Cold Lake (25 page)

Patterson twisted the keys and got out.

With a glance over at the wildlife camera nailed to the tree, she slammed the door and ran around the front of the car and up the slope to the woods on the right hand side.

With quick, powerful strides she climbed the dirt embankment and before too long was swerving between tight pine trees. Her lungs beat a steady rhythm, and the earpiece thumped in her left ear with every movement. For minutes she kept the steady pace without struggle, and she thanked herself for taking time out of every single day for the last two years to exercise.

Jumping over a downed log, she slowed and stood behind a thick pine and leaned on it, catching her breath with long pulls of air. With slow deliberation she ducked down and peeked around the edge of the tree.

The road veered away from her below, and in the distance was a partial view of the Grey’s cabin. She saw the white paint of Rachette’s SUV parked in front, and the wood two-story structure to the right. Past all of it she saw slivers of the gray lake water beyond. It looked still, no white streaks of a boat wake, but she could see a distant row of wake waves as rolling reflections on the otherwise still water.

Where the hell was Wolf’s radio signal?

If that was their boat’s wake, he was undoubtedly on shore by now. Not only that, but judging by the waves, it looked like Wolf would have had enough time to jump in the water, swim to shore, and hike the short distance to the base of the cliff and by now be halfway into his climb.

“Wolf, do you copy?” She whispered into her wrist mic.

There was no response. Quickly she checked her belt and made sure the dial was turned on. It was. The green light was solid next to the power knob and she was on the agreed channel.

Damn it.

In an instant she forgot the radio, because a branch had snapped loudly somewhere down the slope between her and the cabin.

Again she leaned out, and she still saw nothing in the forest below. For ten full seconds she scanned the area below, doing methodical horizontal sweeps with her eyes, adjusting the distance downward, and repeating the process. If someone was there, they were waiting her out.

What was her next move? It was impossible to make a choice without Wolf’s signal. She was there as a decoy, to bring their attention up the hill while Wolf snuck up from behind. Was the climbing rope Wolf had been expecting not there? Was he hurt? Had he been seen?

Even if things were still going to plan, if Wolf was nowhere close to finishing his climb up the cliff face behind the property, she was not in position to start banging pots and pans.

Damn it.
Wolf was silent, and the sisters had the edge. They knew the forest. According to Wolf, they had sensors, and as far as she knew she was signaling her position right now.

She leaned back against the tree trunk and shook her head. Something must have happened to Wolf’s radio, she thought. Otherwise he would be communicating. That was the only thing she could think of.

What if he fell off the cliff face and he was lying dead on the ground right now? Then what?

“Shut up and move,” she hissed under her breath.

She needed a better view of the property below. Scanning straight across the slope, she found a target that would give her a better vantage point—a group of old-growth pine trees in the distance.

With a quick breath she gripped her pistol, then sprinted for it, trying to keep her footfalls as silent as possible. Keeping her eyes forward, her breath bounced in and out of her nose as she moved with as much speed as she could muster. She swerved and ducked, jumped a downed log, and baseball slid through pine needles to a stop at one of the thick trunks.

For five seconds she steadied her breath and then poked her head out.
There!
She cheered silently to herself as she saw Wolf was already up the cliff and making his way across the property to Rachette. Then her face fell and she gasped in horror, because what was about to happen next she could see as clear as Rocky Mountain air.

Wolf was only halfway up the rock face when his forearms started giving out.

The rope had been there, just as he hoped. The Grigri was doing its job—the cam inside the device pinching the belay side of the rope, arresting his downward motion when he needed.

And now he was using putting his full bodyweight on the rope, stretching his forearms, staring alternately between the rest of the climb ahead of him and the trail below and to the right.

The trail is too exposed on top. Suck it up.

The trail
was
too exposed. First, there was the two sisters’ alleged security system that Wolf’s father had helped set up. That meant the trail from the dock, and the stairway up the rocks, would have been equipped with at least one sensor. To not do so would have been negligent.

Even if there were no sensors, it was an open stairway, with no cover at the top. He’d seen as much two days ago. Taking that route would have been suicide if the two women were even half as dangerous as they seemed to be. Once on top, he would have had an expanse of wide-open property to negotiate, and now no weapon except for the dive knife on his calf.

He looked up. The top of the cliff was his best bet to sneak onto the property. There was cover in the form of pine trees to the left at the summit. And best of all, it was unexpected, he told himself again.

Steeling himself for another push of exertion, he sucked in a breath, gripped a thin handhold with his right hand and pulled himself up. Then he pulled the slack of the rope through the Grigri. Then he alternated hands, heaved himself a foot up the rock, and pulled the slack of the rope.

The light was fading fast, like he’d suddenly entered a cave. The skies would open up with rain again soon.

He pictured himself summiting. He envisioned himself doing it in one continuous burst of energy.

With clenched teeth, he reached up and grabbed another handhold.

Pulling up with shaking biceps, he thought of the two deputies lives at stake on top and it fueled his muscles and his resolve. And when a minute later that wasn’t enough, he thought about Sarah’s dead body, and how he was sure now that one of these twin sisters had shot her dead.

A couple of minutes later, Wolf summited the top of the cliff and collapsed to his chest, panting for oxygen. He quickly gained his composure and ducked behind a wind-warped scrub oak. The two women he now knew as Hannah and Rachel Kipling were on the other side of his thin cover—across the lawn and in front of the house.

Chest heaving up and down, the muscles in his biceps feeling like they’d been torn in half, Wolf watched in silence as his pulse pounded in his temples.

Blood trickled out of his nose and onto his teeth. As he licked the blood and swallowed, his right hand middle finger flexed against his palm, the tendon in his forearm clamped tight and screaming in pain.

With slow, deliberate movement, he got to his knees, keeping his upper body crouched low, held his breath, and with his other hand stretched out his finger.

He froze as the two sisters looked toward him. He was unnoticed, because a second later they turned and looked back up the mountain the opposite way.
Unexpected.

Narrowing his eyes, he studied the two women. They were identical physically, but surely not the same mentally. One sat on the front steps of the house looking defeated, while the other glared into the trees above. He thought about the makeup on Kimber’s face last night. How it had seemed overdone. That had been Hannah, he knew now. The picture from Boise had shown she did not have a mole on her lip. That had been drawn on. That had been what was bothering him about her makeup. Hannah was the baseball bat wielder in her childhood, and she was presumably the one looking up the mountain with killer determination. 

Wolf snapped out of his thoughts and moved silently to the trees to his left.

The rope scraped across the top of the cliff below him. He stopped and dropped to his knees again, watching in horror as a fist-sized rock dislodged and rolled for a few inches before stopping—right before it plummeted over the edge and made a noise that could give away his position. The rock stilled, and Wolf breathed out.

Wolf crouched behind a thick pine trunk and surveyed the property. The cabin was built perpendicular to the edge of the cliff, with the front of the house on Wolf’s right, where Rachette’s SUV was parked and the stairway climbed to the upper level deck and front door.

The rear of the cabin was on Wolf’s left, with a deck on the upper level and a door to a ground level underneath it. The side of the house was straight ahead, and Wolf recognized the kitchen through the windows on the upper floor.

Wolf watched as one of the sisters walked away along the house. She paused and kicked something on the ground.

Wolf exhaled with relief to see it was Rachette, alive, albeit writhing on the ground in pain.

That was definitely Hannah,
he decided.

Wolf’s anxiety ratcheted up a notch when he realized what she was doing. She was going after Patterson.

He pulled his dive knife and severed the rope below the Grigri and watched the frayed end disappear over the edge. Gripping the rope above the device he paused before cutting it.

Instead of slicing it, he jammed the knife home in its sleeve and reeled in the rope hand over hand. As he pulled the cord up, it threaded through two carabiners attached to the top anchor lines, and he moved smoothly to keep the metal from clanking with each pull. There was no plan for the rope, but perhaps he could use it to restrain one of the sisters.

After pulling up the entire rope, he took the coil off his arm, slung it over his head and sprinted silently to the rear of the house.

Once up against the side of the house, he walked toward the front and peered around the corner. Rachette was near his SUV, fluttering his eyes as he barely held onto consciousness, his shoulder covered in blood and his face looking ghost white.

The sister who stayed behind,
Rachel
, paced short steps at the base of the stairway that led to the second floor. She looked eagerly in the opposite direction toward her sister, who made her way past the front of the house and out of sight.

Patterson was coming from up and from the right. The sister was going to try and flank her from the left.

“Be careful,” Rachel hissed. “She could have a rifle!”

Wolf ducked back around the corner.

He had to act fast.

He peered, and then with light feet stepped around the corner, keeping the stairway between him and Rachel. Without slowing he bent down, picked up a stone, and lobbed it high in the air and over the back of the SUV, all the while moving forward at the same silent pace.

The stone landed with a splat and Rachel turned toward the noise and pointed her pistol. Wolf sprang up from behind at the same instant, clubbing her on top of her head as hard as he could with the butt of the knife handle.

Wolf’s fist was a sledgehammer with a solid plug center, and the muffled knock on her skull dropped her unconscious to the ground face first.

Wolf sheathed his knife, and then took her pistol and tucked it into the waist of his harness. He grabbed her under her arms and pulled her back the way he’d come. Tossing her to the dirt on the side of the house, he went back up to Rachette.

Rachette looked up at Wolf and smiled.

“Don’t say anything,” Wolf whispered.

He grabbed Rachette under the arms and dragged him backwards, scraping his heels along the dirt and wet grass, down to the side of the house. He could tie up the one sister, and know that Rachette was behind the shelter of the house, and then get on the hunt for the other sister.

“Drop the cop, and drop the gun.”

Wolf’s stomach sank. With a slow squat he laid Rachette down next to the unconscious sister and held up his hands.

“Slowly. Pull the gun out of your harness and toss it to your side.”

Wolf gritted his teeth and did what he was told.

“Thank you. And now the dive knife.”

Wolf pulled the knife and tossed it next to his gun.

There were quick footsteps on the soggy grass behind him, and Wolf turned to see her picking up the pistol and the knife.

“Hannah? Or Rachel?”

She raised her eyebrows and tucked the pistol into the back of her jeans, and then she picked up the knife and stared at it. She twirled it for a second, staring at the blade as if lost in memories. Then she twisted, hauled back, and threw the knife across the lawn and over the cliff. With a sour smile she faced Wolf with her gun pointed.

“Hannah,” Rachette grunted from the ground, answering Wolf’s question.

An icy raindrop slapped the back of Wolf’s neck and trickled down his wetsuit. Another one smacked on the wood side of the house, and a cold breeze drove up over the edge of the cliff.

Hannah looked at Rachette and then raked her eyes up and down Wolf. “Nice outfit.”

Wolf stared at her.

“I got to thinking just now, why the hell did that midget deputy of yours stop in front of our camera and go into the woods? And then we saw that boat go by. I almost didn’t put it together.” She twirled a finger in the air. “But then I did, and I came around the house.”

Wolf glared. “Why did you kill Sarah?”

She narrowed her eyes. “I killed Sarah? Oh really?” She leaned her head back and laughed heartily. “You’re better off without that slut. Believe me.”

“What the hell do you want?” Wolf asked. His chest heaved, and despite the cold wind that howled up the cliff, he was sweating under the wetsuit.

Hannah’s cool façade cracked for an instant and she thrust the gun at Wolf. “To be left alone!”

“Then”—he waved a hand—“go. Get out of here. Leave me and my deputies and you and your crazy-ass sister get the hell out of here.”

“She’s not crazy.”

“Ah. Right. That’s you.”

Hannah walked over to Wolf and past him. She peered around the corner to the front of the house and then turned back to Wolf and came back, leading her movements with the business end of the gun. “Tell your deputy to come out with her hands up or I shoot this guy again.”

She stopped and aimed down at Rachette. “She’s at the back of the house.”

Wolf glanced toward the back of the house.

“Do it!”

Rachette stared up at Wolf from the ground, shaking his head in defiance.

“Patterson!” Wolf yelled. “Come out!”

There was no response but the whoosh of wind through the pines and the knock of raindrops on the side of the house.

“Patterson!”

“Here.” Patterson came around the corner with both hands in the air, her pistol aimed to the sky.

“Drop it!” Hannah pushed the gun closer to Rachette. “I swear to God, I shot him once, I’ll shoot him again. I’ll shoot him in the face. Drop it.”

Patterson threw her gun to the side and walked at them. Her eyes were half closed, eyeing Hannah with burning hatred.

Wolf held out his hands. “Okay, you got us. Now what? What’s your plan, Hannah?”

She backed away from Rachette and walked to her sister who lay motionless a few feet away.

“Rachel,” she said, slapping her cheek. “You okay?”

Rachel groaned and rocked her head back and forth.

Hannah glared at Wolf and thrust the gun at him. “You two back up. Towards the cliff.”