Frozen (Detective Ellie MacIntosh) (38 page)

The beam hit the darkness, lighting the trees on the steep hill in a yellow arc. From the woods there was nothing. Nothing.

What a mess, he thought, his mind abstractly taking in the disaster. It was something to concentrate on other than whatever might be happening out there. Or the image of Melissa’s body …

He’d have to hire someone to clean up the glass and board up the windows for the winter, someone else to remove the tree from the drive … his parents might never want him to use the cabin again, and who could blame them. He swung the light around unsteadily, noting with dismay his mother’s favorite old dishes in pieces on the kitchen floor. There was a bullet hole in the wall near the stove, another in the ceiling in the living room above the fireplace, and when he flashed the light into the bedroom down the short hall, he saw the screen crooked and discarded on the floor, and the window open.

Methodically, he closed the window, replaced the screen, and sat down on the stripped bed. He felt useless, and it wasn’t pleasant. He wasn’t stupid enough to think he could charge out there and help, but then again, there wasn’t much point in sitting in a freezing cabin either.

As he stood up, the beam of the flashlight hit the corner of the room. At least the bedroom was fine as he ran the light over the walls. No holes, no …

What the hell?

The attic stairway was cracked open.

That hadn’t been that way when he’d closed up the place. He knew for sure, because his father was fanatical about how squirrels got in that way and it was on the stringent list for how to close the cabin.

Bryce ran the flashlight beam over the square opening in the ceiling. No, definitely not shut like he’d left it, but then again, the windows were gone, the place shot up, so maybe it was part of what happened.

Normally there was a pole with a hook stored under the bed. It was used to catch the ring that would pull the folding ladder down, and the wooden apparatus dropped far enough someone could flip open the narrow stairs, but it was so rarely accessed he couldn’t remember the last time he was up there.

So why was it open?

He groped under the bed for the pole, didn’t find it, and then caught it in the beam of the flashlight leaning instead against the wall. Definitely not there when he’d left the place. He picked it up and tugged down the ladder.

Halfway up the stairs, he
knew
. It was just a small sound, not even enough to qualify as a moan, but he heard it and froze before he scrambled up the rest of the way.

The beam of his flashlight caught a tumble of red hair, a dark coat, and a pale oval face, the fine pure outline of her profile, turned toward him. He didn’t even finish the climb but leaned his head against the closest rung, swallowed convulsively, and felt a flare of disbelief at the realization that the woman now lying bound and gagged in his parents’ tiny attic was staring at him with wide eyes. Incongruously she was next to a stack of rubber tire tubes they used for swimming, and a set of pink flippers and a snorkel.

Alive.

What a wonderful word.

And paradoxically, he hoped, in that definitive moment, for another human being’s death. At this point, as far as Bryce could tell, Neil Hathaway had forfeited any sort of humane sympathy. Bryce wanted him killed, shut down, eliminated.

“Jane?” he asked tentatively.

In the glare of the flashlight, she nodded, just barely. There was a long streak of dried blood on her cheek. Her clothes were soaked and he could see her trembling in the cold.

“It’s okay,” he said quietly, awkward in the moment, not certain what a savior was supposed to do, and just as certain that if she’d really endured several days of captivity, not to mention that assault on the cabin, what the hell could he say that would make her think any of this was going to get better. “I’m a friend of Rick’s.”

That was certainly stretching it.

She might have sobbed, but even as he moved to try to decide how to free her—the knives were in the kitchen—he heard the thud.

His head came up as someone shoved open the front door of the cabin, his heavy breathing loud, and footsteps crunching glass. It hadn’t even occurred to Bryce it
was
unlocked. When he’d left the other day during the ice storm, he’d locked it himself. Earlier, he’d come in through the broken window because he was sure it was as he left it.

He almost did it. Almost called out:
In here. She’s alive
.

*   *   *

She’d never been
shot before.

Ellie could feel the blood pooling in her boot, the warm insidious slide soaking her jeans, the pain just a dull ache, but like any injury, she expected it would get worse.

Not a good time for this particular experience. Her foot was also slippery now and the ice didn’t help and she lost her balance, skidding sideways.

Stupid of her to think she could chase Hathaway down in the frozen woods. Let her take inventory. Cold. Wet. Dark. Bleeding everywhere.

Those four elements did not make up a perfect evening she decided as she levered up, winced as her palm slid in the wet leaves, and realized Rick had gone on without her. The left side of her body was soaked, her sense of direction skewed, and she didn’t know if it was the wound or the adrenaline that was making her dizzy.

Maybe both. She tried to wipe off the crusted snow and looked around.

Hathaway and Rick were both gone, and try as she might, she could not slow her breathing to the point where she could hear them. After all these months of hunting an elusive killer, because of Jane’s disappearance, she knew Rick was going to kill the son of a bitch. She didn’t disagree, but the idiot might go to jail for it if she didn’t do something.

The cabin. Her phone was in the cabin. Bryce would have been in touch with Pearson by now.

She staggered to her feet. Crap, her sock was soaked. The warm squish between her toes as she moved to go forward gave her pause.
How bad is it?

Ellie slipped, going down again, one elbow digging into the snow, her breath exhaled in a low grunt as she caught herself with the other hand. The leg might be worse than she first thought.

Pearson would bring reinforcements.
If
Bryce had gotten through.

She needed her phone.

*   *   *

The footsteps stopped
but not before Bryce had already realized that whoever had come in knew the door was unlocked.

The simple calculation left him colder than ever. Someone had put Jane Cummins in the attic, and to do it he would have had to go through the front door, no question about it.

There was a certain quality to the silence that also spoke to him more than words. If it was a police officer he would identify himself.

Bryce was committed to the staircase already. It didn’t take much to ease upward and slither backward on the attic floor. It was rough plywood and he might have made a sound, but Hathaway’s breathing was labored and he had to be as deafened as Bryce by the recent gunfire, if not more so.

Thoughts went rapid fire through his brain as Bryce joined the latest kidnapping victim in macabre camaraderie in the small space, cognizant he still didn’t have a weapon. A stealthy glance revealed only shadows, but he couldn’t chance the flashlight … Shit, what
was
stored up here?

Think
.

Old plastic floatation rafts, worthless but not discarded for whatever reason. Bait buckets, a few metal, but lightweight; a rolled-up musty hammock, no doubt so moth-eaten it would fall apart if unrolled; part of the old umbrella his father had once bought his mother for the dock, the top part now completely disintegrated. He groped along, blind now, the darkness like a suffocating blanket, but if he used the flashlight, Hathaway might catch a glimpse and shoot right up through the ceiling—the place was hand built and hardly square and no doubt there were cracks here and there. He tried, hoping for something, anything …

Jane didn’t make a sound but her breathing was louder, the panic communicated effectively even without words. Bryce was sweating in the November cold, his hands skittering in his frantic quest for a weapon.

Hathaway headed toward the kitchen. Coming closer. Having a crushed-glass floor didn’t make for silent progress, so Bryce could clearly make out the other man’s movements.

Hell
.

Crunch. Crunch
.

“I understand you found another of my girls.” Hathaway’s voice was so normal it was morbid, and close enough he must be in the room now. “I think we’re playing a game, Dr. Grantham. I hide, you seek. Only right now, you’re hiding and I’m seeking. I doubled back, old hunter’s trick. Only two of the three of you with a weapon out there, and I figured police officers wouldn’t let you tag along in a pursuit like that, so you might come back here. Good call, wasn’t it?”

Bryce should have been petrified. Maybe deep down he was, but the truth was, he only felt a lethal sort of calm calculation. The musty smell, the dusty floor, the utter dark. The lack of light would help a little because Hathaway would have to shoot blind, but the space was only about eight feet square. Eventually he’d find his target.

There was nowhere to go.

Surely there’s something up here
.

A creak on the first rung of the ladder. Hathaway continued his toneless monologue. “You see, at first it was interesting. I was intrigued. All that time and they belonged only to me, but then you met the one that was to be November. It rushed things. I don’t like to be rushed. Two in the same month? I’ve never done that before.”

One of Bryce’s groping hands encountered the wooden base of the big umbrella. It was two inches around at least, and heavy, like a thin elongated baseball bat. The rotted top part was no longer attached. He hefted it in his palm. Jane was crying now. He couldn’t hear it, but he saw the glistening trail on her cheeks because of the reflected illumination of the flashlight below.

There was a distant wail of sirens.

Hathaway didn’t seem to care. The ladder squeaked again. “I couldn’t believe it when you found October.”

Bryce was still, crouched under the eaves, his legs aching, his mouth dust dry. This was
it
.

“As a gesture of appreciation, I gave you July.” The tone of the eerie recital dropped, was even quieter. “And I was going to leave November here for you, right in your family’s place. Be a nice little surprise next spring, wouldn’t it? I liked the idea of that, of killing her here. How long would it take for someone to find her? And the circle would come around to you again. The police wouldn’t know what to make of it, would they? But I think we’re done with our game.”

A head crested the opening, barely visible in the gloom. Hathaway had the rifle angled, the dim silhouette not exactly reassuring.

Bryce lunged and swung, catching only the tip of the gun, but he put his full weight into that blow. Even with it deflected he heard the satisfying thud of wood on skull as Hathaway went backward down the stairs. Bryce also went sprawling forward with the momentum of the effort, half in the attic and half spilling onto the staircase, his tenuous grip keeping him from pitching downward eight feet to the floor on top of Hathaway.

Any hope he’d incapacitated the man was dashed as Neil sat up, but Bryce did notice with detached satisfaction a runnel of blood down the side of his face. The beam of the flashlight was skewed upward, a circle on the ceiling.

Hathaway reached for the rifle first, finding it with the unerring instincts of a true hunter, slowly getting to his feet.

“The police know it’s you,” Bryce said, and normally he would be embarrassed his voice was so unsteady. He cleared his throat. “You aren’t going to get far.”

“Farther than you.” Neil Hathaway audibly released the safety on his weapon. “You’ll be my easiest kill yet. It’s over.”

Trapped, Bryce wondered if this was how someone felt when he was drowning, knowing he couldn’t hang on another second and then welcoming the first lungful of suffocating water.

Jane began to sob and it occurred to him abstractly he should say something to comfort her, but then again, he didn’t have much comfort to offer.

The shot was as loud as he expected, maybe louder in the small space. He recoiled, the sound echoing, the world exploding …

No pain, no definitive moment, he realized as the echo went on, and when he opened his eyes, he saw that Hathaway was sprawled next to the wall, a dark stain spreading under his head, one arm outstretched …

Dimly he heard someone say in the aftermath, “Police officer. Don’t move, you son of a bitch or I’ll fire.”

*   *   *

The flash of
blue and red lights once again cast rainbow shadows against the trunks of the trees lining the narrow road, reminding Ellie of that moment when she’d stood outside Margaret Wilson’s car. Having Bryce call Pearson personally had been a good idea, because reinforcements arrived in record time. Everywhere there were officers on their radios, some from DCI with cell phones to their ears. McConnell was there too, and he’d been the first one to interview her.

“We lost him almost right away.” Ellie was light-headed, from the precipitous flight through the wet, half-frozen woods, from the rush of it, and maybe from blood loss also. A paramedic had wrapped a bandage around her thigh and they were trying to insist she get into the ambulance. “Ask Rick. Hathaway had the advantage of the moonless night, of his superior weapon for the chase, of knowing the area like the back of his hand. We hadn’t even located his vehicle yet.”

“We’ve got this covered.” Pearson leaned in the window of the cruiser. She would still be cold but the engine was running and the heater mercifully on. He said, “I’ve sent two officers in to collect Grantham and get his statement. Rick isn’t officially on duty, so looking to him for backup on what happened is only going to tick me off, Detective.

“However, since he is still in the employ—temporarily, probably—of the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Department, why don’t you let him run you into the hospital? You’re pretty scraped up and that leg is still bleeding. He’s heading over there anyway, I assume.”