Zero-Degree Murder

by M. L. Rowland

  “Be quiet,” he said, tracing the length of her body with his fingertips, his feather touch raising the hair along her arms and other places.

  “You’re seducing me.”

  “Will you shut up?”

  Then he kissed her again, deeply, his tongue seeking hers, his hands entwined in her hair, pulling her down on the bench and dragging the sleeping bags over the top of both of them.

  Gracie closed her eyes, refusing to think, refusing to face what would come after, shutting out the rest of the world. In the sanctuary of the cave, no one but the two of them existed. She immersed herself in the moment, submitting herself wholly to his touch, his scent, knowing nothing but the taste of his lips and the feel of his body on top of hers.

  CHAPTER

  73

  MILOCEK groaned in pain as he drew his cotton sock, saturated and stiff with half-frozen blood, from his injured foot.

  He sat on a prickly mat of evergreen boughs at the base of a massive fir tree; the bottom branches drooped low, keeping the ground beneath dry and virtually clear of snow. The little tipi fire he had built of broken twigs and fir needles snapped and popped and cast a halo of orange light throughout the tiny enclosure.

  Milocek’s nose and cheeks were numb. His fingers burned with cold. He snugged the wool blanket up tighter around his shoulders and bent to examine his foot.

  The spikes the woman searcher wore on her boots had sliced through the tendons and ligaments of the instep and broken at least one, maybe more, of the small metatarsal bones. The skin was mottled red and purple with bruising. Blood dripped from the wound onto the hard-packed dirt.

  Milocek had followed the woman down the side of the mountain. Boiling with rage, he wanted to kill her, needed to kill her. But he managed only fifty feet when the ferocious pain in his foot had forced him to stop.

  Now huddled in the shelter of the giant fir, he dragged Rob’s knapsack toward him, unclipped the buckle of the top flap and pulled out the remnants of the gourmet brunch prepared for the hikers by the hotel.

  Pushing up his pant leg, he dabbed clean the twin punctures on his shin with a salmon-colored cloth napkin. With his knife, he slit a second napkin into a single long strip and, with the gentle care of a mother, used it to bind his foot.

  He wolfed down the discarded crusts of a shrimp-salad sandwich and finished off a bag of kettle chips in between swigs of water.

  Then he added several more twigs to the tiny fire and lay down with his head on the empty knapsack. He drew his knees up to his chest to preserve his core heat and dragged long, heavy evergreen boughs up over himself.

  His eyes closed.

  • • •

  SCREAMS INSIDE MILOCEK’S head snapped him awake. His mother’s. Those of girls and women dragged away by his men. Diana’s—muffled by his hand, cut short by his blade.

  He threw back the blanket of evergreen boughs and sat up. Digging into a jacket pocket, he pulled out a crumpled pack of Camels, shook one loose, grabbed it with cracked and peeling lips, and lit it with his lighter. He drew the smoke deep into his lungs and exhaled it through his nostrils in two thin streams.

  The little fire had died to glowing embers. He snapped off dead branches from the tree trunk behind him and added them, with a handful of needles to the fire, watching as the flames devoured the dry fuel.

  Milocek had started young. At the age of eight he had killed a squirrel in a fit of rage after watching helplessly as his drunken father beat his mother unconscious and smashed his little sister’s eye socket, leaving the girl partially blind and permanently disfigured. As the young Radovan gutted the squirrel, he anticipated the satisfaction he would feel when he plunged a kitchen knife deep into his father’s neck.

  As the boy grew, he sharpened his skills on larger animals—a stray dog, a wild pig—until each evisceration was accomplished with precision. He learned to savor the sound and feel of the blade slicing through tissue and bone, the rich smell of the open cavity, the brilliant blood still pumping freely until he stopped it with a flick of his blade.

  The day he watched his father smash his mother’s skull with a shovel, splashing her brains across the gray wood of the barn, Radovan slit the throat of his mother’s killer, nearly severing his head from his body with the finely honed knife he kept hidden beneath his shirt. The boy field-dressed the carcass and hung it from a meat hook in the barn. He set fire to the tinder-dry straw in an empty stall, then walked away forever, the smell of woodsmoke and burning flesh filling his nostrils.

  He was fourteen.

  As an adult, Milocek had killed countless men, taking great pleasure in the slow blade. He had allowed his men to take women, young and old, to do with as they pleased. But he had never participated, operating within the confines of his own strict code of conduct.

  Dispatching the man rescuer had been too easy, as effortless as snapping his fingers, robbing him of much of the thrill that accompanied the kill. Diana had been weak, submissive. There had been no challenge in taking her life. No joy.

  But the woman searcher was strong. A fighter. A worthy adversary. He had underestimated her. But he never made the same mistake twice. He would find her and he would kill her. He shivered with the thought of drawing his blade across that long, slender throat and watching the life sparkle die in her eyes.

  Milocek looked down at his foot. The blood had already soaked through the cloth bandage.

  He needed to stop the bleeding.

  He unwound the damp binding from his foot, then drew out his knife and held it to the fire. He pinched the edges of the wound together and, growling like an animal, pressed the flat of the steel blade against the skin.

  His dry lips cracked and bled as he smiled and breathed in the scent of sizzling flesh.

  CHAPTER

  74

  THE glowing dial of Gracie’s watch told her it was 5:23 A.M.

  In the darkness, she could hear Rob breathing softly, rhythmically in sleep.

  In spite of the specter of fear hovering just beneath the surface, she felt curiously light, as if her body could float on a puff of air.

  At first, her and Rob’s lovemaking had been ferocious, their thirst for each other insatiable. Gracie forgot all else in total immersion of the moment. Rob’s touch was an unself-conscious exploration, testing, teasing, then generous, awakening in her the desire to discover and give selflessly in return. Closure was dizzying, fast, mutually satisfying.

  The second time was a slow, delicious feast for the senses. A murmur. A laugh. A gasp. A groan of pleasure. Rob’s silken fingers gliding beneath her clothes, searching, cajoling. Down Gracie’s back, her arms, over her hips. The earthy perfume of his skin. The sweet taste of his lips, his tongue, the whiskered skin of his jaw and neck, the mat of chest hair running in a dark line to his navel. And the perfect warmth of his mouth on hers.

  Gracie reached back and above her head and turned on the little lantern.

  Rob didn’t stir.

  She studied his face, serene with sleep. The long dark eyelashes, shining hair tousled and curling. He was without a doubt the most physically beautiful person she had ever seen. But it was his mind, his gentleness, his sanity, his surprising normality to which she was drawn.

  Too good to be true, Gracie told herself with an internal sigh. She had found out the hard way that someone that good looking was most likely a super-sized prick. Time no doubt would reveal Rob’s dark side, an underbelly. He probably drank too much. Or was into heavy drugs. Or gambled too much. Or was abusive—verbally, emotionally, physically. Or he possessed a secret, dark and terrible, like Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre, although she doubted he harbored a mad wife in his New York attic.

  Still, she thought with a smile, I have no regrets.

  Ralph’s blue-gray eyes appearing in her mind’s eye submersed her in a wave of remorse and jarred her fully awake. She del
iberately pushed the thought aside, knowing she would have to deal with that—with Ralph—later, if . . . when she and Rob made it out of there.

  She studied Rob’s face again, cementing every line, every aspect to memory, savoring every second, knowing it would inevitably end.

  Sadness rose to choke her throat. She reached out and touched his hair with her fingertips.

  Rob’s eyes opened and looked into hers.

  She pulled her hand back. “Sorry,” she whispered.

  He drew her to him, brushing his lips across hers. “I’m not.”

  CHAPTER

  75

  GRACIE stood outside the snow cave, thigh-deep in pristine powder snow. Her breath wafted around her in diaphanous clouds of vapor. Overhead the predawn sky was clear, cloudless, the stars retreating. A blush of pink in the east heralded the new day.

  All around, trees and boulders were heavily laden with snow, as if they had been dipped in white frosting. Far above her head, skyscraper peaks, white and perfect, rose up and up, reclaiming their dominance against the flawless sky. The silence was absolute.

  Along with the clearing weather had come the cold. The air, free of scent, prickled the inside of Gracie’s nose and cut into her lungs with every breath.

  She tipped her head back and stared up into the alabaster sky.

  It was over. She had done it. She had kept them alive.

  With the thought came no elation, no relief, no sense of a job well done. Only the knowledge that the nightmare was ending along with an all-encompassing exhaustion of body and mind and an overwhelming loneliness.

  She heard Rob crawl out of the cave behind her and scrunch through the snow to stand so closely behind her that wisps of his breath floated over her shoulder.

  “Incredible,” he breathed.

  Gracie smiled back up at him. His eyes were dark and bright and alive.

  “The best thing about a winter storm is what comes after,” she whispered back. “This—all of this—is what I live for.”

  “This is what we all should live for,” he said.

  CHAPTER

  76

  GRACIE drove the ice axe into the snow with both hands and dropped to her knees. She covered her mouth and nose with her mittens and breathed in the warmed air. Her eyes roamed the surrounding landscape, the incline above, the canyon below, the rocks, boulders, bushes, trees. No movement caught her eye. No unnatural splash of color drew her attention. No sign of Joseph made her heart stop. All was silent and still.

  With the clearing skies, Sixty King, the Sheriff Department’s helicopter, would fly at first light to look for them. Believing as Gracie did that Cashman had never reached the Command Post to relay their location, logic told her that the helicopter’s initial route would be to follow the Aspen Springs Trail in from the trailhead parking lot.

  But unless Gracie could somehow draw the flight crew’s attention, they might very well miss the ant wearing an orange Search and Rescue parka among the thousands of trees.

  Gracie and Rob had argued in heated whispers about the risk of her climbing up to the trail alone with Joseph possibly having survived the storm and out looking for them. Gracie had finally pulled rank and ordered him to stay behind to pack up the rest of the gear. Now she was slogging her way up to the trail for what she hoped was the last time in her life. Once she was out in the open, she would wave her arms, blow her whistle or, when the sun crested the eastern ridge, signal with her mirror, whatever it took to make herself noticeable.

  The climb grew into endless torture; a marathon of willpower. Gracie’s nearly empty reserve of energy quickly dwindled to nothing as she plowed through the snow calf-deep in places, waist-high in others. She propelled herself upward with her arms like a swimmer in high surf. She was an automaton, her body moving of its own volition. She plunged in her ice axe, stabbing the hillside with her crampons to seek purchase in the snow. Stumbling, falling, pushing herself back to her feet, she clawed her way up out of the canyon.

  Now she rested on her knees, allowing the pain in her chest to diminish. She sat back on her heels and looked up. High above, the trail—invisible through the trees—wound along the mountainside, unattainable as perfection. Higher still, snow-covered mountain peaks glowed pink with the first rays of the morning sun.

  Move, Gracie told herself. With the sun comes Sixty King. Get out from under the trees and into the open.

  Her body refused.

  She tipped her head back and prayed. Please, God, give me strength. Help me get up to the trail.

  But when she opened her eyes to the mountains rising up before her, she knew she couldn’t go another step. She was played out.

  • • •

  SHE FELT IT first as a shimmer in the air, an indistinct pulse barely distinguishable from the beating of her own heart, growing until finally she heard it: an unmistakable whumping—the staccato rhythm of an approaching helicopter.

  Sixty King.

  She would be invisible under the cover of the trees. “Oh, God!”

  The throbbing grew louder. Gracie blew long, hard blasts on her whistle until black spots kaleidoscoped before her eyes. She waved her arms until Sixty King roared overhead like a giant prehistoric beast, its wake whipping the snow into whirling dervishes of white.

  The helicopter disappeared over the tops of the trees. The thump of the rotor blades faded to a throb, then silence.

  They hadn’t seen her.

  “They’ll come back!” Gracie croaked. “They’ll circle around and do another sweep.”

  A final burst of adrenaline pushed her up the mountain. She climbed, fell headlong in the snow, forced herself to her feet. With muscles straining, arms flailing, grabbing, hauling, she drove herself up to the trail.

  With a grunt, Gracie fell full length into the deep snow on the trail.

  She allowed herself no time to recover her breath. Instead she pushed herself to her feet and waded up the trail in the direction the helicopter had flown. But she had taken only a few steps before she stumbled to a stop, unable to see. Weaving on her feet, she sucked air into her lungs until her vision cleared.

  Dread wrapped cold arms around her. She lifted her eyes. On a ridge high above her head, a cornice of snow curled elegantly against the cerulean sky. Turning around slowly, she looked down to where below her a vast white scar slashed the canyon wall.

  She stood dead center of an avalanche trough, its concave chute lying in wait for her to brush its hair trigger and release the slide.

  Gracie forced her fast, shallow breathing to slow and deepen until she could listen, ears attuned to any sound signaling an instability of the death trap on which she stood, a collapsing of the layers that preceded the violent onslaught.

  Dread crystallized to horror as only a hundred yards below, Rob waded out from among the trees and onto the snow field. He had followed her up the mountain after all. Drawn out by the sound of the helicopter, he stopped and looked up.

  Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Gracie swung her arm wide. “Move back!” she yelled. “Go back!”

  Rob cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled something indecipherable back.

  Gracie crept on eggshells to the edge of the chute, into the safety of the trees, praying all the while that Rob would recognize the danger and do the same.

  An agitated Steller’s jay, blue feathers brilliant against the snow, hopped from limb to limb in a nearby pine, jarring the quiet with its loud squawking.

  Had Rob understood her frantic gestures? Gracie craned her neck, trying to see if he had backed away from the chute. But trees now blocked her line of sight. She stood on tiptoe, not quite able to see—

  A scrunching of snow snapped her eyes back down the trail.

  Joseph.

  Twenty feet away. Limping toward her. Fast. The curved knife in his fist, blade out for the stab
and slice.

  Time slowed to a crawl.

  Gracie’s heart thudded in her chest. Every aspect of the man’s face appeared in crystal-clear high definition. Eyes shadowed in their sockets. Lips—dried to white, cracked, bloodied—pulled back into a ghoulish grimace of yellowed teeth. Pale, frostbitten splotches on nose and cheekbones.

  The curving silver knife blade.

  He was ten feet away.

  Eight.

  Six.

  Gracie planted her feet, blew out a long breath, and watched him come.

  His arm swung back for the strike.

  Gracie swung her ice axe like a scythe and planted the sharp pick deep into the soft flesh of Joseph’s cheek.

  Bones and teeth crunched.

  Joseph slid to his knees at Gracie’s feet, slapping both hands to the wound and spattering bright blood in an arc around them. The knife shot out of his hands and disappeared into the snow.

  Gracie turned to run.

  Joseph lunged up, grabbed her around the waist from behind, and heaved her over the side of the cliff.

  CHAPTER

  77

  GRACIE fell, arms and legs and mind whirling.

  She hit a rock. Bounced off. Tumbled down.

  Stop yourself before it’s too late!

  She heaved herself over onto her stomach and jammed her ice axe into the snow. The pick bounced off and slammed the adze back into the padding of her chest pack.

  She stabbed the pick in again with all her weight behind it. It buried and caught.

  Her body’s momentum pulled the handle out of her hands. The strap on her wrist yanked her up short. Her shoulder wrenched. Pain exploded through her upper body.

  The axe pulled loose.

  She slid down on her side. Hit another rock. Her parka’s slippery shell propelled her like a rocket. She picked up speed.