Winter at the Door

by Sarah Graves

  Howling. Oh, yeah … As she snapped off the siren, her door opened and she half fell out, into Dylan Hudson’s arms.

  “Lizzie? You all right?” He set her on her feet.

  Briskly, professionally. No embrace. “I’m … fine.” Dazed, roughed up a little. But nothing worse. “Really, I’m absolutely—”

  Her legs went out from under her as Missy Brantwell and Chevrier came running up. “Dad!” Missy cried. “Are you okay?”

  “Sit Lizzie down, Hudson,” Chevrier ordered sharply, turning back toward his vehicle. “I’ll call the—”

  Paramedics: an ambulance ride, an ER checkup. “No!” She sat up. “Go look at Brantwell, I think he hit his head.”

  Too bad it wasn’t on a baseball bat, she thought. Or maybe a brick. “And send those EMTs to my office in Bearkill. Washburn’s in there and he’s hurt.”

  Missy bent to her father. “Dad?” But he only turned his face away, the girl peering up uncomprehendingly as Lizzie went on.

  “Cody, cuff him up, will you? He’s a collar.”

  “But he didn’t do anything, you can’t just—”

  Brantwell turned back to her. “Shut up, Missy,” he said tiredly. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, and that’s my fault. But just shut up, okay? It will,” he finished as Chevrier bent over him, “be easier for me if you do.”

  The girl stared, shocked silent. Meanwhile Dylan crouched by Lizzie.

  “So you’ve got him cuffing people now, just on your say-so? Guess he’s starting to trust you a little bit.”

  No concern for possible injuries; no warmth in his voice, either. The hell with you, buddy.

  “Great. My heart’s desire achieved.” She made her own voice light, dug around in her bag for a tissue, and touched it to her cheek where the airbag had hit it. Her nose felt punched, too.

  But she was okay. “Brantwell was a meth courier,” she said. “And this Daniel guy that Missy’s been talking about, he’s in it as well, just like we figured.”

  Dylan looked thoughtful. “So … Brantwell believed that if we got to Daniel, then Daniel might flip, rat Brantwell out?”

  “Maybe.” She touched the tissue to her lip. It came away bloody. “But there’s a twist. Brantwell didn’t know until now that Daniel is the baby’s father.”

  “Oh, I get it.” Dylan nodded. “Now, besides shutting the guy’s mouth, maybe Brantwell wanted a little payback.”

  But then he frowned. “So then why didn’t Brantwell just keep his own mouth shut? Come with us to find Daniel, act like he’s on our side until we do, then shoot Daniel before Daniel could talk? Brantwell could say he panicked or—”

  Lizzie shook her head. “Because he already had. Panicked, I mean, or at least I think that’s what happened.”

  Getting up, she only felt a little bit like she’d been hit by a truck. “When Brantwell got to my office, Trey Washburn was already there. Brantwell must not have stopped to think. Not that he’s been thinking straight for a while, anyway. But he reacted by hitting Trey from behind with a brick.”

  She winced at the memory, made worse by not knowing if Trey Washburn had survived the attack.

  Dylan laughed without humor. “So you didn’t need detecting skills after that.”

  “To figure out Brantwell wasn’t one of the good guys? Yeah, I guess not. Especially when he aimed Trey’s shotgun at me.”

  They trudged to Chevrier’s Blazer, where Brantwell sat behind the perp screen with his hands cuffed in his lap. One side of his face was swollen and already showing a bruise, deep red darkening to purple; those airbags packed a punch. Good, she thought.

  “And it wasn’t just Daniel he was after. Once we got to that campsite, I think he was planning to kill us all.” She turned to Missy. “Except for you, of course. And the baby.”

  Missy shook her head in disbelief.

  “I took a pistol off him,” Lizzie said. “HK semiauto, ten-round clip. And on the floor by his feet I found three more.”

  Missy frowned. “What, three loose bullets?”

  “No. Three more clips. Forty bullets in all. So I guess,” Lizzie added, “either he thought it was going to take a firefight to get your baby home again—”

  She looked back at the wrecked Blazer. Its headlights carved white paths into the woods. But around them the forest was dark.

  Dark and deep. And very soon she would be going into it.

  “—or he figured ten bullets apiece would be enough to get the four of us,” she finished. “Us, and Daniel, too.”

  Chevrier was in his Blazer; now he got out. “Okay, I’ve got a guy coming. Deputy, doesn’t live too far. He can do transport. Assault with a deadly okay with you?” he asked Lizzie.

  For the charge against Brantwell, he meant. “That’ll do for a start. Missy, I’m sorry,” she added. “I’ll explain it all to you later, I promise. But for now you’ve got to trust me.”

  In the gloom, the girl’s face was haggard. But the disbelief in it was beginning to fade, maybe because her dad wasn’t doing any of the things an innocent man might do: telling them they had it all wrong, for instance. Telling his daughter that there had been a mistake, that everything would be all right.

  Or even talking about a lawyer. Instead he just sat there in the darkness behind the perp screen, staring at his cuffed hands.

  Oh, yeah, this guy was toast and he knew it. Missy gazed at him in appeal. “Dad?”

  No response. She waited a moment longer; still nothing. Then she turned. “Okay. I guess … Let’s go, then.”

  She strode away from the vehicle without looking back, and Lizzie followed.

  As she passed him Dylan put a hand out. “Lizzie, are you sure you’re …”

  “Up for it?” She spun away from him. “I’m fine, okay? Don’t worry about me.”

  Because there was a time and place for everything, including confronting Dylan Hudson about his lies. And his moodiness, too; what the hell was the matter with him? But this wasn’t it.

  Ten minutes later the deputy Chevrier had called arrived to take custody of Brantwell, and soon after that they were on the road again, heading deeper into the woods.

  Spud staggered into the clearing and fell. The guy stepped around him, bent down, and unfastened his snowshoes. By the fire, he pulled off the thick fur wrappings and cap that he wore, letting his braid fall. Then he returned to crouch by Spud.

  “Get up.”

  Spud moaned. He was cold, wet, and exhausted beyond anything he’d even known was possible.

  The guy gazed impassively at him. From the other side of the blazing fire, the woman stared, too, huddled under a fur blanket.

  The child Spud had seen the last time he was here was not in sight, and neither was—

  Spud turned his head and puked, ejecting a thin stream of sour liquid. The guy straightened and went away, Spud didn’t see where. A little while later he returned with a steaming mug.

  “Drink this.”

  Spud struggled up and took the mug in both hands. “Thanks,” he whispered, trying for a smile and failing.

  The guy didn’t smile, either. His face was like well-tanned leather, youthfully smooth and yet oddly old in its expression. Or the lack of one, like nothing had ever fazed him.

  Like nothing would. Spud sipped from the mug, nearly puked again at the bitter taste. Some unfamiliar herb, as aromatic as pine tar but way more repulsive, plumed up into his sinuses and burned down his throat.

  But the next sip was better, setting up a glowing warmth in his face and chest. He drank the rest, its heat spreading in him.

  When he looked up again, the guy had a gun aimed at him. “I want you to tell me why you came here,” the guy said evenly. “If you don’t, I’m going to shoot you on the count of three.”

  Spud stared, dumbfounded, the stuff he’d drunk threatening to return. Promising, even.

  “… two …” The guy’s smooth, slim hand was unwavering.

  Spud jumped up, hands out,
palms forward. “Okay! Okay, I …”

  The words tumbled out. “Look, I need to stay here. I’m just like you, man,” he pleaded, “free and independent, you know? But now the cops are after me, and—”

  As the words left his mouth he realized it was the wrong thing to say. But instead of just chasing Spud out into the cold forest, the guy laughed.

  “Well, you’ve come to the wrong place, then.”

  As he spoke, a child’s fretful wail came from one of the lean-tos. Spud nearly fainted at the overwhelming wave of gratefulness that washed over him, that the kid he’d stolen was still alive.

  But this wasn’t going at all the way he’d hoped. The guy went to the lean-to, brought back an open laptop, the device looking strange and out of place here in the wilderness.

  Spud turned puzzledly to the guy. “I don’t get it. How’d you …?”

  The guy pressed some keys on the laptop and the screen lit up. “Remember those little cameras you bought for me, and those microphones? And stuck them up in—”

  Her office. And he did remember, but when he was here before, he’d seen no power source, no way to view what the cameras saw and recorded, storing it online so it could be seen later. So he’d forgotten about it.

  Now, though, Spud recognized the scene. In it: Cody Chevrier and Lizzie Snow. Then Missy Brantwell burst in, looking upset.

  Sound came from the device’s tiny speaker. Arguing, protests from Missy. Then a revelation; Spud looked up. “That’s …”

  The guy nodded. “Yeah. It’s my kid you took. His mom had him and that was okay for a while, when he was so little. But now he needs a dad. And it’s time for me to go, so he’s coming along.”

  Go? thought Spud. Go where? The guy shut the laptop. “As for you, though …”

  He tucked the laptop under his arm, leaned down, and gazed into Spud’s face. The guy’s own eyes were dark, like deep pools of the bitter liquid Spud had drunk; under their examination Spud felt his secrets being picked through, his shames uncovered.

  A flash of contempt mingled with pity showed in the guy’s face briefly, then vanished. He thrust the gun at Spud, urging him to take it. “Here.”

  Nervously, Spud fumbled the thing, then finally got hold of it. “What’s this for?”

  “For when they get here.” The guy paused on his way back to the lean-to. “ ’Cause I don’t know what you were thinking of, coming here,” he added. “But those cops are right behind you.”

  Spud looked around the campsite, eerily firelit, sheltered from the snow by the evergreen canopy spreading above. Only a bit of sky showed, thin smoke spiraling up into it.

  The kid’s wails had quieted, the little blond girl still out of sight. The woman was gone, too, Spud realized.

  All was quiet. It struck him suddenly, too, that they’d taken a much less direct route coming in here than the one he recalled.

  “But don’t worry. I’m ready,” the guy said quietly.

  Ready? How could he be … Then, at a sudden cry of pain from somewhere out there in the snowy forest, Spud understood.

  The snowshoes that Chevrier had rounded up for all of them felt like tennis rackets strapped to Lizzie’s feet, and getting them out of each other’s way was a puzzle needing to be solved at every step.

  “Lift and slide,” Chevrier had told her, but after a hundred yards she felt her more likely mantra was “Fall down and die.”

  Dylan wasn’t doing much better, and from the way he held his injured arm tightly to his side, she knew this trip was most certainly not what the doctor ordered. Even Chevrier seemed less than practiced in the gear; only Missy Brantwell breezed along, one swift foot after the other into the woods.

  Around them the night was silent, the snow falling in tiny flakes. “I hope you know where you’re going,” Lizzie managed to Chevrier, who was bringing up the rear.

  “Yeah,” he grated out. “I do.” At Missy’s direction he’d pulled over and left the Blazer by the road, then produced a GPS tracker with the flyover coordinates programmed into it and handed it to her.

  “Here. You might think you know the way. But at night in the snow it’s different.”

  He’d been right, though, about letting Missy lead. It was her kid out there somewhere, or at least they all hoped he was; moving along tirelessly, the desperate young mother’s feet churned through the snow, and if not for the cops struggling behind her she’d have been making even better time.

  Toward what, though? That was Lizzie’s big question. The notion that her own dead sister’s child might also be out here seemed merely a foolish fantasy, now that they were out here for real.

  Crazy, you must be—What little illumination there was came from their flashlights, showing only snow plastered against huge trees and clumped in brushy thickets. The trail vanished quickly, the stub near the road becoming trackless wilderness in minutes.

  Missy stopped. “I’m not sure,” she said doubtfully, her head bent to peer at the GPS device’s glowing screen.

  Dylan clomped past her on his snowshoes, strobing the snowy darkness ahead with his flashlight.

  “I think …,” he began as something huge flew out of the darkness at him. There was a heavy thud, then came his shout of surprise and pain.

  “Damn,” said Chevrier, running clumsily past Lizzie. “It’s some kind of …”

  But she already knew: trap. Hobbled by the damned snowshoes, she struggled forward to where Dylan lay in the snow, saw that he was—

  Alive. Propped up on his elbow with one hand to his forehead, he swore a blue streak of the filthiest and most reassuring curses she’d ever heard.

  Missy bent swiftly to him, pressing a paper towel full of snow to his head. “Ouch,” he uttered grimly, and then, squinting around, “What the hell was that thing? Nearly knocked my block off.”

  Cautiously Chevrier ventured toward the object, now hanging motionless, suspended by thick rope from a massive pine branch thrust out over their heads.

  “Looks like a log, barbed wire wrapped around it,” he said.

  “Oh, great. That’s just great.” Lizzie clenched her fists at the darkness; if not for the clumsy snowshoes, she’d have kicked something. “So now this bozo’s got the place booby-trapped?”

  “Seems like.” Chevrier looked unhappy. “And for all I know, we may have already missed a few. Which means …”

  “… that we could hit them on the way out,” she finished for him. “Oh, this guy, when I get him, I’m going to …”

  “It means something else,” said Missy, looking up white-faced from where she was tending to Dylan’s head wound. The pulse of terror Lizzie had felt when he’d been hit was fading now. But she still had a bad feeling.

  A very bad one; this guy was smart and competent. And he’d known they were coming, somehow; you didn’t climb way up there in that tree, make this hideous device, just on the off chance.

  Missy thought the same. “He knows we’re here. And this is just the beginning of his tricks. But how? How could he—”

  Chevrier looked up from examining the rope the log hung on. “Yeah, this knot’s fresh. So who knows? Maybe the flyover did put him onto us. If he’s paranoid enough …”

  “I don’t know,” said Missy again. “Maybe I was wrong, maybe we should go back and get more people, all the hunters around here, and—”

  “Nope.” Dylan got up, first to his hands and knees, then clumsily up onto his snowshoes again. The thing had only grazed him.

  “Our guy’s here now. But if he’s as nervous as we think, then if we give him a chance he’ll take the baby and run.”

  They were silent a moment, absorbing this. “Obviously we’re going to have to be more careful,” said Dylan, as calmly as if he hadn’t just almost had his head removed.

  “But we should go on,” he said. “By the look of the GPS, we’re already more than halfway there. And this might be our only chance.” Chevrier nodded reluctantly. “In for a penny,” he said, his voice grim. “I d
on’t know about you all, but I’m starting to feel like I’ve got a personal axe to grind with this son of a bitch.”

  “Me, too,” Lizzie said. She took a breath of the cold, fresh air, feeling better suddenly. Anger could do that to a person.

  And, after all, she’d done pretty well on that snowy road back there: using it, not letting it stop her. Not letting Roger Brantwell stop her, either.

  But there was still something wrong. You’d already decided how you wanted things to go, Missy had said the other night after the dustup in Area 51. To make things work out the way you want.

  And now here she was again, doing the same thing. Trust me, she’d told Missy. I’ll explain. Only this time it wasn’t just a matter of her versus some dope in a bar, brandishing a junky weapon.

  This time, other people’s lives were at stake, too. We’re all out here because I told Missy I’d come. If I hadn’t, Dylan and Chevrier would never have gotten on board, they’d have talked Missy out of it, stopped her if need be. Instead—

  Lizzie looked around: deep woods, deep snow. Deep trouble, maybe, too. Instead, here we all are. And she still thinks I just want to help her. That it’s all I want—

  Maybe it was time to be honest about that. To earn Missy’s trust instead of merely demanding it.

  To deserve it, even. “Listen,” she said. “You should know I’ve got my own reasons for being here. For wanting to go on.”

  Then she looked at Missy and told her about Nicki: who she was—my only family in this world—and that she might be here.

  Emphasis on might. “So if you want to keep going, I’m in,” Lizzie finished. “Just don’t assume I’ve got your best interests at heart. Because it wouldn’t … it wouldn’t be the truth.”

  Damn, that hadn’t come out the way she’d meant it. All she’d intended was to come clean on her own motives, but now from what she’d said, it must seem as if she didn’t care about Missy’s child at all, that all she cared about was her own family.

  If I still have any. And Missy’s reply made her feel even more foolish: “But, Lizzie, we’ve all got reasons.”

  Her voice—even after I just arrested her father, Lizzie thought; man, that girl’s made of something. Titanium, maybe—was full of sympathy.