Sleepwalker

by Karen Robards

  “So, I’ll make you a deal: you don’t want to go off to dreamland like your buddy, you tell us how many other search teams are out here looking for us, and where they are,” Jason said to their captive, stepping away from his handiwork. The belt worked very well as a means of securing Tobe to the tree, as Mick duly noted. On his own, Tobe wasn’t getting out of that anytime soon.

  “I—I don’t …” After one look at Jason’s face, Tobe gave up trying to lie. “Probably about ten. We’re supposed to be covering the roads leading up from the lake, and looking for a cabin or RV or something where you might have holed up last night.” He shot a reproachful glance at Mick. “Sheez, Mick, some of us was worried that something bad was maybe happening to you.”

  While Mick felt a prick of conscience at what felt very much like her own betrayal of Tobe and the others’ friendship, which she knew was ridiculous, because they would have shot her or turned her over to whoever in a heartbeat on Uncle Nicco’s or Iacono’s orders, Jason redirected Tobe’s focus with a snap of his fingers. “Where are they now?”

  “All scattered out. But we went over this area last night, so a lot of them are further east. There are some cabins up that way they’re checking out.”

  East being away from town, away from the expressway. Away from the direction they needed to take in order to get out of the forest.

  “Any others close by here?” Jason asked.

  “Otis and some guy are up by 92. And Snider and Abrizzo are around here somewhere.”

  “Probably we should go,” Mick said to Jason, very calm.

  “Yeah,” Jason agreed.

  “Mick …” Tobe looked at her.

  “Sorry, Tobe.” There was a note of sincere apology in Mick’s voice as, just out of Tobe’s sight, Jason lifted his gun over Tobe’s head, then clobbered him, too.

  Thunk. At the sound, Mick winced.

  Tobe’s breath expelled in a whoosh, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he slumped like he’d suddenly been deflated. Only the belt securing him to the tree kept him upright.

  “You promised him,” Mick said.

  “I lied.” Jason was already striding away.

  “Key?” Mick called after him. She didn’t even bother to ask where he was going, because she knew: to get the suitcase. God forbid he should leave it behind.

  “Got it off the driver.” He tossed the key to her. Catching it, she tucked her gun into her pocket as she ran to the snowmobile. Hopping on, she started it up, feeling the machine throb to life beneath her. With a quick glance at the two men they were leaving slumped unconscious against the trees, Mick shifted the snowmobile into reverse. By that time, Jason, lugging the suitcase, had reappeared. He was wearing a ski mask and gloves, and the change in his appearance momentarily gave her a start.

  “Put these on. If they see us from a distance maybe they’ll think we’re them.” He thrust a pair of gloves at her. Mick recognized them instantly: Tobe’s. But she wasn’t proud, and while she hated the idea that Tobe’s hands might freeze, she hated the fact that her hands were freezing more. Pulling them on, she took the ski mask he gave her next and—after turning it wrong side out because she hated the idea of Tobe germs—pulled it on, too, tucking her hair up beneath it. Jason was right: seen from a distance, any other search parties would probably mistake them for Tobe and the other guy. Until, that is, they found Tobe and the other guy. Which she would make sure they did, once she and Jason were safely somewhere else.

  “You want to scoot back?” He jogged alongside her as she carefully reversed out of the tight spot the snowmobile had been left in.

  “Hell, no. And unless you’re planning on leaving the money behind, you’re going to have to let me drive, because somebody has to hang on to the suitcase, and it’s not going to be me.” She braked, shifting into forward. “Get on.”

  Jason gave her a hard look, then appeared to realize that she meant what she said.

  “Fine.” Throwing a leg over the seat behind her, he hiked himself into position and clamped the suitcase to his side. “You ever driven one of these things?”

  “Once or twice. Hang on.” Cranking the throttle, she steered for white space as the snowmobile took off like a bottle rocket. Thrown backward, he grabbed her around the waist with his free arm. She had to smile. Michigan born and bred, with a father who loved all things outdoors, she was as comfortable operating a snowmobile as she was driving a car.

  “Head for that service station you were talking about by the freeway,” he yelled in her ear. Between the roar of the engine and the whoosh of the wind whipping past, she could still barely hear him. “Maybe we can pick up a car there. And for God’s sake don’t hit a tree.”

  That last was uttered as she dodged through a particularly thick section of forest. Mick smiled again at the very real apprehension in his voice. Then she quit smiling to concentrate on what she was doing. The forest looked like a winter wonderland, all white and sparkly from the previous night’s storm. But the layer of ice on top of the snow, coupled with the uneven terrain, made the going treacherous. With drifts piled everywhere like flash-frozen waves, and the iridescent crust misdirecting the eye, it was impossible to be sure exactly what was what. The biggest danger lay in the possibility that a log or rock big enough to wreck them could have been hidden beneath the snow. No, she corrected herself, the biggest danger lay in the fact that they might encounter Snider and Abrizzo. Or Otis and whoever. Or any of the searchers.

  The mere thought made her stomach knot.

  They were maybe ten minutes from the service station, running parallel to the road but still well concealed by forest, when it happened: a pair of snowmobiles swooped into view. Mick didn’t know where they’d come from. But all of a sudden, there they were, skating toward them, one right behind the other.

  Uncle Nicco’s men.

  Two on each machine. From the determined way they were driving at her, and the fact that the guy riding pillion on the lead machine was wearing the standard uniform pants of Uncle Nicco’s security crew beneath his puffy blue goose-down jacket, she had no doubt at all about who they were.

  She caught her breath. Her heart gave a great leap.

  “Shit,” said the man behind her.

  Chapter

  16

  There are two ways to play this, Mick thought. Keep heading right toward them, maybe even wave as we pass, and hope like hell none of the men on the other snowmobiles realize that we aren’t part of the search team, too. Or change course and hope like hell, etc., etc.

  Even if the men weren’t aware that she and Jason were on the run on a snowmobile, even if they didn’t recognize that she and Jason weren’t part of their crew, it was quite possible that if they got close enough they might be able to tell that she was a woman. Even swathed in Jason’s coat and a pair of oversized sweatpants, with a ski mask covering her face and hair and gloves on her hands, she was afraid her size and build made her gender pretty unmistakable. The bottom line was that they weren’t going to be mistaken for just random snowmobilers.

  Plus Jason was carrying that damn suitcase. If they got close enough, no way was any search crew missing that.

  Stomach tightening with dread, Mick made the only call she could: she changed course, presenting to the oncoming men the side that was not adorned with a stolen suitcase full of cash. Trying to do it casually, she sent the snowmobile zooming up the hill toward the road, praying that the other snowmobilers would just keep scooting along in the direction in which they’d originally been going.

  Would it work? The only way to know was to try.

  “They’re following us,” Jason yelled in her ear. Mick nodded grimly. This she already knew, because she had just seen the snowmobiles’ bulbous white noses pop up in her rearview mirrors. Forcing her attention forward, she opened up the throttle little by little, not wanting to put on a giant burst of speed because that would be a dead giveaway, if one was still needed. Their pursuers never dropped out of sight. Every time
she glanced in a mirror, her heart thumped harder. Her pulse pounded so loudly that it practically drowned out the roar of the snowmobiles. She could feel sweat breaking out on her palms. It was possible, of course, that the snowmobiles behind them were simply following what they thought was another search team for some entirely innocent purpose. It was possible that …

  Pfft. Pfft. Pfft.

  Mick heard the weird, whispery sounds that seemed to originate from somewhere behind her, but in those first few split seconds she couldn’t think what they could have been. Then the follow-up sounds—unmistakable, as they always made her think of a hand slapping flesh—clued her in in a hurry. They were taking fire from weapons equipped with silencers. The follow-up smacks were bullets crashing into trees.

  Yee-ow! I think they know it’s us.

  “Holy Christ,” Jason yelled, his voice whipped away by the wind as he apparently made the same connection. Mick sucked in enough cold air to make her lungs ache as a bullet whizzed so close to her cheek that she could feel the tickle of its passing.

  “Hit it.” Jason’s urgent order in her ear was unnecessary.

  “Hang on.” Leaning low over the handlebars, Mick gunned the throttle, giving the engine every last little bit of juice she could. The snowmobile bucked like a frisky colt, then shot up the hill through the trees. She drove like a NASCAR driver jockeying for the lead, dodging in and out among what felt like thousands of obstacles, accelerating until they were barely touching the ground. Arm clamped around her waist, Jason hung on, his big body curled around her, either to protect her or to get low himself, she didn’t know. She could feel his chest moving against her back. He was either breathing hard or cursing steadily. Probably both.

  Pfft. Pfft. Pfft. Pfft.

  The bullets kept coming, terrifying in their near silence. How close they came to finding their target was impossible to mistake as they crashed into branches just inches overhead and sent nearby tufts of snow exploding upward like feathers flung into the air. Teeth clenched, cringing at every too-close call, Mick drove like a bat out of hell, zigzagging in and out through the trees, going airborne over moguls, sliding sideways on one ski in lightning changes of direction in hopes of making at least one of their pursuers crash, all the while charging up toward the road, because at least that was the way out.

  “Hold steady a minute,” Jason yelled.

  Hold steady? Not possible.

  “Yeah, right.” She dodged a huge oak, skidded around a stand of hollies and plunged between two shaggy pines. A glance in her rearview mirror showed her that she had gained some ground with her maneuvers, but not enough: the other snowmobilers still raced after them. The passengers on both vehicles were firing at will. Mick faced the hard truth: there was nowhere to go to elude them, and outrunning them wasn’t going to work, either. The vehicles all operated at approximately the same speed.

  What do I do now?

  A jolt that felt kind of like she had just taken a knee to her spine made her think at first that she had been hit in the back. Panic clutched at her throat.

  Crack. Crack.

  That sound was unmistakable: gunfire sans silencer. It was so close at hand that she jumped. A glance in her mirrors confirmed it: Jason had his Sig out and was shooting back.

  All became clear in an instant: the knee to the spine she’d felt had been him wedging the suitcase in between their bodies so it wouldn’t fall off, thus freeing his right arm to shoot. Exasperation was too mild a word to describe what she felt when she realized that he had found a way to secure the suitcase rather than drop it even under such dire conditions as these.

  Pft. Pft. Pft. Pft.

  Bullets came thick and fast. She couldn’t keep dodging successfully forever: the men behind them were bound to get off a lucky shot sooner or later. A glance in her rearview mirror showed her that their pursuers were still right on their tail. Even as she watched, a tiny spurt of orange exploded from the mouth of one of the pistols aimed at them. By the time she saw it, of course, the bullet had already whizzed past, but that didn’t help her instinctive response: steer hard left.

  “Jesus Marie, watch that ditch!” Jason shrieked.

  Mick looked forward just in time to see that there was, indeed, a ditch yawning directly in front of them. It was maybe ten feet wide and just as deep, with steep, rocky sides and ice forming a silver ribbon along its bottom: a creek, not a ditch. Nose-diving into it would severely injure, if not kill, them, she was sure. Realizing in that split second of awful recognition that there was no way to brake in time, no possibility of turning or avoiding it, Mick did the only thing she could: went at it full throttle.

  “Holy shit!” Jason grabbed onto her with both hands as they went airborne. Mick’s heart leaped into her throat as the snowmobile shot through space. For a few terrible seconds the chasm yawned dark and deadly beneath them. Then they hit the ground again, swoosh, and just like that they were speeding away. Mick felt a spine-tingling rush of adrenaline.

  Then she saw the other snowmobiles make the jump, too. One right behind the other.

  ]That worked. Not.

  Instead of being over, the chase was on again. More bullets whizzed past. Jason, cursing steadily, returned fire, but judiciously. As Mick ducked and drove, praying under her breath, the snowmobile dodged and slid and careened wildly, on the theory that a moving target was hard to hit, and a crazily moving target was even harder. Her heart pounded. Her pulse raced. Her throat closed up. The truth was terrifying: this gun battle was a fight they couldn’t win.

  They needed a plan, fast. Something that would give them at least a chance at getting away. A distraction …

  What did they want most, besides Jason and herself? The money, of course. If Jason were to throw the suitcase to them …

  “Throw the suitcase,” she screamed over her shoulder. The wind pelting her snatched the words from her mouth, whirling them away so she couldn’t even be sure he’d heard.

  Pfft. Pfft.

  Bang.

  “Throw the suitcase,” she screamed again, desperately driving up a steep bank thick with shaggy evergreens. The foliage would provide some cover, and when they popped over the ridge, they would at least be out of range for a few seconds.

  “What? No,” he shouted back.

  Mick got mad. “It’s my damn life, too, you greedy lunatic. You …”

  The snowmobile flew over the ridge just at that moment, and what she saw as it landed and her bottom smacked back down on the seat completely wiped the rest of what she had been going to say from her mind. The road was right in front of them. On it, heading their way at a leisurely pace that told her the driver had no clue that anything out of the ordinary was going down, was a police cruiser.

  Oh, my God: saved. Mick could have sworn she heard a heavenly chorus of hosannas going off in her brain.

  “Look there! We’re safe,” she shouted triumphantly to Jason, barreling toward the blue and white at full throttle. Running through a strip of cleared ground on the crest of a hill with forest about ten feet away on both sides, the road was a narrow, two-lane blacktop, already cleared and salted. Drifts where the plow had come through were piled high on either side, but beyond the drifts were twin lanes of pristine snow. The gray morning light was still iffy enough that the cruiser had its headlights on, although overhead dawn spun streaks of orange and pink and magenta through the rapidly lightening sky. Flashing her lights to attract attention, she ran the snowmobile down the west snow lane parallel to the road, expecting at any minute to see their pursuers cresting the ridge.

  “Wait. No. No fucking cops!” Jason’s reaction might not have been all she had been hoping for, but it wasn’t a surprise, and anyway, Mick didn’t care. Help was at hand, and she wasn’t about to let it just pass them on by because her passenger had an issue with the legal system. The thought of having to arrest Jason bothered her more than it should have, but it was the right thing to do, the thing she had meant to do all along, and anyway circumstances did
n’t seem to be giving her a whole lot of choice. The only other options were to just keep on running from the goons on snowmobiles until she and Jason either got shot or captured or somehow managed to escape—which had been looking less and less likely before this cop car had shown up—or to let Jason go. If he handed over the money, she might be persuaded to do exactly that, except for the fact that now it wasn’t looking like they were going to make it without an armed, official police escort out of there. She had to report the Lightfoots’ deaths as murders and hand over the pictures as evidence. The obvious question would then be how she had come by her information, and she was going to have to tell the truth. Doing anything else would compromise the reopened investigation, and, later, the prosecution of those responsible. But the good news was that she, as Jason’s arresting officer, could make sure he was well treated. She could also persuade the DA’s office to cut Jason a deal if he agreed to cooperate with the Lightfoot murder investigation, and then persuade him to cooperate in turn. If she could do that, which, once he was in jail, she figured she probably could, he might even actually escape prosecution himself.

  He could easily get off without any jail time. The only thing he would lose was the stolen money, which she wasn’t about to shed a tear over.

  “We need them,” she yelled back at Jason.

  “Will you listen a minute? No!”

  Even if she had been willing to listen a minute with murderous snowmobilers on their tail, it was too late. Having obviously seen them and correctly deduced that they needed help, the cruiser turned on its lights and siren and sped toward them. A quick glance in her mirrors told Mick that their pursuers had yet to crest the rise. Probably they would turn tail and run now that a siren was practically blasting the snow from the trees.