Tahoe Ghost Boat (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller) (26 page)

The slope pitched down at a steeper angle, and we shot down into the dark forest. A third shot pierced the night, but didn’t hit us. We slid, mostly out of control, into the dark forest and away from the men.

THIRTY-SEVEN

As we tobogganed down the mountain, I trailed my legs off the back edge of the sign. By swinging them left or right, they acted as a rudder, steering us between the trees. It also kept my weight back, forcing the front of the sign to stay up so that Gertie’s hands on the leading edge stayed in the air and didn’t dig into the snow. I controlled our speed by how much I pushed down with my boots.

It was dark in the forest as we left the open area near the ridgeline road. I didn’t know where we were going other than to escape the men and head down toward the lake. This part of Tahoe had a few vacation homes down on the lake, accessed by a narrow road that wound down from a neighborhood to the north. Maybe we could get to one of them.

As I steered between the trees, arcing left and right, powder snow flew up into our faces. At one point I heard Gertie gasp.

“Tuck your head down!” I shouted. “Concentrate on hanging on. We’ll be down the mountain in a couple of minutes.”

Gertie lowered her head, her face to her right shoulder.

As we went farther, I saw Gertie’s right hand loosen its grip. I grabbed the right edge of the sign, my fingers pummeled by the snow as we rushed along. By squeezing my grip and pressing down on Gertie’s legs, I was able to pin her to the sign.

At times, snow flew into my face, making it impossible to see. Down below us came lights.

A vehicle on the highway.

I dragged my boots to slow our descent, and we came to a stop at the snow wall.

“Okay, Gertie. Time to get off.”

I helped her down the snow wall onto the highway.

The vehicle that had gone by before was not in sight. There were no other headlights. But we could walk to somebody’s house.

Headlights appeared in the neighborhood above us, where we’d come from.

The cargo van was coming down to the highway.

“Sorry, Gertie, we’re going to have to take another ride. Let’s put my jacket and gloves on you.”

We got my clothes on her, and then got ourselves and the sign up the snow wall on the lake side of the highway.

“Ready?” I said as preparation for our next descent.

The cargo van turned onto the highway and its headlights washed over us as we pushed off again.

As the mountain slope steepened, our speed grew. We were far enough down the mountain that I dared to brake harder with my boots and slow our speed. But I saw up ahead an open area that was much more shallow. If we didn’t carry enough speed, we would slow to a stop and be stuck in the deep snow, unable to move far enough to get to a steep slope and continue our escape. On this part of the mountain slope, in this part of Tahoe, slowing to a stop would be guaranteed death. Without tree branches to cut into makeshift snowshoes, we’d be trapped by the deep snow, and we’d freeze to death.

I bent my knees and lifted up my legs to minimize drag. Our speed increased immediately. But before we got going very fast, we came to the transition and hit the shallow slope.

We slowed. Slowed more. We were probably on a meadow area, covered by six feet of soft snow. By the time we were halfway across, our speed was cut in half. It was like a boat going fast enough to plane on the water’s surface. You can slow a little and still plane. But once you slow too much, you sink down and come to a fast stop.

I scanned the snowy surface in the darkness, looking for any area where the slope angle increased, where our momentum could carry us to a steeper slope. There was a bit of a dip to the right, but the landscape continued at the same angle for a long distance. I didn’t think we could get across.

Straight ahead was a steady slope but probably too shallow to make it across.

To the left, the slope was even shallower than where we were now. But it was shorter to the steeps.

It was a gut decision. I went left.

I didn’t want to steer with my boots because that would slow us more. So I leaned to the left by pulling up on my right hand.

We made a slow arc toward the shallower, shorter area.

Our speed was now down to a gentle ride. No more powder lofted up toward our faces. On a sunny day, and without three killers chasing us, it would have been pleasant. As we slowed toward the planing threshold, the prospect of Gertie freezing to death in the wilderness gripped me. I hoped that she wasn’t aware of the consequences.

The tipping point where the mountain pitched down was just ten yards ahead. We came about a yard short before our makeshift toboggan stopped.

“You did great, Gertie,” I said. “Now I just have to budge us a little farther to get back sliding down the slope. Then we’ll have one more short ride. So don’t move. Just keep hanging on. This will take me a few minutes. You should flex your hands. Make fists inside of my gloves, then straighten your fingers. Over and over. When we are ready to move again, you’ll be able to grip the front edge of the sign like before.”

There was no indication that she heard me. The deep cold combined with fear had made her withdraw to a place that I probably couldn’t access until I got her warmed up.

I let go of the edge of the sign and slid off Gertie’s legs, allowing my legs to drop down into the snow. Suspended from the sign at my waist, my feet didn’t touch ground. I shifted farther back off the sign and pushed off. I dropped up to my neck before my feet touched something solid.

As I tried to push off, the firmer layer under my boots crumbled, and I went in deeper. I wasn’t on ground. I was on snow crust that had formed before the last series of storms.

With my head at the level of the sign, I pushed up and forward on the sign and its 4 X 4 post. The sign, with Gertie on it, moved a few inches, and I sunk down a few more inches.

I spent some time doing chopping motions, cutting snow with the edge of my hands, pushing it down, and then marching and packing it beneath me. It took a few minutes to widen the hole I was standing in. With more snow beneath my boots, I was able to again move Gertie and the sign forward another few inches.

Moving a yard was going to take a long time.

I chop-cut more snow, marched my feet to move it beneath me. Stomped my feet to compress it. Pushed up and moved Gertie and the sign another few inches.

As I continued, another concern was that if I pushed her too far, she could take off down the mountain without me. So I kept one hand on the 4 X 4 post.

I repeated the process, huffing like a sprinter, until I believed that the sign was on the verge of tipping over the crest between meadow slope and steeper mountain slope. By continuously stepping more and more snow beneath my feet, I raised myself up. I pushed the sign with Gertie until it wanted to slide, but my grip prevented it from escaping and kept me from dropping back into my hole.

I pumped my feet and knees against loose snow until I had clambered out of my hole. As the sign began to move, I climbed on.

We accelerated fast, and soon I was once again dragging my feet to slow us down. The trees got very thick, and I had trouble choosing a line between them in the dark. Once, we were in a thick grove and went off what might have been a giant, submerged boulder. For a moment, we were airborne. Gertie made a gasp, which pleased me because it indicated that she was still aware. Then we landed with a soft thwump into deep powder.

Ten seconds later, we cruised into an open glade with the trees well-spaced. There was a sudden drop into a gully, and our speed increased as if in a downhill race. Then we shot up the other side, burning off speed. Our sign toboggan came over the sharp rise and nearly went into the air again as the slope pitched down.

Then in a moment the landscape got very dark. But it wasn’t a heavy forest cover. It was the lake, and we were about to shoot into the black water.

“Let go, Gertie,” I shouted as I grabbed her shoulders.

I took Gertie with me as I rolled off the shooting sign. We tumbled into snow at the shoreline. The sign hit the water and skimmed over the waves for five yards before it came to a stop and then sank.

THIRTY-EIGHT

The snow at Lake Tahoe’s shoreline was crusted, uneven, and slippery, the result of waves crashing and throwing freezing spray into the air. Because of its depth, Tahoe never freezes across. But the shore edges freeze into breaking sheets of ice, and the rocks become coated with layers of ice.

I pulled Gertie to her feet. “We’re okay, Gertie,” I said knowing that we were far from okay. “We made it. Those men will never find us. Now all we have to do is walk to one of the vacation homes near here. Then we can go in and warm up.

“We’ll walk next to the shore where the snow isn’t deep. It’s uneven and slippery, so we’ll have to be careful.”

I turned her north toward where I thought the closest vacation homes were, and I walked closest to the lake so that any splashing water would hit me more than her.

The walking was treacherous on the uneven ice. Gertie was uncoordinated, no doubt from hypothermia. Her Sacramento shoes and pants were much too thin for winter night in the mountains. I believed she’d be okay as long as I kept her moving, but I worried about frostbite on her fingers and toes.

 I put my arm around Gertie’s shoulder, keeping a strong grip and holding her up when she slipped. The shore went in and out. Fallen trees forced us to bushwhack away from the shore and into deep snow. We stepped over many glistening ice-covered boulders and detoured around the larger ones.

As soon as we found a house, we’d be fine. I could call Santiago and Diamond and have them send out a rescue party. I reached for my phone in its cargo pocket, and then remembered that the men had taken my phone when they carried me off to drown me. But there was something hard in my pocket. The phone I took from the man in the van.

I turned it on. The screen asked for the passcode. The phone would do us no good. I put it back in my pocket.

We kept trudging through the crusted shore snow.

There were no vacation homes. No boat houses. No boarded-up cabins. We were alone on a frozen, desolate stretch of Lake Tahoe, getting colder and weaker with every step.

I tried to talk to Gertie, but she didn’t respond. Her steps became more wobbly. Mine did as well. At times, the snow at the water’s edge was deep, and I had to help Gertie as she struggled to raise her legs high enough to march through.

Her shivering was violent, a good sign when one is concerned about hypothermia, because shivering keeps the body’s heat up. But after we’d gone maybe a half mile, her shivering lessened and then stopped. That was a major step on the descent into hypothermia. I tried to speed up her walk to generate more heat, but she could barely walk.

If it got much worse, I’d need to find a place to dig a snow cave and crawl with her underground until morning. But I wasn’t convinced that would save her. I had no idea how much she’d eaten in the previous 24 hours. She may have had little if any food stores in her system. And I was cold enough that I doubted that I’d be able to dig a snow cave. I had no shovel, no extra gloves or jacket, and my own body heat was fading. It would be difficult or impossible to warm up Gertie by crawling next to her in a snow cave.

I decided to keep going, even if I had to carry Gertie.

After what seemed like an hours-long death march, the wind had come up and was blowing snow into our faces. The fatigue was greater than any I’d ever known. Like Gertie, my shivering grew and then faded as I began my own descent into hypothermia.

As my brain grew foggy, I decided it would be best for us to sit and rest. Just a short rest. Maybe we could take a little nap. It would be so pleasant. Gertie would be glad to stop, too. Up ahead was a nice mound of cushy snow. It would be comfy to curl up in it. Winter explorers in the dark forest.

 I stopped. Gertie collapsed to the snow and flopped over sideways. Her movement startled me.

Hypothermia had taken my common sense just as it had taken my body warmth.

We were both on the verge of no return.

I gritted my teeth, visualized Street urging me on. ‘Just a little farther,’ she would say. ‘You can’t let Gertie down,’ she would say. ‘That girl is depending on you,’ she would say.

I bent over, grabbed one of Gertie’s arms, and hauled upward.

“C’mon, Geree,” I said, my lips frozen, brain numb, words slurred. “We ga’a kee wahing. Wah, Geree, wah.”

I held her, and we stumbled ahead.

Twenty yards, I thought. If we could just make it twenty more yards. Then another twenty. Just another twenty yards. But the forest got too thick, too dark. There was a huge tree near the lake, and we walked right into it. My cheek bounced off rough bark. I turned to go around, but I couldn’t even get past it.

A vague thought danced just out of reach. I tried to focus on it. It was like being drunk to the point of unconsciousness. Then I captured the thought. I was brilliant. My brain was a magnificent calculator of complex equations, stunning insights, ruthless conclusions.

It wasn’t a tree.

It was a cabin. A very old cabin with tree-bark siding.

THIRTY-NINE

I don’t remember how I found the window. I don’t remember breaking the glass.

I do remember boosting Gertie up, poking her through the window head first. She fell through to the floor on the inside.

Like an Olympic gymnast, I climbed in head first and fell next to her.

We lay in the dark for a time. The cabin had no heat, but we were out of the wind.

In time, I rolled to my hands and knees, pushed up and stood, wobbling. I walked like a zombie with my hands out in front of me, feeling my way through the cave-dark cabin.

Operating by feel alone, I thought there were three rooms. The one we were in had a bed. Another was very small and had a door and a rack of hooks on the wall nearby. The third was bigger and had a counter with a sink in the middle. I felt along the counter. Something metallic clattered to the floor. Nothing else. I raised my hands. Found a shelf. It had cups and some plates that were curved. Shallow bowls. Some cans.