by Nina Pierce
Her fingers had gone numb as she’d alternated between fiddling with the finicky latch and banging on the unmoving door. She had no idea how much time had passed since she’d watched the stool holding the door tip over. Unable to remain open on its worn out hinges, the cooler door had swung shut in the sickly slow motion of a nightmare. The click of the latch had been a thunderous noise, punctuated by the absolute darkness that dropped down like an unwelcomed curtain before she’d been able to get out.
Unfortunately, the automatic light switch seemed to be fully functional—unlike the door.
Panic hadn’t set in until she’d tried the inside latch and found it jammed. The release bar wasn’t moving no matter how much pressure she applied. Everything stood frozen here in the dark. Her throat burned from her desperate screams and she sank to her knees defeated by her situation.
Her fiancé, Peter, wasn’t even home to wonder why she hadn’t returned—a state of affairs that had become the norm rather than the exception. Damn that promotion. Peter’s work responsibilities seemed to have tripled over the last several months demanding he travel for one project or another and keeping him out late most evenings.
She missed her fiancé, plain and simple.
On the few evenings a week Peter did make it home, they cooked dinner together, often making love in a desperate coupling that left dinner burning on the stove. With the one year anniversary of their engagement coming up on Christmas, Meghan had hoped to make plans for a spring wedding. But broaching the subject of DJ’s and reception halls when they had so little time together seemed about as appealing as gluing pine needles back on a dried Christmas tree. Add the burden of her father’s declining health and it was no wonder she’d been stewing in her own melancholy over the last few weeks.
Now, trapped in the frigid darkness, Meghan realized her day bemoaning Peter’s work schedule had been selfish and petty. She could have spent the morning calling a repairman to fix the faulty latch on the cooler that was going to kill her as surely as skinny dipping in the family pond this time of year.
She held her breath, listening intently for any small sound. But there was no one to hear her. No one was in the shop. No one was expected.
Even the cheery Christmas music wafting through the shop on the cinnamon and balsam scented air couldn’t be heard through the thick stainless steel. She had no way of knowing if someone had tried to reach her on the cellphone that lay on her workbench waiting for Peter’s next call. Would an unanswered call be enough to alert someone she was in trouble?
What if no one came? What if she was stuck here overnight?
She’d lived in Maine her whole life and knew nothing about hypothermia. Her closest experience had been in second grade when unusually cold air from Canada had swept in to blanket Maine just before Christmas. Despite wind chills that dropped the mercury well below zero, the town of Delmont had refused to cancel their holiday light parade.
Meghan had happily walked with her church youth group passing out candy, waving sparklers and singing Christmas carols at the top of her lungs with the high school band. She’d been too young to know the tightening in her cheeks and pain in her fingers and toes was frostbite. By the time she’d gotten home, her teeth were chattering uncontrollably. It had taken hours swaddled in blankets and wrapped in her father’s arms to stop the shivering. Her father had gently rubbed her hands and feet when the biting pain of warming them had her sobbing in his arms.
But frostbite and freezing to death were miles apart. All she knew for sure was that her shivering and chattering teeth were bad signs and she couldn’t fall asleep. Not likely. She was too pissed off at her own foolhardiness at not repairing the faulty door to let the cold beat her.
That thought shot her straight to her feet, her resolve a flash of lightning, heating her blood. She would not freeze to death in this vault. She would survive. Hypothermia took hours to claim a life, and though her teeth chattered and her body shook uncontrollably, she wouldn’t succumb without a fight.
She needed to wrestle through the cold fogging her brain and think like that actor who fashioned bombs from cotton candy and dental floss. One way or another, she’d find her way out of this freezing hell—or die trying.
* * * *
The snow was unrelenting.
If Peter Maddock hadn’t known better, he’d think even the universe was trying to stop him from making this insane trip. He’d been pushing his way through the thick curtain of white that shrouded the taillights of the cars in front of him for nine hours. Nearly twice the time it should have taken to drive from Philly to Boston in good weather. Even the snowplows, which had been running non-stop since last week’s Thanksgiving blizzard, couldn’t keep both sides of the highway cleared.
He’d lied to Meghan about staying put in a hotel today. He’d lied to the guy at the rental counter at the airport about a family emergency just to get one of the last four wheel drive vehicles left in the lot. More importantly, he’d lied to himself that this whole damn catastrophe-waiting-to-happen wasn’t going to derail his relationship with his fiancée.
Turning down the snow-covered exit ramp, Peter should have felt relief that he wasn’t stuck in the usual rush-hour traffic. Hell, he should be happy he’d survived the harrowing journey on interstate 95 without skidding off the road like so many others. Instead, all he felt was apprehension.
He maneuvered his car through the deserted streets of Boston, following the directions he’d scribbled on the hotel pad of paper. Surprised to find himself in the business district, he drove snow-covered roads within walking distance of the famed Faneuil Hall Marketplace and Boston Common. This wasn’t what he’d expected when the woman in the chat room had told him where she worked. Peter had thought the establishment would be on the other side of Boston in the Combat Zone, where seedy run-down neighborhoods were filled with dilapidated buildings only slightly less grungy than the drunks sleeping in the alleys or the hookers huddled at the street corners.
None of that was visible here. Here were only upscale businesses and quaint shops. He had no doubt that a normal Thursday night, just weeks before Christmas, would have found people milling on the streets and shopping. Of course no one was out in this storm. Only fools on errands—like him.
Grateful for the lack of traffic, Peter drove slowly by the buildings checking the numbers. Spotting the one he sought, he did a double take and rechecked the address. It was a hotel. Complete with a doorman, it was tucked between an upscale women’s clothing store and a tavern. He thought he was going to her place of business. What the hell had he gotten himself into?
He should just keep driving.
He couldn’t.
Finding this place had become an obsession. More precisely, finding her had become his obsession. He thought their first meeting would be in public, shrouded by the anonymity of a club, not the privacy of an upscale hotel room. That inferred an intimacy that crossed a line. But what the hell? What was one more? He’d crossed every line he’d drawn in the proverbial sand over the last month. Though this last one seemed a hurdle of epic proportions, he had no doubt he was going to go through with this liaison. Peter had risked too much to find answers to questions he’d never dared ask before.
Turning back was simply not an option.
He parked the car on the nearly deserted street, turned up his collar against the icy pellets of snow and jogged back down the block. He wasn’t sure if the burn in his gut was anticipation, uncertainty or shame. Without analyzing it, he nodded as the doorman pulled the ornate handle on the glass door and entered the plush hotel lobby filled with leather furniture and large potted plants. People of all ages milled about, probably hemmed in by the storm. Fighting the urge to hide from their blatant stares, he made his way to the front desk. His heart pounded in tempo with the click of his Italian loafers on the marble floor.
“May I help you?” The man behind the counter aimed his false cheer at Peter. He looked as frazzled as Peter felt.
&nbs
p; “Yes, I’m looking for a Miss Crystal Ice. I have a seven o’clock meeting.” He felt foolish saying the name aloud, wondering if she’d even given him correct information. It had taken weeks in the chat rooms to convince this woman he wasn’t a serial killer, and when she’d finally typed “MIRL”— meet in real life—his stomach had dropped even as his hope had soared.
“Yes, of course, sir. May I ask who’s inquiring?” The man’s fingers flew over the keyboard, his eyes intently scanning a computer screen.
“Sal.” Peter looked away, fearing the man would see his deceit. SAL was the acronym for his screen name, SingleandLooking21. He wasn’t any of those things. Okay, maybe the looking part, but he’d been of drinking age for nearly a decade, and the engagement ring on Meghan’s finger made him far from single.
“Yes, here you are, sir. Ms. Crystal is expecting you.” The front desk clerk smiled. “She’s in our honeymoon suite on the twelfth floor.”
The honeymoon suite? Peter had no doubt what this man was thinking and he fought the urge to explain the circumstances that had brought him here. No one would believe him anyway.
The clerk handed a card key to Peter. “Take this to elevator four over to your right and hand it to the operator. He’ll bring you right up. Enjoy your evening.”
Peter headed toward the bank of elevators, avoiding the eyes of those around him. He didn’t want to admit he hoped meeting a strange woman in the honeymoon suite of a Boston hotel would fill the desperate void in his heart. He knew what people would think and what conclusions they’d draw if they suspected his deception. To hell with them. No one understood what he was going through. And even if they did, it didn’t matter.
He was like a train whose conductor had thrown the wrong switch—compelled to continue on this course until the bitter end.
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