“Serena!”
He got on his knees and doused his head in the freezing water and lay down so that his whole body was soaked and frigid. Hypothermia was the least of his worries now; he just wanted to slow down the fire from taking hold on his skin. The wind bit at him, the heat burned, and the banshee screamed.
Stride stared into the maw of the devil.
As he prepared to jump through the doorway, he heard something that made his heart stop. Rising above the noise of the storm and the fire came the sharp crack of a single gunshot.
FIFTY-SEVEN
Maggie steered for the fire.
As she rounded the jagged edge of a peninsula, she saw the fish house burning like a pagan bonfire, ushering up a sacrifice to the storm god. The fire illuminated the entire inlet. She could see the twisting of windblown snow, the tin boxes of other shanties hunched against the blizzard, and the outline of birch trees like stick figures on the coast. As she navigated around the other fish houses and got closer, she could see a man outside the shanty, and even at that distance, she recognized Stride.
He was getting ready to go inside, and Maggie could see from the monsterlike size of the fire that doing so was no better than suicide. She honked her horn frantically, trying to stop him, but if he heard her, he ignored her.
“No!” she shouted inside the car and banged her fist on the steering wheel.
As she watched helplessly from fifty yards away, Stride took three steps and dove into the center of the doorway, through the flames, disappearing inside.
Maggie didn’t see Blue Dog until it was too late. She never even heard the report of the gun. A bullet ripped through her windshield and embedded itself in the headrest on her seat, so close to her head that when she reached up instinctively to cover her ear, she felt blood on her fingers. The windshield held together except for the perfect, circular round hole and a spider-web of cracks carved into the glass. Even so, she instinctively turned over the wheel, and the truck spun, the rear end leading it around in circles as she tapped the brakes.
When she finally stopped, another bullet screamed through the far side of the windshield, which finally gave up and rained down in a shower of glass. Maggie saw a man running at the truck, right arm in the air, firing wildly. She knew what he wanted—the truck, not her—something he could use for his escape. She grabbed the keys out of the ignition and hunched down, then scooted across the seat and pushed the passenger door open. She spilled out of the Avalanche.
Maggie dropped to her chest on the ice and stared under the truck, where she could barely see Blue Dog’s legs through the driving tornado of snow. He was moving carefully and silently, step-by-step, about forty feet from the driver’s door. She thought about running, but she wasn’t going to do that. Not from this man. Not after what he had done to her.
She needed a weapon. Her pockets were empty, and the only thing in the glove compartment was a tire pressure gauge. In the covered bed of the truck, she kept an emergency radio, a forty-pound bag of sand, a medical kit, jumper cables, bungee cords, and a shovel. The shovel was made of durable plastic, designed to push snow out of the way, and wasn’t the kind of blunt object she could use to beat a man unconscious.
That was all she had.
She decided to bluff. “Stop right there!” she screamed, and she saw him freeze in his tracks, trying to pinpoint the faint sound of her voice. “Take one more step, and I’ll blow you away.”
A long silence followed, then he fired several more times, shattering the rest of the windows in her truck and spraying the snow with bits of glass.
“If you had a gun, I’d be dead,” he shouted back.
Maggie crawled quickly to the back of the truck. She hoped he couldn’t see the tailgate as she unlocked and lowered it. She reached in and gently slid out the heavy bag of sand, taking care not to rock the chassis.
She squatted down and saw that he was twenty feet away. Cursing silently, she closed the tailgate, put the bag of sand down, and scrambled back to the open passenger door of the truck. She kept low and slid back inside, hoping he couldn’t see her as she replaced the keys in the ignition. She backed out carefully, retrieved the forty-pound sandbag, and positioned it on its side under the truck, directly behind the right front tire. She relied on the wail of the storm to cover any noise she made.
Maggie retreated behind the truck bed and crouched down to watch him approach. He veered wide to check the front of the truck and went all the way around to the far side. She dodged backward, staying out of view. She saw him lift one leg and kick the passenger door shut and immediately fire three bullets into the earth. One bullet hit the rear bumper with a metallic clang. She prayed he didn’t see the bag of sand hidden behind the tire.
He waited. He had to know where she was—in the back, behind the truck bed. The question was whether it was worth the time for him to track her down, knowing they could circle each other as long as she wanted. She watched him retrace his steps slowly to the front of the truck and back toward the driver’s door. He hesitated there.
In the distance, she heard something beautiful. Sirens. Lots of them.
He opened the driver’s door and climbed in and slammed it behind him. He turned over the engine, and Maggie pushed herself off her feet and ran toward the front of the truck. She knew he could see her coming in the sideview mirror, but that was okay. She wanted him to rush. He stepped on the accelerator, and the truck ground away at the ice and leaped forward.
Ten feet later, the Avalanche jerked to a stop as the rear wheel slammed into the bag of sand. Maggie reached the driver’s door at the same second. She wrenched it open, grabbed him by his hair, and slammed his skull repeatedly against the metal frame of the door. He groaned and fell out of the truck. She looked for the gun, but it wasn’t in his hand; she saw it on the far end of the dashboard where he had dropped it during the impact.
She didn’t bother fighting fair. When she bent over him on the ground, she realized his shoulder was bloody and torn, and she hammered her fist over and over into the wounded limb until he screamed. She jabbed her fingernails into both of his eyes. He clawed blindly for her with his other hand, and she reached out, took his wrist and twisted it, and bent his index finger back until it broke with a sickening snap. He gave a strangled, gurgling cry.
“Not like last time, is it, you sack of shit,” she hissed.
His eyes closed, but she wasn’t taking any chances. She reared her left fist back as if she were nailing in a spike and drove it deep into his gut. He didn’t move; he didn’t open his eyes; but his abdomen lurched, and he began to throw up. Vomit bubbled out of his mouth. He was a limp elephant to move, but she managed to turn him over and make sure he wasn’t choking. She slid her belt out from her jeans and used it to bind his wrists together. She got up and went to the truck bed and found a bungee cord and secured his ankles.
Maggie retrieved the gun from the Avalanche and put it in her pocket.
She heard a metal crash boom across the ice, and she looked up and hated what she saw. The shanty was entirely engulfed in flames. The walls were crashing down.
FIFTY-EIGHT
Serena heard Jonny shout and realized he was inches away from her, on the other side of the fiery wall. At that instant, she changed her mind. If the fire wanted her, if the lake wanted her, they would have to come and get her. She also realized there was another way to use the one bullet left in the revolver, and without hesitating, she reached her left arm as far across her body as she could, stretched her right hand to the limit of the cloth that bound her, and fired. The bullet tore through the fabric. Her right arm stung with powder burns, but when she yanked her hand, it came away from the bed frame. Both arms were free.
She was dizzy as the fire and smoke choked out the oxygen from the tiny space. She braced both hands against the side of the bed frame and pushed herself up. A scorching wave of heat slapped her in the face. She leaned all the way forward until her fingers grasped her left ankle and franti
cally tore at the tape that bound her to the frame. She squeezed her eyes shut, unable to keep them open in the face of the heat. The torn tissue in her stomach and shoulder split further, and she felt blood dripping onto her thighs. The duct tape clung as if it were nailed to her skin. Blue Dog had wrapped it tightly, and the tape resisted when she tried to saw it with her fingernails. She couldn’t believe she was this close and still imprisoned.
Her air ran out. Black, tarry poison filled her lungs. She gave up and threw herself back down, hoping there was still something to breathe in the lower section of the fish house, but the smoke had descended there, too. She heard herself gasping and wheezing, and it was as if she went outside herself and watched her labored breathing from afar. She knew she would only remain conscious for a few more seconds.
With both hands free now, she grabbed the bed frame and jerked to the right and felt the frame tilt six inches off the ground before teetering and falling back down. Expelling her last breath, grunting with the huge effort, she tried again, and this time, the cot rose straight up into the air and went tumbling over. The cot was a crushing weight on her back. Her bare skin was pressed against the floor, like a piece of raw meat tossed on the grill. Somewhere right near her lips, though, she smelled a trickle of cool air.
She clawed at the floor with her fingers and realized she was over one of the trapdoors that fishermen used to access the ice. She felt a loop of metal catch under her fingernail, and she pried the small door open and nearly sang with joy as a rush of cold air blew up from the lake water into her face. Her lungs gagged, trying to cough out the remnants of smoke and replace them with oxygen. After a few deep breaths, she felt alive again.
The flames were now circling her like wolves. She felt a singeing heat on her back that told her the cot itself was now on fire. She began to think she had saved herself just to die in the worst way.
The shanty took a heavy jolt, and she heard a voice not even four feet away. “Serena!”
It was Jonny. Inside.
Stride took two steps and ripped something off the wall. The whoosh of compressed air exploding in a burst of foam filled the space. The nearest flames fell back and died. He sprayed until the fire extinguisher was empty, beating back the fire and creating a temporary bubble of safety around them.
He attacked the tape on her ankles. Serena saw the glint of Blue Dog’s knife within reach, and she grabbed it and waved it in the air. “Jonny, use this! Hurry!”
She felt him quickly cut through the tape where it tied her to the steel legs of the cot. In seconds, her legs came free. He flung the bed frame away from her and pushed aside the mattress, which was smoldering. She tried to turn over but found she didn’t have the strength to do so. Her legs were leaden. The blood flowed back to her feet slowly.
“Can you walk?” he asked.
“No.” Her voice was ragged.
Jonny squatted in front of her. “Grab onto my shoulders. Hang on.”
She wrapped her arms around his torso from behind and clung to him as he pushed himself off his knees. He swayed, holding her weight.
“Don’t let go,” he said.
Then she heard him say, “Shit.”
As the two of them watched, half the ceiling of the shanty collapsed. A wall of fire came down like a steel curtain in front of the doorway. The fish house lurched again, a dying ship slipping under the water. The lake spread in a deepening pool across the floor. Steam and smoke mingled. There was no way out.
Stride squatted down again and eased her back onto the hot floor. She hid her face under the trapdoor. There was still fresh air blowing below the shanty, but the ice was weakening, and the pool of water was rising and threatening to flood inside. When she looked up, she saw Jonny with a wet scarf wrapped around his face. He kicked furiously at the tin wall behind them with the bottom of his boot, but the metal hung tough. Sparks landed on his clothes and started to catch fire. He spotted a gas-powered auger in the corner and lugged the three-feet steel coil to the wall. He pulled the crank cord, and the motor coughed and sputtered. The shanty swayed; it was sinking fast. The fire raced over their heads. He yanked it again, and again, and finally the whiny engine roared to life. Stride plunged it against the wall, and the metal screamed and gave way, and then he pulled it back and punched another hole and twisted his body to drill a jagged tear down to the bottom of the wall. When that was done, he brought the drill back up and cut sideways and down, until the gap in the metal formed a three-foot square.
He threw the auger down. He kicked again, and this time the wall yawed and bent, and the flap of metal pushed outward toward the open air. The rush of new oxygen fed the fire, and the flames closed in on them. He didn’t need to tell her what to do; she grabbed hold of his waist, and he squirmed through the gap in the wall, dragging her behind him. He fell out of the fish house and splashed into frigid water, and he kept snaking forward until Serena spilled out behind him. She let go and fell into a foot of slushy water, but there was a sheath of ice below her.
Stride clawed out of the shallow pool and reached back and pulled her out beside him. The snow froze her wounds with an awful sting. She wanted to lay there forever, but he was already moving. He stripped off his jacket and made her put it on, then hoisted her onto his back again. Next to them, the fire spat through the hole they had made in the wall. The rest of the ceiling collapsed with a roar, and the walls caved in over the space where they had been only seconds earlier. A new tower of flame rose and fell, consuming what was left of metal and wood, until there was nothing left of the fish house.
She couldn’t walk, but she knew that Jonny was near to breaking. In the distance, though, she saw rescue. Maggie ran toward them, waving madly. Behind her, only a quarter mile away, half a dozen squad cars converged on the scene.
Jonny saw them, too. He sank to his knees, unable to go any farther. She felt both of their bodies shiver and tremble, but she repeated over and over to herself that it wouldn’t be long, that help was coming, that warmth and blankets and morphine were minutes away. She prayed it wasn’t a mirage.
Someone else saw the police cars coming, too.
Nearby, the snow-covered Lexus sedan near Blue Dog’s van came alive. Windshield wipers pushed aside the snow. Its tires spun, and it shot off away from them, away from the police, away from the wreckage of the shanty, heading straight out toward the belly of the lake, where the blizzard quickly swallowed it.
“Who the hell was that?” Jonny murmured.
Serena didn’t answer. She was already unconscious, and in her dreams, the pain went away, and she was warm.
FIFTY-NINE
Lauren was in a white cloud, unseeing, with the storm blinding the night and the lake as big and open as the ocean itself. The wheels of the Lexus churned silently at a hundred miles an hour across the ice. She could have been flying.
She had no illusions of escape. She was dying. You could only lose so much blood and stay alive. Her heart kept pumping, and the red river soaked into her blue shirt and turned it purple and puddled on the leather seats of the Lexus. Dan would hate that. He could forgive almost everything else, but he’d be standing over her grave asking why she couldn’t have died in the snow and spared the custom interior. That was Dan. Love was sex to him, but money was love.
It didn’t matter to her to die out here. The infuriating part was that no one would understand. It was never about money or power or exposure. She didn’t swing the flashlight into Tanjy’s head because she was afraid of the truth coming out. She did it because Dan was in love with Tanjy.
Lauren willed the knowledge of Dan’s other affairs out of her mind, because in the end, he came home to her and relied on her for everything. If he wanted to sleep with trophy girls who thought they had a chance of displacing her, she didn’t care; she just didn’t want to know about it. Sex was never of much interest to her, so she let Dan do what he wanted. She was the one who loved him, who created him. Their partnership was more important than anything els
e.
Until Tanjy.
Until that perverted, beautiful bitch destroyed their lives.
She didn’t understand how Tanjy and her vile fantasies turned Dan inside out and made him forget what Lauren had done for him. People called Lauren an ice queen and made jokes about the cold face she showed everyone else, but they were so wrong. When that huge, awful blackmailer named Billy Deed showed her what was going on between Tanjy and Dan, she became obsessed with punishing Tanjy. Erasing her. Obliterating her.
It wasn’t just the photographs, although she couldn’t believe Dan would be so reckless. Any one of those photos would have brought their world tumbling down, ruining everything. But there was more. Blue Dog had e-mails, too. Those were the things that scared and enraged her. Dan telling Tanjy how much he loved her. How she aroused him. How he never stopped thinking about her.
How he was talking to a lawyer about divorce.
No lie. She checked his calls and his calendar. He was meeting with a divorce lawyer in the Cities. Divorce. To throw over someone like Lauren, who had made him everything he was, who had built her entire life around his career, for a deranged child like Tanjy Powell. Lauren wasn’t going to accept that.
If Tanjy thought rape was so exciting, let her see what it was really like.
She felt like a stone watching Tanjy suffer in the park, her naked body strapped to the fence. Later, as Tanjy was crucified in the media, Dan finally broke off the affair, and Lauren was exultant. She was in control of the world again. She ramped up her efforts to land Dan a lucrative job far away from Duluth and far away from Tanjy Powell.
Everything was going perfectly until Tanjy called that night. Begging to talk to Dan. Claiming to know who raped her.
Lauren became deadly calm. She was at a crossroads. She wasn’t going to let the truth come out, and she wasn’t going to let Tanjy lure Dan back under her spell. She told Tanjy that Dan was at their lake house, and she knew Tanjy would drive out there that night, to talk to him, to seduce him. Lauren went to meet her instead.
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