the desperate, hopeless desire to see Sarah one more time, the last true connection he had in the world. But he knew, as he looked at the rifle in his hands, turned back, and saw Hart and Anthony out of range, breaking camp, gathering supplies, that he would be denied even this. It would start snowing soon.

CHAPTER 24

The World Frozen

Hart dropped the pistol to his waist the moment he saw Alex's shadowy figure fade into cluster of trees that was the furthest thing he could see. Anthony had taken Alex's backpack and was now rifling through it, searching for anything useful. "Look at this," he growled, holding up a pair of empty, unmarked cans. "Look what we wasted on him. We should have done this sooner."

"Why did you make me do it?"

Anthony paused, and looked up into Hart's eyes. "Well, you agreed, didn't you?"

"You didn't need me for that. All I did was hold the gun."

"Hart," Anthony sighed, standing up, "it was either this or wind up like Sarah. Which would you prefer?"

"I don't think you know what you've done," Hart replied, turning away. "I think we've killed him."

"So?"

Hart turned again and caught Anthony's eye. He suddenly recoiled as he realized what he'd seen—it was himself, two weeks ago. He walked off toward the tracks and pulled out the iron compass, absentmindedly watching the needle swing back and forth. "When do we leave?" he asked, getting no reply. "When do we leave?" he repeated, more loudly. He glanced back at Anthony and saw him rifling violently through the backpack that they had designated for items that weren't food, the same one they'd pulled the rope from hours before. "What's up?" he asked.

"
The bastard!
" Anthony shouted, the exclamation hitting Hart as though he had been punched in the face. "
That…god…damn…
"

"Anthony! Get a grip!"

"
He took it!
" Anthony roared. "It was here before and now it's
gone!
He took it!"

"Cool it!" Hart said, pulling the backpack away and grabbing Anthony by the shoulders. "Who took what?"

"Our best friend Alex seems to have made off with our map!" Anthony snarled, reeling away from Hart.

Hart was taken aback. "How could he have? We were watching the whole time—we didn't let him near the—it's impossible! It must be somewhere else!"

"It doesn't matter how! We don't have it! Either someone took it, or we just lost it, and either way
nobody
without that map is going to be finding their way anywhere out here!"

What happened next to Hart was strange. He suddenly found himself wondering if he'd changed at all—did he genuinely want to renounce his life of violence, or did he just want to prove himself to the one who'd defeated him? Then he realized something else: Alex was gone. There was no reason for Hart McGee to be anybody other than what he'd always been. And then he felt the old weight returning to his spirit, that weight which was at the same time liberation, a feeling that there was something to him. As he recalled his old life he slipped further away, remembering the joys of a fight, his old two-room house—

—and wandering to the mountains at night—

—and the way it had felt to live for nobody, to lean on nobody but Hart McGee, and the more he thought the more he remembered—and then Hart was the other Hart again.

"I think I know who can tell us where it is," he said, a grin breaking over his face.

The day before they'd come for Sarah before Alex, afraid that she would help him if he tried to resist. They hadn't given her the chance to run, but had instead dragged her, still half-asleep, to the top of the wooded hill. There, Anthony had dug rope out of the backpack, sat Sarah with her back against a tree, pulled her arms around behind the trunk, and tied her wrists together, ensuring that she couldn't come to Alex's aid. It was in this fashion that she was still bound, awaiting her release, when Anthony decided it was time to keep moving.

"You bastard!" she shouted when they approached, struggling in vain against the ropes and straining away from the tree.

"Until now I was thinking of letting you go," Anthony said with a sneering tone. "But you're being kind of rude. And there's something I need to ask you about."

"What did you do to Alex?" Sarah spat.

"I said I'm asking the questions!" Anthony spat back. "And he's fine, for…about a day, I'd say. After that I'm not responsible for him."

"Anthony," Hart cut in, "Let's get this over with."

"Whatever," Anthony replied. "Here's the problem. Your boyfriend Alex left without a fight. Problem isn't what he left without, but what he left with."

"Anthony, it wasn't him!" Hart said.

He knelt down in front of her. She stopped struggling and looked directly into his eyes. "He outsmarted you, huh?" she said, now grinning herself. "I figured he would. There's a reason he was the leader, you know."

"Will you two quit dancing around each other so she can tell us where the goddamn map is!?" Hart interjected.

"It was the
map
?" Sarah was laughing now. "That'll be pretty important!"

Hart struck her in the face. He swung his hand toward her nose and connected solidly with a painful thud. Pulling his hand away, he noticed that it had been clean—there wasn't any blood anywhere. He hit her again, with the back of his hand, and felt the warm flow of blood. "There is nothing funny going on," he growled. "Tell us what happened to the map or so help me, you can stay here until you starve to death."

"You're pathetic, Anthony!" Sarah yelled, wiping the blood away from her upper lip. "You just couldn't stand not being in charge! You're pathetic and nothing else! And Hart…" she gazed at him with nothing in her eyes, "look at you. Nothing but muscle. A hired goon. I thought there was more to you! I thought you'd changed, you bastard! You bastards!" Her voice rose as she said this and began to crack.

"
Where the hell is it
!?" Anthony howled, thrusting his foot into Sarah's chest and causing her to lurch with pain.

"Alex knew!" she shouted, emotion filling her voice and throwing it in a hundred different directions. "He knew you'd double-cross him sooner or later! He knew if he took something to remember you by you'd come after him again!"

Hart looked at Anthony blankly. "So what now?"

"I'll tell you what now! We get moving!" Anthony produced his knife from his pocket and held the agonizingly cold blade against Sarah's neck. "Untie her. We're going to start moving,
now
."

Sarah, aware of the blade, sat perfectly still while Hart worked to open the knots. At last it was loosened enough for her to pull herself free.

"All right, Sarah," Anthony grinned. "Lead the way. And remember: we have the guns. If you try to pull a fast one and leave us without directions, we'll know."

Sarah, still fighting back her emotions, stood up and rubbed her wrists. Then she began walking quickly north, watching the sun hide from the world below the solidifying clouds.
I can hardly blame it
, she thought bitterly.

An hour later, Alex realized that he would no longer be able to guide himself without the sun, and set a distant storm bank as a landmark, pressing on towards it and watching it grow closer and further away simultaneously.

He eventually lost track of the movements of the clouds, as, through the night sky, it was difficult to see where they were. He had a vague sense, as the night darkened and the second hour of his exodus dragged on, that something was blanketing the sky, but neither knew nor cared what it was.

He tried to do what he had done so many times before—lose himself in the walking, fall into a rhythm, stay there for as long as it took. But the more he trudged, now navigating by nothing more than what he believed to be a straight line, the more he found that this was impossible. The weight of his banishment hung too heavily on him—his mask, which even Jake had been unable to remove, was now gone. It had been Anthony, the one he had held farthest from him, who had finally looked upon his face.

The wind harried him constantly, covering his every action in biting, numbing sheets. He felt everything acutely—fatigue, mounting hunger, the weight of the rifle he still carried, and the crumpled shape of the map in his back pocket. The only time he didn't feel horrible was when he thought of the latter, the only revenge he'd managed to get against Hart and Anthony. There was a part of him that still took refuge in small victories.

As the second hour closed and the third began, Alex looked at the familiar night and had a strange thought. He pictured himself from far away, as if being watched by somebody standing on a cliff a hundred feet behind his position. He saw a boy walking through half-thawed snow with a rifle in his hands, heading on a course he may or may not have lost an hour ago, toward a place at which he didn't know what awaited him; and he wondered how he could have come to be here.

That led him to the thought that kept him walking. What came to his mind was the silent pact he had made with himself, over a month ago at the threshold of his prison in Woodsbrook. For a few minutes he struggled to remember what it was. The words came to him in a rush, and he was mad at himself; he'd sworn to never forget them.

If I cross this threshold, if I am nearly killed or fully killed, if I die or if I live, I will never return. That's my vow.

He realized then where he was. He was freezing, hungry, weary, weighted by emotion, with no allies left in the world but one, but he was alive, he was moving, and he was free. Conspiring with Jake in his treehouse, tossing notes in French class, he could never have dreamed of this.

I'll press on for Cold Lake,
he thought,
if for no other reason than that Alex Orson from a month ago would have wanted me to.

He raised his head, and then, instead of simply dragging his weight, he began to walk. Something surged through him, and Alex was off on another voyage, alone, as he had begun.

The highway map resting on the glove compartment told Ordoñez that the road he had found was known by few and used by even fewer—the routes were colored according to usefulness, the number of places you could use it to get to; and his route was only useful only for somebody who wanted to get to Cold Lake Provincial Park from Alberta or British Columbia, something decidedly rare this time of year.

He drove steadfastly alone, the top on his convertible down despite the conditions, watching the flurries dance slowly to the earth through the beams of his headlights.
So graceful and content in the air,
he thought,
yet when they hit the ground—bam!—they die. Never knew what hit 'em.

He reflected over what he knew and what had happened to him. It was not in his nature to comprehend unfathomable things, so he worked to force his situation into a manageable brief.

First,
he thought,
I'm out of the Moose Killers
. Nothing wrong with that—he'd always wanted to go into business for himself. However, there was the problem that they were still trying to kill him.
That can be overcome. I'm Alberto Ordoñez. I don't get killed. That's just how it works.

Second,
he thought,
that stupid boy.
Alex Orson had put him directly in his least favorite spot in the world: a dilemma. Used to problems he could know the answer to, Ordoñez attempted to consider it.
If I kill him, I get my revenge, but the Moose Killers get what they want. If I don't kill him, I undermine Potard, but the little crap survives and somebody else might just plug him anyway.