Menace in Christmas River (Christmas River 8) (21 page)

She looked away.

“One summer, my mom hired this young culinary student as a line cook. This kid was really talented. And she… she just thought the world of him. I think she always wanted a son, and she treated this guy like the son she never had. You know? She took him under her wing and taught him everything she knew about the industry.

“And then that…
bastard…”

She inhaled a ragged breath and her hands tightened around the hammer.

“He took everything from my mom…
Everything
. After he graduated from culinary school and came back from this big internship in New York, my mom asked Cliff to be her business partner. And a few years after that, Cliff made my mom sign something. Something she thought was just run-of-the-mill paperwork. But it wasn’t. You see, he found a way to swindle the restaurant from her. He thought he could do a better job with it if he got her out of the way. He created this big franchise and he made a killing.

“And it all… it all just
broke
her heart. It ruined her.”

I felt a chill pass through me at the phrase.

It echoed Cliff’s last words to me almost to a tee, though he had been talking about somebody else.

Holly trailed off again, the wind taking her voice clear away into the icicle forest that surrounded us.

I swallowed hard, and for a moment we just stared at each other.

“Did you start working for Julie just to… just to do this?” I asked.  

She lowered the hammer even further, letting it drop to her side as if the weight was too heavy for her small arm.

She closed her eyes for a long moment.

“I applied for the job with Julie’s PR firm six months ago without knowing anything about the Chocolate Championship. But during the interview she told me that she’d been hired for this big event, which is why she would need an assistant. And that Cliff Copperstone himself was going to be judging it. And when I heard that… It just seemed like fate. He would never remember me. I was just a kid when he stole the restaurant from my mom. He’d have no idea that it was me…

She tilted her head up, peering into the red night sky.

“I wasn’t even sure until this afternoon if I would actually be able to go through with it,” she said. “It takes a lot of courage to do something like that. Last night, I was thinking ‘No. I can’t do it. It’s too risky.’ I left the meat tenderizer I was going to hit him with at the hotel this morning. It was from the restaurant, you see, and I had thought it would be fitting to do it with that. People would think one of the contestants from that stupid show he’s on had done it, trying to get revenge.”

I swallowed hard.

She had really planned it out.

“But I saw that hammer today on the handyman’s tool belt,” she continued. “And I thought I’d take it just in case I changed my mind, I’d still have my chance. Then I saw Cliff standing outside by himself during that break this afternoon, and I went up to him, telling him that Julie needed to see him ASAP. And he was so rude… just so... He told me to get out of there and leave him alone.”

She smirked slightly.

“And then… then he kneeled down to tie the laces on one of his boots and…”

Her eyes turned to steel.

“And my mother always did say never to pass up an opportunity.”

I shuddered as she said the same words she’d said to me when I first met her in my pie shop kitchen earlier in the week.

Holly’s expression darkened.

“You see, Cliff got everything. After she lost the restaurant, my mom started drinking and her life is just… she’s spiraled out of control. She lost her house and spends all day at the neighborhood bar. She’s a drunk and she doesn’t care about anything anymore. She doesn’t cook anymore – doesn’t do anything anymore but drink.” 

Holly let out a sharp sob, then as if to stop it, she bit her lip hard.

“Cliff Copperstone deserved everything he got today.”

But even as she said it, I could tell there was no conviction in her voice.

She wasn’t as cold-blooded as she wanted to be.

“He broke my mom’s spirit,” she said. “And I wanted to break his skull the same way.”

I glanced down at the hammer in her hand.  

I swallowed hard again.

“I’m sorry, Holly,” I said, not knowing what else to say. “I’m sorry that this happened. I’m sorry that it came to this.”

I felt my whole body shudder again.

“But if you try to leave now, you’re going to die out here, Holly. Do you understand that? You won’t make it an hour out here.”

She looked at me with cold, empty eyes.

“
I’ll make it
,” she whispered.

But I could tell that she didn’t believe it, either.

“Think of your mom,” I said. “Think of what she would want.”

She shook her head after a moment.  

“I can’t go back,” she said, looking past my shoulder in the direction of the building. “It’s over now, Ms. Peters. When your husband gets back, you’re going to tell him everything. And everyone will know. And I’ll be…”

She swallowed hard.

I grappled with how to respond.

Because she was right: Everyone would know what she did.

And she would be arrested, charged, and most likely convicted for attempted murder.

Or, if Cliff didn’t survive tonight, for straight-out
murder.

If anything could make walking out into an ice storm appealing, then that was it.  

“Holly,” I said in an almost-pleading voice. “You might have hurt him, but you can explain why you did what you did. People will listen if you give them a chance. I’m not saying it’ll be easy, but it could…”

I stopped speaking when I caught the look in her eye.

She’d already made up her mind. And not one thing I said was going to make a difference.

“Nobody will understand anything,” she said, dropping the hammer and letting it hit the hard ground with a harrowing crack. “How could they?”

And with that, she turned around and started walking again out into the storm.

I just stood there, watching as her figure became smaller in the darkness.

This was what she wanted.

And maybe I should have had enough respect to accept that.

But in the end, I did what I thought was right.

Chapter 47

I knew I shouldn’t have gone into the storm.

I knew I belonged back inside the auditorium where it was warm and bright and safe.

I knew that I should have stayed and waited for Daniel.

But it was as if Holly Smith was about to hurl herself off a cliff in front of me. And letting her go out into the storm alone was equivalent to me watching her slip away without so much as lifting a finger to stop it.  

Maybe she had done something terrible.

But I couldn’t let her do this to herself.

“Stop!” I shouted again, running after her.

My snow boots slid across the icy ground as I tried to run. But every time it felt as though I was spinning out of control, I’d somehow regain my balance and continue on.

Holly seemed to be having the same problem with her footing. Only she had something I didn’t:

Nothing to go back to.

“Don’t do this, Holly!” I howled, the frosty air burning my lungs.

She didn’t listen. She continued on into the storm, heading for the woods that surrounded the culinary school’s building like a pack of rabid wolves.

A moment later, she disappeared over a steep hill and into the trees.

I picked up the pace, trying to catch up to her. To stop her before she was forever lost.

Because if she disappeared now, the next time anybody would see her would be in the spring once the snow thawed.

“Holl—”

I couldn’t finish saying it.

Suddenly, my feet were in the air and I was flying backwards down the hill.

Chapter 48

“Ahhhh!”

I let out a cry that could have freed the trees from their glass cocoons.

But the indifferent wind took my howls away before they could reach anyone or anything.  

Holly had to have been out of range, now. And even if she could hear my screams, I wasn’t sure if it would have mattered one way or another.

She was gone.

I lay on the hard, unforgiving ground, stunned for a long moment at what had just happened. I stared up at the swirling ice and the suffocating wall of white all around me, deep in shock.

Then, the pain kicked in.

I cringed in agony.

It was as if a million fire needles were being pricked into my left shoulder all at the same time. And with each passing moment, they were being jabbed deeper and deeper into my bones.

It was apparent that something was very, very wrong with me.

I tried to sit up, but the terrible stabbing sensation intensified and damn near took my breath away. Tears started flowing from my eyes uncontrollably, and my temples throbbed with a white-hot searing sensation.  

I let out a cry and lay back down on the ice.

Dammit.

Dammit
.

I stared up at the shards falling from the sky, feeling them ping mercilessly against my cold face as I tried to summon the courage to try and get up again.

I gritted my teeth, feeling a few more tears pop over the rims of my eyelids.

The pain was unlike anything I had ever felt before. As if my whole left side had just been doused with gasoline and set on fire.

“
Holly
!” I shouted again, futilely. “Help!”

But all I got back for my trouble were more needles.

I looked back up into that white expanse, biting my lip, feeling lightheaded.  

And although I was blinded with pain, there was one thing I could see clearly enough:

I couldn’t just lie out here waiting for help to come.

By the time Kara noticed I was missing, she wouldn’t even know where to start looking. And there’d be a good chance it’d be too late, anyway.

I was trembling something fierce, and I knew that it was only a matter of time before the first stages of hypothermia kicked in.

I could no longer worry about chasing down Holly, convincing her to come back and face what she had done.

I had to worry about getting out of this ice storm alive.

And given that, I realized there was no other choice.

“Ahhhhhh!!!”

A bloodcurdling scream escaped my mouth as I pushed myself forward.

I felt dizzy as I stumbled to my knees. The world around me turned white again. A fiery shade of white.

I thought of Daniel. Of Huckleberry and Chadwick. Of sitting at home by the fireplace, the way we had a few nights before the Chocolate Championship. Safe and sound and warm.

Daniel looking down at me with loving eyes, listening as I told him something silly about my day…

All the love I felt for him.

Far away from ice storms and disastrous competitions and spilled blood and people with bad intentions.

I forced myself to my feet.

I thought I wouldn’t make it: that I would for sure pass out from the pain. But to my surprise, I remained completely conscious for every excruciating moment.

When I balanced myself on the slick ground, I looked back for a moment behind me.

There, on the ice, were the shiny, shattered, scattered remains of what had once been my phone.

It must have slid out of my pocket during the fall and hit the hard, unforgiving ice.

I heard laughing. A kind of laughter that scared me with its desperation and anguish.

It took me several moments to realize that it was coming from me: I was laughing like a lunatic busting free from the asylum.  

I bit my lip to stop the unholy sound and tried to steady myself against the wind.

Things had gotten so bad so fast.

My arm hung loosely from my shoulder in an unnatural way that made me want to blow chunks all over the ice just at the sight of it. I forced my eyes away before that happened. I turned back toward where I had come from – to where the culinary building was.

Only… Only I couldn’t see it through the driving wall of sleet whipping around in front of me.

I could see nothing, in fact. Nothing at all.

A terror gripped my heart and squeezed harder than a cider press.

I thought back to stories Warren had told me about the old days. The way the blizzards would sometimes descend upon Christmas River, back when every winter was colder and more severe. People who lived on farms near the town sometimes got disoriented and lost in the storm by just going from their house to the barn. Every once and a while, somebody wouldn’t make it back home.

They were only found once the storm was through.

And by then, it was far too late.

I hadn’t ever been in one of those storms.

Not until now.

I took in a sharp breath of air and I felt my chills get worse as I did. More pain erupted from my mangled shoulder.

Everything around me looked exactly the same. Snow and ice and tall trees bending beneath the weight of it all.

“Okay, Cin, okay,” I whispered to myself, trying to cauterize the fear before it started to flood though me. “One step at a time. Baby steps. Baby steps…”

I had come up the hill. I knew that at least.

I slowly walked down, one lethargic, heavy, leaden step at a time, my arm hanging lifelessly. When I got to the bottom, I headed in the direction I thought I had come from.

A few more tears of pain rolled down my cheeks. I brushed them away with my functioning arm, refusing to let them go any further.

I needed a drink.

I needed a doctor.

Most of all, I needed Daniel.

But for now, I just needed to get back and—

My right foot lost its traction suddenly, and I jerked forward. I shrieked in pain as I tried to regain my balance. But with half of me compromised, I didn’t have a chance.

I fell forward, my knees taking the brunt of the impact this time.

But it was my shoulder that took the brunt of the pain.

I tried to stop what happened next, but I didn’t have the strength to.