by Webb, Peggy
There was no escaping through the window into that blizzard.
Her longing for the fire she’d built downstairs was almost visceral. She could feel the heat against her face, feel the warmth seeping through her skin and spreading through her body. If only she could go downstairs and wait out the rest of the storm in front of the fire, she might be able to put the horrors of the last two days behind her.
She glanced at the rope she’d tied to a crossbeam. He’d whacked off a small portion, but there was still enough she could use to rappel into the hallway.
But what if Jonathan was playing ‘possum down there? What if she’d only temporarily addled him and he was waiting for her to walk past so he could grab her? She had every confidence she could get the best of him in a game of wits, but she’d be no match for his size and strength. She’d had plenty of survival and endurance training, but none in hand to hand combat.
They’d offered some defensive courses for women at the University of Minnesota. If she got out--when she got out--she was going to enroll as soon as the new semester started.
Resigning herself to the frigid temperature in the attic, she settled into her cocoon and prepared to wait out the storm or continue her battle with the killer. Whichever came first.
* * *
3:45 p.m.
Jonathan came to gradually, his surroundings coming alive in bits and pieces. The floor, hardwood, but missing the scent of lemon oil Betty used on the mop. The walls, stark slabs of wood without the cabbage rose wallpaper Jonathan hated and his mother loved. The ceiling, a jagged hole ripped into it…
He bolted upright and pain shot through his head. His ax had skittered down the hall and an old trunk lay on its side three feet from where he had fallen. His sneaky, conniving bride-to-be had almost killed him. The worst part was she’d done it with nothing more than a trunk.
“KATE! You won’t get away with this!”
“I just did, idiot!”
If they were back home and she was leading him a merry chase around the bedroom, he’d admire her spunk. But she’d wrecked his snowmobile, nearly killed him with falling trees, caused him to freeze almost to death and put a knot on his head the size of a baseball.
“You’ll pay for this.”
“So will you, Mr. Wrong About Everything.”
Her laughter was positively wicked. Why hadn’t he checked that out before he caught her? If he’d ever heard her laugh, he’d have sent her on her way with a patched tire then groomed another girl.
“What else are you going to do? Throw old clothes at my head?” He was so mad he could hardly see straight. Or maybe the smack-down with the trunk had addled him. “Pelt me with mothballs?”
Kate went quiet up there. That was even worse than her diabolical laughter and her unexpected defensive tactics. Her silence was malevolent. Obviously she was plotting against him. He could almost feel her thoughts reaching through the hole to grab him by the throat.
What else could there be in the attic? Maybe some old furniture, but most of it would be too heavy for her to lift. And a chair small enough for her to toss wouldn’t deter him.
Even if there was a second trunk up there, she’d better take another look at her enemy. He wasn’t the kind of man who would sit still for his obituary to read killed by a flying trunk
Still, he went through the house looking for a gun. Let her see how she liked looking down the business end of a barrel.
His search turned up no guns, not even a fishing pole. What kind of outdoorsman lived in this rat hole of a cabin? Jonathan stomped into the kitchen and pawed through the cabinets. On the bottom shelf next to the stove he found an old metal sieve, the old-fashioned kind with curved legs you could put on a countertop.
It was the perfect size for his head. By stuffing two kitchen towels underneath, he could add a layer of protection against Kate’s next blow.
Wearing the sieve like a helmet, he caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror hanging above the sink. His nose was swollen twice its normal size, his face was raw from being nearly frozen and bleeding from the gash Kate had made in his cheek with the trunk. He looked nothing like the dashing, handsome bridegroom he’d intended to be. More like a creature from a horror show.
And he was going to extract his full measure of revenge.
Back in the hall, he set the table upright and hefted himself up. He craned his neck upward, trying to pinpoint her location. Where was she?
“I didn’t want to do it this way, Kate.”
“I’m sure you didn’t, you coward. You wanted an easy target.”
Her voice was coming from his left. He angled his head that way, but she had scooted too far back from the edge for him to see.
“You’d better watch that mouth, young lady. Who do you think you’re talking to?”
“The man who shot two innocent girls in the heart with an arrow.”
The clever girl had moved to the right. How did she have any energy after being chased in snow all day? She ought to be weak and dehydrated, huddled up without a single ounce of fight left in her.
The others hadn’t been as strong as this one. Jennifer had put up a fight, probably because of the baby. But Linda had been so scared she’d wet all over herself and done nothing but whimper.
“But what else would I expect from a coward who mistreats his own sweet mother?” she added. Her taunt felt like molten lava in his veins. He boiled with rage. “That’s what you are, isn’t it? A coward. A great, big whiny coward.”
He leaped upward to catch the edge of the attic floor, and she pounced, shrieking like a banshee. He tried to see what she had in her hand, but it all happened too fast. His fingers slipped and he landed back on the table in a crouch. Pain shot through his bruised leg, and he had to hunker there a moment to recover.
He’d have to outsmart Kate. The trick was to stop rising to her bait, tell her something that would throw her off-balance.
“You think Betty’s sweet?” he yelled.
“She was good to me.”
“She sent me out here to kill you.” That shut her up. He felt a moment of supreme satisfaction, extreme superiority. “I told her the storm would get you, but that didn’t satisfy the old biddy. She likes blood.”
Let’s see how she likes that!
Kate was quiet for so long he wondered if she’d passed out from shock. Pretty little privileged girls like her couldn’t fathom how a mother could also be a monster.
“You’re lying,” she said, finally, but she didn’t sound very convinced. More like a bewildered little girl. “Betty’s a nice woman.”
“Why do you think she kept you locked in?”
“So you wouldn’t get to me.” She didn’t sound so cocky anymore. He congratulated himself on finding this new weapon. It was going to be almost too easy to break her.
“She was jealous of you. She was jealous of them all. Betty will never allow another woman to live in that house.”
Kate was quiet up there. Where was all her bravado now? Where was that feisty girl who had run all day through a snowy wilderness and still had enough energy to shove a trunk in his face? He was gleeful at how quickly he’d broken her.
Suddenly, Jonathan was struck by a brilliant plan. It was different from what he’d intended, but wasn’t that the mark of genius? To be able to shift strategy when an opening to victory presented itself?
“If you’ll come down here and be nice to me, I’ll let you live, Kate.”
Her continued silence made him nervous. Had he taken it too far? Had he broken her completely the way he had the second girl? That would be too bad. Kate had far more potential than Linda. She’d been a mouse, a nuisance, as expendable as a used bar of soap.
Kate wasn’t like that. She had brains, class. She was the kind of woman you’d be proud to call your wife.
What if she could be his, after all?
“We’ll sit in front of the fire till the storm blows over, and then we’ll go somewhere else to live. Just the two o
f us.”
Why wasn’t she saying anything? She wasn’t even moving around. Was she thinking it over? Weighing her options?
“We could hunt and fish and live like royalty, just me and you.” The vision became so real he could see the two of them deep in the wilderness where nobody would ever travel, living off the land and having babies. “You’re smart, Kate. You could home school the kids.”
She was still so quiet up there he could picture her mulling it over, maybe dreaming about their little cottage and their first child. A boy. Big and handsome and strong. Just like him. Kate had proved to be a sturdy girl, the kind who would spit out boys as fast as he could make them. After three, he might go for a girl.
Let Betty try to spoil things for him, then. She wouldn’t have a clue where they were. She wouldn’t have any idea that she had three grandsons with a granddaughter on the way.
With such a picture-perfect family, Jonathan might even try to locate his daddy. In the one photo he had, Harvey looked like a man who would get a kick out of being a grandfather. Maybe they could have Christmas together, surrounded by Jonathan’s kids, a holiday both of them would always remember.
Suddenly Kate stomped on the attic floor.
“Hey, down there, Dumbo. Are you listening? I wouldn’t have a child with you if you were the last man on earth!”
Fury propelled him off the table and into the front room. Let her stay up there in the cold. Let her wonder what he was up to. He’d make her so tense with worry that the next time he went over the edge and into the attic, she’d never know what hit her.
He had plenty of time. The monster storm was living up to its name. It wasn’t likely to be done with Minnesota anytime soon.
And he for sure wasn’t done with Kate Carter. By the time he was finished with her, she’d be begging him to put an arrow through her heart.
Jonathan sank onto the sofa and stretched his legs toward the fire. It felt so good he didn’t even bother to take the sieve off his head. Come to think of it, he could call it a crown. After all, he was king of this forsaken cabin. He could sit here and wait for the cover of dark to drag Kate out of that attic.
What would the old biddy think if she saw him now, living like a king while Kate hunkered down in the cold? She might change her tune about who was the dummy of the house and who was the boss.
He pulled out his phone to snap a selfie and send it to Betty, but his phone had gone dead. Last night he’d been so excited to have Kate in the house he’d forgotten to charge it. Probably couldn’t get any service out this far anyway. That last call he’d made to Betty was about the limits of service this deep in the wilderness.
It served the old biddy right. Let her sit up there in that big old house and worry about him for a change. It was a whole lot better than him worrying about her, what evil thought she had, what horrible insult she’d hurl his way next, what outrageous thing she would do and say in order to ruin his life.
Chapter Nineteen
5:00 p.m.
Betty was freezing to death and furious at everybody she knew. Her power had been off for four hours and that stupid son of hers had forgotten to get fuel for the backup generator. If he ever got home, she was going to make him wish he was dead.
What was taking him so long? He’d caught up with the girl hours ago. Betty didn’t care how smart Kate was. It shouldn’t have taken this long for Jonathan to kill her.
She watched as the last log burned in two, then wrapped herself in another blanket and went into the kitchen to find something to eat. As it turned out, all she found was some stale bread and peanut butter with jelly.
She’d meant to cook a pot roast with all the trimmings plus a meatloaf to have for the storm, but, oh no. Thanks to that foolish son of hers, her house had turned into Grand Central Station. She hadn’t done a thing all day except stand in her front door and fend off foolish questions.
She hoped Maggie Carter was out there in the wilderness buried under an avalanche. It would serve her right for ruining Betty’s day.
And that stupid cop need not think he was going to come back nosing around here with a warrant. Betty would shoot him on the spot. She’d use him for fertilizer for her spring garden. If spring ever came. At the rate winter was going, it looked like she was in for another few months of misery.
Betty made herself a sandwich then stood at the kitchen window, eating and peering into the darkness. She hated winter. The horrible weather and the stupid early sunsets. Though who had seen the sun since Holly went on a rampage?
The blizzard was driving her crazy. Shutters banged against the walls and the howling wind tore under and around the house. It was like some crazy giant trying to lift her home off the foundation and rip it to shreds.
Well, let it. She’d move to Florida. Get herself a little cottage on the beach. Without Jonathan.
He was grown now and she wouldn’t live forever. Maybe it was time to let him go. Maybe it was time for him to start taking care of himself.
Still, in spite of his many mistakes and the lonely life she’d had devoting all her time to him, she hated the idea that he was out there in the midst of the storm. She didn’t want to lose her only child. Thankfully he knew the wilderness well, and he had sense enough to find shelter.
She chased her sandwich with a glass of water. She’d meant to make a pot of coffee, something to warm her up during the storm. But, of course, she hadn’t counted on having to think of everything around here, including getting fuel for the generator.
The wind outside her window screeched like a thousand demons. That silly weatherman, Stan, had predicted wind gusts of seventy-five miles an hour. To Betty, it sounded more like a hundred and ten. It sounded like the end of time.
She turned to hurry back to her fire.
Suddenly, the wall ripped off and the gale lifted Betty across a kitchen turned to chaos. She slammed onto her back while shards of glass pelted her. Her furniture flew around her like animation in a Walt Disney movie. The teapot bounced off her head and an upended china cabinet made a hard landing on her hips.
She screamed with pain and couldn’t seem to stop. She was pinned to the floor. Every bone in her body felt crushed and broken. Her hips were twisted sideways and the useless sticks that were once her legs didn’t seem attached to the rest of her. Even her hands and lower arms were mangled underneath the china cabinet.
“Help!” she cried. “Somebody help me!”
The wind snatched her cries into the maelstrom. The dishes that had been sitting quietly in the sink turned into airborne missiles while her kitchen towels pelted her head like angry demons. A large tea towel featuring a wilderness scene attached itself to her face and wouldn’t let go.
She was going to smother to death. If the flying crockery and cutlery didn’t kill her first. Panicked, she fought for breath. Her vision was going dim. She was going to die because of a tea towel.
“Help me,” she whimpered.
But nobody was there to hear except Holly. The storm took pity on her and lifted the towel off her face. Betty gasped for breath--only to find herself sucking in snow that was now pouring into her house where the wall used to be.
“No, no, no, no, no….”
The snow flew in with a vengeance, first covering Betty with a light dusting, the way she used to sprinkle powered sugar on top of her pound cakes, then piling it on like Jonathan had when he was five years old and tried to bury his mother in sand.
They’d driven all the way to Biloxi to meet a man Betty had discovered at an online dating site. A year after her husband Harvey had vanished. Back when she was gorgeous and golden and filled with hope.
When had hope died? When she’d found out her online suitor had a wife and six kids and was an alcoholic, as well? When she’d discovered that there was something a little off about Jonathan? When she understood she’d married a spineless, heartless man who would bring her nothing but misery? When she’d realized she was never going to have a charmed life? She was
going to be stuck in these Minnesota woods forever with a son who didn’t appreciate her.
She blew snow out of her mouth and tried to blink it out of her eyes. For a while, she’d thought she would be buried alive under the snow. But the wind had shifted directions and the snow was now swirling off into the woods.
Fortunately she would not be dying of asphyxiation.
Unfortunately, nothing could stop the cold. No amount of wishful thinking would raise the temperature from twenty below. Her teeth chattered and she shivered violently.
It came to Betty with the same certainty she’d felt when she sent Jonathan out to kill the girls. She was going to freeze to death.
She was so cold she could no longer feel her own skin. She was nothing more than a beating heart encased in an icicle.
Is this what Linda had felt?
Jonathan had killed the first one—Jennifer--quickly. Betty didn’t know why. Maybe because of the baby. Maybe because he’d once had some crazy idea that the two of them might make a go of it. In spite of the way his warped brain worked, he’d somehow developed real feelings for her.
But the second one was nothing more than a scared little mouse. Betty had sent him out to kill her with no more thought than if she’d told Jonathan to set mousetraps in the attic. She’d even reminded him to get back in time for supper.
He’d come back in time, and they’d had a good laugh over their roast beef and gravy when he told how he’d toyed with the girl.
“She was running around naked in the snow, whimpering and peeing herself,” he’d said. “I’d let her get ahead of me, just enough to make her think she could get away, and then I’d tackle her and bring her down for a little fun and games. Finally she turned blue all over and was shivering so hard it wasn’t fun anymore, so I sat down and entertained myself watching her run in circles till she couldn’t run any more.”
“How long did it take her to freeze to death?” she’d asked.
“I didn’t wait to find out. You know me. I’ve got a generous heart. I put her out of her misery before she froze to death.”
