Brian Freeman - The Cold Nowhere

‘I didn’t need people poking around in your background if you disappeared,’ he said. ‘Besides, I figured you had as much to lose as me, right? A girl who fucks rich old goats for tuition money knows the sacrifices you have to make, and you weren’t going to give it all up. I was right, too, wasn’t I? When Margot showed up talking about Cat and the ring, you called me. I knew you’d never let that pretty face rot in jail. Good girl, Brookie.’

Good girl?

She’d thrown open Pandora’s box. She had no soul.

‘What happens now?’

He shrugged. ‘That’s up to you. It doesn’t look like I can trust you. You were ready to rat me out.’

‘People keep dying,’ she murmured.

‘You think I wanted it that way? Sometimes you do what you have to do.’

‘The police are going to figure it out. They probably already have.’

‘That’s your fault. You should have kept your cool. Now they know where to look.’

‘You won’t get away.’

‘You think I don’t know how to disappear? You think I haven’t made plans? No one’s going to find me. You can come along for the ride or you can wind up in a hole somewhere.’ He jerked his thumb at the back seat. ‘Right next to her.’

‘You’d let me come with you?’

He didn’t answer. He eyed the bridge again and pumped his fist. The bridge began to come down, not just on the canal, but on ten years of her life. He turned on the engine, which purred. Soon they would be out of the city, on the rural back roads. He probably already had his route planned. There would be a cabin waiting for them on the Wisconsin side, near a pretty lake. Secluded. Quiet. She had no illusions that he would let her live beyond the first night, no matter what he said. He would fuck them both, and then he would kill them both.

Even so, she wanted him to think that she believed him. That they were partners.

‘Time to go,’ he said.

He let the ambulance roll past them in the opposite direction, and then he drove across the bridge as if nothing in the world were wrong. The gun was pointed at her chest again. He drove into the empty streets of Canal Park, and the wind made it look like a desert ghost town, blowing snow like dust and tumbleweeds across their path, from Grandma’s Restaurant toward the old brick factories.

‘Do you remember the first time?’ she asked.

He looked at her.

‘You and me,’ she said.

He grinned.

The first time. He’d left a message on her phone to meet him in a campus parking lot near one of the athletic fields. A cop in an unmarked sports car. At night. She’d had her heart in her mouth, wondering what he wanted, but there was no mystery in that. He knew. This young cop, barely older than her, knew all her secrets. He’d followed her and photographed her; he had everything it would take to expose her hidden life. She’d bawled like a kid, and then he’d said, with that sly grin, ‘It doesn’t have to go that way.’

He’d unzipped his fly, and she understood the way it would go. She didn’t care. She’d serviced him for months, and she’d thought of it as nothing more than an insurance policy, until he came to her on a snowy December night with a different plan. You need to do something for me.

A week later, she gave him the alarm code at Lenny’s house. 1789.

Ken stopped at the light. He waited to turn left on Railroad Street, which led south beside the concrete overpasses of I-35. She knew the road; it took them past Bayfront Park into the industrial zone, where the ships loaded and unloaded and the ore-filled rail cars rattled over the tracks. From there, the Blatnik Bridge arched over the bay into Superior, Wisconsin, in a part of the state that was mostly a wilderness of single-lane roads and deep forests.

You can wind up in a hole somewhere.

‘Are you tense?’ she asked, with a faint smile on her lips.

His head swiveled. ‘Huh?’

‘You know.’ She touched his thigh.

‘Hell, yeah.’

‘You’re right, I don’t want to sit in jail,’ she said. ‘I want to come with you.’

‘Show me how much.’

He unzipped. It was like the old days. The light changed, and he accelerated. She slid across the seat and bent her torso over him. Ken waggled the gun at her.

‘Don’t be stupid.’

She removed his shaft from his jeans and stroked him with her nails, getting him hard. His breath caught in his throat. She knew how to get a reaction. Beneath her, the car engine growled; he was going faster.

Faster.

She took him in her mouth, tasting salt and sweat. Underneath her bobbing head, her hands massaged the wrinkly skin of his scrotum and the firm chestnuts floating inside. He moaned. His hand pushed her head down, so far that she felt herself gagging. He had one hand, his gun hand, on the wheel. She felt the veer of the car; he couldn’t steer straight.

Faster.

Brooke knew it was now or never. She snapped her fingers shut like a hawk’s claw, digging her sharp nails into his testicles, eliciting a primal scream. Simultaneously, she cracked her head upward into his chin, rifling his neck backward. She threw her left hand into his skull and drove it into the cold, hard window of the car. With her other hand she let go of his balls and spun the wheel, wrenching the car into a sharp turn. The car, still going forty miles an hour, shot off the road onto the dirt and ice of the grassy field beside the freeway.

The car hit a light pole, which broke with a screech of metal and hit the hood like a falling body. Brooke flew forward, hitting the dashboard, bouncing backwards. With a chemical sear, the airbag exploded into Ken’s face and the car lurched to a stop. Disoriented, Brooke found herself face-down near his feet. Something hard and heavy — the gun — grazed her skull and disappeared under the seat as if sliding on ice.

Her head spun, but she pushed herself up and yanked the handle on the passenger door. It opened and she tumbled outward, falling into snow and weeds. She spotted Ken slumped in the driver’s seat, already groaning and recovering. With no time to waste, she opened the rear door and dragged Cat outside into the cold. The girl was bruised from the impact, but she wasn’t hurt. Brooke tore at the duct tape around the girl’s ankles and as the tape split, Cat thrust her legs apart, freeing herself. Brooke didn’t take the time to work on the girl’s hands. She helped Cat stand.

‘ Hurry ,’ she hissed.

As they began to run, Brooke saw Ken’s eyes inside the car. They were open now, and there was murder in them.

She and Cat sprinted along a snow-covered line of railroad tracks only steps from the twin overpasses of I-35. The roar of engines above their heads was a constant throb. They were no more than a hundred yards from the streets of downtown Duluth on the other side of the freeway.

People would find them there. People would rescue them.

She pulled Cat across the tracks toward the city. The crushed rock under their feet was slick. The ground sloped downhill toward the freeway foundations, and they made tiny, dancing steps on the frozen earth, skidding to a stop at the giant wall of the northbound overpass. Dead brush around them was wet with snow drifts. They hugged the wall, inching sideways on a slippery stretch of concrete no more than a foot wide. Where the wall ended, they reached a narrow creek that tunneled between the two overpasses. The water was glazed over with ice. Lights on the highway overhead cast long shadows. They could see an SOO train parked on the tracks of the Depot, and beyond it the city loomed, bright and close. Freedom was a quick skate across the water.

Brooke stepped onto the creek. So did Cat. The ice gave way with a crack; their feet landed in three inches of murky, numbing water. Before they could take another step, a loud crack boomed above the noise of the cars. The wall on the other side of the creek exploded in dust.