Black Ice

by Becca Fitzpatrick

  The bullet tore through Jude's shoulder. Miraculously, after one convulsive jerk, he continued to propel himself forward, advancing on Calvin with almost superhuman determination. He staggered three more steps before Calvin backhanded the gun across Jude's face, the strike pitching him violently onto his back.

  Jude lay utterly still, a pool of liquid spilling out beneath his shoulder. I was so shocked, I couldn't find my voice. I gawked in disbelief at Jude's lifeless body. Had Calvin killed him?

  Calvin gazed down at his opponent with a certain twisted admiration. That is, until recognition dawned.

  "What's he doing here?" he demanded, clearly identifying Jude as Mason from the 7-Eleven.

  "You killed him!" I exclaimed in breathless horror.

  "He's not dead." Calvin nudged his foot into Jude's rib cage. "I didn't aim to kill. And I used a small-grain bullet to minimize the damage. But this is that guy from the gas station. Your boyfriend. What's he doing here?"

  "You--shot him," I stammered, my mind still reeling.

  "'Him' meaning Ace, short for Mason, got it. Mason, the guy who abducted you and who now has my map. I take it he's not really your boyfriend?" he commented dryly.

  "If we don't do something, he's going to bleed to death!"

  "Quiet or you'll wake Korbie," Calvin chided me, walking a slow circle around Jude's body, keeping the gun trained on him as he did. "He's in shock. Help me tie him up before he comes around."

  "Tie him up? He needs a hospital!"

  "We have to keep him detained until we're able to contact the police. We're making a citizen's arrest. Once he's tied up, I'll treat his injury. Don't look so scared. What's the worst that could happen?"

  "He could die."

  "Would that really be so bad?" Calvin continued, in a mild voice that struck me as far too calm, even for Calvin. "He left Korbie in a cabin to die, and he forced you to guide him through the freezing mountains. You nearly died, Britt. And now we have evidence proving he killed a girl last year. Look at him. He's not a victim; he's a murderer. He forced his way inside the cabin tonight with the intent to kill you, and probably me and Korbie too. I shot him in self-defense."

  "Self-defense?" I echoed, shaking my head in bewilderment. "He wasn't armed. And we don't know for sure he was trying to kill us."

  But Calvin wasn't listening. "Go to the garage and bring me the rope. It's on a shelf to the left of the door. We have to restrain him before he becomes conscious."

  I saw the logic in Calvin's plan, but my feet stayed rooted to the spot. I couldn't bring myself to tie up Jude, who appeared near death. The blood had drained from his face, which reflected more ghost than man. Were it not for his short, shallow breaths, he would have looked at home in a coffin.

  I tried to sway myself to Calvin's line of thinking--Jude deserved this--but my heart kept holding me back. What if he did die? He didn't deserve that. The idea of him gone forever slashed me to pieces. I had questions, so many questions, and now I might never get answers. I couldn't believe this might be the end to our story. We'd never had a chance to set things right, to come to an understanding.

  Calvin paused in his inspection of Jude long enough to look across the room at me with an expression of exaggerated patience. "The rope, Britt."

  I left the room, shaking.

  Calvin was right. I couldn't be emotional about this. We had to arrest Jude.

  In the garage, I stretched up on my toes to pull the rope off the highest shelf. I hesitated, once again wondering if it was really necessary to tie Jude up. It wasn't like he could run off. As I fiddled with the rope in my hands, I saw a rust-brown stain matted into the fibers. Blood. I wrinkled my nose, wondering if Calvin had used the rope previously during a hunting expedition. The dried blood flaked off under my fingernail. Was it sanitary enough for tying a man with an open wound?

  I put the rope back on the shelf and grabbed another one from behind it. After a quick check, I determined that though dusty, it was cleaner than the first.

  Upstairs, Calvin had closed the bedroom door. I opened it, and was immediately overwhelmed by the sour stench of fresh blood. Calvin had thrown a few towels on the floor to keep from slipping on it, and had managed to haul Jude onto the bed, where the sheets were already darkening with red.

  Reluctantly, I handed him the rope.

  Calvin searched hastily through Jude's pockets for weapons. Finding nothing, he knotted Jude's wrists to the posts of the headboard. He repeated the maneuver, securing Jude's ankles to the footboard. Jude lay stretched in the star formation of an eighteenth-century prisoner about to be drawn and quartered.

  "Now what?" I asked, trying to quell the sickening wave inside me.

  "I stop the bleeding and we wait for him to wake up."

  Not a half hour later, a loud, cursing growl stirred me from where I dozed on the living room sofa with my head in Calvin's lap. I didn't remember slouching sideways onto him, but I must have, because not a moment after the pained swearing carried down from the bedroom at the top of the stairs, Calvin jumped to his feet, depositing me roughly on the leather couch cushion.

  He was already striding toward the stairs. "Don't come up," he told me, tossing a warning glance over his shoulder. "I want to talk to him alone."

  There was an edge to Calvin's voice that made me shift uneasily. If he roughed up Jude, it wouldn't look good when the police arrived. And they would arrive. Not tonight, but maybe tomorrow. With luck, the sun would melt the snow on the roads enough that we could go for help.

  I knew Calvin wouldn't like it if I second-guessed him, but he wasn't thinking logically. His anger had obviously taken control. He'd killed Shaun, and I was scared he'd do the same to Jude. He couldn't cover up both murders. The fact that he was acting like he could, only proved he was in over his head. I had to help him step back and think clearly.

  "Calvin," I said. "Don't touch him."

  Calvin halted on the stairs, squinting down at me with his jaw clamped fiercely. He held himself so rigidly, he reminded me of chiseled stone. "He hurt my sister. And he hurt you."

  "He didn't hurt me."

  Calvin scoffed. "Are you hearing yourself? He kidnapped you. He marched you through the freezing mountains like a prisoner."

  How was I supposed to convince Calvin--without sounding brainwashed--that Jude had saved my life? Jude had treated me humanely. He'd promised to help me to Idlewilde, when it would have been easier for him to leave me to freeze in the woods and make his own escape. Even after I'd given him the map, he'd stayed with me. If I hadn't run off, he would have stayed with me to the end, I was sure of it.

  "Stay out of this," Calvin said. "You've been through a lot, and you're not thinking clearly."

  "I've been through a lot, Calvin," I said, jabbing a finger at my chest. "I know what happened out there on the mountain. And I'm asking you to leave him alone. Let the police deal with him."

  He studied me with his head cocked slightly to one side, baffled. "Why are you protecting him?"

  "I'm not. I'm asking you to let the police handle this. That's what they're there for."

  "He kidnapped you, Britt. Do you hear me? What he did was illegal and dangerous. It shows a complete lack of respect for human life. He thought he could get away with it. He used you, and he'll keep on using people like you unless somebody stops him."

  "People like me?" I echoed incredulously.

  Calvin flapped his arms impatiently. "Helpless. Naive. You're just the kind of girl guys like him prey on. And he is a predator. He detects weakness and incompetence the same way a shark smells a single drop of blood from a mile away."

  Heat surged into my face. Shaun and Jude hadn't abducted me because of my incompetence. In fact, the whole reason Shaun had picked me over Korbie was because he believed I was a strong, capable backpacker. Because I was clever enough to convince him that Korbie had diabetes, and should be left behind.

  I leaped to my feet. "You are so stupid, Calvin. You think you know everything.
Maybe you should ask why Shaun and Mason took me with them but left Korbie in the cabin."

  "Because Korbie isn't half as submissive or helpless as you," Calvin said decidedly. "You've floated through life expecting your dad, Ian, even me, and probably a lot of other guys I don't know about, to come to your rescue. You can't do one thing for yourself, and you know it. Mason and Shaun looked at you and saw an easy target. A gullible girl with low self-esteem. Korbie never would have stayed with them as long as you did. She would have fought. She would have run."

  "I ran!" I protested.

  "I'll tell you why they picked you," Calvin informed me calmly, which only made my temper burn hotter. I couldn't stand his cool composure, or the patronizing look in his eyes. In that moment, I wondered what I'd ever seen in him. He was so wrong for me. I'd spent eight months of my life mourning a self-important, egotistical jerk. The irony of it was, Calvin had spent the past eight months trying to escape his dad, but he couldn't see what I could. He was transforming into his dad. It was hard to tell if I was talking to Calvin right now or Mr. Versteeg. "Because they wanted to exploit you. Some guys--guys like Mason--get off exercising power over girls. It makes them feel invincible. He needed you so he would feel in control."

  I made a furious sound of disagreement. Calvin wasn't describing Jude. He'd never tried to control me. Shaun, yes. But not Jude. Calvin would never believe me, but out there on the mountainside, I hadn't relied entirely on Jude. He hadn't let me. I'd survived because he'd trusted me to stand on my own two feet. I'd grown up more in the past few days than I had in four years of high school.

  "And I'm the stupid one?" Calvin finished simply.

  "Shut up," I said, my voice shaking with anger.

  "No one's blaming you, Britt. He brainwashed you. If you could see outside yourself and look at this from a legitimate perspective, you'd stop trying to make excuses for a criminal. You've stood up for him at every turn. If I didn't know better, I'd think you have a secret crush on him."

  Whatever I'd expected, it wasn't that. I opened my mouth to argue, but I had no defense. I felt my face growing hot. The blush worked its way above my collar, tingling the tips of my ears. Calvin saw it, his superior expression slipping. His brows tugged together in puzzlement, and then a shadow darkened his face. For one moment, I feared he'd guessed my secret, but he shook himself, clearing away any disgust or betrayal I might have imagined seeing brew behind his eyes.

  "I want ten minutes alone with him," he said flatly, and climbed the stairs.

  I dropped onto the couch, hugging my knees and rocking back and forth, suddenly cold, despite the fire burning a few feet away. A strange fog hung in my head. If only I could think. I had to stop Calvin from going too far. But how? Korbie might be able to convince her brother. But she was drugged and sleeping, and Calvin would lose the last of his temper if I woke her. Even if I did manage to wake her, I doubted she would feel like going to the trouble of helping Jude. She knew him as Ace, one of two men who'd left her to die.

  Feeling restless, I jumped to my feet again and paced the kitchen. If I couldn't take my mind off what was happening in the room at the top of the stairs, at least I could keep my hands busy. I tidied the kitchen and took the trash out, throwing it in the bin outside the kitchen's back door. When I lifted the lid, I was surprised to find several other bags of trash at the bottom. By the smell of the garbage, the bags had been there for weeks. As far as I knew, the Versteegs hadn't stayed at Idlewilde this winter. It seemed impossible that Calvin could have produced this much trash in the couple days he'd been here. Had the Versteegs forgotten to carry their trash out with them the last time they were here, at the end of summer? It was very uncharacteristic of Mr. Versteeg. He hired a cleaning service after every trip, leaving the cabin spotless.

  Frowning, I went back inside and opened the kitchen cabinets. They were fully stocked. Mostly with junk food, mostly with Calvin's favorite foods. Lucky Charms cereal, beef jerky, donuts, Ritz crackers, and crunchy peanut butter. I knew Mrs. Versteeg had sent her assistant up the previous weekend to drop off boxes of food for Korbie and me, but I could plainly see those boxes from where I stood. They were still in the entryway hall where they'd been deposited, untouched.

  It didn't make sense. Why would the Versteegs leave the cabin fully stocked during the winter when they hadn't intended to make any trips up? If I didn't know better, I'd think someone had been living here all these months.

  A strange chill crept up my spine. There were more things that didn't make sense. Things that had been bothering me under the surface for a while now. Right before Calvin had killed Shaun, he'd said, "I've seen you around," but how could that be? Jude had said that Shaun moved to Wyoming about a year ago, and Calvin had spent most of the past year at Stanford. When would he have seen Shaun?

  An impossible suspicion fluttered in my mind, but I swatted it away. I could not doubt Calvin. I would not doubt him. What was wrong with me, that I was thinking the worst of him? I didn't have any reason not to trust him.

  But that's exactly what I found myself looking for next--reasons. Explanations. Proof that this alarming idea brewing in my head was completely illogical.

  In the living room, I shuffled through the papers on the desk for signs that someone had been living at Idlewilde recently--utility bills, recent mail, magazines, newspapers. I found nothing.

  The bathroom was a different story. There was a pinkish ring in the toilet bowl, indicating it had been used but not cleaned. The counter and sink were dirty with dried toothpaste. Water had splashed onto the mirror above the sink and never been wiped away. I knew Mr. Versteeg would have paid to have the cabin cleaned before the family closed up Idlewilde at the end of last summer. Someone had been here after Labor Day. Someone had been here over the winter. I swallowed thickly. I didn't want to think who.

  Back in the living room, I went through the desk drawers more thoroughly. One piece of paper in particular caught my eye. It was a pay stub from Snake River Rafting Company. The check had been cut on September 15 of last year, and made out to Calvin, weeks after he supposedly left for college.

  I shut my eyes, trying to sort through the horrible, half-formed suspicion pounding at the back of my brain. Cal? No, no, no.

  Macie O'Keeffe, the rafting guide who'd disappeared last September, had worked for Snake River Rafting. Was that how Calvin met her? Was she the reason Calvin had stopped calling me and eventually broke up with me? Had they dated, quarreled, and one night after their shift, had he . . .

  I couldn't finish the thought. I couldn't think it. Cal had been away at school for eight months. He couldn't have killed Macie last September--he couldn't have killed anyone.

  I pinched the bridge of my nose to fend off a dizzy spell. The moment felt unreal, as convoluted and visceral as a nightmare. How could Calvin be a killer?

  I dug more frantically through the drawers. I lifted out a rumpled flyer with the bold letters MISSING! printed across the top. I smoothed away the creases over Lauren Huntsman's smiling face. The hole at the top of the flyer led me to believe it had been nailed to a tree or telephone pole. It made sense that search parties had combed Jackson Hole, and the surrounding area, looking for her. All those people hunting tirelessly for a missing girl, and Calvin had taken the flyer as a keepsake.

  A keepsake of what he'd done.

  It was true, I thought dazedly. He'd been hiding at Idlewilde. No wonder he'd tried to dissuade Korbie and me from coming on this trip. His secrets were here.

  His lie seemed to yawn open, swallowing me whole. Calvin, a liar. Calvin, a stranger.

  Calvin, a killer.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  I had to get Jude out of Idlewilde.

  I had to get all of us out of the cabin. We weren't safe with Calvin.

  Calvin.

  The horrible crimes he'd committed--oh, God, let them be a mistake. There had to be an explanation. He must have had a reason. I was missing some vital piece of information. I wasn't
too late to help him.

  At the top of the stairs, I found the bedroom door cracked. Calvin's voice carried through it as he spoke to Jude, his voice choked with fury.

  "Where's the map?"

  He sat on the mattress beside Jude, his back turned to me. In the low flicker of light from the candle on the nightstand, I could see Jude shivering violently, causing the ropes that kept his arms and legs pinned straight to quiver. Calvin had bandaged Jude's shoulder, but that was the end of his service to him. Cal had opened the window; the draft rushed under the door, wrapping around my ankles. In a matter of minutes, the room would be as cold as the wintry air outside. I had the sickening feeling that this was only the beginning of the suffering Calvin had in mind to inflict.

  "Why so interested in the map?" Jude's voice was weary with pain. His breathing came in short, uneven rasps.

  Calvin laughed softly, harshly, and it made my scalp prickle. "You don't get to ask questions."

  Peering through the door crack, I watched Calvin tip the candle over Jude's unbuttoned shirt. Jude let out a sharp gasp that trailed into a low, pained groan.

  "Once more, where is the map?"

  Jude arched his back, straining to free himself, but it was no use; the rope was industry-grade. "I hid it."

  "Where?"

  "You really think I'm going to tell you?" Jude fired back, his defiance admirable considering he was at Calvin's mercy and had to be in a great deal of agony. Admirable or not, it was the wrong thing to say. Calvin tipped the candle a second time, wax dripping onto Jude's bare chest. His entire body stiffened before he uttered another moan. Sweat glistened along his temples and into the grooves of his neck, but the rest of his body continued to convulse in shivers.

  "Three green dots on the map," Jude panted hoarsely. "You forgot to label them."

  This time it was Calvin's spine that went rigid. He didn't respond, but the deep rise and fall of his shoulders told me he was upset by Jude's comment.

  "Three green dots, three abandoned shelters, three dead girls. See a connection?" Jude's hardened intonation made it clear he wasn't asking a question.