Menace in Christmas River (Christmas River 8)

by Meg Muldoon

Or, if Cliff didn’t survive tonight, for straight-out murder.

  If anything could make walking out into an ice storm appealing, then that was it.

  “Holly,” I said in an almost-pleading voice. “You might have hurt him, but you can explain why you did what you did. People will listen if you give them a chance. I’m not saying it’ll be easy, but it could…”

  I stopped speaking when I caught the look in her eye.

  She’d already made up her mind. And not one thing I said was going to make a difference.

  “Nobody will understand anything,” she said, dropping the hammer and letting it hit the hard ground with a harrowing crack. “How could they?”

  And with that, she turned around and started walking again out into the storm.

  I just stood there, watching as her figure became smaller in the darkness.

  This was what she wanted.

  And maybe I should have had enough respect to accept that.

  But in the end, I did what I thought was right.

  Chapter 47

  I knew I shouldn’t have gone into the storm.

  I knew I belonged back inside the auditorium where it was warm and bright and safe.

  I knew that I should have stayed and waited for Daniel.

  But it was as if Holly Smith was about to hurl herself off a cliff in front of me. And letting her go out into the storm alone was equivalent to me watching her slip away without so much as lifting a finger to stop it.

  Maybe she had done something terrible.

  But I couldn’t let her do this to herself.

  “Stop!” I shouted again, running after her.

  My snow boots slid across the icy ground as I tried to run. But every time it felt as though I was spinning out of control, I’d somehow regain my balance and continue on.

  Holly seemed to be having the same problem with her footing. Only she had something I didn’t:

  Nothing to go back to.

  “Don’t do this, Holly!” I howled, the frosty air burning my lungs.

  She didn’t listen. She continued on into the storm, heading for the woods that surrounded the culinary school’s building like a pack of rabid wolves.

  A moment later, she disappeared over a steep hill and into the trees.

  I picked up the pace, trying to catch up to her. To stop her before she was forever lost.

  Because if she disappeared now, the next time anybody would see her would be in the spring once the snow thawed.

  “Holl—”

  I couldn’t finish saying it.

  Suddenly, my feet were in the air and I was flying backwards down the hill.

  Chapter 48

  “Ahhhh!”

  I let out a cry that could have freed the trees from their glass cocoons.

  But the indifferent wind took my howls away before they could reach anyone or anything.

  Holly had to have been out of range, now. And even if she could hear my screams, I wasn’t sure if it would have mattered one way or another.

  She was gone.

  I lay on the hard, unforgiving ground, stunned for a long moment at what had just happened. I stared up at the swirling ice and the suffocating wall of white all around me, deep in shock.

  Then, the pain kicked in.

  I cringed in agony.

  It was as if a million fire needles were being pricked into my left shoulder all at the same time. And with each passing moment, they were being jabbed deeper and deeper into my bones.

  It was apparent that something was very, very wrong with me.

  I tried to sit up, but the terrible stabbing sensation intensified and damn near took my breath away. Tears started flowing from my eyes uncontrollably, and my temples throbbed with a white-hot searing sensation.

  I let out a cry and lay back down on the ice.

  Dammit.

  Dammit.

  I stared up at the shards falling from the sky, feeling them ping mercilessly against my cold face as I tried to summon the courage to try and get up again.

  I gritted my teeth, feeling a few more tears pop over the rims of my eyelids.

  The pain was unlike anything I had ever felt before. As if my whole left side had just been doused with gasoline and set on fire.

  “Holly!” I shouted again, futilely. “Help!”

  But all I got back for my trouble were more needles.

  I looked back up into that white expanse, biting my lip, feeling lightheaded.

  And although I was blinded with pain, there was one thing I could see clearly enough:

  I couldn’t just lie out here waiting for help to come.

  By the time Kara noticed I was missing, she wouldn’t even know where to start looking. And there’d be a good chance it’d be too late, anyway.

  I was trembling something fierce, and I knew that it was only a matter of time before the first stages of hypothermia kicked in.

  I could no longer worry about chasing down Holly, convincing her to come back and face what she had done.

  I had to worry about getting out of this ice storm alive.

  And given that, I realized there was no other choice.

  “Ahhhhhh!!!”

  A bloodcurdling scream escaped my mouth as I pushed myself forward.

  I felt dizzy as I stumbled to my knees. The world around me turned white again. A fiery shade of white.

  I thought of Daniel. Of Huckleberry and Chadwick. Of sitting at home by the fireplace, the way we had a few nights before the Chocolate Championship. Safe and sound and warm.

  Daniel looking down at me with loving eyes, listening as I told him something silly about my day…

  All the love I felt for him.

  Far away from ice storms and disastrous competitions and spilled blood and people with bad intentions.

  I forced myself to my feet.

  I thought I wouldn’t make it: that I would for sure pass out from the pain. But to my surprise, I remained completely conscious for every excruciating moment.

  When I balanced myself on the slick ground, I looked back for a moment behind me.

  There, on the ice, were the shiny, shattered, scattered remains of what had once been my phone.

  It must have slid out of my pocket during the fall and hit the hard, unforgiving ice.

  I heard laughing. A kind of laughter that scared me with its desperation and anguish.

  It took me several moments to realize that it was coming from me: I was laughing like a lunatic busting free from the asylum.

  I bit my lip to stop the unholy sound and tried to steady myself against the wind.

  Things had gotten so bad so fast.

  My arm hung loosely from my shoulder in an unnatural way that made me want to blow chunks all over the ice just at the sight of it. I forced my eyes away before that happened. I turned back toward where I had come from – to where the culinary building was.

  Only… Only I couldn’t see it through the driving wall of sleet whipping around in front of me.

  I could see nothing, in fact. Nothing at all.

  A terror gripped my heart and squeezed harder than a cider press.

  I thought back to stories Warren had told me about the old days. The way the blizzards would sometimes descend upon Christmas River, back when every winter was colder and more severe. People who lived on farms near the town sometimes got disoriented and lost in the storm by just going from their house to the barn. Every once and a while, somebody wouldn’t make it back home.

  They were only found once the storm was through.

  And by then, it was far too late.

  I hadn’t ever been in one of those storms.

  Not until now.

  I took in a sharp breath of air and I felt my chills get worse as I did. More pain erupted from my mangled shoulder.

  Everything around me looked exactly the same. Snow and ice and tall trees bending beneath the weight of it all.

  “Okay, Cin, okay,” I whispered to myself, trying to cauterize the fear before it start
ed to flood though me. “One step at a time. Baby steps. Baby steps…”

  I had come up the hill. I knew that at least.

  I slowly walked down, one lethargic, heavy, leaden step at a time, my arm hanging lifelessly. When I got to the bottom, I headed in the direction I thought I had come from.

  A few more tears of pain rolled down my cheeks. I brushed them away with my functioning arm, refusing to let them go any further.

  I needed a drink.

  I needed a doctor.

  Most of all, I needed Daniel.

  But for now, I just needed to get back and—

  My right foot lost its traction suddenly, and I jerked forward. I shrieked in pain as I tried to regain my balance. But with half of me compromised, I didn’t have a chance.

  I fell forward, my knees taking the brunt of the impact this time.

  But it was my shoulder that took the brunt of the pain.

  I tried to stop what happened next, but I didn’t have the strength to.

  I was injured, freezing, and alone.

  And in that moment, the hopelessness of my situation hit me with all the force of an out-of-control freight train careening off the tracks.

  I leaned forward and sobbed hysterically into the cold, unfeeling, never-ending night.

  The building couldn’t have been that far, but it might as well have been the moon.

  And all I had to hold onto was regret and anger and pain.

  I could have blamed Holly for doing what she did. I could have blamed Cliff for treating others so badly. I could have blamed Samantha for the part she had played in turning a decent person into a bitter, mean, and cruel one.

  But the reason I was out here, alone, was because of the decisions I had made, and the decisions I had made alone.

  I had gone too far, yet again. Instead of stopping before it got to a point like this, I had kept pushing. Driven by something inside of me that had to know the truth and expose it to the light of day.

  It had once again gotten me into trouble, and maybe this time, the biggest of my life.

  I tried to heave myself forward in a desperate push to get to my feet again, but the pain was too intense.

  I slumped back down onto the ice, with no hope left.

  My cheeks were numb and I couldn’t feel my arms or my legs anymore. In a few more minutes, I wondered if I would feel anything at all.

  That would be something to look forward to, at least.

  I lifted my head, staring into the void in front of me.

  “Daniel,” I whispered to no one. “Daniel, I wish you could hear m—”

  I stopped speaking.

  Something touched my back.

  Something with a frail, light, delicate touch.

  I held in my sob, wondering if the sensation was real, or just the next stage of hypothermia.

  I turned my head.

  A small figure stood behind me, looking scared and lost and broken.

  But at peace, too.

  She kneeled down, reaching for my good arm. She placed it over her shoulders, and helped me back up.

  I gritted my teeth in pain, but got through it.

  Then I turned my head, looking at her for a long moment.

  She didn’t say anything.

  But she didn’t have to.

  We both knew the score.

  Holly Smith might have killed someone.

  She might have planned it, executed it, and tried to run from it.

  But she was doing the right thing now.

  A massive gust howled past us then, and as if by fate, the wall of ice up ahead cleared enough to see the faint outlines of the culinary building.

  We stumbled toward it.

  A moment later, over the whipping wind, I heard the sound of a car engine somewhere in the distance.

  A familiar car engine.

  One that I had been waiting on the whole night.

  The joy I felt in my heart made me forget all about the searing pain.

  We watched as the high beams of Daniel’s truck illuminated the storm.

  Chapter 49

  I opened the oven and pulled out the HubbaHubba Hazelnut Cherry Chocolate Love pies one at a time, inhaling a greedy breath of the hot, nutty, sweet air as I did.

  I wasn’t normally a fan of fruit and chocolate combinations when it came to pies. It always seemed to me like when combined, the two strong flavors would battle each other for the spotlight, leaving their best attributes by the wayside when they did. I much preferred it when flavors took a more pacifistic view of things, and danced together instead.

  But something about this pie flavor – with the bright, dazzling taste of the cherries and the seductive and almost-sinister qualities of the dark chocolate joined together by the flaky, buttery hazelnut crust… well, it was a match made in heaven.

  I lined up the pie tins in a row on the marble counter top with my good arm and hummed along to a live version of Frank Sinatra’s “The Very Thought of You,” feeling taken by Old Blue Eyes’ smooth, soulful crooning.

  I pulled my mitten off with my teeth and dusted off my apron. My eyes drifted out the back window for a second, and I paused, admiring the scene.

  It was a beautiful, sparkling morning in late February. Snow from the storm earlier in the month was still piled in drifts around the deck and in the forest, but a good deal of it had already melted. With warmer temperatures lately, the trees that had survived the storm had finally emerged from their icy tombs, feeling the rays of sunshine on their bare branches for the first time in weeks.

  And most importantly, there was no trace anywhere of the deadly ice that had kept us snowbound in the culinary school’s auditorium this past Valentine’s Day.

  I watched for a moment as a gust of warm wind wound its way through the trees, making their damp pine needles sparkle in the sunlight like diamonds floating through the air.

  I took in a deep breath, enjoying the moment.

  Here in the pie shop, surrounded by the soul-warming smells of sugar and pastry and fruit and chocolate, looking out at such a pristine, picturesque landscape… the Valentine’s Day Chocolate Championship Showdown felt like just a nightmare. Just some fuzzy, half-remembered dream that had never existed this side of reality.

  But every once and a while, those half-remembered moments would come back to me. Sometimes in the middle of the night, I’d close my eyes before bed and see Holly Smith’s young and scared face staring back at me in the storm. Her eyes desperate and terrified, brimming with tears and pain and madness.

  I felt a chill pass through me at the memory now, and I rubbed the side of my compromised arm out of habit.

  Holly Smith had had a very bad Valentine’s Day, and the rest of the year wasn’t going to be any better for her. She was in deep, and sometimes, I wondered whether she was strong enough for what was up ahead. The publicity, the trial, the reliving of it all, the sentencing… It wasn’t going to be pretty. And her life was going to be forever altered by what she had decided to do that afternoon at the Chocolate Championship.

  But there were two silver linings to all of it – at least, from what I could see.

  Holly had done the right thing. She’d come back, of her own freewill, and she’d helped me get back to the culinary building, thereby saving me from a cold and bitter fate.

  And aside from that, she wasn’t facing a murder charge like she might have been if Cliff had died from his injuries.

  Cliff Copperstone had survived the blow. Daniel had gotten Cliff to the hospital in time, successfully navigating a nightmare of icy roads and white-out conditions. The Sheriff had lived up to Eleanor Tunstall’s opinion of him – he showed everyone that he was a man who got things done.

  Cliff had lost a significant amount of blood from his head injury and had suffered a fractured skull, but according to the newspapers, his outlook was very good. When weather conditions improved, he’d been airlifted to Legacy Emmanuel Hospital in Portland. His doctors there told the press that Cliff woul
d most likely make a full recovery.

  The news had been a big relief. And not just for Holly Smith.

  Samantha Garner had been pretty relieved to hear that her former fiancé was going to be okay, too.

  Because even though their past had already been written in stone, there was no reason that the future couldn’t be different.

  “Uh, Ms. Peters?”

  I pulled my eyes from the majestic landscape out the window and turned around.

  Good old Tobias was standing there by the dividing door, the way he usually did when he had a question or was running low on a certain pie flavor out in the dining room.

  I smiled to myself for a short second.

  It was the small things in life that made it worth living.

  “Yeah, Tobias?”

  “Are you doing okay in here with that shoulder of yours? Do ya need any help while Tiana’s on her break?”

  I glanced down for a moment at my arm.

  After dislocating my shoulder in the fall, Daniel had, for the second time that night, driven somebody to the emergency room. It was slow going there for a while on those icy roads, and I threw up along the way. But we’d been lucky: we didn’t slide off or have the truck’s battery die again, the way it had on Daniel’s return trip to the auditorium – which had been the reason it took him so long. The poor sheriff had damn near frozen himself trying to get that truck’s battery up and running again.

  “Thanks for your concern, Tobias, but I’m managing just fine,” I said, nodding to my injury. “I think I’ve finally gotten the hang of this.”

  My shoulder still ached often, the way an injury like that could. But I was lucky – it hadn’t required surgery, and it was getting better with each passing day. And while I felt impatient with its slow recovery, the doctor had said I’d be back to baking pies with both arms within a month or so.

  And I guess compared to everything that could have happened the night of the big storm, a dislocated shoulder and a broken phone wasn’t all that bad.

  “Well, you let me know if you do need any help, ma’am,” he said

  “I sure will, Tobias.”

  He started to leave, heading back out to the dining room. But then he stopped in his tracks.