Ice (2 page)

That was the thing about Lolly Helton. Even as a little girl, she’d been so convinced that she was so much better than everyone else in town that nothing he or anyone else had said to her had put a dent in that superiority. Her father was the mayor, and she never forgot it, or let anyone else forget it. If she’d been especially pretty, or especially smart, or anything else out of the ordinary maybe she’d have been more popular in school, but there hadn’t been anything special about her. He remembered her frizzy brown hair, and that nothing she wore had ever looked very good on her, and that was it. Well, except for the way her expression had said
Eat shit and die, peasant
.

There had to be something wrong with him to actually feel a sort of anticipation at seeing her—and probably arguing with her—again.

Keeping a steady hand on the wheel, he switched the radio from XM to a local station so he could catch any weather updates. Within a few minutes he left the city limits of Wilson Creek behind, speeding up to gain whatever extra seconds he could. Another kind of anticipation built inside him, sharp and strong. Sam. He was going to see his kid again in just a few minutes, and his heart began pounding with joy.

Four miles down the road he turned between two huge spruce trees onto a concrete driveway. Behind the spruce trees was a sprawling white house with neat black shutters and a three-car detached garage. The back door was already slamming open as he lurched to a stop, a small, dark-haired dynamo erupting from the house yelling, “Dad!
Dad!”

Gabriel left the truck running and leapt out, barely in time because Sam launched himself upward. He grabbed the kid out of midair, and skinny arms wrapped around his neck so tightly he could barely breathe. He didn’t need to breathe. He just needed to hold his son.

“We got out of school early!” Sam said, beaming at him. “There’s going to be an ice storm. Gran’s making plenty of soup, because she said we’d probably need it.”

“That’s good to hear,” Gabriel said. Sam was wearing a coat but it wasn’t zipped, and the hood had
fallen back so the cold rain was falling on his bare head. Gabriel pulled the hood up, then opened the truck’s back door to grab his duffel, shouldering the door shut. Holding his son in one arm and the duffel with the other, he ran through the rain to the back porch. His mother was standing there, trim and capable-looking in her jeans and boots, the wide smile on her face not quite disguising the concern in her green eyes.

“He wouldn’t wait,” she said, throwing her arms around Gabriel and hugging him, then planting a swift kiss on Sam’s cheek as well.

“Ah, Gran,” he said, squirming, but he didn’t wipe his cheek. Gabriel grinned, remembering how mortifying it had been at that age for his mother to kiss him. Sam might as well get used to it, because nothing stopped Valerie McQueen from kissing the people she loved.

He dropped his duffel, set Sam on his feet, then squatted and began rifling through the duffel for his knife and flashlight. “The coffee’s almost ready,” his mom said. “I already have one thermos filled with soup, and here’s one of your father’s insulated rain ponchos.” She gave him the poncho, then turned and hurried back into the kitchen.

“Thanks,” he said, hoping he wouldn’t need it. His boots were all-weather and insulated, so his feet should stay warm and dry, but he tucked an extra pair of socks in his coat pocket, just in case. His coat was thick and heavy and he had gloves in the truck, as well
as a blanket that Sam had shoved under the backseat over a year ago and which he’d never gotten around to dragging out. He figured he was as ready for a quick trip up the mountain as he was going to get.

“Where are you going?” Sam asked as he watched the preparations. “You just got here.” Disappointment laced his tone, edging into sulky.

“I have to rescue a woman from her house on a mountain,” Gabriel replied, keeping his own tone brisk so Sam would know this wasn’t the time for an argument, but he put his arm around him for a quick, hard hug. “I don’t want to leave either, but when something needs doing, someone has to step up and do it.”

Sam mulled that over. With Gabriel being career army and his grandfather a sheriff, in his short life he’d heard a lot about responsibility, and seen it in action. He might not like it, but he understood it. “Is she hurt?”

“I don’t think so, but your grandpa wants me to get her before the ice storm leaves her stranded.”

Sam gave a solemn nod. “Okay,” he finally said. “If you have to. But be careful.”

“I will,” Gabriel promised, wanting to grin but keeping his expression grave. His little guy was learning how to step up to the plate himself.

Valerie returned, and he stood to take the two big thermos bottles from her. “Be careful,” she said needlessly, echoing Sam, but now that he was a parent himself
he understood that the worry never stopped, no matter how old or how capable he was.

“Aren’t I always?” he asked, knowing that would make her roll her eyes, which it did. He kissed her cheek, then knelt to give Sam another, extra-big hug. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. Can you take care of Gran until then?”

Sam nodded solemnly, and he squared his thin shoulders. “I’ll do my best,” he replied, though the look he gave his grandmother said that he doubted he could control her. Gabriel bit the inside of his cheek to hold back a grin.

“Bring Lolly here,” Valerie said briskly. “Don’t try to take her into town and then make it back. We have plenty of room and plenty of food, so there’s no point in pushing your luck with this weather.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said obediently, but inside he was thinking:
Oh, shit, I’ll be stranded with Lolly Helton
.

Maybe she wouldn’t be there. Maybe she was somewhere safe in town, and had simply turned off her cell phone. Maybe he’d slide off the road and have to walk back, and wouldn’t be able to make it up the mountain to the Helton place. Maybe, even if she was there, she’d refuse to go anywhere with him. Yeah, he could see that.

Then that weird sense of anticipation rose in him again, the antsy feeling he got when he knew he was going to be in a fight and was actually looking forward to it. He’d been in a lot worse situations than this, he
thought. He’d waded into brawls with nothing but his fists, kicking ass and breaking heads, and come out of it okay. Lolly had a tongue like a scorpion, but that was about it. He could handle her and anything she dished out. “Thanks,” he said to his mother. “I’ll see you in about an hour.” Then he dashed back out into the cold rain and the deepening gloom, off to fetch the spoiled princess from her mountain.

Earlier that afternoon

The old white Blazer, crusted with grime and salt, turned into the small parking lot of the local grocery store. A skinny, ill-kempt man with straggly, dirty-blond hair pulled the Blazer so it was facing the road and put the gear in park. “Ready,” he said, drumming his fingers rapidly on the steering wheel. “I’m ready. Ready to go.” The words were fast and abrupt. “You got the gun?”

“Right here,” the woman beside him said, shoving a pistol into her stained, red canvas tote bag. She was as skinny and straggly as he was, her eyes and cheeks sunken, her long, dark hair plastered to her head so that her ears stuck out through the strands. Her gaze roved restlessly around the parking lot, darted to the front of the grocery store, back to the parking lot. She
put her hand on the door handle and shoved the door open, then quickly closed it again when another vehicle turned into the parking lot and drove past. She watched as a black Mercedes SUV, driven by a lone woman, went past them with tires hissing on the wet pavement and parked in a slot close to the store door.

“What’re you waiting for?” the man asked, still drumming his fingers. He shifted restlessly in the seat. His name was Darwin Girard, and he hadn’t slept in three or four days, maybe even longer. Despite that, he felt as if he might explode with energy, and just sitting there was almost more than he could handle.

“That woman looked at me.” Niki Vann indicated the driver of the black Mercedes as the woman got out of the small SUV and pointed a remote at it. The lights blinked, signaling that the vehicle was locked, and the woman hurried through the rain into the little grocery store.

“She did?” Darwin asked, his attention zeroing in on the woman like a laser. No one was supposed to notice them. That was the plan, and he didn’t like people messing with his plans. Feral hostility glowed in his sunken eyes as he glared at the door through which she’d passed.

“Yeah. Bitch,” Niki growled, for no reason other than that the other woman was driving a Mercedes. Then an idea began to squirm in her brain. “I bet she’s got a lot of money in her purse. Look at what
she’s driving. I bet she’s got more than that rinky-dink little grocery, and she’s by herself.”

Darwin drummed his fingers faster, faster. “What’re you thinking?” he asked, as if he didn’t know, grinning at her. Niki was even better than he was at seeing an opportunity and not hesitating to act on it. Because of her, their supply of meth was fairly steady. She was always looking for a way to get more money.

She shoved the Blazer door open again, and got out. “Be back in a minute,” she said before closing the door, then she darted through the rain, her thin body almost dwarfed by the huge green jacket she wore.

Inside the store, Lolly Helton grabbed a cart and headed down the first aisle. She didn’t need much, just some cans of soup and a couple of sandwich items, maybe a couple of magazines to read, and she wanted to be home before dark so she was in a hurry. Because she was in a hurry, of course, she was stopped almost immediately.

“Lolly!” said a woman wearing a bright red apron that covered her from neck to knees, looking around from where she was neatening the stacks of produce that had been disordered by customers picking through them for a perfect head of cabbage, or apples that were either firm or soft according to their individual tastes. “I heard you were back. You’re looking well.”

“Thank you,” said Lolly, good manners making her pause. “You, too. How have you been?” Mr. and Mrs.
Richard had owned the little grocery store for as long as she could remember, and she’d always liked Mrs. Richard, who loved to joke and gossip and never had anything negative to say about anyone. The door opened behind her and a gust of cold air swept in. She didn’t look around, but moved her cart to the side so the newcomer could pass by.

“Well. Busy, this time of year, with all the holiday cooking.” She wiped her hands on the apron, her gaze moving beyond Lolly to whoever had entered the store behind her. She gave a brief nod of acknowledgment, then turned her attention back to Lolly. “Where are you staying tonight?”

“At home,” said Lolly, a little startled. Where else would she be?

“Goodness, child, haven’t you been listening to the radio? They’re predicting ice for tonight.”

An ice storm! As if she could see the approaching storm, Lolly turned and looked out the window, her gaze sliding past the woman who had entered behind her. It wasn’t anyone she knew—didn’t look like anyone she’d
want
to know—so she didn’t make eye contact. “I haven’t had the radio on,” she admitted. She seldom listened to the radio anyway, preferring her own CD collection for music.

“You can’t stay way out there by yourself. If you don’t have anyone you could stay with, Joseph and I have an extra bedroom—two of them, in fact, now that the boys are married and gone.”

Lolly’s mind raced. She didn’t have any old school
friends she could stay with for the duration of the storm, mainly because she hadn’t really been friends with anyone. Her school years hadn’t been good ones. She was much better at making friends now, but that meant all of them were back in Portland. She didn’t like the idea of staying with Mr. and Mrs. Richard—she liked them, but she wasn’t close to them—but with an ice storm looming she had to make some fast decisions.

“Thank you, I’ll take you up on that offer, at least for tonight,” she said, lifting her purse from the cart. She wouldn’t need any groceries, after all. “I need to go home and get some of my things. How much time do I have?”

“The weather service said it should start around dark. Don’t tarry.”

Lolly checked the time. She had a few hours, but the icing could start sooner than that at home because the house was at a higher elevation. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” she said. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the offer.”

Mrs. Richard made a shooing motion with her hand. “Go on, hurry!”

Lolly did, though she took the time to return the cart to the small corral, pushing it past the woman wearing an oversized green jacket and carrying a dirty red canvas tote, as if that was her nod to the Christmas season. A sense of urgency drove her to almost run back to her vehicle; an ice storm was nothing to dismiss. Snow was nothing, at least to a native Mainer,
but ice was unbelievably destructive. She could have been stranded for days, even weeks, if she hadn’t happened to stop by the grocery store and talked to Mrs. Richard.

So much for her plans, she thought ruefully as she wheeled out of the parking lot, but a looming ice storm trumped packing. There weren’t even that many personal items left to pack up, so it wasn’t as if she had to get everything done right now. The house had been used so seldom in the past several years, there was just the bare minimum of furniture and some odds and ends left, anyway. She had intended to take her time packing—in fact, her actual plans for the night had been to heat some soup, turn on the gas fireplace, and read, leaving packing for tomorrow morning. She enjoyed the peace and quiet, and there was something about being snug in a warm house on a snowy night that deeply appealed to her.

She had come here this week wanting to enjoy a few leisurely days in the house where she’d grown up, wallowing in warm fuzzy memories and, in her own way, saying good-bye to the house and to Wilson Creek. With her parents in Florida and her job keeping her busy in Portland, there was no need for a vacation home that was so rarely used.

The Helton house had once been the finest in the county, a large and somewhat extravagant—for the area—two-story house on the mountainside, just outside of town. For a lot of years all the important local political meetings and parties had been held there,
which Lolly found slightly ironic, as she was the only family member left in Maine and she had no interest in politics and even less in partying. She’d outgrown some of her youthful awkward shyness, but she’d never be outgoing. She much preferred an evening at home to a night on the town.