Лори Касс - Booking The Crook

I glanced around at the blowing snow. Which suddenly felt even colder. A shiver roiled up my back, and I had to grit my teeth to keep them from chattering. “Stewart, let’s talk about this,” I said as pleasantly as I could. “You don’t want to kill me, I’m sure you don’t. Surely the two of us can find a compromise.”

“Not possible,” Stewart said flatly. “You’re never going to keep quiet that I killed Rowan. And if I run, where am I going to go? What am I going to do? Anyway, I’m not about to leave everything I’ve worked for. It’s bad enough giving half of it to my ex-wife.” He half smiled. “Well, not quite half of it. But since you’re the only one who knows, that doesn’t count.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, but I was far happier with him talking than with him threatening me, so I said, “You’re a smart guy. I bet with a little head start you could get some money together, get a fake identity, and make a new life somewhere. There will be details to work out, but—”

“Take your hat off,” he said suddenly.

“Um.” I reached up and touched my nice warm hat. “It’s maybe twenty degrees out here, and getting even colder. Plus the windchill is—”

Stewart reached out and roughly yanked the hat from my head. “Take off your mittens.”

Real fear coursed through me. “Stewart, please . . .”

“Off,” he said, and even in the dim light cast by the bookmobile headlights, I could see the emotionless expression on his face. “Your coat, too.”

Without a word, I shed all of my outer gear and in seconds started shivering. I stood there, hugging my arms to my chest in a pointless attempt to keep my body warmth where it should be. In my body.

He gestured at my feet. “Boots.”

“Stewart . . .”

“Boots!” he roared, pointing the gun at my chest.

Quickly, I toed them off and put my stocking feet, one by one, into the accumulating snow.

“Now walk,” he ordered. “Not on the road. Into that swamp over there and no turning back.” He sounded way too satisfied with himself. “In this cold, dressed like that, you’ll lose all feeling in your fingers and toes in five minutes. Fifteen minutes and you won’t feel your arms and legs. Twenty minutes from now you’ll stumble and fall to the ground and never get up.” He smiled. “Half an hour from now I’ll be safe, so get going. There’s a hockey game tonight I don’t want to miss.”

I stared at him. He was sending me to my death, but what mattered most was hockey? The man was a lunatic. But he was a lunatic with a gun.

He loomed over me. “Get. Going,” he commanded, then reached out and pushed at my shoulder. I staggered, back across the road, and in front of the bookmobile that I longed to retreat into, but with Stewart and his gun so close, it wouldn’t be anywhere near safe, even if I could manage to get in the door.

Truly the last thing in the world I wanted to do was walk into that flat and frozen swamp, dark and thick with cedar trees. I glanced up at the bookmobile as I passed and saw Eddie’s face peering down at me.

Eddie, I’m so sorry.

I waded through the deep snow in the ditch, looking back only once.

“Keep going,” Stewart said, waving the gun around. “Twenty minutes from now you won’t feel a thing.”

I turned back around and faced the forest. Every step I took, the sound of the wind increased. Snow pelted my face. I was so cold I could hardly breathe.

The last thing I heard before the sounds of the storm closed around me were the plaintive howls of my cat.

Chapter 19

Snow and darkness swirled around me. Every step I took felt like a journey of a thousand miles. Every step took me farther away from the road, from the bookmobile, from Eddie.

I made my way through the drifted thigh-high snow and clambered up the far side of the ditch. There, I paused to catch my breath. “Get moving,” Stewart’s voice called through the wind. A sharp gunshot rang out. I ducked. Which wouldn’t have helped me escape a bullet, of course, but you can’t help your instincts.

“Next time I’ll be aiming for you,” Stewart shouted. “Keep going.”

“Jerk,” I muttered. And kept going.

The sun was long gone, but the moon must have been rising somewhere, because even through the snow, I could detect the vague shape of the line of cedar trees. When we’d been driving past at forty miles an hour, the thicket of cedar trees had seemed to be an impenetrable wall of green. Now that I was up close and personal, even in the almost-dark I could see that wasn’t quite the case. There were gaps and holes where bigger trees gave way to baby trees. I slid in through a gap and immediately learned two things. One, the snow wasn’t nearly as deep inside the cedar forest, and two, and an even better thing, the wind barely penetrated.

Not that I was going to do a jig about my situation. I had no hat, no mittens, no coat, and no boots, and I was stranded in the middle of nowhere during a blizzard. But I was youngish and healthy and at least Stewart had only taken all my outerwear. If he’d taken all my clothes, I’d be truly desperate instead of just desperate.

“Right,” I said out loud. It was time to make a plan. And it needed to be a good one.

I risked a glance over my shoulder. If I couldn’t see Stewart, there was no way he could see me, especially since my eyes were now adjusted to the dark and he was trying to see through the bookmobile’s headlights. I could make out everything in front of me, which at this point was exclusively snow-laden cedar trees and the occasional vine.

Ignoring the very real possibility that I’d been walking through a thicket of poison ivy, I hugged myself tight, holding in as much body warmth as I could, and through my shivers, tried to think.

What was the biggest problem? That I was cold and rapidly getting colder. I wasn’t sure Stewart had his facts right about how quickly I’d succumb, but he probably wasn’t far off. We were five miles from anything and I wasn’t at all certain I’d be able to walk that kind of distance.

The only solution? Get back to the vehicles and, once there, figure a way out of this mess.

What was the problem with that solution? Stewart was standing there, waiting for me to come back. What had he said, in half an hour he’d be safe? All I had to do was wait for thirty minutes.

“Rats,” I said out loud. For the first time in my life, I regretted not wearing a watch. My cell phone was back in my coat pocket and I had no way to tell time. How long was half an hour? If you were reading a wonderful book, it went by in a flash. If you were standing in line to get your driver’s license renewed, it was forever.

How long had I been standing in the cedar trees already? I had no idea. Five minutes? Probably not even that.

I counted out the seconds the way my dad had taught me to count the time between flashes of lightning and thunder—one, one thousand; two, one thousand—but that was so boring I stopped at thirty.

“Be conservative,” I said out loud. At the sound of my own voice, I hunched down, making myself a smaller target, I suppose, for a bullet from Stewart’s gun. But that was silly since the storm was so loud I’d barely heard my own footsteps. Then again, with stocking feet, maybe my footsteps were somehow noisier in the snow than booted feet and—

“Stop that,” I muttered.

Now wasn’t the time to worry about what I couldn’t change. Well, technically, I shouldn’t ever worry about that kind of thing, but now was what mattered. I needed to summon everything I could remember about cold weather survival from every book I’d ever read and from every person who’d ever mentioned a trick about staying warm during ice fishing.