Cold Red

by Fiona Quinn

  “Okay Bear Grylls.”

  “Mmm. Just so you know,” she dug her plastic fork into the beef stew, “I’m not eating anything’s poop, no matter how hungry I get.”

  * * *

  Finley wasn’t a complainer. That could be a good thing. Might not be. His injuries were causing him some problems beyond painful movement. They had made it around the side of the hill and had started south again. Movement was slow and deliberate. Finley had to walk with his hands on her shoulders, often with his eyes closed. He was dizzy, sometimes disoriented, and they were pushing their bodies to the limits with their high stepping strides and the weight of the snow. Not to mention the wind. She’d guess it was steady at thirty-miles and hour with gusts that stole her breath.

  They’d slathered Vaseline on their faces to stave off wind burn. That had its own problems, she thought, pulling a strand of hair from the goop.

  Anna peaked up to find the sun’s position, comparing it to the little button compass she’d stored in the heel of her boot. She tugged her gloves off with her teeth. Holding her fingers horizontally, she measured the bottom of the sun to the horizon. Six digits wide. They only had an hour and a half of daylight left. She was equally relieved and fearful at the thought of stopping for the day. They weren’t nearly as far as Anna had calculated they could be, let alone as far as the railroad tracks which had been her lofty goal. They’d done their best.

  All day long, they’d pushed and pushed and pushed themselves forward, eating their halves of the protein bar, and sharing their Coke without stopping.

  Bella’s trumpeting rode the wind. They couldn’t tell how far she was from them, but it sounded like she was right on her heels.

  The snow fell and covered their tracks but not nearly as quickly and completely as Anna would wish.

  These were mountain men, tracking them. Hunting men. Men who could sense where their prey had gone. Once Bella got them onto Anna and Finley’s track, the snowmobiles would power forward to find them. And the cigarette guys last night were right, there was no way to run from a snowmobile and nowhere they could hide.

  They’d be trapped.

  Anna’s only hope was they could stay far enough ahead that at some point tenacious Bella would want to take a nap, that toes and noses would freeze, that the Jim Beam bottle would call, and they’d all go back and sleep. They were bound to be tired, too. Wrung out, too. Though not beaten to hell in a car accident and from sleeping sitting upright against a tree root in a plastic hut.

  Anna scanned the white terrain. They’d need to start building their shelter soon. She’d have to keep an eye out for a good spot.

  Were they far enough ahead? Would the men find some complacence knowing that catching up to where their victims were today would be an easy thing to do tomorrow? Anna hoped so.

  A warm fire.

  A couple of Lifesaver candies.

  Sleep.

  The other thought was that SIC would have had time by now to bring in the necessary equipment for the hunt. They very well could have night optics available, now. And, as soon as she lit their fire, the militia would see them bright red against the cool atmosphere. Would they have access to a heli with FLIR, forward looking infrared cameras? She didn’t think so. But that wasn’t a given. Anna watched the trees bending against the onslaught of the wind. A night flight with this wind pelting through the mountains would be tricky. She couldn’t imagine a pilot volunteering his aircraft for that mission.

  But, they wouldn’t even need a helicopter.

  If the wind gusts died down, SIC could send out their drones to do the same thing. With a fire lit, there was nothing Anna could do to protect them from being seen by infrared. A cave, maybe? No, even then, they’d be found by the warm air exiting the cave opening from a fire, and a cave was a darned dangerous environment when it came to hypothermia.

  Anna turned to where Finley rested his hand on her shoulder to check his watch for the temperature. With the sun going down, she expected the temperatures to drop precipitously.

  Anna had lost the feeling in her toes a long while back. Frostbite was on her mind.

  “I finally know how I know you,” Anna said to dowse her panic.

  Finley squeezed her shoulder as if requesting more information.

  Anna walked sideways down the incline, moving from tree to tree, grasping branches, turning her back and sliding down as she grabbed at the air, trying to regain her foothold on the treacherous descent. “It was an FBI case last year about this time. You were working on the east-coast Zoric family’s case. Something about an arts scam. You were on the news when a sniper shot at Lacey Stewart at her press conference. You tried to save the news reporter’s life when she took the ricochet.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “You got in trouble over that. Putting Lacey in danger somehow and having a personal relationship with her. Fell in love with her? You two were living together?” Anna stumbled forward and grabbed at the tree.

  She shouldn’t know any of that intel. Other than his face on the news, that information wasn’t public. It was part of the information dispersed to her by John Green the CIA station chief over in Slovakia. He told her the story to prepare her once the Zoric family had assigned her to travel back to the States with Johnathan. The Lacey Stewart case was all about the Zoric family in DC.

  “I did fall in love with her. She’s a wonderful person. She was right to tell me to go to hell.” This time it was Finley who helped her from sliding down, grabbing at her hand and planting his foot on a trunk. “She’s happily married now.”

  Anna gripped his hand and pushed back up from her knees. “She married the guy who tackled her at the press conference and saved her life?”

  “The very same.”

  “Iniquus guy. Strike Force. I have a friend, Randy Lopez, who’s at Iniquus, now,” she said. This wasn’t good chess.

  Her own physical and mental issues were making the game hard to concentrate on.

  Shift the conversation elsewhere, Anna told herself. Move the ball back to his side of the court. “What’s she like, Lacey?”

  “Not like you.”

  “That—” She put her hands on her knees as pain shot up her leg. “That’s not a lot to go on.” Anna batted her arm out to stop Finley from walking. “Stop. I have to stop.” Anna needed to pee. She needed to drink. She needed to catch her breath for just a second. She’d start with drinking. She pulled out the Coke can that she carried inside her jacket, so her body warmth could melt the snow she’d packed inside.

  Finley leaned against a tree, squinting over at her. “What’s Lacey like? Let’s see…She’s got dark brown hair and brown eyes. She’s tiny, just over five-feet tall. She’s more yoga and less cross-fit.”

  “Drink,” Anna said.

  Finley clumsily unzipped his coat to get his can and pulled out the piece of plastic that stoppered the hole and kept him dry. “She’s less chess player and more tea-drinking novel reader. Comfortable in front of a fireplace and less so out in the wilds building campfires out of nothing.”

  Anna swirled the water around her mouth warming it a bit more before she swallowed it down. “I read novels.”

  “I’m imagining you read Creighton and Child – she reads historical romances. Big fan of Jane Austen.”

  “Mmmm.” Yeah, that was definitely not Anna’s thing.

  “She ate a lot of salad.”

  “You’ve never seen me eat a regular meal – I think you might be overreaching if you’re supposing what my diet might look like.”

  “I’m imagining your more of a protein shake/paleo gal.”

  She took the last swig then bent to fill the can with more snow. “Those two things don’t go together.”

  “Okay.” Finley followed suit, filling his empty can. “Not paleo, clean eating. No eating from boxes for you.”

  “Because they took a Ziploc of gorp from my coat pocket at the house?” She laughed. “That SWAT guy must have taken it to eat himself.
It wasn’t in the trunk with the rest of my stuff. The shithead.” Finley was silent, but Anna needed the stupid banter, needed anything to think about beside her aching muscles. The pain was taking up too much space and was making panic rise like an early morning tide. “Lacey doesn’t eat nuts and raisins?”

  “Nuts and raisins, maybe. She’d never put gorp in her coat pocket. She’d have a snack container in her purse if she had anything. And it would be something like a wedge of brie nestled next to some herbed olives or a spinach salad.”

  “Wait. Lacey carried a spinach salad in her purse to snack on?” Anna didn’t mean to be judgmental but… “She sounds a bit high maintenance.”

  Finley went to shake his head then put his hand on his make-do brace. “Self-maintained through a life of necessity. That would be the thing you have in common. She’s more like a magnolia tree, able to withstand the storms. You’re more like a holly. Equally capable in rough weather.”

  Anna popped her eyebrows. “But prickly.”

  Finley studied her for a moment. “I didn’t say that. I wasn’t thinking it either. I meant that you seem able to defend yourself. Lacey learned to bend and sway to stay upright in the storms where you learned to stand strong and fight back.”

  “You seem to have drawn a pretty clear picture of me in your head – you’ve got this whole tree metaphor thing going.”

  “It was a long night. Am I wrong about any of it?”

  “Not so far,” Anna acknowledged. “Got anything else to add?” she asked, zipping the cold can of snow into Mulvaney’s coat, then zipping her own coat around that.

  “She didn’t have a pet, though she talked a lot about getting a puppy. She had no family – I bet you have both those things in common.”

  No, Anna didn’t have either – a pet or a family. She kept a couple of best friends from her school days, but everyone since then was held at arm’s length for their safety. Her job leant to imperiling loved ones. The suggestion from her superiors was to cut ties.

  It was interesting, though. These ideas Finley had about her weren’t things that would be in an FBI file. The file under Zelda Fitzgerald would say: big assed dog, lives in a house of women friends, big family in Ohio that she goes to visit frequently – the family part was a fabrication to give her a break from her undercover work. Nope, he hadn’t read up on Zelda. And he’d pretty much nailed her real-world attributes. The FBI must teach one hell of a profiling program.

  Maybe she should ask him if – Anna pitched herself around when she heard Finley suck in a surprised gasp.

  He flailed his arms out wide, rotating them like he wanted to take off in flight. Anna had been hiking away from him toward the bushes to pee, and she was too far away to help as the snow beneath his feet gave way, dropping him onto his side.

  Reaching, gripping at the sheer white slide, he was finding nothing to stop or even slow his descent. Finley skid down the slope and disappeared from Anna’s sight.

  Chapter Nine

  Anna

  She ran.

  Ran as fast and hard as she could. Sliding sideways. Catching her balance. Gaining traction for a few more strides. “Finley! Finley!” she screamed. But the wind lifted her voice and swirled it into the tree tops. It wasn’t until she got to the edge that she realized Finley had dropped a good meter and slid out onto an ice-covered pond, well out of her reach. He lay on his back, gripping his head in his hands.

  Alive.

  Okay.

  Okay good.

  Good.

  No, not good.

  Alive, though.

  “Finley, the closest edge is to the east.” She cupped her hands and shouted down to him. “Crawl to the right. Don’t stand up. You don’t know how thick that ice is.” Was he from the north? She’d forgotten to ask him. Did he have the skills?

  Anna watched as he flipped over on his stomach and started to lizard crawl. She wasn’t sure if that was because it was the right thing to do or the only thing he could do. But she didn’t stop to contemplate, she was racing along the edge of the drop off, trying to get to the side of the pond to meet him.

  Standing on a snow drift separating water from land. Anna threw the supply bag down and stomped on a small tree to make it bend his way. He’d stopped crawling. She read surprise on his face – wide-eyed fear as she caught his eye. Then the ice gave way, plunging him into the water. He slid beneath the surface.

  Stripping her coats and fleece as fast as she could, dropping the gun belt as she sprinted back around to where he’d skid off the side of the hill, where the ice must be thicker. She kept her eye on the hole, hoping he’d come up.

  Nothing.

  Nothing!

  Over she went. Snake crawling along. She flung survival prayers in Finley’s direction.

  When she reached the hole, Anna shoved her arms into the ice water, flailing around.

  Nothing!

  She dragged a lungful of air into her fear-constricted chest and nose-dived her torso down into the water, swirling her arms desperately through the murk. She caught hold of fabric and dragged. Pulled. Fought to get it to the surface. She flipped onto her back and scuttled, kicking her heels into the ice and pulling.

  When she got Finley’s hips onto the ice. He fought to get out.

  “Kick!” she screamed. “Kick your feet hard.”

  Up he came onto the slick surface. Sopping, dripping wet. She dragged him backwards onto the thicker ice and had him flip over onto his stomach. She pointed at a fallen tree that extended out into the pond and then, with her hands on his boots, shoved him toward it. The log would get him to dry land.

  They had two coats – hers and Mulvaney’s, she processed through the next steps of the survival game. They had Mulvaney’s pants and shirt. They’d get warm enough, fast enough. “Go faster!” she chattered out. Her teeth rattling so hard that they flicked her head up and down. Her wet hair draped down her neck, ice already forming in the strands.

  Anna slid, arm, leg, arm, leg behind Finley, skittering like a summer crab along the shore line. She was whispering nonsense about the crab being her spirit animal, as she moved.

  Relief washed over her as she saw Finley reach an arm over the trunk and fling a leg up.

  Almost.

  They were almost out of there.

  Almost.

  But behind and around Finley as he pushed up on the trunk, the ice splintered and broke.

  “Zelda, get back!” he warned her.

  She shifted to move left of the cracks to the far side of the trunk, but her hand went in. She slid herself back, farther along the pond trying to find another exit strategy. She thought she was doing okay. But a giggle bubbled up in her chest. She sounded crazy to her own ears. When she paused to figure out why she was making that noise, her legs went down into the ice water.

  She fought her first panicked reaction. She had trained for this. The body completely freaks out when it goes in the water but if you can just pause and breathe through it, you can still survive. She waited, and once she could breathe again, she kicked her legs until she rose up. But there was no more ice in front of her to crawl onto.

  There was snow and below the snow there were muddy ice crystals.

  Anna let her feet go back down into the hole and discovered she could stand, though the mud wouldn’t support her weight.

  Each step sank her just above the knees in the icy swampy mess.

  She was wholly focused on getting her foot out, taking a step, sinking back in. Pulling out her rear foot. She was still fifty feet from where the hill curved up, and she’d find relief. She started counting how long each step took her. A stride was twenty seconds. She guessed she was taking steps smaller than her normal walking pace, so she could keep her balance. She’d have to add that into her equations.

  She needed to stay in her rational mind if she was going to get through this.

  Anna noticed she’d stopped shivering and chattering. That wasn’t a good thing.

  The wet a
nd the cold made her mind blur.

  She went back to the simple math of her situation. Six hundred inches at say thirty inches per stride times thirty seconds. Was what? She lifted her foot and set it right back down in the same hole, waving her arms to stay upright. Twenty strides for thirty seconds each was ten minutes. She could be off. She wasn’t sure that math was right. That any of it was right. She wasn’t sure of anything other than that her system was on fire. She was burning up. She’d studied this phenomenon. If she didn’t get dry and warm soon she’d be dead.

  Huh. Think of that…

  Dead felt like it might be peaceful – at least she wouldn’t be on fire.

  She stilled for a moment, trying to spot Finley. He’d been fully immersed. If he was already hypothermic, he could already be in dire straits. She didn’t see him. She didn’t have time to see him. She had to save herself first – there was something in her training about oxygen masks on the airplane. You have to put the oxygen mask on yourself before you helped anyone else. She pulled her foot up, feeling the sucking and pulling of the mud on her boot. If she lost her boot, she’d lose her ability to make a fire. If she lost her boot, getting out of the swamp wouldn’t save her.

  “Fight! Fight for it,” she yelled in her mind.

  She needed the fire, or she’d die.

  And Finley would die.

  They’d die.

  She struggled to picture warm thoughts. Hot cocoa. August in Virginia. Wool blankets. Marmaduke sitting on her lap.

  She took another step.

  She thought about reasons to stay conscious, to battle against the cold that stabbed pain into her legs.

  Chocolate and red wine.

  Her friend Tina’s wonderful laugh.

  Flowers in the meadow.

  That Mediterranean restaurant where the Iraqi guy made falafel that was amazing.