Authors: Violet Walker
“I’m going to suggest we take another pizza up the hill to Toby and his mom, they’re both down with that damn cold now.” Henry ate his third slice and looked between the two of them. His hair was still damp from being hit with a snowball.
James shrugged, the point of his collar soaked from a return hit. “Sounds like a plan. Hey, did the Parks Department say anything further on those snowcats?”
Henry paused, and then shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing yet, but Toby called me this morning. His mom was listening to police dispatch on the shortwave, and--”
“Toby’s got shortwave over there?” Anna paused and set down her pizza slice. “Don’t the Parks guys use radios?”
“Yeah, they do; each snowcat is set up with one.” James eyed her, as did Henry. They knew the look she got when she had an idea percolating.
“Okay, well, we have five stolen snowcats and they must have grabbed them for something. We haven’t seen any rescue teams show up, so chances are this isn’t so they can pull someone off the mountain like you did with us. Whatever they are doing, they have a big team of people and they have to stay in touch in all this blowing snow.” She shrugged and took a sip of her cocoa. “Why wouldn’t they use the radios?”
“And if they do use them, then Toby and his Mom can listen in.” James looked at Henry, and then nodded.
Henry coughed into his fist. “Okay. Given that we’re the only ones that the Parks Department knows are associated with disappearing snowcats, we’re on the hook as suspects for this theft unless we can point the authorities at the guys who actually have them. So I think maybe we better make that a deluxe pizza with everything and make sure we get it, and the request, to Toby’s house while it’s still hot.”
“Sounds like a good plan to me,” James shrugged. “But first I’m finishing my own damn pizza.”
Toby’s house was on the same road as the farmhouse they had been stuck in, which wasn’t plowed out, so they ended up breaking trail up the hill until they reached the dilapidated white Victorian. Toby was an incredibly talented wood carver who was disabled due to a childhood head injury. He and his mother helped each other get through the tough winters, but this year a cold had laid them both low at the same time that Henry and Anna were trapped in the farmhouse. The pizza wasn’t exactly homemade chicken soup, but it was good eating, and they wouldn’t have to cook for themselves that day.
That far up the hill, Anna could look back and see the snow drifted over the highway just beyond the far edge of town. The sky was still leaden and dumped more snow on them at intervals, never with the strength of the last few days’ blizzards, but still enough to make plowing almost pointless yet. The crews still made runs a few times a day, engines growling by. She could see where their blades had piled up snow on either side of the highway, but just an hour after plowing, the blacktop was under another foot.
I really hope we don’t have a medical emergency.
She turned to follow the others again, setting her feet in the trail they had broken.
“You okay back there?” James asked, looking back. Henry paused a moment as well.
“Well, it’s nothing like winter in Delaware, but I’ll manage…” she stumbled a little, but caught herself and walked on.
Toby yanked the door open almost before James could ring the bell. “Oh my God, hi guys!” he said enthusiastically. He was smallish and on the round side, with dark brown hair, a scraggly beard and thick round-lensed glasses. He wore a superhero t-shirt and jeans over his thermals. His cheeks were a little red, but he seemed to be mostly over his cold. “You brought food! My Mom’s still sick, but I’ll see if she’s up to visitors.”
She was, and they all piled into the kitchen while Toby devoured two slices of pizza and looked at the bracelet James gave Anna for Christmas. It was carved from wood using techniques Toby had taught him, cut from a section of branch and then carved away in a filigree pattern to expose the rings. He had polished it up and it was smooth as silk against her wrist. She was almost reluctant to take it off for Toby to see, but finally did.
“Oh wow!” He beamed at James, who gave a tiny awkward smile,, hands shoved in his jeans pockets. “Hey, this is a good job!”
“Yeah, well, you taught me the skills, I just practiced them a lot.” James was handy, in the way of many Catskills men: they possessed an odd collection of practical skills both to make money and to save it when their own homes and cars needed work. The bracelet had been a labor of love. She only a hug to give him in return, but as it had finally broken the touch barrier between them, he hadn’t complained much.
“It’s beautiful!” Toby peered at it and then at James. “You use beeswax?”
“For the final polish, yeah, all I had handy.”
“Came out real nice.” He handed it back to Anna, who quickly slipped it back on. She and James exchanged glances, and his gaze was so soft she blushed slightly.
Toby’s mom, Beth, was a lean woman in her sixties who wore a pink fuzzy housecoat who was followed perpetually by four cats. She took a slice of pizza and went over to her scanner which she had set up in the corner next to her computer. It was an old fashioned analog device, on a par technologically with the communications equipment she was generally trying to listen to. “The highway boys are saying it will be another two days before we’re dug out of here at this rate. Not pretty, but I suppose it could be a lot worse.” Her voice was a bit scratchy.
Henry nodded, and went to her. “Ma’am, I was hoping we could get your help with something.” He explained the situation with the snowcats as she munched her pizza, not even bothering to try and lie. She had piercing gray eyes and never missed a damn thing. “If we could figure out who has the snowcats we could point the authorities that direction and it will no longer be our problem,” he finished up a little awkwardly.
She peered at him shrewdly, fist on hip, then nodded once. “Yeah, well, I suppose it’s not going to do any harm to scan the frequencies. If there’s a reward for those missing snowcats, though, I want in on it.” She turned on the scanner.
“Of course, Ma’am.”
Beth sighed through her nose and started poking at the machine, twisting a large dial on the front slowly as she tilted her head and listened in. Everyone turned to watch her curious and slightly arcane fiddlings. The speakers kept coughing out static and bits of conversation, which she ran for maybe fifteen seconds each before identifying them and moving on.
“Emergency channels...road crews...there’s the cops...volunteer firefighters...power crew. You know that the groomers up on Bellayre have their own channel? Don’t know why they need it, all they’re doing is making fake snow and sometimes steering some drunk skier back down the mountain.”
“Avalanches, ma’am. They’re the most likely to get caught in them.” James went to the window and looked out. It was starting to snow again, and he scowled briefly at the falling flakes. “The radios are so they can call for help.”
She grunted and kept searching. “Just so you know, this could take a while. If you have places to be, I can call you when I get something.”
“We’ll hang around a little then leave you to it, then,” Henry replied smoothly. Nobody wanted to make her cold any worse by overexertion, and Toby’s mom was an introvert to begin with.
But Toby himself seemed glad of the company. He took them down to the basement, which was taken over by his woodworking tools, and showed them a snowy owl he was carving out of a chunk of white willow. The whole time Anna stood unconsciously between James and Henry, not wanting to be too far away from either of them.
Soon enough, they would have to break it to Toby that Henry was sick. Maybe Henry had it half in his head to do it tonight, but as he looked over the carving and listened to Toby go on about techniques and materials, he seemed to not want to change the subject toward his problems. Anna couldn’t blame him. She didn’t want to bring it up either, and she doubted James did. Nobody there wanted to watch Toby cry.
They stayed around for a while, but the snow started falling thicker and thicker, and James finally insisted they get back to the bed and breakfast while they could. He was the most practical of the three and rarely wrong, so they said their goodbyes and headed back down the hill. James held her hand as they labored against the blowing snow. Henry strode ahead of them, his tall form breaking trail, and sometimes the snow flurries made him vanish from sight even though he was just out of reach. The sight gave Anna a lump in her throat, and she clung closer to James than she needed to as they pushed along.
When they got to the bed and breakfast lobby, they tried to get more mochas and were told the cafe was now out of milk. Still, if black coffee was the degree to which they had to rough it, they were still ahead of the game. Before they left Tony’s house, they overheard conversations on the scanner about the blackouts stretching west over the county line. It was starting to get bad out there; it just hadn’t touched them too much since their return to town.
H
enry insisted on tackling his next round of phone calls and paperwork alone, adamant about his need for a few hours of privacy. Anna started to wonder what he was up to that had him being so secretive. She felt torn between giving him the space he asked for and invading it just so he wouldn’t be alone so damned much. She compromised by asking if he was sure, and he gave her a brief hug and then shooed her off with James, promising to meet them for dinner.
They went back to her room, Anna feeling sad and clingy, sticking close to James as they came through the door. He watched her as she shucked her coat and kicked off her boots, shivering from the slush that had gotten in around her pant cuffs. “You okay?” he finally asked as she rubbed the chill from her feet.
“I um...I...no. No, I’m really not.” She glanced up at him but her vision was blurring, and she quickly looked away and wiped the tears from her eyes. “No, James, I-I...um….”
“Aw Hell. c’mere.” He shouldered out of his own jacket and reached for her, dropping it aside. He pulled her against him, pillowing her head on his shoulder, and rocked her.
She sobbed helplessly for a while, dampening his blue flannel workshirt. Finally, she calmed down enough to lift her head, using her sleeve to dry her tears. “S-sorry.”
“Nah, don’t be.” He kissed her forehead. “It’ll be okay, baby. I know it doesn’t seem so now. This thing with the Boss is damn unfair, but we’ll get through this.”
“I’ll do my best, but right now I just don’t want to think about it for a while.” She tilted her face up to his, and he stroked her stray hairs off her cheek with rough-skinned fingertips as he kissed her.
They looked at each other mutely, and he reached over and turned off the light before pulling her in for another kiss. The two windows offered cold, dim light filtered by the blowing snow, throwing them half in shadow as he started tugging off her clothes. He broke the kiss only long enough to pull her sweater and camisole over her head. His hands roamed over her bared skin hungrily while she reached over to unbutton his shirt and tug it back off his shoulders.
She moved toward the bed, hearing the rustle of him ridding himself of his shirt and the sharp click of his belt buckle. She was just turning to pull back the comforters when he caught her by the hips from behind.
He bent over her, brushing her hair aside with his hand and kissing her neck roughly. She shivered, feeling him unfastening her bra with a little impatient fumbling, as if he needed distraction in pleasure just as much as she. He slid it down off, and the fabric slipped down over her arms. She shifted to get rid of it--and then moaned and braced herself again as he took both her breasts in hand.
James was always gentle until he couldn’t stand to be any more. His breath shivered in her ear as he kneaded and caressed her, and then circled his fingertips against the sides of her nipples until they tightened almost painfully. She panted and squirmed under him, feeling his chest press warm and firm against her back while his heart pounded.
Finally, impatiently, she unfastened her skirt and slid it and her half-slip down over her hips. He reached down with one hand to help her, and the fabric fell to a pile at her feet. That just left her panties, and from the throbbing hardness she felt against her bottom, he was already completely bare again.
He backed off to grasp the panties in one fist. “You like this pair?” he growled, with a moment’s consideration.
“Not that much.”
Do it.
He ripped the fabric from her in one brief savage yank and tossed it aside, then took hold of her hips and pushed her forward against the bed a little. She felt his fingers slide up her inner thigh and then start to rub her mound, kneading her gently and sensually while she whimpered and rocked slightly against his hand. He teased her open, sliding two fingers into her slowly and caressing her with them. She let out a low moan, and braced herself as he removed his fingers and replaced it with the head of his erection.
He settled over her, holding himself up with one hand as he sank into her body. She arched and squirmed, feeling him move inside her from a new angle as he reached around with his free hand to knead the top of her mound.
She knew the doors and walls of this place were thin, and did her best to keep her voice down, but as he thrust into her and stimulated her at the same time, as he groaned in her ear and shuddered against her back, it got harder and harder to avoid crying out. She could feel her muscles tightening and trembling as she strained back against him in time with his movements, panting, biting her lip, whimpering through her closed mouth.
“That’s good, baby. Come on, now, don’t hold off. Don’t be shy.” His voice was a low purr in her ear as he thrust into her, his hand tireless between her legs as he kept the same rhythm.
He moved more roughly, their flesh slapping together audibly as she tried to answer and instead only moaned feverishly. Her need for satisfaction intensified until it hurt. She ground back against him, and he shuddered and let out a little shout of enthusiasm as his thrusts sped up.
“Come on,” he purred softly in her ear while his body ravaged hers. “Come on….”
It took everything she had not to scream, and that left her with no outlet. Pleasure roared through her body as she sobbed and writhed under him, pushing against him with everything she had while his murmurs rose suddenly into groans he muffled against her shoulder. She felt him release inside of her, hips grinding against her a last few times, before they both went limp.
She barely caught herself on the edge of the bed, and got her feet under her, feeling him slip out of her as he straightened. She heard him stagger slightly behind her, and groan. He was panting hard for breath as she climbed into the bed and he snuggled in beside her.
“Damn. Didn’t even make it under the covers.”
She giggled as she nestled in under his arm, running a hand over his sweat-damp chest. “That was really good, except I couldn’t see you.” She loved watching how pleasure and then ecstasy transformed his face. His near constant tension dissolved completely, and his eyes lit up with an almost furious joy. Now, after, he was at peace, the set gone from his jaw and the hardness from his gaze. It made him look years younger and showed something in his face of the gentleness with which he always treated her.
“Hmm, she likes to watch.” His eyebrows wiggled, and she blushed and laughed a little. “We could get a mirror…”
More blushing, and he chuckled and kissed the top of her head before settling in. “I’ll get you again when we wake up, make sure you’re not face down this time.”
He was, as usual, as good as his word, and she woke in his arms again, feeling him caress her gently into slow arousal and then roll over to slide into her when she started to shake. They rocked together this time, and in the dimming afternoon light from the window, she saw his blissful expression. They muffled each other’s cries with their mouths, and held each other sleepily afterward.
She was just dozing off again when James’s phone buzzed. “Nngf. Crap.” He rolled over and grabbed his jeans off the floor, yanking the smart phone out of his pocket. He peered at it as he settled back down. “It’s the Boss.” He picked up while she blinked sleep from her eyes. “Yeah.” He listened to whatever Henry was saying and his eyes widened. “...what?”
“Beth says she has the snowcat thieves’ frequency and has been listening in on them for about half an hour now. They weren’t actively using the radios before. Her guess was that they weren’t on the move.” Henry had changed to a brown wool sweater over his button-down, and paced the length of his front room. “We can’t get over there to talk directly but she held the phone up to her speakers and we got a few good recordings.” He rubbed his face tiredly.
Across the room, James was brewing a pot of hotel-room instant coffee and yawning into his fist. They had changed as well, he into plaid flannel and jeans over thermals, and she into a deep purple wool dress. Awkwardly, she simply hadn’t been able to find some bits of her outfit after their afternoon romp. But now, she simply hazily waited for caffeine as she tried to sort out the reason for the urgency in Henry’s tone.
“So how bad is it?” she asked finally.
He sighed. “Crime of opportunity. Excuse me. Crime
spree
of opportunity.” What he said next woke her up with a jolt of adrenaline. “They’ve stolen snowcats so they can rob banks up and down the highway. And they’ll be hitting Phoenicia tonight.”