Sleepwalker

by Karen Robards

  “Knock yourself out.”

  “You know there’s no way you’re going to get away with this. Even if you didn’t leave any fingerprints behind—which I’m betting you did—your picture is there on the security camera. All they’re going to have to do is run it through the right computer database, like the military or prior arrests or even driver’s licenses, and your identity will pop up. After that, it won’t take them long to find you. Uncle Nicco has contacts like you wouldn’t believe.”

  “You let me worry about that.”

  Mick found it annoying that he didn’t sound particularly worried.

  “But don’t you see, the best way out of this for you is to let me arrest you and take you in. I’ll make sure you’re protected, and once you give a statement, once law enforcement knows about the money and the pictures, Uncle Nicco and his men lose their incentive to kill you. They’ll be too busy trying to stay out of jail themselves.”

  The wind tossing around the branches overhead grew stronger as she spoke. The volume of sound from what she feared was a heightening storm increased. Creaks and groans and a rapid-fire pitter patter that she guessed was the snow raining down through the trees were almost loud enough to drown out the crunch of their footsteps. Uncomfortably aware of the pelting quality of the snowflakes hitting them, Mick hunched her shoulders against the onslaught and fought the urge to shiver. If she started, she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to stop.

  “Once law enforcement knows about those pictures, your uncle Nicco loses his incentive to kill you,” he pointed out.

  “I’m aware.”

  “So you’re not going to go all family solidarity and keep your mouth shut about what you saw?”

  “I’d be a fool to, wouldn’t I?”

  “You would. I just wasn’t sure you realized it.”

  A huge rush of wind made the treetops sway as if they were dancing. From somewhere on high, a large amount of snow slid off to land with a heavy plop beside the road. Mick jumped, and looked, and as her head came up she realized that what was spilling down on them now was no longer just snow. It was mixed with sleet, and was starting to fall heavily despite the canopy overhead, coating everything in a slithery layer of ice.

  “This is bad,” she said, raising her voice to be heard over the sound of the storm. Moving even closer to the man beside her for whatever protection from the elements the bigger bulk of his body might provide, she found little relief. Already her flannel pants were growing damp. Luckily, the sleet rolled right off her coat. He wasn’t so lucky. Remembering the cotton fleece of his hood, she grimaced in sympathy: soon it would be soaked through, just like their pants and anything else that wasn’t waterproof. The night had gone from uncomfortable to unbearable in a matter of minutes. Much as she hated to acknowledge it, she was starting to get tired. And she was so, so cold. Dangerously cold. Unless the sleet stopped, it was only going to get worse.

  “Hopefully it won’t last too long.” His head bent and his shoulders hunched against the onslaught. Even though his face was turned toward her, his words were hard to hear over the wind. “If we can find some shelter, our best bet is probably to wait it out. How sure are you there’s a fishing store on this road?”

  “There used to be one. I don’t know if it’s still there.” Besides his dark form, and a few shadowy trees near the edge of the road, silvery sheets of mixed snow and sleet were all she could see every way she looked. She was shivering openly now. Her teeth chattered. Her legs felt heavy as lead. Her feet slipped and slid on the road, the snowy surface of which was now shiny with ice and pockmarked from the constant bombardment of pellet-like droplets. “If it is still here, we should be close. I think.”

  “I hope so.”

  She slipped again, nearly falling to her knees. He caught her with a grab at her arm. As she regained her balance, he wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her in close against him. Mick was surprised, then appreciative, as she realized that he was doing his best to both shelter her from the heightening downpour and provide support against the increasingly treacherous conditions underfoot. Under such dire circumstances, they had to rely on each other. Their best chance for making it out of this lay in working as a team. She wrapped her arm around him, too, burrowing her hand up under his jacket for warmth and protection from the wet, hanging on to his waist by clutching a fistful of his sweatshirt. Like that, huddled close, bent against the storm, they trudged on. They spoke only a little after that, and then for what felt like a long time not at all. In Mick’s case at least, it took every bit of strength and endurance she had just to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

  “We should have reached it by now. The fishing store,” she said finally.

  “I was afraid of that.”

  Letting her go—God forbid he should drop the suitcase instead!—he produced from his pants pocket the headlamp he’d worn earlier. He turned it on and shined it through the trees in every direction as they walked, in what was obviously a bid to find any possible shelter. Driving, icy snow immediately gleamed silver-white as the beam hit it, but that and trees, trees and more trees was all she could see no matter where she looked. At first, when she saw the light, Mick experienced a stab of alarm, and thought about pointing out that if anyone happened to be in the vicinity the light would make them impossible to miss. But then she faced the terrifying truth that, first, no one was in the vicinity, and, second, the danger posed to them by the weather outweighed the danger of any possible pursuer’s seeing the light and finding them. Besides, by that time, she was just too cold to talk.

  “Look at that.” They were the first words he’d said to her in forever.

  “W-what?” She was shivering so hard that it hurt to unlock her jaws enough to open her mouth.

  “Up there. Another deer stand. We can get inside, maybe.” The light pointed to the left, deep into the woods and about twenty feet up a huge old birch. What she saw, perched among the denuded branches, was a boxlike structure that seemed, as the light played over it, to possess the bare minimum of necessary requisites: a floor, four sides and a roof.

  “Thank God.” Or, at least, that’s what she tried to say. She wasn’t sure the words actually came out of her mouth. As far as shelter was concerned, the deer stand wasn’t much. But under the circumstances, being picky wasn’t in the cards. At this point the deer stand was the only game in town. At least it would get them out of the snow and wet and wind, and she wasn’t about to argue with anything that could do that.

  “Watch that drift. It’s deep.” Shining the light on a mound of snow in her path, which he had inadvertently started to plow through, he backed up out of it then walked around it, breaking a trail for her. So tired that it took real willpower to keep going, moving like a robot because her feet were so numb that she couldn’t feel them, with knees that were stiff as wood, she followed silently in his footsteps. He shined the light over the birch as they approached so that by the time they reached it she had already seen the metal brackets set like the rungs of a ladder into the massive trunk. Reaching the tree, looking up through blinding snow as he played the light over the structure high in its branches, she saw the weathered gray boards of what looked like a solid wood box: no door or other access was apparent. Blinking, she forced herself to focus and looked again. This time she saw the rope handle affixed to the corner of the floor just above the brackets and realized that it had to be part of a trapdoor.

  “Think you can climb up there?” He turned to look at her.

  Ordinarily she would have been indignant at the question. But at this point it wasn’t so far-fetched. Exhausted and frozen almost through as she was, hauling herself up those brackets was going to require effort.

  “Oh, yeah.” Her response was pure bravado, but hey, sometimes bravado worked.

  At the very least she needed a moment to summon her determination. Which was why she was still standing with her head tilted back, studying the deer stand, when all of a sudden he flicked
off the light and looked sharply back toward the road.

  “What?” Her face was too frozen to permit her to frown, but she looked toward the road, too, peering through the darkness and the curtain of snow, seeing nothing at all.

  “Hear that?”

  She was about to shake her head no when she realized that, actually, she did hear something: the kind of distant rumble that she vaguely associated with lawn mowers and Saturday mornings.

  At about that same moment she spotted them: two tiny lights, one following close behind the other, speeding through the trees toward the lake. Then, some little distance behind the first ones, two more lights appeared, popping up seemingly out of nowhere to zoom toward the lake, too. Mick realized that the lights were appearing out of nowhere because she was watching whatever they were attached to crest a hill.

  But what …?

  “Snowmobiles,” she squeaked as the truth dawned in a terrible flash.

  Chapter

  11

  The machines barreled down the gravel road they had abandoned just moments before. It didn’t require genius to figure out that the snowmobiles almost had to be part of the search party looking for them. Who else would be have been out at such an hour in such weather? Mick watched them with horror as they raced ever closer.

  “Climb.”

  His terse order needed no repeating. Heart pounding, blood pumping a mile a minute as a welcome jolt of adrenaline kicked in, she grabbed hold of the closest rung. Clumsy because she was stiff from the cold and the brackets were slick with ice, she began to climb as quickly as she dared. Snow stung as it hit her in the face, icy wet and driven by the force of the wind behind it. She made it to the top, then clung precariously some twenty-plus feet above the ground as she reached for the rope handle. Unable to help herself, she looked back toward the road again. The snowmobiles—two of them—were close enough now that she could make out their dark bulk schussing toward the lake. Their roar filled her ears. Their headlights shone forward, illuminating the driving snowfall, the road and the trees on either side of it, and the cold black stillness of the night itself in all its icy splendor. Other lights—powerful searchlights, which, she presumed, were being wielded by a second person riding behind the driver—swooped through the forest.

  Hunting them.

  Mick’s stomach turned over. Her pulse hammered in her ears. Would one of the searchers on the snowmobiles spot their tracks? That was her most immediate, pressing fear. Because of course they’d left a trail. How could they have not? Although it was possible that with the snow falling at the rate it was, maybe it was already covered over. Swallowing hard, praying that no stray footprint would betray them, she grabbed the rope handle and pulled. A trapdoor dropped open with a rusty creak, the hard edge of it just missing her head as she ducked just in time. With another harried glance at the careening snowmobiles, she grabbed the sides of the trapdoor and pulled herself up and inside. Her first thought was It’s such a relief to be in out of the wind and snow. Her second, panicky one was We’re going to be sitting ducks here. But there was nothing to do about it, nowhere else to go. If they were down on the ground, they would be spotted instantly.

  “Move,” came the grunt from behind her. Almost as soon as she had scrambled out of the way, the bundle of dry clothes, now not much larger than a basketball, was lobbed inside. Then one of the thief’s hands curled around the edge of the opening and the suitcase was boosted through—she didn’t know why she hadn’t expected it—to land partly over the entrance.

  “Grab that, would you?” he asked in a low voice as his head appeared. Making a face at him that she knew he couldn’t see, she complied, dragging the suitcase out of his way as he heaved himself in after it. Pushing her hood back so that she could see better, she glanced around and discovered a jumbled assortment of items piled against the far wall. Then he was inside, and her attention refocused on him. With both of them now on all fours on the floor, he pulled the trapdoor closed.

  They were alone in the pitch dark. For those first few moments, she could see absolutely nothing at all. If she hadn’t heard him breathing, she wouldn’t have known he was there with her. Outside, the storm howled. Snow and ice peppered the wood with a constant rat-a-tat-tat. Inside, it was cold but thankfully dry, and it smelled of cedar and old smoke and damp clothes—theirs.

  “Okay?” he asked. Mick nodded, realized he couldn’t see her, and answered firmly, “Yes.”

  Although she wasn’t really. She was cold to her bones and tired to death and both heartsick and terrified when she thought of what the next few days might bring. What she wanted to do was stay huddled on the floor, luxuriating in the absence of snow and wind, her mind a near blank, her body still. What she did was stand up, cautiously because she couldn’t see squat, and feel her way toward the wall facing the road. Inside, the deer stand was narrow but fairly long, maybe four by eight feet. A good-size structure, probably shared by several people. If it was anything like the one her father and his friends had used, it would have gun slots—long, narrow windows that allowed the hunter to remain hidden while keeping watch for prey—built in.

  “What are you doing?” he asked. From the sound of movement that preceded the question, and the position of his voice, she could tell that he was on his feet now, too.

  “There should be gun slots.” Stripping off her damp sock mittens, she stuck them in her breast pocket, then flexed her cold hands before patting them along the wall, carefully because the rough wood meant a chance of splinters. A moment later she was rewarded by discovering a short length of rope affixed to a section of wall. She presumed it was a handle. She pulled on it, and lo and behold, she discovered a gun slot. About a foot wide and three feet long, attached to the wall proper by metal hinges, it fell inward to lie against the wall. The slap of its landing made her flinch, although she knew no one besides herself and the thief could hear. A blast of cold air rushed in, which she ignored.

  “Jesus.” He was beside her now, looking out the slot. He’d lost the hood, she saw in a glance, and his face looked hard and set. Snow and ice blew in on them, but as she looked out, Mick barely noticed. Her throat closed up as she took in the scene unfolding below. The night was only slightly less dark than the inside of the stand. If it hadn’t been for the snowmobiles’ lights, she would not have been able to find them, or see anything at all. As it was, though, the vehicles themselves were impossible to miss, and the eerie way they lit up the forest gave it the macabre appearance of a set from one of Tim Burton’s movies. Black, skeletal trees loomed menacingly through a spectral-looking snowstorm. The snowmobiles themselves scooted along like giant, scurrying black beetles.

  There were more snowmobiles now, at least six that she could see. Two—Mick presumed they were the original two—were still on the road and had made it almost all the way down to the lake. Four more glided through the woods, two toward them, two in the opposite direction. Their progress was necessarily slow because of how tightly spaced the trees were. The searchlights swept the forest in a series of wide arcs.

  “Do you think they’ll find our footprints?” Mick asked. Her voice was scarcely louder than a whisper.

  “They haven’t yet.”

  As an answer it was less than satisfactory, but she got a better idea of how he really felt about the matter when she heard a distinctive metallic ratcheting sound and realized he had pulled out his gun and was checking to make sure there was a round in the chamber.

  Her heart thumped, and then, in this moment of necessity, the cool veil of professionalism descended. Welcoming it for its steadying properties, Mick pulled out her Glock and did the same. Their ammunition consisted of one clip each. As he’d put it earlier, if it came to a shoot-out, she didn’t like their chances. But because it was still hard for her to digest the fact that she’d wound up on the same side as a criminal she ought to have been arresting, in a twisted kind of way it was good to know that they were on the same page—that in this instance he had her back.<
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  “All they have to do is spot the deer stand and they’ll check it out,” she said. One of the snowmobiles was close now, not quite headed directly toward them but not off by much. Its headlight illuminated a relatively narrow segment of woods just to their left. The searchlight shining from the pillion seat was a different story: it swung back and forth in a methodical sweeping motion that was sure to at least touch on the birch that sheltered them.

  “So let’s hope they don’t look up.”

  Standing so close to him that their bodies touched as they watched the snowmobiles, Mick could feel the echo of her own rising tension in the tautness of his muscles and the intensity with which he tracked the searchers below. His Sig Sauer was held, arm down, by his side. Her Glock was in the same position.

  Her mouth twisted at the similarity. Cop or military training, she was all but certain.

  “They’ll see the brackets.” Remembering the shiny metal bars affixed to the rough charcoal trunk, Mick wet her lips. If the searchlight hit them, those brackets would gleam like black glass.

  “Maybe not.”

  Both of them watched as the closest snowmobile rolled ever nearer.

  “Listen. We don’t want to open fire unless we have no choice,” she said. Because her mouth was dry, her voice was raspy. Tearing her eyes away from the sight of the blindingly white beam that was now swinging relentlessly in their direction, Mick looked at the man beside her. He was in profile and his face was in deep shadow, but she saw that his eyes were narrowed and his mouth was grim. “Here’s the plan. If they find us, if we see it’s going to happen, I’m going to throw open the trapdoor and yell for help. Then I’m going to march you out of here at gunpoint as my prisoner. They know me, and unless somebody’s told them otherwise, they’ll defer to me because I’m a cop. I think I can keep us both alive until I can get us somewhere safe or we can escape.”

  I hope, she added silently. As plans went, it wasn’t much, but it was the best she could come up with.