Tess Gerritsen - Ice Cold

“Got the address!” a deputy called out. “The phone’s listed to a Norma Jacqueline Brindell, up on Doyle Mountain.”

“Where’s that?” said Jane.

Fahey said, “That’s a good five miles west of the accident scene. How the hell’d she end up out there?”

“Show me on the map.”

They crossed to the county map displayed on the wall, and he tapped a finger on a remote corner. “There’s nothing but a few seasonal cabins. I doubt anyone’s living there this time of year.”

She looked at the deputy who’d given them the address. “Are you sure about that location?”

“That’s where the call came from, ma’am.”

“Keep calling it. See if anyone answers,” said Fahey. He looked at the dispatcher. “Check and see who we’ve got in that area right now.”

Jane looked at the map again and saw wide expanses with few roads and rugged elevations. How had Maura ended up there, so far from the wrecked Suburban? She scanned the map, her gaze moving back and forth between the accident site and Doyle Mountain. Five miles due west. She pictured snowbound valleys and towering crags. Scenic country, to be sure, but no villages, no restaurants, nothing to attract an East Coast tourist.

The dispatcher called out: “Deputy Martineau just radioed in. Says he’ll handle the call. He’s heading to Doyle Mountain now.”

THE PHONE in the kitchen would not stop ringing.

“Let me answer it,” said Maura.

“We have to leave.” The boy was emptying out pantry cabinets and throwing food into his backpack. “I saw a shovel on the back porch. Get it.”

“That’s my friend trying to reach me.”

“The police will be coming.”

“It’s okay, Rat. You can trust her.”

“But you can’t trust them.”

The phone was ringing again. She turned to answer it, but the boy snatched the cord and wrenched it from the wall. “Do you want to die?” he yelled.

Maura dropped the dead receiver and backed away. In his panic, the boy looked frightening, even dangerous. She glanced at the cord dangling from his fist, a fist that was powerful enough to batter a face, to crush a trachea.

He threw down the cord and took a breath. “If you want to come with me, we need to leave now.”

“I’m sorry, Rat,” she said quietly. “But I’m not going with you. I’m going to wait here for my friend.”

What she saw in his eyes wasn’t anger, but sorrow. In silence he strapped on his backpack and took her snowshoes, which she would no longer need. Without a backward look, without even a goodbye, he turned to the door. “Let’s go, Bear,” he said.

The dog hesitated, glancing back and forth between them, as though trying to understand these crazy humans.

“Bear.”

“Wait,” said Maura. “Stay with me. We’ll go back to town together.”

“I don’t belong in town, ma’am. I never did.”

“You can’t wander alone out there.”

“I’m not wandering. I know where I’m going.” Again, he looked at his dog, and this time Bear followed him.

Maura watched the boy walk out the back door, the dog at his heels. Through the broken kitchen window, she saw them trudge across the snow toward the woods. The wild child and his companion, returning to the mountains. A moment later they vanished among the trees, and she wondered if they had existed at all. If, in her fear and isolation, she had conjured up imaginary saviors. But no, she could see their prints tracking through the snow. The boy was real.

Just as real as Jane’s voice had been on the phone. The outside world had not vanished after all. Beyond those mountains, there were still cities, still people going about their normal business. People who did not skulk in the woods like hunted animals. For too long, she’d been trapped in the boy’s company, had almost started to believe, as he did, that the wilderness was the only safe place.

It was time to go back to that real world. Her world.

She examined the telephone and saw that the cord was too badly damaged to reconnect, but she had no doubt that Jane would nevertheless be able to track her location. Now all I have to do is wait, she thought. Jane knows I’m alive. Someone will come for me.

She went into the living room and sat down on the sofa. The cabin was unheated, and wind blew in through the broken kitchen window, so she kept her jacket zipped. She felt guilty about that window, which Rat had smashed so they could get into the house. Then there was the ruined phone cord and the ransacked pantry, all damage that she would pay for, of course. She’d mail a check with a sincere apology. Sitting in this stranger’s house, a house in which she was trespassing, she stared at the photos on the bookshelves. She saw pictures of three young children in various settings, and a gray-haired woman, proudly holding up an impressive trout. The books in the library were summer entertainment fare. Mary Higgins Clark and Danielle Steel, the collection of a woman with traditional tastes, who liked romance novels and ceramic kittens. A woman she would probably never meet face-to-face, but to whom she’d always be grateful. Your telephone saved my life.

Someone pounded on the front door.

She jolted to her feet. She had not heard the vehicle pull up to the house, but through the living room window, she saw a Sublette County Sheriff’s Department SUV. At last my nightmare is over, she thought as she opened the front door. I’m going home.

A young deputy with the name tag MARTINEAU stood on the porch. He had close-cropped hair and the stern bearing of a man who took his job seriously. “Ma’am?” he said. “Are you the one who made the phone call?”

“Yes! Yes, yes, yes.” Maura wanted to throw her arms around him, but he did not look like a cop who welcomed hugs. “You have no idea how glad I am to see you!”

“Can I have your name, please?”

“I’m Dr. Maura Isles. I believe there’ve been premature rumors of my death.” Her laugh sounded wild, almost unhinged. “Obviously, it’s not true!”

He peered past her, into the house. “How did you get into this residence? Did someone let you in?”

She felt her face flush with guilt. “I’m afraid we had to break a window to get in. And there’s some other damage. But I promise, I’ll pay for it.”

“We?”

She paused, suddenly afraid that she’d get the boy into trouble. “I didn’t have a choice,” she said. “I needed to get to a telephone. So I broke into the house. I hope that’s not a hanging offense around here.”

At last he smiled, but something was wrong about that smile. It didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Let’s get you back to town,” he said. “You can tell us all about it.”

Even as she climbed into his backseat, even as he swung the door shut, she was trying to understand what bothered her about this young deputy. The SUV was a sheriff’s department vehicle, and a metal grate isolated her in the backseat, trapping her in a cage meant to hold prisoners.

As the deputy slid in behind the steering wheel, his radio crackled to life. “Bobby, this is Dispatch,” a woman’s voice said. “You make it up to Doyle Mountain yet?”

“Ten four, Jan. Just checked out the whole house,” Deputy Martineau answered.

“You find her there? ’Cause this Boston cop’s on our backs.”

“Sorry, I didn’t.”

“Anyone there at all?”

“Must’ve been a hoax, ’cause no one’s here. Leaving the scene now, ten seventeen.”

Maura stared through the grate and suddenly met the deputy’s gaze in the rearview mirror. The look he gave her froze her blood. I saw it in his smile. I knew there was something wrong.

“I’m here!” Maura screamed. “Help me! I’m here!”