Cold Fire, page 11
‘Those two strangers being at the cemetery makes sense now,’ Siobhan admitted.
His thick lips turned down at the corners, conversely a show of happiness that she’d gotten his point. ‘Better get us back there quick then, huh?’
She took care turning around. Joanne’s car had reversed off the narrow track into a drift; from the way its trunk nosed down the snow covered a drainage channel or other form of ditch. Back on the straight again, she picked up speed.
‘Take it easy, we don’t want to take a spill,’ Harper cautioned.
‘I’ve got this,’ she said.
Within a minute they approached the cemetery. Snow billowed and danced on the wind, but it wasn’t falling as thick as before. ‘They’ve left already.’ Siobhan stated the obvious.
‘Yeah. Keep going, they can’t be too far ahead.’
Harper smacked his lips and then smiled, almost as if the taste of victory was already in his mouth. Siobhan on the other hand couldn’t help thinking that his pleasure was premature. If the strangers had picked up Joanne, then where might they have gone? Possibly their sole purpose was to help smuggle her across the border into Canada. If that were the case, then the hunt would continue, but for how long? Sooner rather than later she hoped to return home; damn it if she didn’t have a potted plant that required watering!
Her concern about a prolonged search withered and disappeared as a car loomed out of the blizzard. The closer she got, the more details she could make out. It was the Kia Telluride belonging to the strangers. It was parked at roadside, at the foot of a deforested hillside. There was snow on the roof and hood, but that gave no indication of how long the car had been there; however, fresh snow adhering to the windshield and side windows showed an accumulation of inches in places. It was likely that they were only minutes behind their prey.
She stopped behind the Telluride and Harper again reached out. She passed him her pistol.
‘Wait here,’ he instructed.
‘They aren’t in the car,’ she said.
‘You’re probably right, but I’ll check anyhow.’
‘Suit yourself,’ she said, then before he could respond to her sarcasm, she added, ‘you’re the boss, Harp.’
She could tell from the footprints in the snow that the couple had gotten out and not yet returned. It was dark, but the snow added a weird nimbus to everything, making the scenery glow. Their tracks went uphill to where they joined another trail. From her position, she thought it could be a snowmobile track.
Harper walked around the Telluride, poised to shoot. Siobhan was confident she was correct, that the car was empty, but had to admit that Harper had learned a lot from his cursory check of Joanne’s car. He might learn something important about their prey by a similar investigation of theirs.
He shook his huge head, dislodging snowflakes that had piled up on his hair. The move had nothing to do with shedding the load, but at having found nobody in the car. He checked the doors, but they were locked. He spied uphill; Siobhan wondered if he was contemplating smashing inside, but it could set off an alarm and alert the couple. With no idea where they were it was probably best not to alert them to their presence. Harper made a second pass of the vehicle, this time gently touching the back hatch door, but it was locked too. He scowled at her through the windshield as if he’d just twigged on to her sarcastic comment of a minute ago. He pointed at the couple’s tracks and how they led up the slope, meeting and then blending with the skids and caterpillar track of the snowmobile. There was one logical reason why they might have followed the snowmobile upwards, to reach shelter over the crest of the slope.
Harper returned to the SUV. He stood by her driver’s window until she powered it down. They were in the full blast of the storm, Siobhan’s hair whipping around her ears. He by comparison was unmoved by its force.
‘Their car has all-wheel drive, and a three-point five-liter V6 engine. It could have easily managed that slope, even in this much snow. They chose to climb the hill on foot. Tells me they spotted something worth closer investigation.’
‘I doubt it was Joanne on that Ski-Doo,’ Siobhan said.
‘It wasn’t, but maybe somebody gave her a ride. We have to check it out, Siobhan, see where those tracks lead.’
‘You’re going to make me climb up there in this storm?’
‘Can’t take the Chevy and alert them we’re coming,’ he said. ‘If you brought extra clothing now’s the time to put it on.’
Siobhan had a coat and hat and, thankfully, gloves. Harper took his own advice and pulled into his gloves again. He turned up his jacket collar: he had no hat, but already his bristly grey hair was dotted with flakes and he seemed untroubled by the idea of gathering more.
He passed her the pistol. ‘I don’t need that,’ he said, more as a personal reminder than for her.
Siobhan buried the gun in her pocket and kept her hand on its butt. She almost crabbed uphill, with her left shoulder braced into the wind, her face averted. Harper went ahead, shambling upward like some big old grizzly bear, his shoulders swaying from one side to the other with each step. Siobhan tried getting directly behind him, so that his larger form might block the worst of the blizzard, but he snapped instructions to fan out and make a second approach to the crest of the hill. Admittedly, he made sense. Without discussing a plan, it had been assumed by her that their only reason for scaling the hill was to ambush the couple and to take away Joanne if she was in their presence. Harper, again without having said so, wouldn’t wish to leave behind any live witnesses. She was expected to flank and then shoot them given the order.
Earlier Siobhan had moved the pistol out of Harper’s reach when realizing that the woman was pregnant; knowing his disregard for life, she didn’t put it past him to shoot her in the belly because of, rather than despite, the baby she carried. Siobhan had killed before and was not in a business where apathy could exist, but in her opinion murdering an unborn child overstepped a mark she’d prefer not to cross. That was not to say she wouldn’t kill the pregnant woman, just that she wouldn’t take any satisfaction from it the way Harper would. She’d do things clean, though, and spare her from Harper doing a dance number on her like he did to that cripple at the gas station.
NINETEEN
Joanne Mason woke up clutching a bloody claw hammer. She had no idea it was in her hand until she attempted to stand and found she only had the use of a single hand. She dropped the hammer, pushed up to her knees and peered down at it, as if the tool was an ancient relic left over from time immemorial; although if that were the case it would not be tacky with fresh, vibrant, red blood. A swollen lump behind her left ear indicated how close her skull had come to being shattered, but not, with the offending weapon before her, how she’d been spared.
She looked around, her throat constricting as memories flooded in. The sharp recollections were a kaleidoscopic assault on her senses and she cried out as if witnessing each again in real time. Without conscious thought, she lurched up and stumbled away from the murder weapon, reaching for and smearing a door handle with her bloody fingerprints. She staggered out into the second-floor hallway. Her skull was ringing from the blow she’d taken and pain shot daggers to the backs of her eyes and down her neck. Her right hand, the same one that had been clutching the hammer, felt numb, while her arm stung as if with nettle rash. Her discomfort was nothing compared to the dread clutching her heart.
Behind her were the open doors to Lacey Blackhorse’s bedroom and those of her children. Joanne didn’t look back: there was nothing she could do for any of them now and nothing she wanted to see a second time. It was bad enough finding her employer with her head beaten to mush, but incomparable to the horror of seeing those smaller blond heads broken like egg shells on their pillows. She thought whenever she closed her eyes in the future, nightmarish images would assail her. She was supposed to care for those children, to nurture and protect them, and yet she had failed. What future could she expect? A future for her wouldn’t exist unless she got the hell away as quickly as possible. She could still hear the murderer inside the house and once he learned that the blow he’d struck her had failed to kill her, he’d surely return to finish the job.
Below her a door slammed as loud as a gunshot, and voices babbled, one of them high-pitched with fright, the other guttural. A scuffle and a door slammed again, was yanked open, and the voices diminished as the killer pursued his next victim. Her first thought was that while he was chasing another then the murderer couldn’t trouble her. She must find a phone and call the police.
Her cell phone was in her purse in her bedroom, on the next floor up. She mustn’t climb the stairs and trap herself up there. Lacey Blackhorse owned a cell phone, but where it was, Joanne had no idea. It could have been on her person, or deposited anywhere in the large house. Lacey was hair-brained forgetful and regularly lost things. When she wasn’t caring for the children, Joanne’s tasks included searching for Lacey’s misplaced belongings. There was a landline in the kitchen, but that was too near to where the murderer had chased his latest intended victim. Carl Blackhorse, Lacey’s husband and stepfather to the children, had an office in an annex to the main house, and she was pretty certain he’d had a landline installed to necessitate his work. He’d made his first millions through asset management via pooled investment funds, but he’d added to them through less conventional practices – criminal practices, she’d concluded – so required privacy from possible eavesdroppers. One time she’d been chased away by an angry Carl Blackhorse when she’d mistakenly pursued one of the kids into his office; afterwards she received no apology, only a warning from Lacey that he wasn’t the type of man to say sorry. Ordinarily she’d avoid his office as instructed, but not under these circumstances – and besides, Carl wasn’t home, he was on a business trip to Atlantic City, or more likely with an escort on his arm in one of the casinos.
She went along the hall on shaky legs, holding her breath. Her head felt twice its normal size. Her arm still stung like crazy. A sharp memory of taking a horrendous slap from an unseen assailant came back, explaining the numbness and tingling of returning circulation. She wondered now if the murderer should be thought of in the plural because that slap had come from someone other than who’d struck her with the hammer. If that were the case then the second attacker could be anywhere. She came to a halt, emptying her lungs in a protracted cry. She could be heading directly into the path of the second killer. She must forget trying to reach Carl’s office, escape the house instead and run to a neighboring property, seek help there.
It was odd. She’d lived and worked at the Blackhorse house for months, and knew it intimately. Fleeing under duress, the house was an unfamiliar maze. She got turned around more times than there were directions to go, and she finally ended up catching her breath while leaning against a wall on the ground floor. A view through an open door and large window showed gently falling snow shrouding the garden. The snow was virginal, white and pure. It didn’t last. A figure hurtled past, arms windmilling as it tried to ward off another figure following in determined pursuit. Joanne only saw them for a second or two, but her confused mind couldn’t define sharp enough detail to tell who was chasing whom. Kicked-up tracks now destroyed the pristine snowfall.
Joanne pushed off the wall and staggered the length of the front vestibule. In her role of nanny to the Blackhorse children she was still nevertheless an employee, so didn’t use the front door during her usual comings and goings. Even then, as she sought safety it felt alien and not a little forbidden to leave the house via the front door and she stuttered to a halt. At least now she had gotten back her bearings and knew it was a simple matter of cutting across the large kitchen and into the adjoining utility room to reach a second exit door. It allowed direct access to an adjoining parking garage where the Blackhorses stabled their mechanical steeds.
There was no possible way that she could use one of the Blackhorse cars to escape in. Their luxury vehicles weren’t the type to be left with the ignition keys behind their sun visors. Besides, she didn’t trust herself to safely drive just then, not with her brain in turmoil; she’d probably crash within seconds of setting off. Her idea was to gain the access door on the far side of the garage and flee across the grounds in the opposite direction from where she’d just watched the murderer chase his latest victim.
A figure blocked her escape. She cried out into the palm of her hand and backpedaled away. It was seconds before she understood the hands grasping for her were not to snare her. The owner of the hands was in equal need of support as she. She recognized Toby Hillman. He was little more than a youth, but was a talented cook and was employed by Carl Blackhorse to serve up more appetizing dinners than Lacey could dream of making. Toby was stricken with terror, eyes wide and mouth drooping as he reached for her. She understood his mind was in as much turmoil as hers and he grasped at her for direction. She shooed him back the way he’d come, gesturing at him to stay silent. From somewhere behind them came the crash of breaking glass.
She squeezed past Toby, urging him to follow and they sprinted through the garage, dismissing Lacey’s Lexus as a getaway car, and she lunged for the exit door. Unlike from outside, it had no need of a key, and it opened to her by the briefest twist of the handle. The air was frigid, but Joanne was overheated by then and was unaware of the chill. She ducked out briefly, checking both ways, then turned to Toby. He was directly behind her, almost looming over her shoulder. His hot exhalations buffeted her hair. Each rasp of breath was enough to lead the killers to them.
‘You must be quiet,’ she whispered urgently.
‘Wh-what are we going to do? Who are those people? Why—’
‘Shush, Toby, be quiet or they’re going to hear you.’
Tears rolled down his acne-dotted cheeks. He squirmed, ready to bolt away screaming.
‘This way,’ she instructed and grabbed his elbow. She tugged him outside and with a shove propelled him into the garden. There was enough snow on the lawn that the killers would spot where they’d ran, but if they could keep ahead of them, make it to the perimeter wall and escape into the neighboring property …
Joanne was running. She was unaware that somebody pursued, until she was barged aside and a burly form grabbed Toby and lifted him bodily in some kind of bear hug. Toby was swung around and then in the air, his legs forming a pendulum, and then he was savagely tossed to the ground. Joanne found herself on the ground too. Rolling, then scrambling for her life on her hands and knees. She made it partly to her feet as the killer stomped Toby’s head into the earth; the soft cushion of snow wouldn’t save him. Then Joanne was up and she lurched to get past, still intent on making it to the joining property. The killer swung for her and his huge hand grazed her shoulder. The force was enough to knock her off her stride and she staggered a few steps before catching her balance. She hurdled the wall into a graceless dive. Her fall ended in a spongy pile of fallen leaves and a thin crust of rime. For a second she lay there, gasping, and her gaze was drawn to the top of the wall. A huge head, as big as a propane gas bottle, leaned towards her. Huge, blunt fingers gripped the top of the wall.
Joanne croaked and rolled away. She bounded up, watching, fearful that the giant would step over the wall and pursue. He did not, only his mocking words chased her.
‘That’s right, Joanne, you can keep on running, girl, but you’d better believe I’ll find you and when I do …’
He has found me!
He had his horrible hands on her, shaking her. He shook her firmly; perhaps intent on fooling her a moment before grinning his weird fixed grin, as she came to understand that her promised doom could not be avoided. She should open her eyes and face her death with courage. She kept them squeezed tight.
‘Can you hear me?’ asked a voice.
Joanne turned her head aside, mewling in anticipation of a crushing stomp to her head, the way in which she’d watched the killer murder Toby.
Craning away from him, her face should have pressed into the icy snow she’d collapsed into. Her cheek pressed something soft, but it was warm. The voice was exhorting her to wake, and she thought it odd that the killer’s gruff tones were now more melodic, belonging to a girl and not a brutish Neanderthal. She cried out softly again, knowing deep down that there was no hope of mercy, but reaching out to this more gentle side of his psyche.
‘Can you hear me? Are you awake?’
Joanne’s gummy eyelids unzipped open. A figure loomed in her peripheral vision, amorphous and shadowy, backlit by a dim yellowish glow. It had several heads and more than the expected pair of arms. She cried out, horrified that her notion that a giant had chased her was only a partial truth of his horrifying monstrous form. She tried squirming away, but there’d be no escaping his multi-limbed reach. He’d warned her, said he would find her, and she’d believed that his words were prophetic …
She sat up abruptly and stared aghast at the figure crowding her … correction, at the figures. It was not some kind of nightmare creature looming over her, but a pair of women. They stood so close together they appeared almost intertwined, but it was only because both wished to help wake her.
