A Killing Frost

by Hannah Alexander

  “Surveillance equipment has picked up a couple of familiar voices,” said Agent Sydloski. “Apparently some people are walking west along the Missouri River.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “If those people do not return to River Dance immediately, there will be a warrant issued for their arrest.”

  “Understood.”

  The connection ended.

  Tyrell folded his phone and returned it to his pocket. “It’s time to go home, Jama.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Doriann smelled the river seconds before she saw it-tiny waves moving in the moonlight beneath heavy splotches of fog. She stopped, surprised that it was so close.

  She still heard the man’s voice behind her in the woods. So Clancy was either with Deb, or he was still crazy and talking to himself. He didn’t sound angry now, but the voice was too distant to tell what he said.

  She hurried after Humphrey, who chuffed and whined, his nose to the ground. Barely a hundred feet downriver rose high cliffs. Humphrey started climbing, and Doriann followed. The trees grew thickly here, and she ran into a low limb. It smacked her in the forehead. She stumbled on a rock and fell hard on her rear.

  “Slow down, Humphrey! I can’t keep up.”

  Still whining, he came back and licked her. Then he stopped and sniffed the air. Whined some more. By the time Doriann was back on her feet, he was on his way back down the way they had come. He didn’t howl. He whined, that squeaky-scared sound in his throat.

  “That’s the wrong way,” she said. “Come on.”

  He didn’t come.

  She continued climbing without him. He’d probably smelled a rabbit or squirrel. One time he’d led her to a tree where a mama raccoon and three babies huddled in the limbs, looking down at them. And one time a skunk-

  “Uh-oh.” She stopped and sniffed. Okay, no skunk. “Come here, Humphrey,” she whispered as she continued the climb.

  He came slowly, as if she were dragging him with a rope. He continued to whine.

  Sweat dripped down Doriann’s forehead by the time she reached the top of the cliffs and started down the other side. Halfway down, she heard a thunk-thunk-thunk below in the darkness. It blended with Humphrey’s squeak-chuff, squeak-chuff.

  Doriann stopped. The wind cooled the sweat on her face, chilling her.

  She wished she’d found the Katy Trail, or even Highway 94. The riverbank wasn’t made for walking. And her feet hurt. She had worn her best walking shoes, but after so much running and walking, even they rubbed in places they’d never rubbed before.

  Humphrey bayed suddenly, and she gasped. Humphrey’s baying was beginning to drive her nuts. How much noise was a girl supposed to take?

  The thunk came again, and she finally peered over the cliff’s edge to the water below. In the light of the moon, she saw the outline of a small boat dock. She thought she could make out a little rowboat in the water. The thumping was probably the boat hitting the dock with the motion of the water.

  She hadn’t seen a lot of boats docked on the river for permanent storage. Grandpa said that the current was strong enough that if a boat came loose from the mooring, it could get swept downriver all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.

  The thunk grew louder as Doriann stumbled down the side of the cliff. Some of Grandpa’s friends along the river had boats. Grandpa had taken her out on the river a few times, and though they were usually on motorboats, he’d taught her how to paddle a canoe.

  She heard the voice behind her again, getting closer.

  If she could paddle a canoe, she could row a boat, right? She could get to River Dance if she could avoid the old stumps and snags in places along the shoreline. Out in the middle of the river, she could avoid those and make good time.

  She climbed down to the little wooden dock, stepped onto it and studied the rowboat. Two paddles. It was small for such a big river, but if she could stay near the bank, she’d get to River Dance a lot faster.

  She’d gone on float trips down the Gasconade. She could do this. She reached down to release the rowboat. The rope was stiff and tight around the post, and she had to work at it.

  Humphrey growled. Doriann jerked around, startled. The dog stood in the moonlight, his back to her as he looked into the dark woods.

  Some bushes at the edge of the river shifted, rustling from something more solid than the breeze.

  And then a shadow rose from the brush, black and menacing. “Hey, little Dori.”

  Clancy!

  Humphrey snarled and lunged. Doriann screamed.

  Jama followed Tyrell through the gurgling waters of Fern Creek. Her shoes would take days to dry out, and she’d probably never get them clean enough to wear to the clinic again.

  Tyrell stopped and turned around. “Did you hear something?”

  “Like what?”

  He took a few steps toward her. “I don’t know. It sounded like a mix between a dog’s bark and a scream.”

  She heard it, too. “Coyotes.”

  He stood looking upriver for a few seconds, then turned back. “You’re probably right, but what if it isn’t?”

  She listened again. Nothing. “If the FBI picked up our voices, they’re sure to pick up the sound we heard. They’ll know if it’s coyotes or not.”

  Doriann shoved at the rope as Humphrey tangled with Clancy. The rope caught on a jagged edge of wood. Humphrey yelped with pain, but when Doriann turned around to look, he was attacking Clancy again.

  The rope came off, but the current of the river pulled it out of Doriann’s hand. Humphrey yelped. She grabbed at the rope, but the rowboat disappeared beneath the dock. She ran to the other side and watched for it to float out.

  She looked over her shoulder. “Humphrey, come!”

  Clancy came instead. Fast. Humphrey was faster. He grabbed Clancy’s leg and tugged, snarling like a Doberman. Doriann had never seen him so ferocious before.

  The boat came out from beneath the dock. Doriann sat on the edge of the rough wood and slid down until her feet touched the boat bottom. “Humphrey! Hurry!” The boat rocked beneath her. She grabbed the edge of the dock. But the boat kept going. She couldn’t hold on.

  “Humphrey!”

  Clancy reached for her. She grabbed an oar, tried to knock him away. He jerked it from her hands. She lost her balance. She saw the water rising to meet her.

  Humphrey attacked Clancy again as Doriann dropped to her knees and grabbed the sides of the boat. It rocked from side to side. “Humphrey!”

  Something flew toward her and she screamed. It hit the water beside her and sprayed her face. The oar. It broke the surface and bobbed. Clancy had thrown it at her. She reached for it, couldn’t get it. The current of the river swirled it away as it turned her in circles.

  There was another cry as the dock, the dog and the monster disappeared into darkness and fog.

  “Humphrey!”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The digital clock in Tyrell’s truck read nearly midnight. Jama stared at the reflection of headlights against the layers of fog across the road. They entered the outskirts of River Dance. Five blocks to the clinic.

  Tell him.

  But it would be so difficult to face him-to face all the Mercers-day after day, so nearby.

  Do it anyway. He deserves to know. Jama was ashamed of the way she’d treated Tyrell. He believed he had done something wrong, that he lacked something to make her happy. He deserved better.

  “Slow down,” she said.

  From the corner of her eye, she saw him glance at her. “We’re done for the night, Jama. There’ll be a heap of trouble if we go back out-”

  “Do you want to know why I can’t marry you?”

  The speedometer dropped to twenty.

  “Okay, maybe you’d better park somewhere.”

  “We were parked in the perfect spot before we left the river.”

  “I wouldn’t want to spoil all your great memories of that place,” she said dryly.


  He didn’t stop. He drove to the clinic in silence, parked beside her car, turned off the engine and switched off the lights.

  The clinic was dark, and Jama wondered when Ruth had left. Across the street, Zelda’s lights were still on. Maybe she’d fallen asleep without turning them off. She never stayed up after the ten-o’clock news.

  “Let’s talk, Jama.” Tyrell’s voice was gentle, filled with warmth.

  Jama turned to him, glad it was too dark for him to see her expression clearly. He could always read her so well. “You took me by surprise two weeks ago.”

  He hesitated. “I was so sure…just so sure.”

  “I’m sorry. I should have picked up on the clues.”

  “If I’ve rushed you, I’m sorry. You may not be ready yet, and if-”

  “Don’t apologize and make me feel any worse than I do right now.”

  “What could you feel bad about?”

  Jama closed her eyes and braced herself. “I killed your sister.”

  One ghost after another formed in front of Doriann, then disappeared as the boat plunged through it. She didn’t know where she was, how far she’d floated or how much time had passed.

  “Humphrey,” she whispered. She couldn’t cry again; she was already damp enough. But she felt the warmth of tears in her eyes, anyway, felt them drip down her face, then chill in the wind.

  It was colder on the water, and the fog dampened everything on her so that the wind froze her all the way to the bone. She kept trying again to steer the boat to the left, but she had discovered that a rowboat didn’t steer the same as a canoe. She needed two oars.

  Why had she shoved the oar at Clancy? He couldn’t have gotten to her unless he’d tried to jump into the boat with her.

  Something else rammed the side of the boat, and she cried out. She almost expected Clancy to come bursting from the water and grab her.

  Again, she shoved the oar into the water to her right. Again, the boat turned in a circle. She was definitely doing something wrong.

  If she kept turning in circles she was going to throw up. She pulled the oar into the boat and huddled in the middle, arms wrapped around herself. She was too tired and scared to do anything but shiver and cry.

  But then a sound reached her. For a moment, she imagined one of the ghosts in the water had found a voice and howled at her. Or maybe it was the wind howling through the trees. It suddenly felt strong enough.

  But the sound grew louder. Clearer. It came from the left riverbank. It wasn’t the howl of the wind.

  It was the baying of Humphrey.

  He was following her! Doriann’s best friend was following her. “Thanks, God.”

  A long, hunting-dog howl surrounded her. She’d gotten this far. She’d escaped the FBI’s most wanted killers. She’d made it through the freeze. She could get to shore.

  She picked up the oar again, determined to do it this time. It could work like a canoe paddle, only she’d have to do short strokes from side to side, then place the oar only halfway into the water to point the boat the way it needed to go.

  She shoved forward. Yes!

  But something went wrong. The oar struck a solid object hard. A limb? A log? The impact hurt her hands. She tried to hold on. The oar was wrenched from her. She scrambled to the side, reached out and tried to grab for it. She couldn’t. It floated from sight beneath another ghostly wraith of fog as the boat spun once more in the water.

  Tyrell felt as if the temperature in the SUV had suddenly dropped below freezing. He knew Jama couldn’t mean what she was saying.

  He looked across the seat at her. With no dash lights, the only illumination was from an amber security lamp above the clinic that cast only minimal light into the parking lot. Her head was bowed, and he couldn’t tell if her eyes were closed.

  “Tell me more, sweetheart. You can’t stop there.”

  She jammed her hands inside her jacket pockets.

  “Are you cold?” He reached for the keys in the ignition.

  “No, don’t. I’m not cold, I’m just…I’m not that kind of cold.”

  “Do you have a key to the clinic yet? We could go inside where we can be more comfort-”

  “No. I’ve put this off for four and a half years, and nothing’s going to make this comfortable.”

  “Okay, then. Let’s talk.” He wanted to take her hand, to wrap his arms around her and hold her. Yet he knew she wouldn’t let him, and besides, a chill had begun to rise inside him, too.

  “Before I go on, I want to say that I love you, Tyrell. I love your family, your mom and dad, all of you. I can make no excuses for what I’ve done. I’ve convinced myself all these years that I could never tell you or your family about this because I didn’t want to hurt you more than you’ve already been hurt.”

  “I know you wouldn’t do anything intentionally-”

  “Please, just listen. Don’t try to excuse my way out of it. There’s no excuse for what I did. It’s because of this change in me-it’s because of Christ-that I’ve come to this point.”

  “Then why don’t you tell me the point?”

  “In the past few years I guess you might say I’ve grown. You know. As a believer. Recently I read a passage in Proverbs that made me rethink everything in my life. It said, ‘The Lord detests lying lips, but He delights in men who are truthful.’ It struck me hard. I’ve had lying lips. Deception is a lie, whether you speak it or not.

  “And then just a few days before you asked me to marry you, I had read, ‘A wife of noble character is her husband’s crown, but a disgraceful wife is like decay in his bones.’ I would be a decay in your bones if I marry you with a lie hanging over our heads.”

  “Jama, you’re stalling.”

  “I know, but I’ve got to work my way up to this, okay? I just need you to understand…Oh, Tyrell, I need you to see.”

  “You know I will.”

  “Don’t say what you don’t know to be true.” She laid her head back against the seat and took a deep breath. “Amy and I both worked the day before Christmas, but I got off at two in the afternoon. She got called to assist in an intricate surgery and realized she was going to be there for several more hours. After working a twenty-four-hour shift already, she was dead tired, and asked me to drop the car off to get the brakes checked because she was worried about them. Then we both agreed that I’d go to our apartment and get some sleep, so I’d be fresh to drive to River Dance for the holiday.

  “Amy knew better than to drive when she was sleep deprived. We were determined to get home-Fran had told us she would have our favorite dishes prepared and waiting.”

  “I remember,” Tyrell said. “Mom decided on nontraditional Christmas fare that year. She prepared a favorite dish of every person coming to dinner. You would have had your favorite meat loaf, and Amy her crème brûlée. I still wanted turkey and pumpkin pie. I think Heather went with devil’s food cake, and Renee with angel food. Dad his chicken and dumplings.”

  “Comfort food,” Jama said.

  He heard the irony in her voice.

  “We all knew you had a hard time at Christmas,” Tyrell said. Not only had her mother left on Christmas Eve, but a week before Jama’s fifteenth Christmas, her father was killed.

  “You saved my father’s life today, Jama, and you risked your own life, and possibly risked jail time, to help look for Doriann.” Now he was stalling.

  “Would you just listen to me? You’re not going to be able to excuse this away so easily. As I was walking out of the hospital that day, some of the other residents invited me to a Christmas Eve party at the chief surgical resident’s house. There was going to be great food and lots to drink. I declined. But as I was walking out to the parking lot, I will never forget what I saw.”

  A pause. Tyrell waited.

  “There was a little blond-haired girl, about eight, being wheeled to the entrance. She’d probably had her tonsils removed or something. She looked healthy and happy. She had balloons tied to her chair, and her moth
er walked beside the wheelchair, laughing and talking about what they were going to do when they got home.” Another silence. “When they reached the car outside, while others loaded the flowers and balloons, the mother knelt in front of her daughter, kissed her tenderly on the forehead and then gathered her into a tight hug.”

  Jama looked out the window, then raised a finger to draw a circle on the film of fog that had formed there from her breath. “I couldn’t look away from the expression of love on that mother’s face for her little girl.” Her voice trembled. She turned back to Tyrell. “I decided I was hungry, and the party had already begun-we had to take our celebrations when we could get them.

  “I couldn’t stand being alone right then, so I went to the party after all, thinking I could get some food, visit with friends for a few minutes, then get the brakes checked and still have time to sleep.

  “Not only was there food, there was champagne punch, eggnog, mixed drinks of all kinds. So I had an eggnog.”

  “You’ve always loved that stuff.”

  “This brew was made with spiced rum, and it was delicious. But I should have known better.”

  He waited.

  “That one drink didn’t help me forget. It just made me depressed. So I had another cup to take the edge off, and then some champagne punch. Then I realized I hadn’t eaten.”

  “You drank on an empty stomach.”

  “I got snockered, but I still maintained my equilibrium. I visited with colleagues and other staff, people I seldom had a chance to talk with. It felt so good being surrounded by people who understood the pressure of the job, the stress of holding a life in my hands every time I picked up a scalpel.

  “I was still at the party hours later, had just swallowed another eggnog, when Amy called me on my cell to come and get her. I was surprised by the time. I remember that. We had already packed for the trip. You were coming home that year, and you’d been gone for so long.

  “I used mouthwash, brushed my teeth, stuck two sticks of gum into my mouth, pretty sure I’d covered any smell on my breath. And then I drove to the hospital and picked up Amy.”