Snowbound (21 page)

Ethan’s old room was already stocked with food and water and plenty of blankets, since they couldn’t risk the light or smell of a fire. Will and Kalyn had set the weakest women on the mattress and swaddled them in covers, left Devlin in charge of protecting the women who couldn’t fight.

“This is your room now, Devi,” her father said, “and these women are your responsibility. You kill anyone who comes through that door to hurt you.”

“I will.”

“There’re two more shotguns, fully loaded, and three boxes of shells on the bedside table. I don’t care what you hear out there, stay put.”

“Yes, sir.”

Through the glass, the sky deepened from purple to navy.

“Keep them quiet, away from the windows, and use no light.” Will tapped the walkie-talkie in the pocket of her parka. “Emergencies only. You remember the channel?”

• • •

Outside in the corridor, Will closed and locked the door. He looked at Kalyn, said, “Come with me,” and led her down to the supply room, which he unlocked. “Go on, pick out whatever you think you’ll need.”

Kalyn stepped inside, pulled a shotgun from one of the glass cases, then broke open a box of shells. She loaded it and crammed the pockets of her fleece jacket with as many shells of buckshot as they would hold. Then she opened a drawer, took out a Browning 9-mm.

“Will?” she said while loading a magazine with hollow-point rounds.

“What?”

“Thank you for not telling my sister about what I—”

“It’s not the time to deal with that.”

Kalyn lifted the shotgun strap over her head, slammed a magazine into the Browning.

• • •

Suzanne and Lucy sat side by side near the end of the south-wing corridor, twenty feet back from the alcove, the shotguns lying across their laps.

It was perfectly silent—just the steady pulse of their heartbeats and the humming of a ceiling lamp above their heads.

• • •

Sean and Ken waited twenty feet back in the passage, their shotguns trained on the thick wooden door that led to the veranda.

Their only light was a lantern mounted on the passage wall.

“Dad?” Sean said.

“Yeah.”

“We’re in trouble here.”

Ken glanced at his son in the lantern light. “Your old man’s working on something.”

“What?”

“A way to get us out of this.”

• • •

Kalyn sat on the stone of the freestanding hearth. With a quick turn of her head, she could keep an eye on either the front entrance or the library door, now closed and locked. She could also look down the first-floor corridor of both wings, see Suzanne and Lucy camped near the end of the south, Will walking toward the end of the north. She kept replaying the afternoon and evening and all the preparations they’d made, haunted with the fear she’d overlooked something.

• • •

Will approached the end of the corridor, spotted Rachael twenty feet back from the north-wing alcove, out of sight from the east- and west-facing windows. He eased down beside her, set the shotgun on the floor. She glanced over, tried to smile.

“It’s just not fair,” she whispered, “to get you and Devi back, only to have to go through this.”

“I know, but we haven’t experienced much fairness in the last five years, have we?”

She shook her head. “How do you think Devi’s handling this?”

“She’s scared but dealing. Our daughter is an amazing human being, Rachael.”

“She is, isn’t she? Felt so good just to be able to give her therapy this morning.”

They were quiet for a while, sat there holding the shotguns, listening.

On his way to Rachael and their post, Will had stopped in one of the rooms to look out the window. He’d seen a starry, windless night, the lake serene, a model of absolute stillness.

Nearby, wood creaked. Rachael looked at Will, but he shook his head, whispered, “An old place like this makes all kinds of noise. Probably just wood settling.”

“I’m glad we have these gloves. It’s freezing in here.”

They waited, evening assenting to night.

An hour slipped by, then two.

“My legs are cramping,” Rachael whispered. “I’m gonna stretch them, just to the lobby and back.”

As his wife walked away, Will took out his radio, asked for everyone to check in.

When Kalyn’s voice came over the channel, she said, “You probably just heard the front doors close.”

“No, I didn’t actually. What’s going on?”

“I stepped outside with Ethan’s whistle, called in the wolves. Figured maybe if they find our bad guys, we’ll hear them, get a sense of where they are.”

“Good deal.”

The radio went quiet.

Rachael returned. She leaned against Will and closed her eyes for a little while, then let him do the same.

• • •

Two minutes shy of midnight, Will glanced over his shoulder, saw Kalyn right where she’d been all night, sitting on the base of the freestanding hearth.

“I’m gonna go talk to her,” Will said.

“Why?”

“Something’s not right. I mean, why haven’t they come yet?”

“I don’t know.”

Will sighed. “You’ll be all right on your own for a minute?”

“I’ll be fine.”

He struggled up, legs sore, feet numb from two hours of sitting in one spot, immobile. “If you see anything, hear anything strange, radio me immediately.”

Will started down the corridor toward the lobby, and it had just crossed his mind that maybe Javier and his men weren’t coming tonight after all, that maybe they’d decided to let them sit it out until morning, until everyone was nerve-frayed and psychotic with exhaustion. Just then, the lodge rumbled and all the lights winked out.

Will froze in his tracks, Suzanne’s voice squeaking over the radio in his pocket. “What just happened?”

Kalyn responded, her voice a whisper: “They cut the power. This means they’re close, wearing night-vision goggles, and getting ready to make their move. I know it’s pitch-black at the end of those corridors, but your eyes will adjust, so everyone stay calm. You all have flashlights, and if you shine the beam in their eyes, you’ll screw up their vision for a minute or two. Now I don’t want anyone using the radio again until you’ve made visual contact.”

Will could see the lobby just ahead, lantern light flickering across the wall and the floor. He thought he heard Kalyn whispering, wondered if she was sending up prayers against whatever was coming.

Will turned around, jogged back toward the alcove, practically tripped over Rachael in the darkness.

“Just me, honey.”

“I can’t see a thing, Will.”

“Get your flashlight out.”

“I’m already holding it. Should I turn it on?”

“No, but be ready when I say. I’ll handle the shotgun. You be my light source.” Will found his radio, just a red dot in the darkness. He pressed TALK. “Suzanne and Lucy? Copy?”

Suzanne’s voice came back: “Yeah?”

“Don’t turn it on yet, but one of you operate the flashlight while the other mans the shotgun. Better than each of you fumbling with two pieces of equipment at once.”

The radio went quiet, and Rachael and Will stared at the alcove, waiting for their eyes to adjust, to begin picking out form and shape in the darkness, but they never did.

Roddy hated Fidel and Javier. They’d controlled every aspect of this job. Told him where to go, how to go, talked down at him like he didn’t know what the fuck he was doing out here in the bush in his own state. This wasn’t Mexico or the Arizona borderlands. This was his block, and he resented being treated as a foot solider under their command.

Of course, he didn’t utter a word of that dissatisfaction. Didn’t venture an eye roll, display a single millisecond of outward frustration. He and Jonas had agreed: They want to run the show? Fine. Because what outranked Roddy’s frustration with Fidel and Javier was his fear. You did not fuck with Alphas. They were mythic. Doing business with them, regardless of how lucrative, entailed severe risk, since the possibility existed that things wouldn’t work out, that you might insult them or be perceived as trying to take advantage.

He thought it strange—the Alphas were here on principle, didn’t give a shit about the money, the women, said Stoke could have whatever they found. They’d spent tens of thousands to come up here just to deal with that ex-FBI agent. Stoke had warned Jonas and the boys not to upset them, said flat out. “You piss them off,
your
problem. I’m not getting involved. Certainly not intervening on behalf of your ass. You’re their bitches, so grab ankle, grit teeth, and pray you come back.”

At least the Alphas had brought some killer toys and been nice enough to share. And despite his inner griping, he had to admit that they certainly seemed to know what they were doing. Roddy felt like a fucking SEAL on some badass spec ops gig.

So here he stood, freezing his ass off in waist-deep snow, waiting for the signal, acknowledging the irony that what scared him more than anything was that he might accidentally kill the ex-FBI agent or Mr. Innis. They’d been cautioned several times against making that mistake, which meant that on top of everything else, he had to worry about who wound up in his sights.

A wolf howled. With the moon rising over the Wolverines and that milky smear of stars, it was almost too bright for night-vision goggles. But Roddy went ahead and slipped them on, figured the signal would be coming soon, and from what they’d seen, it would be total darkness inside the lodge.

• • •

Kalyn was up now, moving in slow circles around the freestanding hearth. She kept debating whether to start with the Browning or the twelve-gauge, decided finally on the 9-mm, since the shotgun felt cumbersome hanging from the strap around her shoulders. She slipped it off, set it on the stone in front of the dormant fireplace.

Wolves were howling outside, on their way back to the lodge.

• • •

From where Fidel stood, the view was spectacular—the black lake and the hills and a moon edging up on the horizon. Nothing like Sonora or the industrialized desert waste of Phoenix.

His parka and snow gear lay in a pile nearby.

He crossed himself and waited for the signal.

• • •

The snow was deep on the veranda, almost to the man’s waist. The large wooden door stood thirty feet from where he squatted by the railing, protected from the snow by a steep overhanging eave.

Javier reached into his pocket and sent the signal, then pulled out the walkie-talkie. He pressed
TALK
, said, “Get ready.”

The deep anticipatory tingling in the pit of his stomach was spreading like wetness across a napkin. He’d mapped everything out, nailed it down so cold, he had but to execute the movements, the choreography. He felt like a ballerina in that regard, waiting backstage before the curtains opened.

• • •

Devlin sat on the floor in Ethan’s room. She was cold.

In the opposite corner, the newborn cooed.

The head of a woman named Theresa rested in her lap, and Devlin stroked her hair and whispered into her ear that everything would be all right.

A shaft of moonlight passed through the west-facing window of the south-wing alcove. It illuminated the floor, the walls in lunar light. A wolf howled, much closer now, and received no answer.

Lucy’s walkie-talkie coughed up a loogie of static, Kalyn’s voice squeaking through the speaker, “Lucy, come see me for a second.”

“Be right there, K.”

Will reached out, located Rachael’s hand in the darkness, squeezed.

Lucy walked quickly down the corridor, the vast darkness of the lobby looming just ahead. The shotgun she carried in her left hand was so heavy, and she couldn’t imagine actually firing it at someone, the bruising recoil, the earshattering report, the killing.

Ten feet from the lobby, she spotted something out of the left corner of her eye. She stopped, staring at the door to 114. It was wide open, which shouldn’t have been the case, considering they’d locked every room on every floor that afternoon.

Lucy hurried on.

Three steps from the lobby, her legs melted.

She hit the floor, head pounding and consciousness fading as someone dragged her back into 114.

The pager in Roddy’s pocket vibrated. He inhaled the spike of adrenaline, moving now toward the east-facing window at the end of the north wing, wading through the snow. He reached the window’s base, took a moment to calm himself and rack the slide on his suppressed Beretta 93R, slipped his finger into the trigger guard.

He peeked over the windowsill, peered through the glass, the night-vision world green and grainier than a B horror movie. He spotted a man sitting against the wall, not ten feet away, at the opening to a stairwell, with what appeared to be a shotgun across his lap. Roddy ducked down, listened. No sound of movement. He hadn’t been seen.

Three, two, one.
This time, he stood upright, the detachable stock pressed tight against his shoulder, squeezed the trigger twice, half a dozen 9-mm rounds piercing the glass.

The man with the shotgun shook like the epicenter of a tiny earthquake, his body riddled with bullets, and fell over. He hadn’t made a sound. Only the shatter of glass could have compromised Roddy’s presence, and he didn’t think it had been that loud.

Never saw that coming, did you, my man? I’d have made a helluva Special Forces solider. It’s gonna be so much fun to talk about all this with Jonas and the boys
. After
the Alphas are gone
. He pictured them having beers, laughing in Stoke’s poolroom at the Fairbanks warehouse, each taking turns telling everyone how they’d stormed this lodge like it was fucking Normandy.

• • •

Kalyn’s walkie-talkie chirped.

Suzanne’s voice: “Kalyn, you there?”

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“Where’s Lucy?”

“She’s not with you?”

“No.”

“She left the lobby at least a minute ago, heading back your way.”

“Well, she isn’t here,” Suzanne replied, in tears now, “and I don’t hear her coming.”

“Just sit tight. I’ll find her.”

Kalyn slipped her radio into her pocket and stared down at her sister, who lay unconscious on the floor. “Sorry, Luce,” she whispered, “but I didn’t come all this way to see you killed.”

• • •

All right, buddy, time to focus.
Roddy played the move several times in his head.
Stand quickly. Both hands on the windowsill. Leap through. Roll twice across the floor and sight up the corridor while lying on your stomach. Extra clips in your pocket. Use controlled bursts. Don’t freak out, and remember to breathe. Three, two, one.

He came to his feet, gloves on the windowsill, such an adrenaline charge running through him that he swung both feet over at once, clearing the sill by several inches, with enough energy to jump a mountain.

Screaming, something gone terribly wrong, like he’d landed in the mouth of a shark, then realizing what it was with a crushing desperation, saw in that gray-green light the rusty metal teeth of a grizzly snare sunk into his shinbones, clamped halfway up his throbbing tibias.

He tore his gloves trying to pull the jaws apart, grunting, teeth gritted, veins rising from his forehead.
Oh God, I fucked up. The Alphas are gonna kill me.

But the jaws didn’t budge. He could hear his legs splintering as he stared at the man he’d shot, the teeth burrowing deeper, closing slowly, and through the bone-fracturing pain, he realized there was something wrong with the guard—1onghaired, pajamaed—and it was this: He had rigor mortis. He was stiff, rigid, dead for hours, maybe a day.
What the fuck?

And the grainy green turned to blinding white as a shotgun boomed. His vest caught most of the pellets, but the force knocked him back onto the floor. He ripped off his goggles, reached for the Beretta, footsteps coming toward him and the unmistakable horror of a twelve-gauge pumping, thinking,
The vest will buy me time to spray them.
He aimed at the light, but the time wasn’t there. They don’t make a vest for your face.