Wed To A Stranger?

by Jule McBride

  He merely nodded, readjusting his arm around her back, so she could use him as a crutch. In the firstfloor bathroom, where there were no windows, Nathan turned on a light. Then, before Fritzi could protest, he lifted her onto the edge of a sink. Squinting against the light, she glanced anxiously toward the door. “Shouldn’t we check outside for tracks first? The snow might cover them.”

  “Not until I get a good look at you.”

  Fritzi was relieved. Her whole body ached. In the mirror, she barely recognized herself. Her forehead was bruised and bleeding, her hair was hopelessly disheveled, and her eyes were puffy. “The snow’s tapered off,” she conceded. Her breath suddenly caught. “I just hope that guy doesn’t come back.”

  Nathan nodded, wet a paper towel and started cleaning her forehead. “This’ll just take a second, then we’ll get out of here. I don’t think you need stitches.” Nathan turned his attention to the elastic bandage on her ankle—unwrapping it and probing, applying pressure to various spots.

  Fritzi’s eyes trailed over the jagged part in his unruly hair, then to his lush, heavy eyebrows, knitted together in concentration. Recalling how he’d cared for her when he found her in the snow, she drew a sudden, sharp breath. “You’re a doctor, aren’t you?”

  Nathan looked up, his penetrating gaze catching hers in the mirror. Then his mouth quirked.

  “What’s so funny?”

  He shrugged. “A doctor and a cop. You seem determined to make something admirable out of me.”

  “Are you a doctor?”

  “No.”

  The intensity of his expression made her wonder if he was lying. She swallowed hard. “Well, you just seem so…” Adept at fixing me up.

  Nathan focused his attention on her ankle again. After a long moment, he said, “Maybe I’ve had a little medical training.”

  “Maybe?”

  “Okay,” he said softly. “I have.” He glanced up. “Just promise me you won’t run off like that again.”

  How could she make promises to a man she knew nothing about? Fritzi wondered. And yet staring at his face, she knew she’d promise him anything.

  “I promise.”

  Nathan traced a tantalizing circle around her anklebone, then rewrapped the elastic bandage. “Why don’t you stay inside and let me look for those tracks?”

  “No way,” she said, sliding off the sink. As he slipped an arm around her, Fritzi detected hurt in his eyes.

  “I thought you trusted me,” he said when they’d nearly reached the front door.

  Only when you kiss me. “I’m scared. And I don’t want to be alone in here. That guy could come back.”

  Nathan nodded. When they reached the door, he withdrew a flashlight from his pocket, and Fritzi realized with a start that it was the same one she’d dropped when she fled the trapper’s cabin. As he flicked it on, she wondered if he’d found it when he’d rescued her in the snow or if he’d returned to the cabin today.

  “Now you pull out the flashlight,” she ventured dryly.

  Nathan shrugged and began searching the stairs. “We’ll never find the key without it.”

  Fritzi nodded, seating herself on the steps she’d so fearfully crept down before. As she glanced toward the window in the door, she half expected to see her attacker appear again. “You know,” she said as Nathan headed downstairs. “My parents were murdered….”

  Even as she said the words, she imagined her parents’ Cessna exploding—the whole sky lighting up, the wing peeling from the plane’s hull like a lid from a tin can. The craft nosedived through the clouds, trailing smoke and raining white ash. At least that was how the crash looked in Fritzi’s nightmares, on the long nights when she’d awakened to David’s hushed voice comforting her in the dark, sharing how he’d felt when his own parents had died….

  She cleared her throat. “It was…a bomb in the plane.”

  From the bottom stair, Nathan glanced up. In the dim light from the flashlight, his face seemed blank, devoid of emotion. Even though she’d mentioned her parents’ deaths during her interrogation at the detention center, she expected Nathan to look surprised. But then, she doubted much surprised him.

  He stared down again, looking for the key. “And?”

  Blowing out a shaky sigh, Fritzi shifted her weight on the cold schoolhouse step. It felt so good to have someone believe her; maybe she could share what she was really thinking. “I keep wondering if whoever killed my parents could have followed me here.”

  “I doubt it,” Nathan said gently.

  Fritzi had the fleeting impression his comment was based on fact. Did he really have reason to believe her line of thinking was a dead end? She squinted at him, hoping to find something significant in his expression. There was nothing. “But it’s possible,” she continued. “It was a politically motivated murder…he was a diplomat. And a group claimed responsibility.”

  “If it was politically motivated, why would anyone want to hurt you?”

  Nathan had a point. “Some kind of revenge?” Fritzi felt the familiar twinge of heartbreak. Even now, she couldn’t believe her parents were gone. “My father made a lot of enemies. Maybe it was more than just political. Maybe someone took it personally.”

  “Maybe,” Nathan murmured.

  If Nathan had information about what was happening to her, she had a right to know, but she kept her temper in check. Alienating him wouldn’t help matters. “Well, if the strange things that have been going on aren’t connected to my parents deaths, then they’ve got to be connected to David’s disappearance.”

  Nathan’s voice turned sharp. “Something else happened besides that phone call?”

  Her temper flared. “Yeah. A man chased me through this place with a gun. And your turning up and pretending to be my husband is pretty strange.”

  Nathan shrugged and he began looking for the key again. “Found it,” he said a moment later.

  Using the stair rail for support, Fritzi stood as Nathan flicked off the flashlight. “Don’t you think we should check the basement?” she asked reluctantly. “Maybe the guy left something behind.”

  But they found no clues downstairs. Not even the spent shell casings from the gun, which were probably buried under the school supplies on the floor.

  Back upstairs, Nathan leaned lithely, catching the bottom edges of Fritzi’s parka. His eyes followed the

  long course of the zipper as he closed it for her, and when he stopped at the top, he gazed into her eyes. His smile was charming—a slow flash of even, white teeth in weather-tanned skin.

  Fritzi smiled back tentatively, fighting the urge to smooth her hair. She just wished she knew why he was here, and what he wanted. “I probably look just awful.”

  Nathan nodded agreeably. “Like hell.”

  “Thanks.”

  He shrugged. “I like the way you look.”

  And then they headed into the frozen night again, but this time it seemed just a little warmer because they were battling the elements together. Sure enough, skis were propped beside the front door. Probably Hannah’s husband’s, Fritzi realized. That meant Nathan had skied here, just as he’d said.

  She watched him put on the glove she’d found in the snow the night he’d kissed her. At the realization he’d gone through her drawers—that was where she’d put the glove—she felt a twinge of uneasiness, but said nothing. With him supporting her, they moved slowly around the schoolhouse, through the deep drifts. He directed the bobbing beam of the flashlight beneath the windows, but they saw no footprints. By the time they reached the back of the building, the snow was falling in earnest again.

  Fritzi’s teeth suddenly chattered. “The front d-door was unlocked. I’m sure he went in that way.”

  Nathan shook his head. “Not unless he circled around from the other side. He was definitely parked out back.”

  When Fritzi’s teeth chattered again, Nathan hugged her against him.

  As they passed through the open gates to the play ground, she fin
ally saw the snowmobile tracks—long, continuous treads in the hard-packed snow that proved someone other than Nathan had been inside the schoolhouse. Her eyes studied them, then swept over the vacant, snow-buried schoolyard.

  The place was so ghostly. It was cold and dark, a windswept, treeless tundra strewn with childrens’ toys—swing sets, jungle gyms and basketball hoops. All the swings moved in the wind, creaking on their chains, as if ghost children were playing in the cold. Fritzi shivered.

  Nathan shone his light along the tracks. “Looks like whoever it was headed for Main Street.”

  “Did you see him at all?”

  Nathan shook his head. “Couldn’t even tell if it was a man or a woman.”

  “It was a man,” she said, “I’m sure about that much.”

  “Looks like it,” Nathan agreed a moment later as he aimed the flashlight at the enclosed area of a back stairwell. Large footprints led up the steps. “The guy went up, then came back down, which means this back door’s locked. He circled around the building from the other side and used the front door.” As if to prove the point, Nathan swung the light in the general direction of the prints.

  Fritzi stepped into the enclosure, out of the wind, and glanced from the footprints to the building itself. Her voice echoed in the stairwell. “Strange that just a week ago I was teaching here.” She’d been good at her job, too. The kids loved her.

  Nathan came up behind her, so close his breath whispered on her skin. “It can hurt when people don’t trust you.”

  She knew he was talking about her not trusting him, but her voice turned defensive. “I’m a good teacher.”

  “I know.”

  He didn’t. But it was nice of him to say it. His thoughtfulness was another indication he meant her no harm, she decided.

  Suddenly, Nathan switched off the flashlight. Following his concerned gaze, Fritzi turned too quickly. Pain darted through her foot, but it was instantly forgotten.

  Because a snowmobile had approached quietly—and was now racing toward them. Fritzi barely registered that the driver suddenly flicked on high beams—much less ran—before the vehicle barreled through the gates and across the playground, trapping her and Nathan in front of the stairs.

  “Oh, no,” she murmured. “He’s come back.”

  And close. The snowmobile wasn’t ten feet away now.

  Nathan stared right into the bright, blinding light, stepping nearer to her, shielding her with his body. Defiantly, she fought the urge to cover her eyes.

  “Sure wish I had the gun,” Nathan said under his breath.

  “So do I,” Fritzi admitted hoarsely, visualizing the revolver taped to the rattan table. Terrified, she watched a man slowly get off the snowmobile. A rifle was slung over his shoulder, held in place by a long strap. “It’s him,” she whispered.

  “You sure?”

  She squinted. In the glare, she could only see the snowmobile and the man’s silhouette—the large frame, the huge hood of his parka. “I think that’s the man.”

  Nathan grunted softly, as if considering. Then he said, “Interesting. Because that’s Joe Tanook.”

  Fritzi gasped. Had the sheriff been in the schoolhouse with her? And why?

  Tanook’s voice boomed in the silence. “Mind explaining what you two are doing out here?”

  Nathan put his arm around Fritzi. His breath fogged the air. “Somebody broke into the school.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Or did you already know that?” Fritzi shot back. “Some man called me. He didn’t give his name, but he said he had information about my husband. About Da—” She cut off her words, feeling confused.

  “Don’t tell me,” Joe Tanook called. “Not about Nathan here, who really is your husband. But about David Frayne, right?”

  “Right.” Fritzi glared at the sheriff. “The man asked me to meet him and—”

  Joe Tanook cut her off again. “And you actually came out in a blizzard to meet a strange man?”

  The frigid air no longer bothered Fritzi. Inside, she suddenly felt every bit as cold. “Yes, and Nathan followed me.”

  The sheriffs chuckle was meant to rile her-or Nathan. “Don’t guess I’d want my wife out meeting strange men in this weather.”

  Fritzi had about had it. “Want to know the strange part?”

  Joe Tanook leaned casually against the snowmobile as if to say he wasn’t particularly interested. “What?”

  “The man chased me through the schoolhouse with a gun—and he was dressed exactly like you and driving a snowmobile.”

  “First, everybody in this town wears parkas and drives snowmobiles in the winter,” the sheriff returned. “And second, why would I chase you through a deserted schoolhouse with a gun?”

  Nathan stepped forward a half pace. “Because you think she knows something about the dead man you found in the river. Maybe you’re trying to scare her into giving you the information you think she’s withholding.”

  The sheriff looked up at the school building. “Nobody broke in here,” he scoffed. “The place is always unlocked.”

  Fritzi scrutinized Joe Tanook. Maybe Nathan was right and the sheriff had been trying to scare her. At times, she’d thought the man’s heavy breathing was faked. And when Joe Tanook got off the snowmobile, she could have sworn he was the man. But it was hard to believe a law official would do such a thing.

  “So this supposed man had a gun,” the sheriff finally prodded.

  Fury welled within Fritzi. “He wasn’t a supposed man. He was a man. And the gun went off in the basement, so there might be casings down there somewhere.”

  The sheriff looked faintly bored. “Notice anything unusual about the snowmobile?”

  Nathan shook his head. “It was too dark. Is there some reason why you’re asking that?”

  “You think I’d tell you if there was?”

  Fritzi’s pulse quickened. Maybe the sherriff hadn’t chased her…but had an idea about who had. “I heard a plane today,” she supplied. “Did anybody get dropped off in town?”

  Nathan tensed beside her. “Are there any strangers here?”

  “Besides you two?” The sheriff shrugged. “I wouldn’t know.”

  Fritzi gaped at him. “A man was murdered here!” she exclaimed. “And now a man told me to meet him—only to chase me with a gun. Aren’t you the least bit curious about what happened?”

  “Oh, I’m curious,” the sheriff said. “And my gut says you both know way more than you’re telling. I’ll get to the bottom of this, too. But until then, I’m not sharing any information.”

  “Fine—” Nathan’s arm tightened around Fritzi, then he started guiding her past the snowmobile and toward the gates.

  The sheriff watched them carefully. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Home,” Nathan returned.

  The word home rang in her ears. She and Nathan were leaving together. They’d have dinner together, too. And then they were going to spend yet another long cold winter’s night under the same cozy roof.

  Fritzi was glad, too. Because whoever had attacked her could come again. And she had to trust that Nathan would protect her and Malcolm.

  “YOU SURE TOOK YOUR TIME,” the medical examiner said.

  “Like they always say, Larry—” Detective Sam Giles stamped his feet and stepped inside the room “—that’s the only good thing about crime scenes. There’s never a wrong time to visit.”

  Larry chuckled. “Yeah. Guess we’re always too late.”

  Sam glanced toward a back room and suddenly shivered. He tried to tell himself it was only from the cold, snowy Washington night, but he knew it was because he was about to view a victim’s body. He really loved the mental aspects of his job—especially all the puzzle-solving-but the carnage he could definitely live without.

  Suddenly he frowned, thinking of Katie Darnell, Al Woods and Mo Dorman. That old case still haunted him. And yet he’d just about given up. Maybe it was better never to know who’d kil
led those three people, his perfect solved-case record be damned. After all, it had turned out to be one of the more dangerous cases he’d ever been assigned. And he had a family to go home to—alive.

  “You still with the living?” Larry said.

  Sam blinked. “Yeah.”

  “Your mind’s a thousand miles away. What in the world are you thinking about?”

  Sam exhaled a long, world-weary sigh. Then he nodded toward the back room. “I was just thinking that this is at least one murder I can probably solve.”

  As for the others—Katie Darnell, Al Woods and Mo Dorman—well, that was another story.

  Oh, the day Sam had realized those three murders were connected, he’d called Stan Steinbrenner over at the Post. What he’d heard had chilled him to the bone. About a year ago, while Stan was writing a feature on mercenaries, one of the killers-for-hire began feeding him information that connected the three murders. Also, according to the mercenary, the supposed water testing facility where Katie Darnell had been murdered was really a cover for some sort of underground surgical unit.

  That explained the presence of the scalpel at the site, as well as the chemicals not used in the development of photographs. Stan had been tracing the facility back through various dummy companies, but he still hadn’t identified an original owner. He had rounded up a name, though. One that was supposedly the key to it all.

  The name was David Frayne.

  That solved the mystery of the gold monogrammed cuff link. Even so, D.F. or David Frayne was undoubtedly an alias. One Sam Giles wished he’d never heard. Some names, like faces, were best forgotten.

  Not that Stan had seemed worried. “This is big,” he’d said on the phone. “The kind of story people get killed for. And you know what that means?”

  “What?” Sam had said.

  Stan chuckled. “That this year’s Pulitzer’s got my name on it.”

  And maybe it did.

  As of last week, Stan had tracked down David Frayne. Stan said he’d found a message in the Post classifieds. According to Stan, the ad was written to David Frayne by someone who seemed to be posing as a past lover, and it named White Wolf Pass, Alaska, as a rendezvous point.