Rescue at Cedar Lake

by Maggie K. Black

  The car spun as Gnat lost control of the wheel.

  It was going to hit them.

  Alex threw his arms around Theresa, clutching her to his chest. They rolled sideways. His body wrapped around hers like a protective shell. She heard the rumble of the engine and Alex’s breath coming hard and fast in her ear.

  Then they were over the edge of the cliff, tumbling down into the trees toward the frozen lake below.

  SEVEN

  They were rolling. Their bodies were plummeting down the hill toward the lake, and all Alex could do was hold onto Theresa, shelter her with his body and pray. He closed his eyes. Rocks and branches beat against him. Then they hit a pocket of deep snow and their bodies sank into it. He felt thick coniferous branches smack against him. They stopped rolling.

  “Thank You, Lord.”

  He heard a prayer slip through Theresa’s lips and felt her hot breath on his cold skin. He opened his eyes. They were lying side by side, half buried in the snow. A huge pine tree pressed against his back. Theresa’s nose was just inches from his. Her hands clutched his coat. His arms were wrapped around her body. The rumbling sound of Zoe’s car engine disappeared down the road above them. A prayer of gratitude filled his heart. He pulled back slightly and felt the snow shifting around them. “Are you okay? How’s your head?”

  “I’m fine. Thanks.” Theresa leaned away, out of his arms, and craned her head to look down the hill past them. “Well, that could’ve been worse.”

  “Don’t move.” His arms tightened around her. He could feel the tension deepening his voice, making him sound a lot more like a bodyguard than an ex-boyfriend holding the woman he once thought he’d marry in his arms. “We’ve got to be careful. The last thing we want to do is shift too much ground and end up falling farther down the hill.”

  “All right.” She stopped moving.

  Was it his imagination, or was she arching her back away from him, as if the last place she wanted to be right now was in his arms?

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked. “You’re not hurt?”

  “I’m not hurt. Just let me know when I can climb out of here.” Her jaw was clenched so tightly that tension practically radiated through her skin. Was she upset with him for some reason? Frustrated? For a second he just lay there, feeling her heart beating against his chest and the snow swirling down around them, while he argued down the impulse to ask her if she was upset with him. But it didn’t matter. They were stuck on a snowy hillside, having just been run off the road by a criminal, and as long as he got her out of here safely and alive it didn’t much matter whether or not she liked him.

  No matter how much Theresa might still push one or two of his buttons.

  She shifted. Her arms brushed against his chest. A shiver ran through him.

  All right, she still pushed a whole lot of his buttons—starting with the one telling him he needed to protect her.

  “Okay, so, here’s what’s going to happen,” he said. “You’re going to get to your feet, very slowly and carefully, and then see if you can find anything above you to grab on to. I’ll steady your legs. Got it?”

  “Got it.” Theresa crawled up onto her hands and knees slowly. “I’ve got nowhere to put my feet.”

  “Put your feet on my hands. Use my palms like a step stool.” He shifted onto his back. “I can support you.”

  She planted her boot firmly into his palm. His right hand gripped her calf, feeling the unexpected strength of her muscles through her ski pants. Then he lifted her up as high as he could. The weight of her body pushed his down hard against the pine tree. He could hear the branches creak. She gasped a deep breath.

  “Okay, I’ve found a handhold. Let me go.” She pulled her leg up out of his grasp.

  He stayed there, watching the soles of her boots grow smaller as she climbed up the hill above him. “You good?”

  “I’m great.” Her voice filtered down. “When you stand up, you’ll see a bush above you to the right and a solid rock just above that to your left. It’s not super great for footholds. But the road’s only about twenty feet up and it’s not that bad a climb. I’m almost there.” She disappeared from view. Snow and sky filled his view. Then her head appeared above him over the ledge. “I’m good! All safe. Come on up.”

  He said a prayer that was half thanksgiving and half a plea for help, for guidance. Then he started climbing after her. Wow. Theresa had been optimistic in describing the climb as not that bad. The climb was steeper than the one he’d tackled earlier on a different part of the slope, and with fewer hand-and footholds. Definitely not impossible, by any means, especially not to an experienced athlete with his kind of upper body strength. But not the kind of challenge he’d have ever expected Theresa to tackle so cheerfully.

  His grip tightened on a rock hidden under the surface of the snow.

  “Need a hand?” Theresa was still looking down at him over the edge, with a gentle, kindhearted smile that told him she was trying her best not to let whatever negative feelings were bubbling inside her show on the outside. She’d always been like that. Quick to hide whatever was upsetting her. Even quicker to forgive. He knew that smile too well and had probably ignored it more times than he was comfortable admitting.

  “Nah, I’ve got it.” Alex hauled himself over the ledge and back up to the road. “Where’s the snowmobile?”

  “In the trees on the other side of the road.” She pointed. “Gnat definitely clipped it. But thankfully he sent it flying toward the rocks instead of over the cliff.”

  He strode in the direction she’d indicated. The snowmobile was dented in the front. But thankfully nothing was leaking and the skis weren’t bent. He pulled it back onto the road and tried the engine. It started.

  “Looks like we’re good to go,” he said.

  She frowned. He knew she probably still wanted to talk about what she thought she’d seen in Zoe’s car, and he definitely still needed to tell her about the body he’d discovered in the totaled sports car that was now sinking into the icy waters of the lake. But he was tired of talking. He was tired of things going wrong. He was tired of feeling stuck. He was tired of being out in the cold and the snow, watching the flakes grow thicker. He had to get her to the safe house.

  “We need to think carefully and plan where we’re going from here,” Theresa said. “I just wish you’d gotten to the car before Gnat.”

  Okay, now he definitely heard an edge of frustration in her voice. One that even verged on desperation. His jaw clenched.

  Help me, God. I don’t know what to do. If I ignore whatever she’s going through and push her to get back on the snowmobile, she probably won’t argue with me. I don’t want to be that kind of man anymore. But I also don’t want to stand around talking when we should be taking action, especially if standing around puts her in even more danger.

  “We need to get out of here, and quickly.” He turned the snowmobile off again. “But I can tell something’s bothering you. So, let’s just take five seconds and talk it out quick. But just five. No more. I’m sorry if I was too rough and sudden when I grabbed you like that and we rolled off the cliff. I was trying to save your life. I didn’t exactly have a choice.”

  “I get that.” She shook her head. “But you could’ve just left me and chased after Gnat. You might’ve even stopped him from taking Zoe’s car.”

  “You were hurt. You were down on the ground! That was all that mattered. Not some car. You, baby, I care about you!”

  The words flew from his lips and seemed to echo around them, swirling in the snow and bouncing off the trees.

  Baby, I care about you.

  I. Care. About. You.

  Her green eyes opened wide. But the surprise on her face was nothing compared to the shock he felt. What was he saying? What’s more, what was he thinking? He hadn’t call
ed her baby in years. Not since the day she’d shattered his heart. But that was three times the word had slipped out of his mouth without even thinking.

  “Sorry, I shouldn’t have called you that,” he said. “Of course you matter. You’re my sister’s friend, you’re our client’s psychotherapist and you’re an important asset for Ash Private Security. Obviously, you were an important part of my past, too. That goes without saying.”

  Her lips parted slightly. But no words came out. Instead, she bit her lip, reminding him of every kiss he’d ever given her.

  “Yes, you’re right it was unfortunate that Gnat stole Zoe’s car.” He kept talking, like maybe if he got enough words out in a row somehow he’d hit upon the right ones. “But at the end of the day, a car is just a car. You’re still you.”

  Static and buzzing filled the air. A disjointed voice faded in and out over the air. He blinked, then fumbled for the CB radio on his belt. He hadn’t even realized it was still on. But he was insanely thankful it was still working.

  “Hello?” He raised it to his lips. “Is anybody there?”

  * * *

  “Break, break. Is anyone there?” A girl’s voice filtered through the distorted channel.

  “It’s the kid,” Alex said. Theresa reached for the CB radio. But Alex sheltered the radio with his hand from the elements. “Hi. You’re Bug, right? Beetle? Something like that? I need you to go get your parents for me. Right now. It’s very important. I don’t know how long I’m going to have a signal and we need the police.”

  “You’re a rude man,” the girl said. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

  “Just let me talk to her.” Again, Theresa reached for the CB.

  But Alex didn’t even seem to notice.

  “Look, kid, I’m really not trying to be rude.” He sighed. “But we’re dealing with some major, grown-up stuff here. Please, just go get your parents, right now. They’ve got to call the police about what’s going on at Cedar Lake.”

  “I’m not supposed to tell stories about that!” The girl’s voice grew sharp. “Nobody believes any of it anyway. They say it’s all just a prank.”

  “What did you just say?” Alex asked. “What did you mean by a prank? Nobody believes what?”

  “Don’t talk to me again. Over and out.” The line went to static.

  Alex groaned. They’d found precisely one CB channel with a person on the other end they could potentially ask for help, and it was being manned by a child who refused to talk to them. “Tell me that you’re as worried as I am that she refused to talk to us about what’s happening up here because people think it’s a ‘prank.’”

  “I am,” Theresa admitted, “Especially considering Gnat’s convinced that Castor’s somehow above the law. Although, judging by her tone of voice, I’m relieved to say I don’t think that child’s in any physical danger. I think she’s at a house far away from the lake, as she said earlier, and just going through random radio channels looking for someone. I’m also glad that whoever her parents are, they seem to have taught her some great self-protection skills. That bodes well for her, too.”

  “I can’t believe you’re praising a child for cutting me off, refusing to talk to me.” He clipped the CB radio back to his belt. “Although I totally see your point that it’s a good thing a child knows better than to talk to a stranger about something she’s upset about—especially not a rude man.”

  Despite herself, she felt a smile brush her lips. “I agree that if we happen to reach her again, we need to try to talk her into putting a responsible adult on the line.”

  “We need to make sure somebody calls the police. We have a criminal on the loose up here who’s apparently willing to kill indiscriminately, not to mention two dead bodies.”

  The smile fell from her lips “Two?”

  “There was a body in the driver’s seat of the car that crashed down the hill.” He pulled his cell phone out of his zippered jacket pocket. The phone screen was a mass of cracks. But thankfully it still turned on. He held up a picture. “His name was Blake Howler. He was twenty-one and from Stoney Creek. Is this the same Howler who was with Castor and Brick?”

  “I think so.” Her face paled. He’d been the one who’d called her a finicky princess. But she’d never seen him before. Maybe he’d heard someone else call her that? Castor had said something similar about her, too. She sighed. Something about this whole thing still felt personal. But she couldn’t put a finger on why or how. “So, Castor killed both the men who helped him break into the cottage? I don’t even know what that means. Or why someone would do that.”

  “Maybe he found the trunk he was after and was trying to eliminate his rivals to avoid paying them their share.”

  She shuddered. “Or maybe we were wrong this whole time and Castor didn’t kill them. Maybe whoever else is after the trunk did.”

  Two warring gangs, each searching for the same cache—of drugs, or weapons, or whatever else people were willing to kill each other for—was the kind of thing she’d expect to hear about happening in a crime-heavy part of a big city. Not at the idyllic Northern Ontario lake where she’d spent her childhood summers.

  “Change of plans,” he said. “You might’ve noticed that when we reached the fork in the road earlier, I didn’t turn toward my cottage and instead kept going toward the highway. That’s because Zoe and I set up an emergency meeting place. Mandy Rhodes’s older brother Emmett recently bought a broken-down house on an offshoot of the lake. It’s completely dilapidated and in need of repair, so it wasn’t intended as any kind of shelter. But if anything went disastrously wrong, Zoe was supposed to take Mandy there, as a last-case scenario, and hide out until Daniel or myself could retrieve her. I’m hoping that, when we get there, we’ll find Zoe and Mandy waiting for us. But if we don’t, I’m going to suggest that we find a safe corner there for you to hide in while I head down the highway and see if I can get a phone signal or flag down some help.”

  “But I told you I saw letters scratched on the dashboard of the car,” she said. “The letter A and the letter Y, along with a diagonal slash in the seat. I’m pretty sure it’s a message from Zoe.”

  “Okay, well, if it’s a message from her, we can figure out what it means at the safe house.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “We need to follow them now. Remember, back when we were teenagers, the year we won the scavenger hunt? We didn’t want to risk any of the other teams hearing us talking on the radio. So we came up with the idea of making some signal out of twigs, or rocks or scuff marks on the ground, to let each other know where we’d gone. I’d suggested it be the letters A and Y because you kept trying to gear us up for victory going, ‘Are we a team? Are we a team?’”

  “And you’d say, ‘Yeah, we’re the best team ever.’” His voice trailed off. “If you’re right, and it is a sign from Zoe, then what way do you think she wanted us to go?”

  She stretched her hand out and pointed out across the lake, in the same direction that the knife slash in the seat had run, toward the tip of the giant outcropping of rock on her parents’ old property. It was the place where Alex had proposed. It was the place they were supposed to have gotten married. If Zoe had been trying to get her attention, there was no better place on Cedar Lake to point her toward. Surely Alex would get that, too. Wouldn’t he?

  But, instead, he chuckled.

  She pressed her lips together. “You’re laughing at me.”

  “No, sorry, I was laughing at the irony of the situation.” He ran his hand over his head. “Because that’s the opposite direction of where I’m trying to take you. There’s nothing even in that direction except a useless hunk of rock.”

  It wasn’t a hunk. It was a beautiful, long, flat slab of Canadian Shield granite spreading out into the lake like a natural dock. Her cottage had been on the crest of the hill. The rock had been
beneath them at the very edge of their beach, down steep winding stairs her father had built.

  “That rock was on my parents’ property.” Her arms tightened across her chest. “It’s the rock we were supposed to get married on.”

  “A million years ago!” he exclaimed. “There’s no reason why Zoe would ever want to remind us of something so disastrous and painful. We’re not kids anymore. There could be any number of reasons why there were scratches on the dashboard of the car, and they happen to look like letters.

  “Okay, so maybe I didn’t used to be the most reliable guy. But that’s not who I am anymore. I take my work very seriously. Ash Private Security has plans in place for dealing with emergencies. Ones that don’t involve random knife scratches and chasing obscure clues through the woods in a storm. Snow is still falling, with a lot more coming. I have no idea why we haven’t seen any sign of police yet or what that girl on the radio could’ve possibly meant by a prank. But thankfully the snowmobile seems to be running so we have a possibility of getting out of here while the road is still passable. There’s no way to get to that rock without either walking through the woods or taking the snowmobile out on the lake, neither of which is wise. I’m taking you to the safe house.”

  “And if Zoe and Mandy aren’t there?” Her chin rose.

  “Then I’m going to make sure it’s safe, leave you there and go find help,” he said.

  “But Zoe obviously tried to come back this way not that long ago,” she said. “The hazard lights were still flashing. Clearly she’s not at the rendezvous point.”

  “Or somebody else stole her car while she was in town and she never came back to the lake,” Alex said. “Or she tried to come back for you, crashed the car, and then did what any sensible bodyguard would do after being run off the road and shot at by killers, and took her client to the place where we’d agreed to meet.”

  “But if we get to the safe house and they’re not there, your plan is to just leave me there,” she said. “You don’t think I can help. But Gnat and Brick tried to force me to help them find the trunk. They thought I knew where it was or had some connection to it.”