Snow Brides

by Webb, Peggy

  Premonition? The weather?

  A loose shutter on the second floor banged against the side of the house. And that’s when he saw it. Bars across an upstairs window. He scanned the other windows that were visible. Only one was barred.

  He hoped Maggie didn’t see. It would rip her heart out.

  “Joe?” She nodded in the direction of the upper story. “You see that?”

  “I do. It’s probably nothing. Big houses in remote areas like this often have several generations of family living together. Could be senile grandparents at risk of trying to climb out the window. Or a child’s room.”

  She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t buy it, either. He could tell by her eyes. One blink. I don’t believe you. A second. But I’m not going to argue.

  Maggie used to be passionate about everything, being a SAR handler, being a wife, being a mother, being a good citizen who gave freely of her time for the betterment of her community. When did it disappear? Was he the cause?

  “Joe?”

  “What?”

  “That’s the second time I’ve called your name.”

  “Sorry. What is it?”

  They were almost at the front door. And there wasn’t a single sign of life inside the house.

  “Will you ask the questions?” Maggie said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive. Knowing what I know, I don’t think I’ll be able to say anything without crying or shouting or hitting somebody. Just about anybody will do.”

  He squeezed her hand. “I’ve got this, Mags.”

  How long since he’d called her Mags? Since he’d felt anything with her except the need to apologize. Or disappear.

  He skirted a rotting step and crossed the porch. The door had neither bell nor brass knocker. Joe balled his hand into a fist and pounded. He thought he heard a scurrying, like house slippers sliding across a wooden floor.

  He knocked again.

  * * *

  Betty’s worst nightmare was standing on her front porch. The mother. Maggie Carter.

  And that big dog. A hundred and thirty pounds if he was an ounce. Shiny coat all decked out in his Search and Rescue vest and harness. Fierce looking. A chocolate Labrador retriever, according to the information she’d found on the internet. Not like the black Labs she’d seen around here. They looked like they would lick you to death. This one was bigger and meaner. He looked like he could take you down in two seconds flat then rip you in half with one slash of his powerful jaws.

  The man who was with them knocked on her door again.

  She dropped the edge of the curtain where she’d been peering out and balled her fists in fury. That fool son of hers should have been back hours ago. How long did it take to hunt down a skinny college girl exhausted from floundering around in the woods and put her out of her misery?

  He was weak, just like his daddy. It was just like Jonathan to leave her to clean up his messes. She’d let him have it when he got back. He’d think twice before he trolled around online looking for another bride.

  The very idea. After she’d raised him and coddled him and given him everything he ever wanted, this was the way he repaid her. By trying to replace her. With three skinny, wimpy women who wouldn’t hold a candle to her. No, they would not. In her prime Betty had been a golden goddess. She was still an imposing beauty when she wanted to be.

  The man pounded her door again like he meant business. And that woman for sure was not going to give up and just walk away. Besides, Betty didn’t want them to think nobody was home so they’d be free to just go nosing all over her property. She’d read that dogs like the brute standing on her porch could smell a body buried a mile underground.

  “Just a minute.” She made herself sound weak, and even added a big whooping, coughing fit for good measure.

  Then she scampered into the hall bathroom to swab her throat and nose with Vick’s salve. On second thought she socked herself in the nose with a full can of hair spray so it would be red and swollen. On the way back to the front door, she grabbed a shawl off the hall tree and swaddled herself.

  She took her time opening the door, too. Let them stand out there and freeze. Maybe they’d think twice before they’d raise another daughter who went about luring nice young men like her son with their feminine wiles and their flirty ways and their perfumed hair.

  That first one had been such a wily thing she’d even fooled Betty for a while. She’d put up with the girl for six weeks--and all that went on in that upstairs bedroom. After the foolish girl got pregnant, Betty had been forced to use her entire repertoire of manipulative skills on Jonathan. She told him she’d heard Jennifer sneaking out at night and he’d never know if he was the real father of her baby.

  She’d vowed never to go through that again. And she hadn’t. Not with the second girl, and not with Kate. Get them out of her house and get it over with--that was her motto.

  When Betty finally opened the door just barely wide enough for them to see, she went into a coughing fit that spewed spittle everywhere. They jumped back like she’d used a cattle prod. It was all she could do to keep from laughing.

  “I’m sick as a dog in here,” she said. “Been like this for eight days. I’m so weak I can barely stand.”

  She could see sympathy building on the man’s face, but Maggie Carter didn’t buy her act. It was all because of that dog. No telling what he smelled around here. Yesterday morning when Jonathan had brought the girl in, she’d found the tarp wadded in the corner of the front porch. Stupid fool. She’d had to personally fold it back up and take it to that junky old shed out back.

  “We’re looking for our daughter.” The man’s hand was steady as a rock when he held out a picture of Kate. It appeared to be a high school graduation picture and it didn’t do her justice. There’d been something about that girl, some tough inner fiber Betty could have admired if she hadn’t been such a threat.

  “I’ve never seen her.”

  “Her car went off the road on Glen’s Crossing near here,” he said. “Do you know anybody who saw the accident?”

  “No,” she said, and Maggie Carter made a sound like a mama grizzly bear about to rip your throat out. Let her growl. Betty didn’t care. She wasn’t about to tell them a thing.

  “Is there anybody else in the house we could talk to?” Maggie Carter was a pushy woman. What she didn’t know was that she’d met her match.

  Betty covered her laughter with another coughing fit. For good measure, she lifted the end of her shawl and gave a big, honking imitation of blowing her nose. The nosey woman on the porch tightened her jaw and stuck out her chin.

  Just let her try to get the best of Betty. She’d live to regret it.

  “My son’s upstairs sicker than I am. Poor little kid.” She was proud of herself for that touch. It implied Jonathan might be seven or eight years old. No more than ten. Besides, if he needed an alibi, she’d already framed it. “He’s got allergies, too. I hate to think what’s going to happen to him when I go upstairs carrying that dog’s scent with me. He’s liable to pass out.”

  She didn’t care who was standing on her porch. Nobody got the best of her.

  “I’m sorry,” the man said. Kate’s daddy had her coloring and the same nose. It was small, aristocratic, and made him too handsome for his own good.

  “Do you mind…”

  “I mind everything,” Betty said, cutting the Carter woman off. “I mind having to stand here in the freezing weather talking. I mind two strangers on my front porch. And I especially mind that you’re on my property. Last year I had a break-in, and I still suffer anxiety attacks just thinking about it.”

  The man apologized again, but the woman looked like she might haul off and sock Betty in her already red and now throbbing nose. She wished she hadn’t hit herself quite so hard.

  “I don’t plan to keep standing here in the weather and die of pneumonia. Leave now. And get that dog off my property.”

  The woman looked like she
was going to argue, but the man took her arm and led her off the porch. Betty stood there glaring at them as they left. Let them turn around and get a good look at that. Her expression ought to scare them enough to stay away.

  It looked like they were heading back where they came from.

  “Ha!” Betty whispered. “Some search dog.”

  But then he veered toward the shed. Betty thought she’d die on the spot. But not from pneumonia. She was torn between racing outside with her shotgun or calling to warn her son. She was about to grab her gun and head outside when she saw the dog streak around the corner of the shed toward the trail in the woods. Both the Carters raced after him.

  Betty threw off the shawl and kicked it into the corner while she searched her pocket for her cell phone. Where on earth had she put it?

  She’d been in the kitchen when the nosey Carters came. She raced in that direction and tore up the place looking for it. She finally found it in the breadbox.

  Those three girls had just about driven her crazy. If Jonathan brought another one here, Betty, herself, would put her out of her misery.

  Don’t think she couldn’t, either. She was an expert with guns. Ask anybody, her son or even that useless ex-husband if you could find him. Betty was an expert marksman. During their brief marriage, she’d put more wild game on the table than he had.

  She jerked her phone out of the breadbox and called her son. It went to voice mail.

  “Jonathan? Are you there…? If you’re deliberately not answering your phone just because it’s me, then you’re dumber than I thought. And that’s saying a mouthful. You’d better take care of business and get out of the woods. Maggie Carter’s after you with her search dog, and she’s mad enough to spit fire.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  10:45 a.m

  The open meadow left Kate vulnerable, but it was the shortest route toward the lakes she’d seen from the bluff--and hopefully the cabin. Fighting against bitter winds and frigid temperatures she pushed forward. She was in full stride, going wide open when the arrow whizzed past her leg.

  “STOP RIGHT THERE.” Jonathan’s yell spurred her on.

  If he was trying to kill her, he’d completely missed the mark. Was he a bad shot or had he been trying to cripple her? Was his plan to bring her down like a wild animal on the run then overpower her and put a fatal arrow through her heart?

  Think!

  There, on the left. A copse of trees. Without breaking her stride Kate veered in that direction. It was quiet behind her now, but she didn’t dare stop to look.

  You can do this, Kate. In her mind, her coach was on the sidelines, urging her on as she raced toward the finish line. You can do this. Keep on going.

  She was moving against the wind now, struggling as it buffeted her backwards, shivering as it moaned around her like something alive, like a new enemy that had risen from the earth. If Jonathan didn’t get her first, the wind was determined to defeat her.

  Stretch out! Push it!

  With her coach’s voice spurring her on, she pushed into the wind with all her strength, imagining herself on a groomed track in the spring, arms swinging, hips perfectly aligned under her shoulders. She made her steps quick, light, trying to increase stride turnover.

  Run, Kate! You’ve got this.

  The tree line loomed ahead, and suddenly she burst through. Cover. At last. Kate slowed, evened her breathing, listened for her killer.

  Where was he? Why wasn’t he pursuing her?

  Ducking behind the trunk of a large spruce, Kate stopped to catch her breath and see what her enemy was doing.

  He was barely visible through the curtain of snow. His snowmobile had come to a dead halt in the middle of the clearing. She didn’t know if he was out of gas or out of a killing mood, but she wasn’t about to wait around to find out.

  She set off into the deep forest, constantly sweeping her gaze around for higher ground. She had to even the playing field. And that meant getting him off the snowmobile.

  * * *

  Jonathan sat on his snowmobile shaking with fury as he tapped Betty’s name in his contact list.

  “It’s about time you called,” she said. “Where are you?”

  “You made me miss her!’

  “What?”

  “I had a clean shot at Kate, and you called right in the middle of it.”

  “She’s not dead yet?”

  “That’s what I said. And it’s all your fault.”

  “Well, excuse me for trying to keep you alive. Pardon me for being concerned about the safety of my own son. Listen up, stupid! Maggie Carter and her dog are in the woods hunting you down like an animal.”

  “The search dog’s here?”

  “That’s what I said, moron.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “Then don’t act like one. What’s taking you so long to kill the girl, anyhow?”

  “She’s smarter than I thought.”

  “I told you. You’d better take care of her soon. The latest weather report said the blizzard will be here around one-thirty.”

  “Wind’s already blowing the ground snow so hard I can barely see.”

  “It’ll be a whiteout soon. Take care of her and get home as fast as you can.” Suddenly she said a string of words that even he wouldn’t say.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Cops are on my porch.”

  “Don’t tell them a thing.”

  “What do you think I am? An idiot? Unless they’ve got a warrant I’m not going to give them the time of day. I’m sick with the flu, and by the way, so are you. Upstairs in the bed.”

  Furious at the cops, his mother and his bride-to-be, Jonathan ended the call and screamed Kate’s name. The answering silence mocked him. There was not a single sound in the wilderness except the moaning of the wind.

  What did he think? That she’d answer?

  She was nowhere in sight. Where did she go? For all the good wondering would do, he might as well sit there and say eenie, meanie, minie, moe. Jonathan wasn’t about to fail and let Betty keep rubbing it in about what a loser he was, a nincompoop, an incompetent fool. She’d called him every name in the book. Someday he was going to get a bellyful and show her who was boss.

  Fury drove him to push the snowmobile to its limit. The wind got fiercer by the minute. Resulting snow squalls obscured his vision. Jonathan’s snowmobile crashed so suddenly he barely had time to register that he’d slammed into a boulder.

  He catapulted into the air, his arms and legs ricocheting like a rag doll. When his body slammed the ground, his right shin hit the boulder with a force that brought tears to his eyes. Jonathan sat there shaking his head in disbelief.

  How did this happen? Luck was always on his side.

  Until today.

  Seething, he stood up and almost crumpled. His right leg was going to be bruised and sore for days. Maybe even broken. He tested his weight, and was surprised that it wasn’t so bad. Bruised, maybe. Once he was riding again, he wouldn’t be on it much anyway.

  Still boiling at the injustice of his situation, he limped toward his snowmobile. It lay against the boulder like a dead bug. The front end was completely demolished, and parts of the machine lay scattered in the snow.

  He was on foot now, and he hadn’t even brought snowshoes. Hadn’t thought he’d need them. He was so hot with rage he almost forgot he was practically freezing to death. Kate’s shenanigans were costing him the comforts of home in the storm--a big fire and a glass of whiskey.

  The only good thing he could say about the situation was that his bow and quiver of arrows were still intact. Jonathan shouldered his weapon and limped toward the woods. He had to find a hiking stick, and he was going to find Kate. Make no mistake about it. If she thought he’d overlook what she’d put him through, she was sadly mistaken. Kate Carter was messing with the wrong man. And she would pay.

  He entered the woods and began his search for a makeshift cane. He rejected several tree limbs that woul
d be easy to cut with the knife he always carried. They weren’t substantial enough to do the job.

  His search brought him to the snowshoe tracks. Where in the world had they come from? Nobody was in this part of the woods with him except Kate. He’d have noticed. And she wasn’t wearing snowshoes.

  Jonathan knelt beside the tracks and looked in both directions. Clearly, they came from the area where he’d tried to cripple her with the arrow. And clearly, the clever girl had managed to find herself some snowshoes. But where? At the abandoned trading post?

  Then he remembered the shed behind his house. Jonathan whipped out his phone and was about to tap Betty in his contacts when he remembered the cops on his porch.

  He opened his mouth to yell out his frustration then stopped on a squeak.

  That Carter woman was in the woods with her dog.

  He tightened his jaws and gritted his teeth hard enough to crack enamel. He wanted to go home. He wanted to get into his bed and pull the covers over his head and forget he’d ever gone looking for a wife on the internet.

  But if he didn’t kill Kate, she’d tell. He was going to slaughter her like a deer.

  The thought gave him a momentary burst of pleasure. Picturing the terror in her eyes and the thrill of watching her realize her fate, Jonathan whacked off the first branch that would do for a cane. Then he set off tracking his prey.

  Chapter Fourteen

  11:15 a.m

  Visibility was horrible, and Jefferson had gone full-out since they’d found the wreckage of Kate’s car. He hadn’t hesitated to press forward from the moment they hit the trail in the woods. Her scent had obviously been strong from the beginning.

  When Jefferson went into alert shortly after they’d entered the woods, hope flooded through Maggie.

  “Joe, look.” She pointed to the broken branch then leaned down to praise her dog and to give him premium treats. He was expending enormous energy searching under these conditions. The treats would not only reward him, but help fuel and warm his body.