Chill Factor

by Sandra Brown

  His bedroom window opened soundlessly because he kept all the sliding parts oiled. In a flash, he was outside, closing the window again. He didn’t want his mom to feel a cold draft and come to investigate its source.

  The frigid air stung his eyes and made his nose drip. He hunched his shoulders against the blowing precipitation and dug his gloved hands into his coat pockets. Keeping to the unlighted areas of the yard, he set off on foot.

  Sometimes, particularly following one of his old man’s lectures on how he was goofing off, when in fact he’d busted his balls to do everything he’d been told, he simply had to escape his house.

  Of course nothing he did was ever enough to suit his dad. No blue ribbon was blue enough, no silver trophy shiny enough for Wes Hamer’s kid. If he won an Olympic gold medal, his dad would want to know why he hadn’t won two.

  Seeing a pair of headlights approaching and fearing it might be Dutch Burton’s Bronco, he dodged behind a hedge and waited for the vehicle to pass. Going no more than ten miles an hour, it seemed to take forever to reach Scott, whose legs were growing stiff with cold.

  But his caution was unnecessary. It wasn’t the Bronco that crept past. He began walking again, the collar of his coat flipped up against his cheeks, his cap pulled down low so he wouldn’t be recognized by anyone who happened to be watching the storm from his front window.

  People in this town loved to talk. If someone spotted him out tonight and later mentioned it to his dad, he would be in a world of hurt. What if he slipped on the ice and damaged something? His old man would stroke out. But only after killing him first.

  Lost in that thought—or perhaps fearing it so badly he made it happen—he slipped on the icy sidewalk. His feet went airborne and he came down hard, landing flat on his butt. His tailbone felt like it had been jammed up against the ceiling of his skull. The fall jarred his teeth, causing him to bite his tongue.

  He gave himself several moments to recover from the impact before he even tried to stand. After a few somewhat comical attempts to regain his footing on the slippery surface, he succeeded. He hobbled over to a picket fence and leaned against it.

  “Jesus,” he whispered shakily as he imagined what his dad would have done if he’d limped home dragging a shattered ankle or broken tibia.

  See, Dad, it was like this. I sneaked out of the house. While walking the streets of town, I fell down on the ice. You should have heard the sound that bone made when it snapped. Like a couple of two-by-fours being clapped together. Sigh. Guess I won’t be going out for the Crimson Tide of Alabama after all. They’ll have to win the NCAA football championship without me.

  As he moved along the sidewalk, staying close to the fence, he shuddered to think of the H-bomb effect a mistake like that would have on his life. He would be paying for it until the day they buried him, when his dad would be leaning over his open casket saying, What the fuck were you thinking, Scott? There would be no end to Wes’s ranting and raving. Only an end to his grand ambitions for Scott.

  He glanced back at the icy patch that had caused him to fall. He’d come within a hairsbreadth of disaster. It was damn lucky that he hadn’t broken his neck.

  Or was it unlucky?

  Without any forewarning, the thought popped out of Scott’s subconscious and stopped him dead in his tracks. Where had such a mutinous thought come from? he wondered.

  It was the kind of thought that, just for thinking it, you got struck down by lightning. He’d done some things lately that would be considered worthy of damnation by any moral code or religion on the planet. But he hadn’t really feared a fiery eternity until now, and all because he had entertained, if only for a millisecond, that traitorous thought. But who can be condemned for what he’s thinking? And who’s to know?

  It was several moments before Scott continued on his way.

  With extreme caution.

  CHAPTER

  9

  HAVING JUST BEEN REMINDED BY TIERNEY that she was no longer married, Lilly tossed aside the afghan and scrambled off the sofa. She expected him to try to keep her beside him, but his injuries prevented him from moving that quickly. He managed only to stand up unsteadily. “Lilly—”

  “No, listen, Tierney.” Although he hadn’t touched her, she put out her hand to stop him from trying. “Our present circumstances are unnerving enough without—”

  “Unnerving? You’re unnerved? Don’t you feel safe with me?”

  “Safe? Yes, of course. Who said anything about safe? It’s just . . .”

  “What?” Eyebrows arched in silent inquiry, he let the question hang there.

  “We were getting personal. For the time we’re here, we should avoid that. Let’s leave everything personal alone and concentrate on practical matters.” He seemed on the verge of arguing, but she added a please that softened her tone of voice.

  He agreed, reluctantly. “All right, let’s be practical. Are you up for a project?”

  “Like what?”

  “Scavenger hunt.”

  He suggested they search the rooms to see if she had overlooked anything when she had cleared out the cabin earlier. He said he would start in the kitchen. Turning away from her, he hobbled off in that direction.

  “Tierney?”

  He came back around. Before she lost her nerve or talked herself out of it, she asked, “Did you meet up with them later?”

  He frowned quizzically. “Who?”

  “The two college girls. The ones in the Jeep, begging for trouble. After I turned down your invitation to meet for a drink, did you hook up with them?”

  He gave her a long, measured look, then turned and continued toward the kitchen. “See what you can find in the bedroom and bath.”

  • • •

  The bedroom yielded only three straight pins she found stuck in a crack in a bureau drawer. She presented them to Tierney. “That’s it, other than two dead cockroaches under the bed. I left them there.”

  “We may need them for protein,” he said, only half in jest. He produced two candles that were faded and warped but would come in handy if the electricity went out. “They were way in the back of the drawer of the end table.”

  He was leaning heavily against the kitchen bar, his hand planted firmly on the granite surface. His eyes were closed. “You should lie down,” she said.

  “No, I’m fine,” he mumbled absently as he opened his eyes.

  “You’re about to keel over.”

  “Just another wave of dizziness.” Leaving the bar, he walked over to one of the windows flanking the front door and pushed aside the drape. “I’ve been thinking.”

  Lilly waited to hear his thought, but already she had a bad feeling about it.

  “If snow comes behind this sleet and freezing rain, which is likely at this altitude, our situation is going to become more dangerous. I’m worried that the propane tank will empty, which means we’ll need fuel.” He turned back into the room. “While it’s fractionally safer than it will be later, I should go to the shed and bring back what firewood I can.”

  She looked beyond his shoulder toward the window, then back at him. “You can’t go out there! You can barely stand up without losing your balance. You have a brain concussion.”

  “Which won’t matter much if we freeze to death.”

  “Well forget about it. You can’t go. I won’t let you.”

  Her vehemence made him smile. “I’m not asking permission, Lilly.”

  “I’ll go.” Yet even as she heard herself volunteering, she quailed at the thought of setting foot outside the security and relative warmth of the cabin.

  He looked her up and down. “You couldn’t carry enough to make any difference. I may not be able to bring back much, but it would be more than you could handle. Besides, your boots are wet. You could get frostbite. I’m the one who has to go.”

  They argued about it for another five minutes, but all the while, regardless of her arguments against the idea, he was preparing to do it. “Is there anything i
n the shed I could use, like a sled? Something to stack the wood on and drag along?”

  She ran a quick mental inventory, then shook her head. “Unfortunately Dutch and I removed everything except some basic tools. As you go in, on your right, there’s a large wooden chest we used as a toolbox. You may find something useful in it. There’s an ax, I know. Larger than the hatchet on the porch. You said the logs needed to be split, so if you can carry the ax, too, you should bring it back.”

  “Once I get past the porch steps, I angle off that way, correct?” He indicated the general direction.

  “Correct.”

  “Anything between here and there I should be aware of? Tree stump, sinkhole, boulder?”

  She tried to envision any potential obstacles on the path. “I don’t believe so. It’s a fairly straight shot. But once you get across the clearing and into the woods . . .”

  “Yeah,” he said grimly. “It’ll be rougher.”

  “How will you see?”

  He removed a tiny flashlight from his coat pocket.

  It didn’t look all that reliable. “What if the battery runs out? You could get lost.”

  “I have a sixth sense about direction. If I can see well enough to get myself there, I’ll be able to find my way back. But if the cabin lights should go out while I’m not here—I’m expecting that at any time. Ice is hell on power lines.” She nodded agreement. “If you lose power, light one of the candles and put it in a window.”

  “I don’t have any matches.”

  He withdrew a matchbook from another coat pocket and handed it to her. “Keep the matches and candles together so you’ll know where they are if you need them.”

  Suddenly she was struck by the lunacy of what he was about to do. “Tierney, please rethink this. We can break up the furniture and burn it. The shelves in the bookcases, the coffee table, cabinet doors. Before we run out of fuel we’ll be rescued. And the propane may last longer than we expect.”

  “I’m not willing to risk it. Besides, no sense in trashing the cabin unless we’re absolutely forced. I’ll be all right. I’ve trekked through worse.”

  “During a blizzard?”

  He didn’t respond to that as he reached for his cap. When he picked it up, he frowned with distaste. “It’s stiff with dried blood. Mind if I borrow your stadium blanket?”

  She helped him fashion a hood as he had for her earlier, and then he was ready. Trying one last argument, she said, “People with concussions aren’t supposed to exert themselves. You could black out, your sixth sense of direction could fail you, you could lose your way and either walk off a cliff or get lost and freeze to death.”

  “We who are about to die . . .” He saluted her.

  “Don’t joke.”

  “I wish I was.” He worked his scarf up over the lower half of his face and reached for the doorknob. But after taking hold of it, he hesitated, turned back, and pulled the scarf down past his mouth. “If I don’t make it back, I’m going to hate like hell that I never kissed you.”

  His eyes were as blue as flame, and as entrancing. They held her gaze as he worked the scarf back up over his nose. When he opened the door, the blast of icy air was like a slap in the face, and about that short-lived. He pulled the door securely shut as soon as he’d slipped through.

  Rushing to the window, Lilly shoved back the drapery, lending him light through the panes. He turned and gave her a thumbs-up for thinking of it. She went to the other window and did the same, then cupped her hands around her eyes and watched him through the frosted glass. With each step, he carefully planted his boot and made certain he had solid footing beneath him before putting his full weight on it.

  The windows shed an apron of light over the area immediately in front of the cabin, but it didn’t extend far, and Tierney eventually walked out of it. Impatiently Lilly wiped away the fog created by her breath on the cold glass. She saw the feeble beam of the flashlight bobbing erratically in the swirling precipitation.

  Soon she couldn’t see even that.

  • • •

  They found Cal Hawkins in the kind of place that Wes had described.

  It was deep in the woods where a dirt road ended at a wall of solid rock two hundred feet high. Tucked beneath the face of the mountain, the windowless, single-story structure had all the architectural detail of a cracker box.

  In the center of its flat facade was a dented metal door. A bare yellow lightbulb had been screwed into an electrical socket directly above it. There were three pickup trucks parked in front of the building. Judging from the depth of the sleet on the windshields, they’d been there awhile.

  Dutch had finessed his Bronco over two miles of dark, narrow, treacherous road to get there, so he was in a truculent mood when he and Wes went inside. Lighting was dim. The room was foggy with smoke and stank like wet wool and b.o. They stepped over splats of tobacco juice on the floor as they made their way to the particle board bar along the far wall.

  Without ceremony, Dutch said, “Cal Hawkins.”

  The bartender nodded his head of stringy, greasy hair toward a corner. Hawkins was seated at one of the rickety tables, his head lying on it, his arms dangling lifelessly at his sides. He was snoring.

  “Been that way ’bout an hour,” the bartender volunteered as he absently scratched his armpit through his dirty flannel shirt. “Whach’ y’all want him for?”

  “What’s he been drinking?” Dutch asked.

  “Somethin’ they brung in.”

  He hitched a thumb in the direction of the only other occupied table, where a trio of sullen, bearded men was playing cards beneath the stuffed head of a snarling black bear mounted on the wall.

  “The bear’s got the highest IQ of that lot,” Wes whispered to Dutch. “I hope your gun isn’t just for show. You can bet theirs aren’t.”

  Dutch had already spied the shotguns propped against each chair. “Cover my back.”

  “Three against one? Thanks for nothing.”

  Dutch approached the table where Hawkins was sleeping it off. His slack lips had drooled a puddle of saliva onto the table. Dutch hauled back his foot and literally kicked the chair out from under the man.

  Hawkins landed hard. “Fuckin’ hell!” He came off the floor with his hands balled into fists. But catching the glint of Dutch’s badge, he backed down and blinked at them in confusion. Then he grinned. “Hey, Dutch. When I was a kid, I used to watch you play ball.”

  “I ought to throw your sorry ass in jail,” Dutch snarled. “But if you’re sober enough to be stupid, you’re sober enough to be working, and I need you.”

  Hawkins wiped saliva off his chin with the back of his hand. “What for?”

  “What do you think?” Dutch thrust his face closer, only to recoil from the other man’s breath. “You’ve got a contract with the city to sand roads during ice storms. Well, guess what, genius? We’re in the throes of one. And where are you? Out here in the middle of freaking nowhere, stinking drunk. I’ve wasted several hours I didn’t have tracking you down.”

  He yanked what he assumed to be Hawkins’s coat off the back of a chair and threw it at him. Hawkins caught the coat against his chest. Dutch was glad to see that his reflexes weren’t completely pickled.

  “You’re getting out of here right now. We’ll follow you to the garage, where your truck has already been loaded and is waiting for you. Have you got the keys?”

  Hawkins dug into the pocket of his oily blue jeans and produced a set of keys, which he extended toward Dutch. “Why don’t you just take ’em and—”

  “I would, except nobody else has experience with the truck’s mechanisms, and you’re the only one who’s insured to drive it. I don’t need the liability, and neither does the township of Cleary. You’re going, Hawkins. And don’t think you can lose me between here and town. I’m going to stay so close I could bite your butt through your tailpipe. Let’s go.”

  “Won’t do no good,” Hawkins protested as Dutch gave him a hard shove towar
d the door. “I’ll go with you, Chief, but fast as this stuff is coming down, anything I put down tonight will be a waste of good sand. It’ll cost the town double, ’cause it’ll just have to be did again, soon’s the storm blows outta here.”

  “That’s my problem. Your problem is to keep me from beating you senseless once you’ve done what I need you to do.”

  • • •

  Lilly had been anxiously watching for Tierney’s return and gave a glad cry when she saw him trudging out of the darkness. He was dragging something along behind him. When he got closer she saw it was a tarpaulin stacked with firewood.

  He left it at the foot of the steps and stumbled up them. She opened the cabin door, caught him by the sleeve of his coat, and hauled him inside. He collapsed against the doorjamb and pushed back his makeshift hood. His eyebrows and eyelashes were again covered with frost. Instinctually she brushed it off them.

  “Glass of water, please.”

  She rushed into the kitchen and filled a glass from the pitcher. The trickle from the faucet had stopped, she noticed. They’d done well to fill the containers while they could.

  Tierney had slid down the wall and was sitting propped against it on the floor, his legs stretched out in front of him. He had removed his gloves and was clenching and flexing his fingers, trying to restore circulation. She knelt beside him. He gratefully took the glass of water from her and drank it all.

  “Are you all right? Besides the obvious.”

  He nodded but didn’t answer.

  Ordinarily the walk to the shed would have taken about sixty seconds. According to her wristwatch, he’d been gone for thirty-eight minutes, minutes during which she had repeatedly castigated herself for letting him go.

  “I’m glad you’re back,” she said with all the sincerity at her disposal.

  “I’m going again.”

  “What?”

  With a groan, he worked himself up the wall until he was standing. More or less. Actually, he was swaying, as though saved from toppling only because the soles of his boots were nailed to the floor.