Strange Things Done (34 page)

Jo picked her way through the darkness, following the weak circle of light, ringing as she went.
Ching. Ching. Ching.
The narrow overgrown path, almost obscured by snow, led through the woods toward an outhouse. She stopped at the clearing.

Now that Jo was away from the cabin, she had begun to doubt herself. She had no proof that Byrne had done anything. Just a feeling. No, more than a feeling. It was the way he looked at her, like he
knew
that she knew. Jo thought she had a few minutes at best. When she didn’t come back, he’d come after her. She might have just enough time to make it to the truck.
But would the keys be there?
Jo began walking, slowly at first, looking over her shoulder. Then faster, her boots sinking into the snow past the tops, dampening her shins. Jo cut away from the path at the back of the house, through the woods toward the lane where Byrne parked his pickup.

The timid line of light from her flashlight was no match for such an opaque night. It was possible only to see a few feet in any direction, where branches waved their dark claws and bright flakes of snow lunged and circled. Feeling exposed in the spotlight of her flashlight, Jo hurried forward, against the wind.
Ching. Ching. Ching.
It was difficult to move either quickly or with any stealth, and the bear bells broadcast her location to anything that might be … The word “hunting” came to mind. Hunting her. She stooped to remove the bells, causing strips and patches of ice to crack at the knees of her jeans. Her numb fingers fumbled with the bells, a fury of metal noise, but it was no use. He’d tied the leather strings into a tight knot and now she would have to remove her gloves. She tugged at the first glove, exposing flesh to a rake of icy air just as a flash of movement caught her eye. She dropped the glove. A black figure in the brush. A bear? A man? A dog? Jo didn’t know. She half-whispered into the darkness, “Nugget?” She swung her torch.

Jo was startled by the heavy shape in the snow that awaited her. She made a little noise at the back of her throat. Nugget turned his head to look up at her, face placid.

“Oh, for the love of Christ.”
Not a bear,
she thought, her whole body rejoicing.
Not a man.
She gasped as the wind kicked in again, feeding on the exposed skin at her face and throat and left hand. Jo tucked her chin into an already icy scarf. “Good boy,” she said, stretching out her bare hand toward the dog. The dog ignored her, turning back to look at something in the woods, an animated expression on its face. Then, the animal threw back its head and howled.

“Shhh!” Jo said, fearful that the dog would give her location away. She fumbled to pick up the glove in the snow. The dog stood, the hair rising on the ridge of its back. He began to bark emphatically. “Nugget, no. Quiet ...”

The husky gave her a baleful look, then continued with his loud warning to something unseen in the dark. Jo hesitated for a moment, hating to leave the dog in case it was in any kind of danger.
Stupid dog. Please don’t get yourself killed.
She looked back over her shoulder. The dog suddenly darted off into the underbrush, a departing shadow in a tangle of snowy branches.

The wind harangued her as she scanned the capricious shapes of waving trees. She took a deep, needling breath, head turned against the wind, and began jogging away.
Ching. Ching. Ching.
The bear bells rang out in the darkness. Then, in the distance, Jo heard Nugget howl again. She paused, struggling to hear anything else above the wind. Where was the sound coming from? Behind her? Or ahead?

She ran like her life depended on it. The bells clamoured as she rounded a corner.
Ching. Ching. Ching
. Her left hand burned, and she realized with horror that she’d dropped the glove somewhere. No time to go back for it. Snow pelted her cheeks. How long before frostbite set in?

The toe of her right boot caught on something—she tripped, touched bare hand to snow briefly, but did not go down. Her breathing was ragged, each inhalation knifing her lungs. She was almost there. Almost to the truck.
Please let the keys be inside.

Jo lurched into the glade where she thought Byrne’s pickup should be parked. Saw the truck. A warm wave of relief washed over her, then receded. The drifts were halfway to the windows.
Will never get out … Might be a shovel in the back … Imagine the state of the roads … One thing at a time.
As she neared, Jo tried to peer through the window to see the ignition, but the feathered pattern of frost obscured her view. The door handle was frozen, but she was able to jiggle it free. It moved. The door opened. Her heart soared. But no. There was no key in the ignition.

Jo climbed in anyway, closing the door against the juddering cold and locking it.
Think. Think.
Would she be safer here? Could she somehow hotwire the engine?
Not likely.
She checked the driver’s mirror, half hoping to find a key, then opened the glove compartment. There was a drawstring leather pouch inside.
Please.
Numb fingers clawed at the string until the bag revealed its treasure. Two fleshy round lumps. Bear balls.

There was no key anywhere to be found.

She was halfway out of the truck when the first shot rang out. A rush of panic gripped Jo, making her hands shake as she clawed at the off switch on the flashlight. For a moment, she couldn’t feel the button. Then the ring of light at her feet winked out with a tremor. She hesitated, unsure of which direction to head, then darted helter-skelter toward the shadowy contours of trees. The bells around her ankle trilled like an alarm, echoing across the blowing landscape.

Jo flinched as another shot thundered, propelling her forward as the sound of the explosion faded into the yowl of the wind. She was sprinting back along the path toward the outhouse, but realized with a shock that it would dead-end, and that he’d be able to predict her route. She veered off to the left, into the woods again, knee-deep in snow. Her breath was coming in great crescendos, like waves battering a shoreline during a storm. The grim scent of winter was magnified.

Bullets of hard snow pelted her face and her eyes watered, the tears freezing on her cheeks. Jo followed a less-tangled area in the forest. It might have been another path, it was difficult to tell. Another shot exploded somewhere in the night, and immediately she shifted direction, arms pumping, slicing through the crisp air. Her legs ached with fatigue and cold, and her one bare hand had gone numb. She wondered what it might feel like to die here, with only trees for tombstones, the snow piling up around her body, and wolves to pick the bones clean and white.

Then, she spotted a dark, structural shape not far off.
Please let it be another cabin.

It was a roughly hewn shack, smaller even than Byrne’s. The windows were dark, and the pipe chimney smokeless. Jo banged on the door. There was no answer. Jo rattled at the handle until the front door gave way, swinging inward with a swirl of snow, the darkness swallowing her.

As she plunged inside, it was the smell of the place she noticed first. A raw, spoiled scent like rank meat. She gagged. It felt as though the smell were clinging to her, getting inside her mouth and nose and down her throat. Jo found the switch on her flashlight and lifted the light. A bear snarled at her, fangs bared, just a few feet away. She almost dropped the torch.

Taxidermy. The heads of animals had been mounted everywhere, in silent roars. The glassy, yellow-green eyes of a cougar made Jo think of a child’s marble. A small, empty treasure. One table contained bits of bone or antler. Another, a collection of bear paws. Not far away, something howled, expressing the passion of the hunt.

Jo swallowed. She had nowhere to run, and he was coming. She moved to the door, closed it, and bolted it with the heavy, wooden latch. She scoured the one-room shack for something to use. There was a long-bladed knife and some saw-like instruments on the table with the paws. She seized the knife.

Outside, boots crunched on snow like a funeral march. The sound conveyed a dreadful sense of purpose. Motion at the window caught her eye as a man in a balaclava flashed by the window in profile, headed toward the door.

A fresh surge of panic, made worse by the chaotic ringing of bells as she rushed to the window closest to the front door. Frantically, knife in gritted teeth, Jo closed and secured the rough wooden shutters as best she could. They clattered and shook in her numb hands. Then, she backed away, holding the knife in front of her.

The doorknob turned, slowly, then rattled, but the deadbolt held.

Jo glanced around. There was no window on the wall that housed the animal heads but, at the wall opposite the door, her open-mouthed expression was reflected in an inky mirror of glass. She rushed to the other window and closed another set of wooden shutters, a flimsy hook locking them loosely in place. Then Jo stooped down to hack through the twine holding the bells in place around her ankle. They fell to the floor with a dismal clang.

The crack of a rifle tore the arctic air. Across the room, there was now a dime-sized hole in the wooden shutters. Jo scrambled under the work table and listened. Nothing but the fury of the wind for a moment, then the sound of footsteps receding into the storm. Jo exhaled a fog of breath. She quickly leaned into the table with her shoulder, tipping it over in a shower of bone and metal as random animal parts and taxidermy tools rained down. Jo lay flat on the floor behind it, covering her head.

Nearby outside, boots crunched on snow again, growing louder. His step was calm and confident. A crash made her wince, then an icy log skidded across the floor in a wake of glass. A rattling sound at the window. She peered out from behind the table. A gloved hand was reaching in through the splintered shutters, feeling its way toward the deadbolt on the door with outstretched, crab-like fingers. Icicles of glass fell to the floor, playing a melodic tune.

Jo lunged with the taxidermy knife just as the encroaching fingers made contact with the bolt. The long blade disappeared into the meaty bit between the index finger and thumb, pinning the appendage to the door. The person attached to the hand made a horrifying sound. The arm wrenched and the fingers spasmed.

Byrne was screaming, but it wouldn’t be long until he was free if the skin tore. Jo darted to the back window and opened the shutters. She snatched up the log and hurled it through, leaving fragments of glass hanging like loose teeth. Grabbing a long taxidermy saw, she smashed the remaining shards out, then began climbing through the window.

She glanced over her shoulder, behind her. The knife still pinned a black glove to the door like some great, horrid spider, but the glove was now empty. Her gaze shifted to the opposite window, to the bullet hole in the shutters, sensing that he was watching her. She barely had time to leap. Something seared through the air just above her head, where she had been a second before
.
“Hunt,” she heard Byrne call out.

She landed in a thick drift of snow, almost up to the window, and the thing was on her, slavering and snapping its jaws. Nugget. Jo swung the saw at the dog, but it leapt away easily and was back at her, crouched and snarling. Each time Jo stabbed with the saw, the husky backed off to evade the blow, but she couldn’t escape while it guarded her. Byrne was coming. He would find her here. When the dog lunged again, Jo threw the saw. This time, she found her target. The beast whimpered and fell back. Running up the drift onto the window ledge, she hefted herself up onto the cabin roof. She scrabbled and slipped as she climbed, clutching the icy edge of the shingling while the husky launched itself just below her feet once again, fangs bared.

How many rounds were in a rifle magazine? Five? Ten?
She pictured the gunman’s arm swinging wildly about, struggling to hold the barrel steady with only one good hand.

“Jo,” Byrne called out. “It doesn’t have to be this way. Come back and let’s talk.” His voice was carried away by the wind. Did he think she’d escaped into the woods? Or did he think she’d gone back inside and was cowering behind the work table?
He’ll see my tracks if he comes around to look.
Jo inched forward in the snow caking the roof of the hut, trying to reach the peak. Could she go over the top and take him by surprise?
Her arms were shaking as she pulled herself up the incline.

For a moment, Jo heard only the rising wind, then the sound of snow under boots. Byrne was moving away from the front of the cabin and down the side, toward the back. He would find her. He would kill her.

38

The frenzied dog hurled itself below Jo’s feet. The muscles in her arms burned with the effort of clinging to the roof, some misplaced gargoyle. She strained to hear over the wind, but there was nothing but the yammer of the husky. She couldn’t go down, and she didn’t know where Byrne had gone. Her only choice was to crawl up and over the small cabin and hope to escape on the other side. Or drop down on Byrne from above if she found him there. She inched her way forward, lying on her belly, the cold soaking into her jeans. She brushed away treacherous snow as she went, gripping the edges of shingles, praying that they would hold her weight. If Byrne sighted her on the roof, he would pick her off with the rifle. She pictured him lying in wait. Stretching forward, she grasped the icy stovepipe chimney and strained to the top. She looked over, squinting into the night and roiling snow. There was no one there.

Jo caught her first strong whiff of gasoline, then. A splashing sound below. He was hunting her, flushing her out. She had to leap now, before he tossed a match, but she hesitated, knowing he’d shoot as she fled. She thought of the girl in the burning car. Jo knew how her own remains would look when they found her.

Wooosh!
The shack went up in flames.

Some motion caught her attention in her peripheral vision. Someone was running through the snow, toward the cabin. He was carrying a gun, making a beeline for the door of the cabin below her. At first she thought it was Byrne, but as the figure got closer, she realized with a shock that it was Johnny Cariboo. In the glow of the fire, he looked determined.
Does he think I’m inside?