Tess Gerritsen - Ice Cold

They both looked down as Arlo sucked in a ragged breath and moaned.

Please don’t wake up, she thought. Don’t make us cut you while you’re screaming.

But Arlo’s eyes slowly opened, and although his gaze was cloudy with confusion, he was clearly conscious and trying to focus on her face. “Rather… rather be dead,” he whispered. “Oh God, I can’t stand it.”

“Arlo,” said Doug. “Hey, buddy, we’re going to get you something for the pain, okay? We’ll see what we can find.”

“Please,” Arlo whispered. “Please kill me.” He was blubbering now, tears leaking from his eyes, his whole body quaking so hard that Maura thought he was convulsing. But his gaze remained fixed on them, pleading.

She draped a blanket over his exposed body. The fire in the hearth was burning brightly now, revived by a fresh load of wood, and with the rising warmth the smell of urine grew stronger.

“There’s Advil in my purse,” she said to Doug. “I left it back in the Jeep.”

“Advil? That’s not going to touch this.”

“I have Valium,” groaned Arlo. “In my backpack…”

“That’s up in the Jeep, too.” Doug stood. “I’ll go get our stuff and bring it all back.”

“And I’ll search the houses,” said Maura. “There’s got to be something in this valley we can use.”

“I’ll go with you, Doug,” said Elaine.

“No. You need to stay here with him,” Doug said.

Reluctantly Elaine’s gaze dropped to Arlo. Clearly this was the last place she wanted to be, trapped with a sobbing man.

“And boil some water,” Doug said as he crossed the door. “We’re going to need it.”

Outside, the wind lashed Maura’s face with stinging clouds of snow, but she was glad to be out of the house and breathing fresh air that did not stink of blood and urine. As she headed toward the next house, she heard footsteps crunching behind her, and she turned to see that Grace had followed her.

“I can help you look,” said Grace.

Maura eyed her for a moment, thinking that Grace would probably be more of a hindrance. But at that moment, the girl looked lost, just a frightened kid whom they had ignored for far too long.

Maura nodded. “You could be a big help, Grace. Come with me.”

They climbed the porch steps and pushed into the house.

“What kind of medicines are we looking for?” asked Grace as they headed up the stairs to the second floor.

“Anything. Don’t waste any time reading the labels. Just take it all.” Maura went into a bedroom and stripped off two pillowcases. She tossed one to Grace. “You search the dresser and nightstands. Look anyplace they might keep their pills.”

In the bathroom, Maura scanned the contents of the medicine cabinet, tossing items into her pillowcase. She left behind the vitamins but took everything else. Laxatives. Aspirin. Hydrogen peroxide. Any one of those might be useful. She could hear Grace in the room next door, opening and slamming shut drawers.

They moved on to the next house, their pillowcases rattling with bottles. Maura was first through the front door, stepping into a home where silence hung as heavy as gloom. She had not set foot in this house before and she paused, glancing around the living room. At yet another copy of the now familiar portrait hanging on the wall.

“It’s that man again,” said Grace.

“Yeah. We can’t seem to get away from him.” Maura took a few steps across the room and suddenly halted. “Grace,” she said quietly.

“What?”

“Take the pills back to Elaine. Arlo needs them.”

“We haven’t looked in this house yet.”

“I’ll do it. You just go back, okay?” She handed the girl her pillowcase of pill bottles and gave her a nudge toward the door. “Please, go now.”

“But-”

“Go.”

Only after the girl had left the house did Maura cross the room. She stared at what Grace had not seen. The first thing she’d spotted was a birdcage, the dead canary lying on the bottom, just a tiny mound of yellow on the newsprint cage liner.

She turned and focused on the floor, on what had stopped her in her tracks: A smear of brown tracked across the pine planks. Following the drag mark, she moved into the hallway and came at last to the staircase.

There she halted, staring at a frozen puddle of blood at the bottom of the steps.

As her gaze lifted toward the second floor, she imagined a body tumbling down those steep stairs, could almost hear the crack of a skull as it bounced down the steps and smashed onto the floor near her feet. Someone fell here, she thought.

Or was pushed.

BY THE TIME she walked back into their house, Doug had already returned with their belongings from the Jeep. He unzipped Arlo’s backpack and dumped the contents onto the coffee table. She saw sinus tablets and nose spray, sunscreen and ChapStick, plus a whole drugstore’s supply of toiletries. Everything a man needed to stay well groomed, but nothing to help him stay alive. Only when Doug unzipped one of the side pockets did he find the pill bottle.

“Valium, five milligrams. As needed for back spasms,” he read. “It’ll help him get through this.”

“Doug,” Maura said softly. “In one of the houses, I found-” She stopped as Grace and Elaine walked in the room.

“You found what?” Doug asked.

“I’ll tell you later.”

Doug spread out all the medications that they’d scavenged. “Tetracycline. Amoxicillin.” He shook his head. “If his leg gets infected, he’s going to need better antibiotics than these.”

“At least we found some Percocet,” said Maura, uncapping the bottle. “But there’s only a dozen pills left. Do we have anything else?”

Elaine said, “I always have some codeine in my…” She stopped, frowning at what Doug had brought back from the Jeep. “Where’s my purse?”

“I only found one purse.” Doug pointed to it.

“That’s Maura’s. Where’s mine?”

“Elaine, that’s all I saw in the Jeep.”

“Then you missed it. There’s codeine in it.”

“I’ll go back for it later, okay?” He knelt down beside Arlo. “I’m going to give you some pills, buddy.”

“Knock me out,” whimpered Arlo. “Can’t stand this pain.”

“This should help.” Doug gently lifted Arlo’s head, slipped two Valiums and two Percocets into his mouth, and gave him a swallow of whiskey. “There you go. We’ll give that medicine some time to work first.”

“First?” Arlo coughed on the whiskey, and fresh tears leaked from his eyes. “What do you mean?”

“We need to work on your leg.”

“No. No, don’t touch it.”

“Your circulation’s been cut off by the tourniquet. If we don’t loosen it, your leg’s going to die.”

“What are you going to do?”

“We’re going to tie off the ruptured artery and control the bleeding that way. I think you’ve damaged either the posterior or anterior tibial artery. If one of them is still intact, it might be enough circulation to supply your leg with blood. And keep it alive.”

“That means you’re going to have to dig around in there.”

“We need to isolate which artery is bleeding.”

Arlo shook his head. “No way.”

“If it’s the anterior tibial, we only have to slide between a few muscles, just below the knee.”

“Forget it. Don’t touch me.”

“I’m thinking of what’s best for you. There’ll be a little pain, but in the end you’ll be glad I-”

“A little? A little?” Arlo croaked out a desperate laugh. “Stay the fuck away from me!”

“Listen, I know it hurts, but-”

“You don’t know shit, Doug.”

“Arlo.”

“Stay away! Elaine, for God’s sake, make him stay away!”