Bill Pronzini - Snowbound

“No one saw me either.”

Peggy kept on stroking his leg, higher now, one fingernail moving across the bulge and making him jump convulsively. The area between her own legs had begun to moisten, to pulse demandingly; damn, but she was horny! “Hurry and get to the cabin, Matt. I’m on fire for you.”

“I know,” he whispered. “I know. ”

It seemed to take a long time for them to reach Mule Deer Lake, a long time before he said, “We’re almost there. I’m going to switch off the headlights now.”

“Can you see the lake?” she asked as the dashboard went dark.

“Yes. No lights anywhere, except in the cabin where those businessmen are staying. It’s just up ahead.”

Three additional minutes crept away, and then Peggy felt the car turn and the wheels bounced jarringly; they came to a stop. Hughes said, “We’re here.”

Peggy sat up, looking through the windshield: a blank wooden wall, the inner wall of the Taggart garage. Hughes had the driver’s door open, and she followed him out on that side. They clasped hands and left the garage and went around to the front door of the cabin, on the lake side. The flat, frozen surface of Mule Deer Lake, ridged with snow, stretched out into deep black; the opposite shore was totally obscured by darkness. The only light was a distant glimmer to the north: the businessmen’s place. It was so still that Peggy could hear the beating of her heart.

Hughes keyed open the door. “You see?” he said against her ear. “Nothing to worry about, not a thing. Nobody saw us, and nobody can possibly know we’re here…”

Kubion knew somebody was there.

He saw the darkly indistinct shape of the car coming without headlights along the lake road, saw it just as he was about to get into his own car parked in front of a two-story, green-shuttered frame house some distance down the shore. Through the thin snowfall he watched it swing off the road at the Taggart cabin and then disappear. Nobody was supposed to be living in that cabin-he’d found out in the village earlier in the day which of the lake dwellings were occupied and which weren’t-and he thought: Well now, just what’ve we got here? Eskimo kids looking for a place to hump?

Smiling fixedly, he slid into the car and started the engine, also leaving his headlamps off, and drove to within fifty yards of the cabin and parked on the side of the road. The building’s windows showed no light; whoever it was was probably still in the car. Kubion thought: Fuck her, I did-an old teen-age taunt-and laughed deep in his throat. He sat there for a time: still no lights. Finally he reached for the ignition key, started to turn it; hesitated and released it again. Oh hell, he thought, the more the merrier.

He opened the glove compartment and removed a flashlight and got out of the car. His eyes, wide and unblinking, shone like a cat’s in the darkness.

The interior of the cabin was winter-chilled and subterranean black. Hughes closed the door and said softly, “We’ll stay here for a minute, until we can see well enough to walk without banging into things.”

They stood pressed together, waiting, and eventually Peggy could make out the distorted shapes of furniture, the doors in two walls which would lead to other rooms. Watchfully, they crossed to one of the doors, and Matt widened it and said, “Kitchen,” and led her to another. Beyond this one was a short hallway, with a door in each wall; the one on the left opened on the larger of the cabin’s two bedrooms.

The bed was queen-sized and unmade, but folded across the foot of the mattress was a thin patchwork quilt; they would need that because of the cold, Peggy thought-later, afterward. They stood by the bed and kissed hungrily, undressing each other in the darkness with fumbling urgency, and then they fell onto the bed, kicking the last of their clothing free, their mouths still melded together. Peggy took hold of his erection in both her hands and heard him moan, and he broke the kiss to whisper feverishly, “Put it in, put it in, I can’t wait!” clutching at her breasts as if bracing himself, and she guided him over her and into the waiting wetness of her and he made a jerking, heaving motion as she drew her legs back and said, “Peggy, ah ah ah Peggy!” and came shudderingly.

The rigidity left all his body at once, and he was dead weight on top of her, his face pressed to her neck. Peggy’s lips pursed in mild annoyance, but when he raised his head finally to tell her he was sorry, he just couldn’t hold himself back, she said, “It’s all right, we have plenty of time, baby, we have plenty of time.” She held him flaccid inside her, moving her hips, seeking to make him hard again, and when she began to succeed she said smilingly, “That’s it, that’s my Matt,” and he commenced rocking over her and into her, expertly now, and it was the way it had been in Whitewater, it was perfectly synchronized and wildly good, and she could feel the beginnings of orgasm fluttering and building in her and flung herself upward at him, reaching for it, reaching for it — and then a bright white beam sliced away the blackness like a sudden spotlight and pinned their glistening bodies on the bed.

For a single instant they were blindly motionless, still locked together, still one instead of two. Then Hughes made a startled, whimpering sound and rolled away from her, twisting, sitting up. Peggy threw an arm reflexively across her eyes; fright and confusion replaced the passion inside her, dulling her mind, stepping up the staccato pounding of her heart.

A voice-harsh, amused, unfamiliar-said from behind the light, “Well, I’ll be damned. It’s the banker himself, by Christ, tearing off a nice little piece on the side.”

Hughes said in a stark, trapped tone, “Who are you, how did you get in here?”

“You left the front door unlocked. You must have been in some hurry, Banker, some big hurry.”

“You have no right to be here, you have no right! What do you want, why did you come in here, put out that light!”

“Hang loose, just keep your head together.”

At the periphery of her shielding arm, Peggy numbly saw Matt Hughes swing off the bed, shambling almost drunkenly, ludicrous in his nakedness. His face a matrix of fear, he started toward the white hole in the darkness.

“Stay where you are,” Kubion said sharply, “stand right there.”

“Put that light out, put it out I tell you!” And Hughes took another step toward the beam.

“Okay, you stupid hick bastard shit.”

There was a brief flame, like the flare of a match, to one side of the beam; there was a sudden roaring sound, localized thunder echoing in the confines of the room, and Peggy jerked on the bed as if she had been struck. Then she saw Matt stop moving, and saw part of his face disappear, and saw something red spurting, and saw his hands flick upward, and saw him begin to sag before the hands reached the level of his chest, and saw him fall into a loose wet naked pile on the floor.

“How about you, sweetheart?” Kubion’s voice said softly behind the light. “How about you?”

Peggy started to scream.

Loxner said, “It’s after seven, Vic, he’s been gone more than five hours now. Where the hell could he be for five hours? He don’t drink, and we got plenty of food right here, and there ain’t nothing in the village for him to do and noplace for him to be riding around.”

“I know,” Brodie said. “I know it.”

“Man I just don’t like the way he’s acting. Not a word to either of us since all that crap about ripping off the valley yesterday morning, gone most of yesterday afternoon, sitting up in his bedroom all of today until he finally went out. I seen him when he come downstairs, and his eyes were still funny; he was smiling funny, too, showing his teeth. I tell you I don’t like it, it’s got me all uptight.”