Лори Касс - Pouncing On Murder

He made a huh sort of noise, and we started moving again, me dragging my feet, him with his hand so tight around my upper arm that I knew I’d be bruised up something horrible the next day, assuming there was a next day. Close to despair, I glanced at the lake’s shoreline, but there was no sign of life, no sign of anyone who might help me.

“Anyway,” he was saying, “this lake here? It’s deep and it’s cold. Did you know the last of the ice came off just two weeks ago? No, I didn’t think so. I checked the water temperature tonight and it’s only thirty-nine degrees. Brr!” He shivered. “That means you can be in the water about twenty minutes before you go unconscious. Now, twenty minutes may seem like plenty of time for you to find a way out of the water, but not if I give you a nice whack over the head before you go in.”

He pulled a rock from his pocket and held it high.

With sudden and absolute certainty, I knew that there was only one chance for me to get out of this, and that this was it.

I sagged down, forcing him to adjust his stance. He had to release me, at least a little, to rearrange his grip on my arm, and when he did, I took my chance.

With all my strength and all my weight and all my might, I shoved at him, pushing him toward the water. Though he grunted as he flailed his rock-laden arm, trying to keep his balance, he didn’t release me. But his grip did lessen.

I twisted hard and fast and, at the same time, stomped on his instep. I didn’t know if he let go or if I broke free and I didn’t care. His hand came off my arm and I did the only thing I could.

I dove off the end of the dock.

And the last thing I heard before the shockingly cold water closed over my head was “Mrr!”

Chapter 21

The water was more than cold. And it was more than water, it was a physical presence that wanted to crush me with its power. I couldn’t even think that I was wet, couldn’t remember to swim, could barely remember not to open my mouth.

But I wanted to. I wanted to shriek at the top of my lungs, announcing to anyone and everyone within a mile radius that I was in water that was too cold for human survival. How fish managed to live in this environment, I did not know, and I made a personal vow to brush up on my basic biology when I got back to the library.

If I ever did.

I tried to swim underwater, out and away from Duvall, but the fleece sweatshirt that had been keeping my upper half warm was now saturated and making every move of my arms sluggish. My legs, clad in jeans, weren’t doing much better, and my feet, which I assumed were still at the end of my legs, wore running shoes that weren’t doing anything to help my speed in the water.

I gave one last underwater stroke and let myself rise to the surface, hoping I was out of reach of Duvall and his rock. My head popped up into the air, and although I tried to stay quiet and hidden, my breaths were loud, panting, and full of a kind of pain that I’d never before experienced.

Cold. I was so cold. Twenty seconds ago, I’d been comfortably warm. Now I was so cold it felt as if the top of my head were about to blow off. There was no way this water was thirty-nine degrees. I was surprised it wasn’t still ice. Panting, I let my feet drift down, trying to see if I could touch bottom.

“How’s that water?” Duvall asked cheerfully. “By the way, it’s plenty deep out there. My boat has a deep draft, so the dock is extra long. Off where you just dove, it’s probably six feet deep. You’re what, not even five feet tall?” He chuckled. “Way over your head.”

I was, too, five feet tall. No more, but certainly no less, and I added the error, intentional or not, to Duvall’s growing list of crimes.

“Now, I might not have had time to give you a nice smack on the head with my rock,” Duvall said, “but you know what? All I have to do is wait. You can’t swim any faster than I can walk, so there’s no way you’ll be able to get to shore without me getting there first. And you’d never make it to the other side of the lake. It’s too far. So I can wait. Twenty minutes isn’t all that long.”

I heard a creak and knew he’d sat back down on the bench.

“Probably less than twenty, really,” he said. “You’re so small that the cold will get to you faster.” He laughed. “You shouldn’t have had so much coffee when you were a kid. Stunts your growth, you know.”

Making fun of short people was beyond the pale and this, too, went on his list.

I was treading water, a silent endeavor, but my short puffy breaths had to be giving away my location. My one chance, which had been diving away from Duvall before he could crack my head open, wasn’t turning out to be much of an opportunity. Not exactly out of the frying pan and into the fire—a fire would be welcome at this point—but the analogy was close.

There had to be a way out of this, but I couldn’t think what. My hands were already numb, so even if my cell phone was operable underwater, I doubted my fingers would be able to do anything more than point, quaking with cold, in the general direction of the screen.

I scanned the shoreline, looking for something, anything, that might help. Of course, since it was almost full dark, I couldn’t see what was ten feet away from me. Clouds had drifted across the face of the moon, and what little light it had been giving out was now gone.

“Getting cold?” Duvall called out.

Come on in and find out, I muttered, but only in my head, because I was starting to get an idea in my cold-fuddled and shivering brain. Though it might not turn out to be a very good idea, I had to do something, and do it fast, because I could already feel the early effects of hypothermia slicking away my strength.

I sucked in a long, shallow breath and sank below the water’s surface. Once again, my head felt as if it were going to explode, but I told myself to quit being such a sissy and get on with it. Because if I was completely submerged, Duvall wouldn’t be able to see me and wouldn’t be able to hear me. All I had to do was swim far enough away that, when I got to shore, he wouldn’t notice when I inched out of the water.

My arms pulled, my legs kicked. The darkness was an almost palpable thing, threatening me, jeering at me, taunting me. I longed to open my eyes, but if I did I’d lose my contact lenses, and anyway, opening my eyes wouldn’t help me see.

Because it was dark.

The blackness of a northern night was something I hadn’t understood before moving here permanently. In cities, there is no real dark. Streetlights, the lights on buildings, lights on signs, lights on buildings, there is light all the time. Up here, though, there was nothing except nature. Even in summer, when the county’s population tripled, you could still see the wide dusty white of the Milky Way, strewing its stars in a path across the sky.

Arms pulled, legs kicked.

My lungs burned, yearning to breathe.

Pull. Kick. Pull. Kick.

Pull . . .

Then, when I couldn’t go any farther, I let myself rise to the surface. I wanted, oh how I wanted, to noisily gulp in air, but I forced myself to take it in slowly. Silently. I kept my mouth wide-open for fear of Duvall hearing my teeth chatter together, and felt for the lake’s floor with my feet.

“Where are you?” he asked sharply.

His voice was off to my right, closer than I’d hoped, but far enough away that I felt a little bit safer.

“Come on,” he said, “I know you’re out there. What game are you playing?”

Survival.

My stretching toes brushed the bottom of the lake, bumpy from the small rocks that had been deposited long ago by a passing glacier. So the water here was a little taller than I was. I sucked in a long, quiet breath, aimed myself, and went deep.