Winter at the Door (16 page)

Spud looked at the bag. “What … what d’you want me to do?”

Saplings grew up through the buckled pavement between the collapsed garage building and the two rusted skeletons of old gas pumps out front. The bent metal tops of the pumps, their glass long ago shotgun-shattered but the round frames still in place, looked to Spud like a pair of smashed heads.

That bag’s just a trick. He just got me out here to kill me. So no one will know, I did what he wanted so now he
—

The guy slid the knife from its scabbard, so fast that Spud didn’t have time to react. “Hey!” he shouted, shrinking away in sudden fright.

The guy looked casually up from paring a shred of cuticle from the edge of his left thumb. “Relax.”

He put the knife away slowly. “You really are a nervous guy, aren’t you? A little pussy, with all your jewelry and your ink.”

He regarded Spud evenly. Spud couldn’t speak, fearing that if he didn’t get out of this van soon, he might throw up or wet his pants. There was just something about the guy …

“So are you hiding something, little Miss Nervous Nellie?”

No words came from Spud’s mouth. Instead a surge of bitter fluid threatened to erupt from his throat. “N-no,” he managed.

The guy sighed, seeming to believe the lie. “I didn’t think so. You’re a disappointment, you know that?”

Spud thought that this question probably did not require an answer … fortunately, since right now it was all he could do just to catch his breath.

“Seemed to me you might have more stones.”

Spud’s chin lifted resentfully. He felt that under ordinary conditions, his supply of stones was adequate. More than, even.

“But maybe I’m wrong,” the guy said, watching Spud from beneath lowered eyelids. “Am I? Do you have stones?”

The answer to this question seemed suddenly very important to Spud, as if his life depended on it. Clearing his throat, he mustered what little voice he could summon.

“Yeah,” he muttered. “Yeah, maybe I do.”

The guy’s lips curved upward again in what served him for a smile. Nodding, he appeared to come to some conclusion, one Spud hoped very sincerely did not involve the knife.

“Why are you doing this, man?” he asked. Dumb, maybe. But he thought he deserved to know.

The guy didn’t answer, pulling the van out onto the road again. Spud glanced over his shoulder at the ruined gas station, the broken gas pumps, and the skeletal trees.

“So,” the guy said as they turned onto the paved road and started back toward town. Now that he’d scared Spud half to death, he seemed more cheerful, almost human.

Almost. “So, open the bag.”

“I don’t get it,” said Trey Washburn. “For one thing, how’d whoever was shooting at you get off the island? That’s where he was, right? The shooter?”

By nine that evening, her own bed was the only place Lizzie wanted to be. Several hours of debriefing in an office at the sheriff’s department in Houlton followed by a small mountain of paperwork had taken all the energy she had. But Washburn had been insistent, and after all, she’d had to eat something.

“Nussbaum had boats on both shores,” she told him now. “The hunting clients used them to get back and forth. Anyone could’ve taken one.”

Washburn’s chicken cutlets in champagne-mushroom sauce were as delicious as his steak had been. She made a mental note to save a
morsel for Rascal, who’d waited patiently at the office for her all day; luckily, Spud had been there to care for him so the dog had been fine when she finally picked him up.

“As for why the shooter stopped, I was shooting at him. Maybe I hit him.”

A dark, roiling desire for vengeance rose in her as she said it.
Between the eyes would’ve been good
.

“But all I really know is that the locator beacon worked,” she added, “or Hudson might be dead now.”

Washburn nodded, digging into his own dinner. “Yeah, I’ve got one of those myself. They’re great for hunting—the signal bounces off a NOAA satellite, so it’s fast. Lucky there was a med-flight chopper in the area, though.”

It had been on its way back to Houlton from a training run; lucky, indeed. Washburn drank some wine. “And you and Chevrier, what, paddled back in the kayaks?”

“Uh-huh.” This time they were eating at the kitchen island with the fire in the cookstove’s side-mounted firebox radiating warmly and the radio tuned to a French-language jazz station out of Canada. She drank some more wine, too, hoping to obliterate the mental picture of blood erupting from Dylan Hudson’s arm.

And of the dead men in the clearing. “Anyway, thanks for the meal. I feel like I used up one of my nine lives this afternoon.”

She looked across at Washburn, who’d dropped whatever he’d been doing when he heard what had happened. “But this helps,” she added, sipping the good Riesling. “It helps a lot.”

“I’m glad.” When they’d finished, he got up and began clearing some of the serving things, rinsing them at the sink.

“Stay there,” he told her when she tried to get up, too. “I like doing this stuff.”

Clearly he did, moving around the elaborate kitchen with the ease of one accustomed to being at home in it. Outside the window looking out over the long valley to the mountains beyond, an icy moon was setting behind the jagged trees, the sky a moon-washed indigo spattered with prickly stars.

“So what did Chevrier say when you told him the whole story?”
Trey Washburn wanted to know when they’d carried their coffee into the living room.

She’d turned down the cognac. “He was pretty good about it, actually. My having other interests here wasn’t a big surprise; Hudson had filled him in before I ever came. After what happened this afternoon, though—”

That violent red splash again, slashing across her vision; she blinked it away, settling into the luxuriously soft sofa as Trey sat beside her.

“—he was very clear on what he wants the ground rules to be,” she finished.

No going off alone without letting someone know where she was. No solitary meet-ups with people she didn’t know unless she had backup. And most of all, in the event she did locate Nicki, no freelance tries at removing the child or confronting whoever had her, no matter what.

“But overall, I think I can live with what he wants,” she finished.

The music had changed; now from the excellent sound system a duet from
The Phantom of the Opera
began floating through the fireplace-scented air. One of the spaniels came over and licked her hand tentatively.

A clock struck ten somewhere; behind the brass fire screen a log popped and settled. And then, without any warning at all, she began to weep.

Not sobs, just tears streaming.
Damn. I’m a cop, dammit, that stuff isn’t supposed to affect me
—

But of course it did. It had to, and the ones who didn’t let it were the ones who ended up sitting alone with a bottle and a gun, trying to decide which one to put in their mouths this time.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, managing a little laugh as she rummaged for a tissue. “After this whole nice dinner and—”

“Don’t be.” He slung a solid arm around her, drew her close. To her surprise, she let him. “You think you’re immune?”

She sighed shakily. “I guess not. Or even if I am, something was different about today.”

“Yeah. Today it wasn’t some civilian, someone you could put over
there
. In
that
category, you know? Far away.”

She nodded against him. His shirt smelled like laundry soap and some other sharp scent, something bracing and medicinal.

“And it wasn’t your usual scene,” he added as the spaniel settled itself on her stockinged feet. “Big city, lots of other cops around.”

I could get used to this
, she thought, even through a pang of disloyalty to Dylan.

Right
, her mind retorted instantly,
because he’s been such an honorable guy to you
. Still, she couldn’t escape the feeling as Washburn went on:

“That big woods up there is no joke, Lizzie, so don’t think it is. It plays by different rules, it doesn’t have any mercy at all, and it doesn’t give any warning, either.”

He settled his arm more closely around her, his voice softly reflective. Probably it was only her own imagination that made it sound more warning than consoling.

“It just takes people. Sometimes on its own, sometimes with help,” he said. The fire popped loudly with a flare of red sparks, startling her.

But then she settled back against him. “What do you mean?”

“I mean there are people out there. Little groups, some are survivalists, end-of-the-world nuts, tiny religious sects.”

She listened carefully; no one else had said this to her.

A weird place
, the lost hunter had reported. But now he was dead, so she couldn’t ask him any more about it.

“You get back far enough into those trees, you could make nuclear weapons with no one figuring out what you’re up to. And I’ve heard stories about guys who live all alone like wolves out there. Not many, and not often, but—”

“You think that’s what happened? The lost hunter ran across someone who didn’t want to be seen?”
Or who didn’t want someone else to be seen … like a little blond girl
.

But Washburn shook his head. “I don’t, actually. Not now. In summer, maybe, but now it’s just getting too damned cold.”

The fire in the huge stone hearth had fallen to glowing embers; the dogs snored softly.

“My best guess is that some local punk tried robbing Harold Nussbaum. It’s well known he had wealthy clients at that hunting camp,” Washburn said.

“With an automatic weapon?” she objected. Also, she hadn’t seen any punks like that around here. But she was too tired to debate, so when he shrugged a “who knows?” she didn’t argue.

Instead she sat up. “I guess it’s too late to have that tour of the property you promised me. And I’m pretty tired …”

It was not, she felt sure, his own acreage that he had been hoping to explore tonight. But if he was disappointed, he was too gentlemanly to show it. At the door, he held her jacket for her and switched on the yard lights.

“Hey.” He caught her in an embrace. “I like you a lot, you know that?”

Drawing her in, he held her just tightly enough. The moment lengthened as almost against her will she relaxed into him; at last he released her, steadying her as she stepped back.

“There,” he said, smiling. “Maybe that’s enough affection for one evening.”

She laughed in spite of herself. “How’d you get so smart?” She really did like him. It was just that she couldn’t shake the thought of Dylan, recuperating from a gunshot wound tonight.

His injury, once the nicked artery got sewn up, had proven to be fairly minor; when she called the hospital after her long session with the state cops, she’d been told he’d already signed himself out against medical advice.

Which was typical Dylan, she thought as Trey Washburn zipped her jacket for her, snugging it up to her chin.

“A vet has to learn how to get close,” he replied lightly, “without getting bitten. There, now you won’t freeze.”

“Thanks, Trey,” she told him. “My turn to cook next time, okay?”
Assuming there is a next time
, she thought as she pulled the Blazer out of the veterinarian’s driveway.

“I mean, rushing out like this isn’t exactly a compliment,” she told Rascal, who sprawled on the back seat.

The dog yawned hugely in reply and settled again. Having him had turned out to be a blessing instead of an inconvenience, especially since Spud was walking the dog daily; another living creature, one she could hang out with and bounce her thoughts off of without fear of contradiction, was comforting.

Or fear of romantic complications. Or any other kind … But as she turned onto her street, her headlights reflected off a car parked in front of her rented house.

A state cop car. For a moment she was puzzled; she’d spent the afternoon with state homicide investigators, explaining how and why she’d been on the island near Allagash that afternoon when the shootings happened.

So what did they want now? And … why didn’t she see them? Dousing her headlights, she drove slowly past the empty car to the end of the street. No cops … but her house lights were on.

When she’d gone out earlier, she’d left only one lamp in the living room burning. Negotiating the turnaround, she headed back up the street.
What the …?

Follow-up questions from one of the Staties was one thing; even at this hour they were probably still working. But entering her house while she wasn’t home was …

She pulled into the driveway and parked, then told Rascal to sit tight, still puzzling over her unexpected company.

She could have left the door open. It had a way of seeming to lock without really doing so. She swung her legs out of the Blazer just as it flew open.

Two men emerged, one pushing the other ahead of him.
Dylan
. And—

Dylan shoved his captive off the front step, then seized him by the neckline of his sweatshirt again. It was Spud, his face flushed and his eyes bright with tears.

“You know why this young man might be in your house all by himself?” Dylan demanded.

He was angry, his lean face hatchet-like and his lip curled in fury; from experience she recognized the delayed reaction of a guy who, if a bullet had zigged instead of zagged a few hours ago, would be dead now.

“Honest,” Spud pleaded, “I know I probably should’ve waited, but you said a guy already hadn’t showed up to do it, so I—”

“Right,” Dylan drawled, giving Spud a one-handed shake. For a guy who’d been shot today, he was feeling pretty peppy.

Or maybe that was part of the reaction, too. She’d taken a round once, just a flesh wound, nothing major at all, and that night she’d cleaned her service weapon, both her personal guns, and all the closets in her apartment before falling into bed at dawn, her eyes wide and her heart hammering.

“Dylan, let go of him.” Spud sniffled, dragging his sleeve across his face. Then:

“Hey!” She got up in the kid’s face. “Talk to me, bud, or I’ll hand you back to that guy.”

The kid cringed. “All right, okay? I’m going to, just let me …”