Eye of the Wolf (22 page)

“ROADBLOCKS!” FRANKIE MONTANA
shifted around on the ripped passenger seat of the Ford pickup he'd stolen and tossed his head back. A loud guffaw erupted from his throat that sent a cloud of foul-smelling air across the dashboard.

Vicky kept her fingers wrapped around the rim of the steering wheel and tried not to breathe in the foulness. The stink of evil, she thought, what you read about in science fiction books, some imaginary stink that didn't actually exist.

“Them cops are putting up roadblocks on every highway in the county, and we ain't on the highways. What d'ya say? Ain't that a laugh?” He was gloating now, congratulating himself that he'd directed her through alleys and down the streets of sleepy bungalows with blinds still drawn over the windows. The engine clanked and squealed, as if the metal parts were rubbing together.

“What d'ya say?” he demanded.

“You're brilliant, Frankie.”

“Ha!” He let out another smelly guffaw. The sarcasm had rolled right by him. “Damn right I'm brilliant. And they're so fucking stupid, all of 'em. Wasting time trying to put them murders on me, just so they can brag how smart they are, and the killer's out there laughing at 'em, and all of 'em, the killer, too, thinking how I'm the one gonna be sitting in prison. Well, they're not dumping me in no prison.”

Vicky threw a sideways glance at the man. “If you didn't kill the Shoshones . . .”

“Bitch!” Frankie slammed a fist into the dashboard. The suddenness and unexpectedness of it, the hard thud of bone and flesh on the inert object made her give an involuntary jump. “I been telling you I didn't do it. You're not listening. My own lawyer, and you think I'm guilty like the rest of 'em. If you'd just listened to me, the cops wouldn't've busted my door this morning. Good thing I got my gun right by the bed. You wanna know why you're here? 'Cause you screwed up, and now you're gonna help me escape, whether you like it or not.”

“Help you escape? That's no way to help you, Frankie.” Vicky was trying again for the calm courtroom voice, but she couldn't pull it off. Instead, the voice she heard was shaky and scared. “You're acting like you're guilty. Instead of looking for whoever killed the Shoshones, Burton's going to spend every moment trying to find you. We should turn around, go back, and . . .”

“Shut up!” He was leaning forward in the seat now, turned toward her, the gun bobbing up and down between them. “You had any good ideas, I never heard 'em. All I heard from you was, ‘Get another lawyer,' and ‘I don't care if you rot in prison.' ”

All true, Vicky was thinking. A part of her had decided that Frankie Montana was guilty. She should have found him another lawyer. Not Samantha Lowe with the eager sheen in her eyes. An experienced lawyer who would have
believed
in Frankie and argued with Burton over every piece of circumstantial evidence that he came up with, thrown up enough stumbling blocks and enough alternate scenarios about what
might have happened out at Bates to make it impossible to charge Frankie, instead of sitting back and waiting for it to happen, as she had done, content to defend the man after he was arrested. For his mother's sake, for Godsakes.

Neither one of them spoke. Frankie seemed spent. He leaned his head back on the seat, and for an instant, she feared that he would see the gas needle jumping around empty. She'd noticed that the gas was low when they were still in town. She'd been silently praying that the pickup would grind to a halt. Nothing to do but get out and walk through a neighborhood where someone might see them, wonder who they were—Indians. A man in shirt and jeans—in this cold weather—pulling a woman along, someone might have called the cops. Even if no one had, she could have watched for a chance to get away.

But the pickup had kept clanking and lurching forward, and now they were climbing a narrow, winding road that switched back on itself, the pickup balking at the trackless snow that spilled into the ditches. She couldn't tell where the road ended and the ditch on her side began. The pines dipped under the wet snow, branches bending into the road and scratching at the sides of the pickup. Every once in a while, she caught sight of Lander below, the gray smudges of smoke rising above the roofs. It was like catching a glimpse of another world. She felt as if she'd been sucked into an alternate universe running parallel to the reality of an ordinary Saturday morning.

In the combination of cold and silence and utter solitude that pressed around the pickup as it took another turn upward, Vicky felt a wave of hysteria coming over her, the scream rising inside her throat. For a moment, she feared she couldn't hold it back. She forced herself to swallow hard. Breathe, breathe, she told herself. Stay in control. If she became hysterical, the crazy man beside her would also become hysterical. Hysteria was contagious. And if Frankie Montana became hysterical, the gun could go off.

She was barely aware that the pickup had started bucking, little jumps at first, the pines rising and falling outside her window. She
gripped the wheel hard, her fingers glued to the plastic, and watched the fuel needle bobbing below empty. The pickup shuddered and seemed to buck into the snowy road.

Frankie sat up straight and turned to her. “What the hell did you do?”

“We're out of gas,” she managed, automatically bracing herself for the blow, the thud of flesh and bone into her face as she turned the key in the ignition. The engine coughed and sputtered, gasping at the last drops of gasoline, then stopped. They were left in a silence so profound that it was like the silence at the end of the world.

“What the hell!” Frankie shouted. “Fucking out of gas! I don't believe the fucking luck.”

The blow didn't come. Vicky felt a mild sense of surprise. Her muscles were still tense as she watched the man thrashing around beside her, knocking his fist against the dashboard, flailing at unseen enemies.

After a couple of minutes, Frankie tucked the gun inside his belt. “Get out,” he said. “We're gonna hike.”

Vicky waited until he'd opened his door and stumbled onto the road before she grabbed her handbag from behind the seat and got out. There was no one around, no sound except for the soft hiss of snow falling off the branches. She could see the blue puffs of breath in front of her, and the breath of the man stomping around the pickup, swinging his arms to keep up the circulation.

Vicky slung the bag over her shoulder. Inside was her cell, which probably wouldn't work in the mountains, but you never knew. She prayed that Frankie wouldn't notice the bag and become curious about what was inside. Pushing it back behind her arm, she weighed her options. She could start running down the tracks that the pickup had plowed through the snow and take the chance that he wouldn't shoot her in the back.

He would shoot her. It wasn't an option.

She had to stay with him and wait for a chance to try the cell.

“Come on,” he shouted, waving her forward. “It's around here somewhere.”

It?
“What are you talking about? What's around here?

“A real nice house.” He was smirking at her, arms doing a windmill. “Let's go.”

Vicky started after him. She understood now. He knew exactly where they were going. He'd had it all planned from the minute he'd forced her into the pickup. They were going to one of the mountain houses that he'd broken into last fall, a charge that she'd gotten dropped on a technicality. She was the one who'd kept him out of jail! And now he was taking her to one of the houses.

It was funny when you thought about it. She felt the hysteria bubbling up again and clamped her teeth together against the laughter that threatened to burst forth, laughter that she knew would leave her weeping helplessly. She focused on planting her boots, one after the other, in the footprints that he was making through the snow.

They must have gone a mile, she thought. Frankie was still ahead, but he'd slowed his pace, walking stiff-legged now, arms hanging like logs at his side. His shoulders were hunched up so far that his head and body looked welded together. He hadn't said anything for twenty minutes, for which she was grateful. Just breathing, keeping one foot in front of the other—that was enough. It took all her energy. She didn't need the conversation of a crazy man. The sense of weariness tugged at her legs, making them seem like stone pillars moving beneath her. She was breathing hard, her heart doing double time in her ears. Beneath the layers of her sweater and coat, her skin felt hot and clammy, and yet—this was the surprise!—she felt as if she might be freezing to death.

As they came around another switchback, the road took a steeper pitch upward. Vicky stopped and tried to catch her breath, but each inhalation felt like an icicle stabbing her chest. Frankie was barely moving, nearly bent double into the rising road and swaying side to side, one foot shuffling in front of the other.

He must have spotted the house at the same instant that she saw it, because he veered off the road and started wading through the snow piled
around the trees, arms paddling like oars at his sides. And howling out some gibberish that she couldn't make out, like the howling of a wolf.

Still trying to stay in his footprints, Vicky started after the man. The drifts were deeper among the trees, bunched up in mounds of white powder that looked as light as air but felt like wet cement pulling at her boots as she struggled through. There was more snow here than in town, the air felt colder, and the sun was lost in the leaden sky. Ahead, nestled in a stand of pines, was a two-story house washed in shadows, roof heavy with snow. There was a deadness about the place, an absolute absence of life or activity, as if it had been standing empty for eons, and yet, from what she could see, the house looked well maintained, flower boxes piled with snow at the windows, a fresh coat of gray paint on the siding.

She realized that Frankie had made his way around to the side of the house and was leaning against a door, rubbing and hugging his arms and blowing out huge clouds of breath. She forced herself to keep walking, across the front of the house and around the side. She set her shoulder against the siding a few feet behind Frankie.

“Take off your coat,” he shouted.

Vicky stared at the man.

“You heard me. Get it off.”

She wasn't sure she had the energy to comply. Her fingers were clumsy sticks trying to push the buttons through the buttonholes.

“Hurry up!” he shouted again.

Finally the top button fell through the hole, then the next and the next. She was still slipping the coat off her shoulders when he reached around and grabbed it, tangling it with the strap of her bag. She staggered back along the side of the house, gasping at the blast of cold air that swept over her as he ripped the coat away. She stooped over and reached for the bag that had fallen into the snow. Her fingers kept sliding off the leather until, finally, she had hold of the strap and managed to drag the bag upward. She was shivering. She struggled to focus on what Frankie was doing. He'd wrapped his right arm and hand inside
the front of her coat, letting the sleeves and collar trail down into the snow. Lifting his arm—a thick black club—he smashed it into the corner of the window set in the door. There was a muffled tinkling, like wind chimes, as the pane shattered and collapsed inward, falling out of the frame.

“All right!” Frankie let the coat fall into a pile at his feet, and Vicky swooped forward, picked it up, and threw it over her shoulders, hugging it close against the shaking that had taken over her body like some invisible force.

“They never learn their lessons, rich people.” Frankie slipped his hand through the hole and, moving into the door until his face was pressed against one of the upper panes, stretched his arm downward. With a faint clicking noise, the doorknob started turning, and Frankie was dancing inward with the door. He retrieved his hand, slammed the door back, and plunged inside.

Vicky followed him into a large kitchen wrapped in dark wood cabinets and long expanses of tiled counters. She closed the door behind her. The house was almost as cold as the outside. She slipped her arms into the sleeves of her coat and wrapped it around her, as if the soft wool might absorb the cold that had settled inside her. She couldn't stop shivering.

Frankie was already across the room, punching the keys on a small plate attached to the wall. “Get us some heat in a minute,” he announced, and almost as if he had ordered the snow to fall or the wind to pick up, a motor kicked over somewhere in the house and the faintest tremor rippled through the tile floor.

Frankie disappeared for a moment around a doorway that led into an interior of shadows and silence. Then he was back, shrugging into a heavy-looking plaid jacket, a wool cap pulled down over his ears. He started rubbing his hands together, and she realized that he was also shivering, even though, with his arm stretched past the needles of glass still clinging to the frame, he'd seemed quiet and in control.

He threw open a door on one of cabinets and pulled out a full bottle
of Wild Turkey. “Nice of them to get me the expensive stuff,” he said, fumbling with the red top for a longer time than seemed necessary. He was having trouble gripping the top, unscrewing it. His fist looked like a claw, frozen halfway open.