Snow Brides

by Webb, Peggy

  Chapter Seventeen

  1:00 p.m.

  Jonathan was beyond hunger, cold and fatigue. He battled through the whiteout with one driving force. When this blizzard was over he was going to find the woman who had done this to him, and he was going to torture and kill her.

  He screamed her name, fueled by rage. The blizzard wasn’t going to get him. Nothing was going to get him before he made Kate pay for everything she’d done to him. No woman slapped him, rejected his advances then spurned the home he offered and lived to tell about it.

  He stumbled over something in the snow. A rock, a root, a fallen tree? He couldn’t tell until he landed on his bruised leg. There was something solid underneath. A floor! He reached blindly through the snow. A wall! A door!

  Jonathan kicked it in with his good leg then stood, disoriented and disbelieving, blinking his frozen lashes. A log burned through, crackling as it shot sparks. The fire was not a hallucination. It was real.

  Jonathan hurried to the blaze and squatted in front of it with his hands outstretched. Gradually his shivering calmed to a manageable level.

  “Hello?” he called. “Is anybody home?”

  He waited for the answer, swung his gaze to every corner of the room for some old codger to rise up out of his easy chair and offer him a cup of coffee. A warm blanket. Some ham and biscuit.

  Jonathan was starving. He’d had nothing since breakfast that morning, and even two helpings of everything hadn’t prepared him for stomping around in a blizzard looking for his bride.

  His ex-bride, he reminded himself. She could be replaced as easily as the other two.

  Easier than Jennifer. That’s the one he’d debated with himself before killing. That’s the one he’d almost let loose in the wilderness just to see if she’d live, just to see if she’d come crawling back to him.

  She’d begged. She’d promised to be good, to do anything he wanted, any way he wanted it.

  She even swore that he was the father of her baby.

  Jennifer came to him as plainly as if she’d suddenly appeared in the cabin and was standing there all big-eyed and scared.

  “I didn’t sleep around,” she said. “I swear to you.”

  “Don’t lie to me. My mother saw you sneaking out.”

  “No! She’s the one lying.” While he positioned the arrow in his bow, she’d put her hands over her belly. “Please, please! Don’t kill me! If you do the baby dies, too.”

  “Do you think I care about some other man’s brat?”

  He still remembered the look of surprise on her face when he pulled back the bowstring and the arrow flew through her heart.

  “Now, see what you made me do.” He’d knelt to arrange her in the snow and place the wedding veil on her head. “This hurts me more than it hurts you.”

  She was lying there so peaceful. “What did you think would happen out here? That I brought you all this way for a stupid wilderness wedding?”

  He bent down to kiss her. She was perfect, really, with the ice crystals already forming in her eyelashes.

  “See what you’re missing. See what a gentleman I am. You shouldn’t have two-timed me.”

  His bride had looked beautiful, the veil framing her cold still face, her blood blooming around her like a rose in the snow.

  Warmed by sweet memories and the blaze, he reached out to Jennifer, but she vanished as quickly as she had come. He shook himself. The snowstorm must be getting to him.

  She was dead. It had been all over the news when they found her body.

  He stamped his feet, trying to get the circulation and heat going.

  “Where is everybody? Hello! You’ve got company!”

  Was the old fool sleeping? Was that any way to treat a guest? Jonathan stomped off through the cabin. He’d jerk the man out of his bed and teach him some manners. Show him how to respect a frozen traveler whose big heart had landed him in more trouble than he’d expected.

  The bedroom was empty. Jonathan helped himself to the blankets on the bed then stormed to the kitchen. He ransacked the place, tossing useless empty dishes and cutlery every which way in his search for something to eat. Nothing but plastic packs of that make-believe food that wasn’t even fit for a dog. Who lived like that? Where was the potted meat, the Vienna sausage, the cheese and peanut butter?

  And where was the owner? If he was hiding somewhere with a shotgun, he’d soon discover something more dangerous than a bear had entered his cabin.

  Jonathan removed an arrow from his quiver and drew his bow. “HEY!” He pointed his bow and arrow in every direction. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

  There was nothing but dead silence.

  “What the devil?”

  Jonathan lowered his bow and tried to think straight. There was a cup in the sink. And a long-handled pot. He found the wrappings from one of those freeze-dried so-called meals in the garbage.

  Could it possibly be her?

  The old biddy had been right. Kate was smarter than she looked. She’d never have survived long enough in the wilderness for him to miss crippling her if she didn’t know something about hiking and camping.

  Jonathan raced back into the front room. The fire was still going, and the owner was still nowhere in sight.

  One of Kate’s Facebook comments popped into his mind. A photo of her beside a campfire posing with a man who didn’t look like much to Jonathan. Camping with my dad, she’d posted. He cooked, I built the fire. How’s that for role reversal?

  He’d thought it was cute at the time, a sweet young thing with her dad. He’d probably gathered the wood and stacked it with just the right amount of kindling then let her strike the match.

  The blaze in the fireplace told another story.

  Jonathan swung his gaze around the room, searching for signs. There. The sofa pillows stuffed in the window. Only a girl would do that. The old codger who owned the cabin would have taped plastic bags over the hole.

  She was here. Everything in his gut told him so. She’d smashed the window, climbed inside then somehow built a fire and found a way to eat that slop.

  But where was she?

  “KATE!” He bellowed her name then stood still, listening for sounds of shifting or breathing.

  Still screaming her name he roared through the cabin once more, kicking open closet doors, ripping off the shower curtain, looking under the bed, overturning furniture. Where could she be?

  He kicked through the kitchen door that led to the back porch.

  There! He knelt and studied the dusting of snow on the floor. In the corner, over by the woodpile. A small footprint near the wall that hadn’t been covered by the mists of snow that still drifted through the screen and around the shutters.

  He jerked one of the shutters off the screen. Snow poured through and a blast of wind shoved him backward. He fought for footing and tried to see beyond the porch. Visibility was zero.

  There’s no way Kate would have tried to escape into the blizzard. Just no way.

  Jonathan clawed his way out of the blizzard-force wind and back into the kitchen.

  “KATE! YOU CAN’T HIDE FROM ME! I’M GOING TO GET YOU!”

  He’d get her if it was the last thing he ever did.

  * * *

  2:00 p.m.

  How much longer before he figured out where she was hiding?

  Even wrapped in her layers of blankets, Kate shivered. She could hear him down below, rampaging through the cabin, stomping and screaming his threats.

  Fear has no place in the mind of an athlete, Coach told her, and she smiled. She was not afraid. She refused to be. She was ready for him.

  But she was cold. The tree that had fallen on the front porch had crashed into the attic window. Even though she’d stuffed the holes with some old tee shirts she’d found in the attic, her makeshift patch job was no match for the blizzard. Plus, the lack of insulation let the frigid air creep though like icy fingers.

  With stealth movements, Kate took her mylar space blan
ket from her backpack and threw it on top of her blankets. Her cocoon immediately became warmer. Still, if it weren’t for that frothing-at-the-mouth monster downstairs, she’d be sitting in front of the beautiful fire she’d built.

  What was he doing now? Adding wood to the fire? Trying to get warm after hunting her down without the benefit of his snowmobile?

  Suddenly the pull-down door to the attic rattled.

  “I know you’re up there, Kate!”

  Terror shot through her, and she struggled to tamp it down. She was utterly exhausted, and she ached with the added effort of being still and quiet. She was even trying not to breathe too heavily in case he could hear. If he thought she wasn’t there, maybe he’d go away.

  He jerked on the string outside the door again, and it creaked.

  Kate glanced up at the crossbeams. The rope she’d strung from the beams through the folding stairs on the pull-down door tightened and the knots strained, but it held strong.

  “I never give up, Kate. How do you think I captured you? Do you think that detour sign got there all by itself and I just happened along?”

  The thought of that depraved mind laying a trap then waiting patiently chilled her soul.

  Don’t let your opponents make you weak. Echoes of her Coach’s voice gave her courage.

  The madman was toying with her, trying to beat her with his mind games.

  “Hi, girlfriend,” he said in a high-pitched voice. “I’m sorry your holidays are going to be so awful… Sad emoji face… I’m driving home Monday and should be there by lunch.”

  He was Frankie!

  Kate felt sick at her stomach. He was quoting her last private Facebook message to her online friend.

  “When I get home, I’ll see if my parents will buy you a plane ticket so you can join us in Grand Marsais.” His girlish imitation and maniacal laughter made her skin crawl.

  “You see, Kate, I worked hard to get you. I’m keeping that good fire going down here, and I’ll stay as long as it takes. You’re mine.”

  She was fed up with him. And she was more than tired of being hunted.

  “Open this door! I know you’re there. I saw your tracks.” He rattled the door again. “If I have to come up there and drag you back down here, you’re going to regret it, Katie.”

  That was the last straw. Nobody got to call her Katie unless they well and truly loved her.

  “So will you,” she yelled. “Come on, sucker.”

  “Kate!”

  “Yeah! It’s me, you slime ball.”

  “What did you call me?”

  “Sucker! Buffoon! Pond scum!”

  He screamed and rattled the door again.

  “What have you done to this door?” If he weren’t such monster, his screech would be comical.

  “I’ve outsmarted you, creep.”

  “Open up!”

  “Figure it out, stupid.”

  He jerked on the string with a force that almost loosened the knots in the rope securing the attic door.

  Kate jumped up and prepared to execute Plan B. The attic was filled with odds and ends of furniture, old clothes, kid’s games, a buoy bell and an assortment of other goodies you’d expect in the deep woods cabin of an outdoorsman. Other people’s junk had become her arsenal.

  It was quiet down below. What was he planning now?

  Kate leaned forward listening for the sound of his footsteps. She tracked him as far as the living room, and then she lost him.

  What would he do next? She didn’t dare let herself panic, and she wasn’t going to waste energy standing over the hatch door preparing to execute Plan B.

  Picking up her ice ax, she huddled back into her cocoon. She’d positioned it so she had a view of both the opening to the attic and the window.

  Those were the only points of access to the attic, and she was prepared to defend both entryways with everything she had.

  She pulled her thermos out the backpack and took a long drink. She had to stay hydrated. She had to stay ready to fight.

  When she’d first heard Jonathan coming, she’d almost panicked, but then she remembered seeing the string hanging down from the hall ceiling. She’d managed to get all her supplies up the disappearing staircase and into the attic. Thanks to parents who never allowed her to be a helpless hothouse flower, she had roped the folding stairs just above the first hinge, closed the hatch door and then secured the rope to a crossbeam.

  While he was raging down below, making as much noise as ten people, she’d quietly explored her new hiding place, confiscated the things she could use, then stuffed the cracks in the broken window and set out to make her hiding place as secure as possible. Her mom and dad would be proud of her.

  Where were they? If her car had been found, they’d launch a search with Jefferson from that point. She was absolutely certain of it. Currently, they’d be holed up with Jefferson in their winter tent, waiting out the storm.

  Could she hold Jonathan off for the duration of the storm? The earliest reports had said it could last anywhere from three hours to three days.

  You have to hold out, Kate. You haven’t crossed the finish line.

  “I can do it, Coach,” she said. “I know I can.”

  The blow against the attic door shot Kate out of her cocoon. What was that? The second blow was followed by the sound of splintering wood.

  She covered her mouth to hold back her scream. There was one important thing Kate had left behind. The ax behind the woodpile.

  Jonathan had found it and was chopping his way into the attic.

  Chapter Eighteen

  3:00 p.m.

  When Kate saw the blade of the ax appear briefly in the pull-down door, she was paralyzed by fear, filled by the vision of two dead girls posed in the snow and certain she’d be next. Momentarily helpless, she watched the blade carve away at the barrier between them.

  With his next blow, wood chips flew upward, sprinkling her hair and clinging to her clothes. Eventually he would make a hole big enough to climb through.

  Move!

  Memories of her Coach’s voice jolted her out of a trancelike fear. Suddenly Kate felt her blood filling up with ice. She was a glacier, a frozen river, an ocean of deadly icebergs. Newly fortified with the icy resolve of a young woman who would not be posed dead in the snow unless an entire army of villains overpowered her at gunpoint, she mentally prepared herself to fight.

  Kate lined up her make-shift weapons. Most she’d found in the attic, some she’d brought up from the kitchen. Her reliable standbys, the rope and the ice ax, she’d stolen from his own shed.

  Somehow it seemed poetic justice to her that she could use a weapon against him that she’d found in the same place where he kept souvenirs of the girls he’d so carelessly slain. As she moved into fighting position, mentally ticking off the order in which she’d use her weapons, she whispered, “This will be for you, Jennifer and Linda.”

  To Jonathan, she screamed, “Today is not my day to die!”

  “Did you think you could keep me out, Kate?”

  “I know I can, you lunatic.”

  “What’s a little bitty thing like you going to do to a big man like me?” His unhinged laughter was made even worse by the sound of the ax blade carving away at the portable staircase.

  “Let me count the ways. First, the minute you show your ugly face, I might chop off your head.” She waited for his response, but all she got was a renewed frenzy of hacking away the entrance to her hideaway.

  “But that would be too easy,” she added. “I think I’ll torture you first. Like you did those other two girls.”

  There was dead silence, no chopping, no angry response.

  “Cat got your tongue?” she yelled. If she could make him mad enough, he might get careless, reckless.

  “You’re not as smart as you think you are, Kate. I’ve never had a girlfriend except you.”

  He started whacking again with renewed fury. Suddenly his ax was through and a hole bloomed across the tr
ap door. He was dangerously close to making an opening big enough to crawl through.

  Kate forced down her panic. Icebergs had no fear. They could not be moved. And neither could she.

  You’ve got this, Kate. Her coach’s voice echoed through her mind, and cold determination poured through her.

  “Dream on, stupid. I’m not your girlfriend. I’m your worst nightmare!”

  One more swing with the ax, and he took down the section of pull-down staircase she’d tied to a beam. The rope snapped, pieces of the staircase flew in every direction and the hole widened so that it looked like the Grand Canyon.

  The only good news was that he could no longer use the stairs. Kate heard footsteps followed by scraping and dragging sounds. He was bringing something into hall to use for climbing. She didn’t dare lean over the hole to look. He might still have his bow, and he might just plant an arrow in the center of her forehead.

  “Come on, sucker.” Goading might force him to show his hand. “Give it your best shot.”

  “I’ll show you who’s boss,” he screamed.

  Suddenly he grabbed the edge of the opening to the attic, and Kate felt the adrenalin rush of fight or flight. When his head and shoulders popped into view, she shoved the antique trunk with all her might. It hit him smack in the face, and he screamed all the way to the floor.

  His body hit with thud, followed by sounds of the trunk banging along the floor.

  “Bingo!” she yelled. “Now who’s the boss?”

  It was quiet down there. She didn’t dare peer over the edge. Instead she moved backward so she could get a long-angle view of the hallway. She saw part of the old fashioned steamer trunk she’d used to send him sprawling, an overturned table he’d used to climb on, and a small section of Jonathan’s legs, spread out like a cadaver on a slab at the morgue.

  Had she killed him? Or was he only knocked out?

  Kate went very still, listening. There was nothing but dead silence below and the screaming storm outside. Holly assaulted the cabin with the ferocity of a pride of lions trying to bring down their prey.