Chill Factor (13 page)

"The two college girls. The ones in the Jeep, begging for
trouble.
After I turned down your invitation to meet for a drink, did you hook
up with them?"

He gave her a long, measured look, then turned and continued
toward
the kitchen. "See what you can find in the bedroom and bath."

The bedroom yielded only three straight pins she found stuck
in a
crack in a bureau drawer. She presented them to Tierney. "That's it,
other than two dead cockroaches under the bed. I left them there."

"We may need them for protein," he said, only half in jest. He
produced two candles that were faded and warped but would come in handy
if the electricity went out. "They were way in the back of the drawer
of the end table."

He was leaning heavily against the kitchen bar, his hand
planted
firmly on the granite surface. His eyes were closed. "You should lie
down," she said.

"No, I'm fine," he mumbled absently as he opened his eyes.

"You're about to keel over."

"Just another wave of dizziness." Leaving the bar, he walked
over to
one of the windows flanking the front door and pushed aside the drape.
"I've been thinking."

Lilly waited to hear his thought, but already she had a bad
feeling
about it.

"If snow comes behind this sleet and freezing rain, which is
likely
at this altitude, our situation is going to become more dangerous. I'm
worried that the propane tank will empty, which means we'll need fuel."
He turned back into the room. "While it's fractionally safer than it
will be later, I should go to the shed and bring
back
what firewood I can."

She looked beyond his shoulder toward the window, then back at
him.
"You can't go out there! You can barely stand up without losing your
balance. You have a brain concussion."

"Which won't matter much if we freeze to death."

"Well forget about it. You can't go. I won't let you."

Her vehemence made him smile. "I'm not asking permission,
Lilly."

"I'll go." Yet even as she heard herself volunteering, she
quailed
at the thought of setting foot outside the security and relative warmth
of the cabin.

He looked her up and down. "You couldn't carry enough to make
any
difference. I may not be able to bring back much, but it would be more
than you could handle. Besides, your boots are wet. You could get
frostbite. I'm the one who has to go."

They argued about it for another five minutes, but all the
while,
regardless of her arguments against the idea, he was preparing to do
it. "Is there anything in the shed I could use, like a sled? Something
to stack the wood on and drag along?"

She ran a quick mental inventory, then shook her head.
"Unfortunately Dutch and I removed everything except some basic tools.
As you go in, on your right, there's a large wooden chest we used as a
toolbox. You may find something useful in it. There's an ax, I know.
Larger than the hatchet on the porch. You said the logs needed to be
split, so if you can carry the ax, too, you should bring it back."

"Once I get past the porch steps, I angle off that way,
correct?" He
indicated the general direction.

"Correct."

"Anything between here and there I should be aware of? Tree
stump,
sinkhole, boulder?"

She tried to envision any potential obstacles on the path. "I
don't
believe so. It's a fairly straight shot. But once you get across the
clearing and into the woods…"

"Yeah," he said grimly. "It'll be rougher."

"How will you see?"

He removed a tiny flashlight from his coat pocket.

It didn't look all that reliable. "What if the battery runs
out? You
could get lost."

"I have a sixth sense about direction. If I can see well
enough to
get myself there, I'll be able to find my way back. But if the cabin
lights should go out while I'm not here—I'm expecting that at
any time.
Ice is hell on power lines." She nodded agreement. "If you lose power,
light one of the candles and put it in a window."

"I don't have any matches."

He withdrew a matchbook from another coat pocket and handed it
to
her. "Keep the matches and candles together so you'll know where they
are if you need them."

Suddenly she was struck by the lunacy of what he was about to
do.
"Tierney, please rethink this. We can break up the furniture and burn
it. The shelves in the bookcases, the coffee table, cabinet doors.
Before we run out of fuel we'll be rescued. And the propane may last
longer than we expect."

"I'm not willing to risk it. Besides, no sense in trashing the
cabin
unless we're absolutely forced. I'll be all right. I've trekked through
worse."

"During a blizzard?"

He didn't respond to that as he reached for his cap. When he
picked
it up, he frowned with distaste. "It's stiff with dried blood. Mind if
I borrow your stadium blanket?"

She helped him fashion a hood as he had for her earlier, and
then he
was ready. Trying one last argument, she said, "People with concussions
aren't supposed to exert themselves. You could black out
,
your sixth sense of direction could fail you, you could lose your way
and either walk off a cliff or get lost and freeze to death."

"We who are about to die…" He saluted her.

"Don't joke."

"I wish I was." He worked his scarf up over the lower half of
his
face and reached for the doorknob. But after taking hold of it, he
hesitated, turned back, and pulled the scarf down past his mouth. "If I
don't make it back, I'm going to hate like hell that I never kissed
you."

His eyes were as blue as flame, and as entrancing. They held
her
gaze as he worked the scarf back up over his nose. When he opened the
door, the blast of icy air was like a slap in the face, and about that
short-lived. He pulled the door securely shut as soon as he'd slipped
through.

Rushing to the window, Lilly shoved back the drapery, lending
him
light through the panes. He turned and gave her a thumbs-up for
thinking of it. She went to the other window and did the same, then
cupped her hands around her eyes and watched him through the frosted
glass. With each step, he carefully planted his boot and made certain
he had solid footing beneath him before putting his full weight on it.

The windows shed an apron of light over the area immediately
in
front of the cabin, but it didn't extend far, and Tierney eventually
walked out of it. Impatiently Lilly wiped away the fog created by her
breath on the cold glass. She saw the feeble beam of the flashlight
bobbing erratically in the swirling precipitation.

Soon she couldn't see even that.

They found Cal Hawkins in the kind of place that Wes had
described.

It was deep in the woods where a dirt road ended at a wall of
solid
rock two hundred feet high. Tucked beneath the face of the mountain,
the windowless, single-story structure had all the architectural detail
of a cracker box.

In the center of its flat facade was a dented metal door. A
bare
yellow lightbulb had been screwed into an electrical socket directly
above it. There were three pickup trucks parked in front of the
building. Judging from the depth of the sleet on the windshields,
they'd been there awhile.

Dutch had finessed his Bronco over two miles of dark, narrow,
treacherous road to get there, so he was in a truculent mood when he
and
Wes went inside. Lighting was dim. The room was foggy with smoke and
stank like wet wool and b.o. They stepped over splats of tobacco juice
on the floor as they made their way to the particle board bar along the
far wall.

Without ceremony, Dutch said, "Cal Hawkins."

The bartender nodded his head of stringy, greasy hair toward a
corner. Hawkins was seated at one of the rickety tables, his head lying
on it, his arms dangling lifelessly at his sides. He was snoring.

"Been that way 'bout an hour," the bartender volunteered as he
absently scratched his armpit through his dirty flannel shirt. "Whach'
y'all want him for?"

"What's he been drinking?" Dutch asked.

"Somethin' they brung in."

He hitched a thumb in the direction of the only other occupied
table, where a trio of sullen, bearded men was playing cards beneath
the stuffed head of a snarling black bear mounted on the wall.

"The bear's got the highest IQ of that lot," Wes whispered to
Dutch.
"I hope your gun isn't just for show. You can bet theirs aren't."

Dutch had already spied the shotguns propped against each
chair.
"Cover my back."

"Three against one? Thanks for nothing."

Dutch approached the table where Hawkins was steeping it off.
His
slack lips had drooled a puddle of saliva onto the table. Dutch hauled
back his foot and literally kicked the chair out from under the man.

Hawkins landed hard. "Fuckin' hell!" He came off the floor
with his
hands balled into fists. But catching the glint of Dutch's badge, he
backed down and blinked at them in confusion. Then he grinned. "Hey,
Dutch. When I was a kid, I used to watch you play ball."

"I ought to throw your sorry ass in jail," Dutch snarled. "But
if
you're sober enough to be stupid, you're sober enough to be working,
and I need you."

Hawkins wiped saliva off his chin with the back of his hand.
"What
for?"

"What do you think?" Dutch thrust his face closer, only to
recoil
from the other man's breath. "You've got a contract with the city to
sand roads during ice storms. Well, guess what, genius? We're in the
throes of one. And where are you? Out here in the middle of freaking
nowhere, stinking drunk. I've wasted several hours I didn't have
tracking you down."

He yanked what he assumed to be Hawkins's coat off the back of
a
chair and threw it at him. Hawkins caught the coat against his chest.
Dutch was glad to see that his reflexes weren't completely pickled.

"You're getting out of here right now. We'll follow you to the
garage, where your truck has already been loaded and is waiting for
you. Have you got the keys?"

Hawkins dug into the pocket of his oily blue jeans and
produced a
set of keys, which he extended toward Dutch. "Why don't you just take
'em and—"

"I would, except nobody else has experience with the truck's
mechanisms, and you're the only one who's insured to drive it. I don't
need the liability, and neither does the township of Cleary. You're
going, Hawkins. And don't think you can lose me between here and town.
I'm going to stay so close I could bite your butt through your
tailpipe. Let's go."

"Won't do no good," Hawkins protested as Dutch gave him a hard
shove
toward the door. "I'll go with you, Chief, but fast as this Stuff is
coming down, anything I put down tonight will be a waste of good sand.
It'll cost the town double, 'cause it'll just have to be did again,
soon's the storm blows outta here."

"That's my problem. Your problem is to keep me from beating
you
senseless once you've done what I need you to do."

Lilly had been anxiously watching for Tierney's return and
gave a
glad cry when she saw him trudging out of the darkness. He was dragging
something along behind him. When he got closer she saw it was a
tarpaulin stacked with firewood.

He left it at the foot of the steps and stumbled up them. She
opened
the cabin door, caught him by the sleeve of his coat, and hauled him
inside. He collapsed against the doorjamb and pushed back his makeshift
hood. His eyebrows and eyelashes were again covered with frost.
Instinctually she brushed it off them.

"Glass of water, please."

She rushed into the kitchen and filled a glass from the
pitcher. The
trickle from the faucet had stopped, she noticed. They'd done well to
fill the containers while they could.

Tierney had slid down the wall and was sitting propped against
it on
the floor, his legs stretched out in front of him. He had removed his
gloves and was clenching and flexing his fingers, trying to restore
circulation. She knelt beside him. He gratefully took the glass of
water from her and drank it all.

"Are you all right? Besides the obvious."

He nodded but didn't answer.

Ordinarily the walk to the shed would have taken about sixty
seconds. According to her wristwatch, he'd been gone for thirty-eight
minutes, minutes during which she had repeatedly castigated herself for
letting him go.

"I'm glad you're back," she said with all the sincerity at her
disposal.

"I'm going again."

"What?"

With a groan, he worked himself up the wall until he was
standing.
More or less. Actually, he was swaying, as though saved from toppling
only because the soles of his boots were nailed to the floor.

"Tierney, you can't."

"One more load could make a difference. I don't think it'll
take as
long this time," he said as he pulled on his gloves again. "Now that I
know where everything is. A lot of the time was spent feeling my way
around inside the shed." He stared into near space for a moment before
shaking his head slightly as though to clear it.

"You're not up to this."

"I'm okay." He replaced the makeshift hood and scarf.

"I wish I could talk you out of going."

He smiled grimly. "I wish you could, too."

Then he pulled the scarf over his nose and went out. She
watched
through the window as he transferred the logs on the tarp to the stack
of firewood beneath the overhang. She continued to watch until he
disappeared once again into the darkness. Turning back into the room,
she decided on a better way to pass the time than fretting.

Sooner than she expected, she heard his boots clomping up the
steps.
When she opened the door, he was dragging the tarp stacked with
firewood up onto the porch. It was a chore, requiring all his strength
because the logs were large. "Did you remember the ax?"