In Winter's Grip (28 page)

David reached inside his coat and pulled out a folded canvas bag.

“Put them in here, and we'll take the bag out to your car.”

“Okay.” I took the bag and held it in one hand while I reached into the step and pulled out the packets of cocaine one by one. I stuffed the drugs inside the canvas bag and held it out to David. “You can have my car if you want. I'll walk home and get Jonas to drive me to the airport. I won't tell him anything.”

David waved off the bag and laughed. “Actually, you'll be driving me to the border, Maja. You'll say you decided to drive back to Ottawa with your cousin.”

“Why don't you just go across yourself? They won't question a police officer.”

David wouldn't answer. He pointed the gun toward the back door. “Let's get going.”

A storm was moving in. The leaden sky had darkened, and it felt closer to nightfall than mid-afternoon. The wind was whipping up the snow, and it was a struggle for me to carry the bag to the car without stumbling. David stayed close behind me, steadying me under my elbow once when I tripped over an ice chunk. I opened the trunk to put the bag inside.

“You were on your way to Duluth then,” he said, nodding at my suitcase and carry-on bag. “Lucky for me.”

He slammed the trunk shut and motioned for me to get into the driver's seat. At the same time he made for the passenger door.

I didn't dare try to get away. David had the advantage of a gun, and we were in the middle of nowhere with nobody as witness— and he had the eerie calm of a man with nothing to lose.

I got behind the wheel at the same time as he slid in on the other side. I could see my breath, and my cold hands fumbled with the keys before I finally got the car going. It wasn't happy with the call to action and took several tries before the engine agreed to turn over. I coaxed it into gear, and we rattled and jostled down the driveway to the highway. Looking out the front windshield was like trying to see through a piece of gauze. I sprayed washer fluid several times. The wipers barely cleared away the wet streaks and the ice.

“Can't you crank the heat up any higher?” David asked. He huddled into his coat and pulled up the collar. The gun was in his lap, pointed in my direction. I hoped he had the safety on.

“It's up as high as it goes. We should be warm by the time we hit the border.” I mumbled the last bit more to myself than to David.

He pointed for me to go left, and I pulled slowly onto the highway. My tires spun on the ice before grabbing. We passed a few homes tucked into the woods, but this stretch of road was desolate. We'd gone little way when David squinted out the front windshield.

“Pull over here.”

“Here?”

“Yeah, just down this road.”

I could make out tire track ruts on a road I knew led to the lake. We followed what was little more than a trail for half a mile or so. The snow banks swooped up beside the road on either side of us like angel wings. At last, we reached a turn-around spot where David's police car was partially hidden by a snow drift.

“Pull alongside,” David ordered and I did as he asked. “Leave the car running.”

We both got out and went to the back of the police car. David opened the trunk. A suitcase and two boxes filled the space. He had me take the books out of one of the boxes until we came to a row of Bibles. I pulled six out, one by one, and opened them to find hollowed out cores, just the size for the bags of cocaine. I looked at David, and he smiled. He'd brought the bag of drugs from my father's house with him when he'd left the car, and he dropped it at my feet. I withdrew each plastic bag of cocaine and inserted it into a gaping Bible. By now, my hands were numb again, and I had trouble inserting the bags. David watched but didn't say anything. There were an additional three hollowed-out Bibles that I left in the trunk.

“Do you want the drugs divided between the two boxes?” I yelled over the howling wind.

“No. The other box is a decoy.”

I finished repacking the box and transferred both to my trunk. As David instructed, I placed the decoy box in front. I managed to get his bag into the trunk after I removed my carry-on bag, which I threw it onto back seat before sliding back behind the wheel. My hands and face were now beyond cold, and I shivered uncontrollably, partly from the cold and partly from fear.

“Good work, Maja,” David said. “Let's get back on the highway.”

I looked at him and took a breath. I placed both hands on the steering wheel, my eyes straight ahead as I tried to control my voice. Even so, it came out small and afraid. “What do you intend to do with me after we get across the border?”

“Don't worry, Maja. I'm not going to hurt you, if that's what you're thinking. People are waiting for me, and I'll be long gone before anybody figures out I've split.”

“What about Olive and the kids? You have a new baby.”

“Olive's better off without me.”

“But you've been together such a long time. It's not too late to go back.”

“Drop it. It
is
too late. Just drive and don't talk any more.”

I'd hit a nerve. David tapped the gun on his leg, his agitation palpable. I stayed quiet for several miles. I concentrated on keeping the car on the road and out of the drifts of snow that were sloped across the highway. The storm was intensifying, if anything. Traffic on the highway was almost non-existent. We passed a snow plow going in the other direction. David shifted in his seat and looked over at me.

“I'm sorry about this, Maja.”

“I know, David.”

“Sometimes things just happen. You know, you take a step in the wrong direction, and before you know it, you're sucked into something you can't get out of.”

“Did my father...did he pull you into this?”

“Not exactly. We were approached by Rainy Wynona. It seemed easy enough. I'd go into Canada and pick the drugs up at a secondhand bookstore on my way to buy cheaper prescription insulin and supplies for my son. I had a valid reason for going into Canada so often, and your father made sure I was waved through this side without a search. I timed my trips to coincide with his shifts.”

“But my father had the drugs in his house.”

“Yeah. I'd transfer the drugs to your father's trunk, and he'd bring them to his house for the pickup. His was the logical place, in the middle of nowhere.”

“Where did you deal the drugs?”

“Rainy had a trucker from down the road bring them points south. I never bothered too much with that end of it.”

I thought of the day I'd stopped at Verl's restaurant on my way to Fortune Bay Casino. Wayne Okwari had enquired about the grandson who drove a transport south. Perhaps he was the link.

“How did you know I'd be back to my father's house today?”

“I didn't. I was upstairs searching when I heard you pull up.”

“But your car was hidden away in the woods a few miles away.”

“I didn't want anyone to know I was at your house again. I had to hide the car and run back. It didn't take too long, since I've been training for the marathon. I was going to leave town one way or the other today, with or without the drugs.”

“But why now? Nobody could link you to the drugs.”

David chewed on his bottom lip. He began tapping the gun on his leg again, and I stopped talking. The car swerved on a bit of ice, but I managed to straighten the wheel. The wipers were trying their best to clear the crusty snow from the windshield. Gusts of wind buffeted the car whenever we came to a flat stretch of road. For the most part, we were protected by the dark miles of forest on either side of us. Tree boughs swayed back and forth in the wind, and snow drove sideways across the road. The car's heater had begun to pump out warm air, and the numbness in my fingers had given way to sharp tingling. I kept telling myself that this was David Keating beside me, a boy I'd known since grade school. He wasn't going to hurt me.

I slowed going up a hill. I could see headlights behind me, but the vehicle was keeping its distance. Even if it caught up to us, there was no way I could signal what was going on. I'd have to hope I had a chance to get away at the border crossing. We'd been on the road almost an hour, and I knew it wasn't far ahead. If not for David, I would have been pulling into my motel in Duluth about now. I wondered if anybody would notice my absence. Probably not. I hadn't made plans with anybody for the evening and hadn't phoned Sam to say when I'd be home. He was likely getting ready for the trip tomorrow. I had intended to surprise him.

David started to look out of the windows, now more nervous than he'd been before.

“How long has that car been behind us?” he asked.

“It just turned on the highway a mile or so back,” I lied.

David swung back around in his seat. “We're almost at the border. You'll tell them you're heading home after your father's funeral. Say you're a doctor and I'm your cousin, Ben Larson.”

“You have papers to that effect, I gather?”

“Yes. And Maja, anything goes wrong, I won't hesitate to shoot someone. Canada Customs won't be bothering with us in this storm unless the officer gets suspicious. I'm counting on you to make sure that doesn't happen.”

“Okay,” I nodded. “I'll get us across the border, but then what, David?”

“Then, I meet my friends, and you'll be detained for a bit while we get away.”

“You'll make sure they don't hurt me.”

“You have my word.”

We reached the crest of the hill and rounded the corner. The road carved through a rock cut that towered above us on both sides. I let out a scream and began pumping the brakes. Across our lane was a Ford truck, spun out on some black ice and facing into the rock cliff. I saw it and my brain registered it, but I reacted on instinct, nothing more. I felt outside my body, watching somebody else getting ready to die. My mind recorded facts. There were no other vehicles on the road. The truck was black. Its front bumper was smashed into the rock cut. We were going to hit it. Snow was falling in slanting lines.
Please don't let
me die this way.

My tires began sliding, and I frantically pumped the brake pedal while steering into the skid. David thunked hard against the side door and cursed. “What the hell? Shit!” He grabbed onto the dashboard,

I steered into the skid as I'd been taught so many years ago in driver's ed, back in high school. Back when life had been simple. Back when I was whole. The brakes caught. The car righted itself. I let my breath out in a whoosh.

We came to a stop a few feet from the truck. My heart was pounding like my chest would explode, and I was breathing heavily. I rested my arms on the steering wheel and my head on my arms. I was tired. I wanted nothing more than to lie down in the snow beside the highway in a fetal position.

Someone knocked on my window, and my head jerked upwards. A hooded figure stood next to the car in the pelting snow.

“David?” I asked. I needed his permission to talk to this stranger. I didn't know what he would do.

David looked all around and back at the person huddled in a black parka standing beside our car. He tucked the gun behind him so that it was out of sight. “Okay, ask if he needs help and tell him we'll send somebody when we get to the next town. Nothing else, Maja, or he'll regret ever stopping us.”

The intensity in David's voice was palpable. He was as scared as I was.

I nodded. Now I was responsible for this stranger's life as well as my own. I lowered my window halfway and turned my head to look at the person, not knowing how I was going to get rid of them. I opened my mouth to say something and found myself staring into the glittering black eyes of Wayne Okwari.

TWENTY-EIGHT

D
o you need help?” I managed to say, then things began to happen very fast.

Wayne reached in and pulled up the lock in one swift motion before he opened my car door, unhooked my seatbelt and yanked me out. I hadn't noticed that another man had come up on David's side of the car, and he opened the passenger door at the same time as I flew out my side. I landed on the ground, and Wayne covered my body with his own. The car that had been following us was suddenly flashing red lights and had pulled up behind us. I heard a gunshot. When I was finally pulled to my feet, David was spreadeagled against the car being searched by two men. Wayne kept one hand under my elbow.

“You okay, ma'am?”

He sounded so like Billy, I wanted to cry. “What's going on?” I asked instead as I wiped snow from my face. I'd scraped my cheek and forehead on the ice, and they'd begun to sting.

“I'm an undercover cop. We were watching your father's house.” Wayne started walking me toward the truck.

“Then you know about the cocaine in my trunk?”

“We figured it was in the car somewhere.” He grinned wryly in my direction.

I stopped walking and held out my arms, palms up. “Why didn't you stop us before we got this far?” The shock was starting to settle in, and the anger. We could have been killed with the truck-across-the-road stunt.

Wayne turned and took a step back towards me. “The agent saw you leaving the house with Officer Keating, but we needed time to mount the takedown. We thought we'd lost you along the highway, and it took a while to track you again.”

“We made a detour to pick up David's car. He had it parked on a side road down the way from my father's house.” I caught up to Wayne, and we started walking again.

“You had us worried. We were scared he'd done something to you. We had to move faster than we'd have liked, so we improvised. The truck idea was mine. I knew Keating wouldn't let you stop if he suspected the accident was staged. It had to look real.”

“David wouldn't have hurt me. He was going to let me go after we got into Canada.”