Hot Ice (44 page)

If her mother had been home, she thought, suddenly furious, if her mother had been home, he wouldn’t have wondered off. She would have soothed and calmed him and tucked him into bed. And Blair had gone off as well, camping with his jerky friends. Probably drinking Budweiser and reading
Playboy
by the campfire.

And she’d gone, too, she thought, near tears with the indecision. Should she stay and wait, or go out and search for him?

She would look. Her decision made, she moved to the desk to turn off the lamp. More glass crunched under her feet. It was odd, she thought. If the bottle had been broken by the door, how could there be so much glass here, behind the desk? Under the window?

Slowly, she looked up from the jagged shards at her feet to the tall, narrow window behind her father’s desk. It was not open, but broken. Vicious slices of glass still clung to the frame. With watery legs she took a step forward, then another. And looked down to where her father lay faceup on the flagstone patio, impaled through the chest by the round of garden stakes he had set there that same afternoon.

She remembered running. The scream locked in her chest. Stumbling on the stairs, falling, scrambling up and running again, down the long hall, slamming into the swinging door at the kitchen, through the screen that led outside.

He was bleeding, broken, his mouth open as if he were about to speak. Or scream. Through his chest the sharp-ended stakes sliced, soaked with blood and gore.

His eyes stared at her, but he didn’t see. She shook him, shouted, tried to drag him up. She pleaded and
begged and promised, but he only stared at her. She could smell the blood, his blood, and the heavy scent of summer roses he loved.

Then she screamed. She kept screaming until the neighbors found them.

HOT ICE
A Bantam Book

Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents
either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or
dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved
Copyright © 1987 by Nora Roberts

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2002071665
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Random House, Inc.

eISBN: 978-0-307-56770-3

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