John Sandford - Winter Prey

They'd set him up. They knew he'd done the others. The knowledge had come on him when he saw the deputies coming back, the knowledge had blown up into rage, and the gun had come up and had gone off.

He had to run now. Alaska. The Yukon. Up in the mountains.

He worked it out. The cops would call on every outlying farm and house in Ojibway County. They'd be carrying automatic weapons, wearing flak jackets. If he holed up, he wouldn't have a chance: they would simply knock on every door, look in every room in every house, until they found him.

He wouldn't wait. The storm could work for him. He could cut cross-country on the sled, along the network of Menomin Flowage snowmobile trails. He knew a guy named Bloom down at Flambeau Crossing. Bloom was a recluse, lived alone, raised retrievers and trained cutting horses. He had an almost-new four-by-four. If he could make it that far-and it was a long ride, especially with the storm-he could take Bloom's truck and ID, head out Highway 8 to Minnesota, then take the interstate through the Dakotas into Canada. And if he stuck the horse trainer's body in a snowdrift behind the barn, and unloaded enough feed to keep the animals quiet, it'd be several days before the cops started looking for Bloom and his truck.

By then…

He jumped off the couch, fists in his pants pockets, working the road map through his head. He could dump the truck somewhere in the Canadian wilderness, somewhere it wouldn't be found until spring. Then catch a bus. He'd be gone.

"Where'n the fuck are they?" he shouted at the yellow-haired girl.

"Should be here," she said calmly.

He needed Rosie and Mark to get back. Needed the gas from the truck if he was going to make the run down to Flambeau Crossing.

The yellow-haired girl had put the ham-and-cheese in the microwave and then she'd gone back to her bedroom and started changing. Longjohns, thick socks, a sweater. Got out her snowmobile suit, her pac boots, began to go through her stuff. Took pictures. Pictures of her mom, her brother and sister, found a photo of her father, flipped it facedown on the floor without a second look. She took a small gold-filled cross on a gold chain, the chain broken. She put it all in her purse. She could stuff the purse inside her snowmobile suit.

Helper had told her about the cops. There had been nothing he could do about it. They were right on top of him. She could feel the sense of entrapment, the anger. She patted him on the shoulder, held his head, then offered him food and went to pack.

She heard the watch chiming, then the ding of the microwave. She carried her stuff to the kitchen, dumped it on a chair, took the ham-and-cheese out of the oven. The package was hot, and she juggled it onto a plate. She'd put a cup of coffee in with the ham-and-cheese, but it wasn't quite ready yet. She punched it for another minute and called, "Come and get it."

Her mom used to say that a long time ago. She sometimes couldn't quite remember her face. She could remember the voice, though, whining, as often as not, but sometimes cheerful: Come and get it.

The phone rang, and without thinking she reached over and picked it up. "Hello?"

The Iceman looked at her from the couch.

Rosie spoke, her voice a harsh, excited whisper. "Ginny-don't look at Duane, okay? Don't look at him. Just listen. Duane just killed two cops and all those other people. There are cops all around the house. You gotta get out so they can come in and get him. When Duane's in the bathroom or something, whenever you get a chance, just go right out the front door and run down the driveway. Don't put a coat on or anything, just run. Okay? Now say something like 'Where the heck are you?' "

"Where the heck are you?" the yellow-haired girl said automatically. She turned to look at Duane.

"Tell him we're still downtown and we wanted to know about the roads out there. Now say something about the roads."

"Well, they're a mess. It's snowing like crazy," the yellow-haired girl said. "The drive's filling up, and a plow came by a little while ago and plowed us in."

The Iceman was off the couch, whispering. "Tell her we need them to come out. I gotta have the gas. Don't tell them I'm here."

She put a finger to her lips, then went back to the phone. "I really kind of need you out here," she said.

Rosie caught on. "Is he listening?"

"Yes."

"Okay. Tell him we'll be out in a while. And when you get a chance, you run for it. Okay?"

"Okay."

"God bless you," Rosie said. "Run for it, honey."

The yellow-haired girl nodded. Duane was focused on her, fists in his pockets. "Sure, I will," she said.

The snow was getting heavier and the thin daylight was fading fast. Climpt was a dark lump in the snow to his left, unmoving. Lucas had settled behind a tree, the pine scent a delicate accent on the wind. And they waited.

Five minutes gone since Carr had called on the radio: Okay, the kid knows, she's gonna make a break for it. Everybody hold your fire.

A man moved along the edge of the woods opposite Lucas, and then another man, behind him, both carrying long arms. They settled in, watching the door.

The radio kept burping in Lucas' ear:

John, you set?

I'm set.

I don't think there's any way he could get out this end-the storm windows got outside fasteners.

Can't see shit out back. Where's Gene and Lucas?

Lucas: "I'm in the trees about even with the front door. Gene's looking at the back." A shadow crossed the curtain over the glass viewport in the front door, stayed there. Lucas went back to the radio: "Heads up. Somebody's at the front door."

But nobody moving fast, he thought, heart sinking. The kid wasn't running. The porch light came on, throwing a circle of illumination across the dark yard. Climpt stood up, looked at him. Lucas said, "Watch the back, watch the back, could be a decoy."

Climpt lifted a hand and Lucas turned back to the trailer home. A crack of brilliant white light appeared at the door, then the large bulk of a man and a struggling child.

"Hold it, hold it!" Helper screamed. He pushed through the storm door to the concrete-block stoop, crouched behind the yellow-haired girl. He had one arm around her neck, another hand at her head. "I got a gun in her ear. Shoot me and she dies. She fuckin' dies. I got my thumb on the hammer."

Lucas waved Climpt over and Climpt half-walked, half-crawled through the snow, using the trees to screen himself from the mobile home. "What the fuck?" he grunted.

Helper and the girl were in the porch light, dressed in snowmobile suits. Helper was wearing a helmet. "I wanna talk to Carr," he screamed. "I want him up here."

Carr, on the radio: Lucas? What do you think?

Lucas ducked behind a tree, spoke as softly as he could. "Talk to him. But stay out of sight. Get one of the guys on the other side to yell back to him that you're on the way. He can't see us-we're only about thirty feet away."

"I wanna talk to Carr," Helper screamed. He jerked the girl to the left, toward his snowmobile, nearly pulling her off her feet.

A few seconds later a voice came from the forest on the other side: "Take it easy, Duane, Shelly's coming in. He's coming in from the road. Take it easy."

Helper swiveled toward the voice. "You motherfuckers, the hammer's back-you shoot me and the gun'll blow her brains all over the fuckin' lot!"

"Take it easy."

Carr, on the radio: Lucas, I'm walking up the driveway. What do I tell him?

"Ask him what he wants. He'll want a truck or something, some way to get out."

Then what?

"Basically, if we get up against it, let him have it. Try to trade it for the kid. If we can get him away from the kid for a second, Gene's got one of your M-16s and he'll take him out. We just need a second."