Snowbound (18 page)

When she opened her eyes again, the first thing she saw was the blurry image of her feet sliding across the stone floor of the lobby and past the hulking tower of the freestanding hearth, its blaze burned down to the embers, the only light coming from Ethan’s lantern.

Devlin was being dragged by her hair. Her right eye throbbed and she could see only a slit of the world through it. The Texans who stood in their kimonos at the far end of the lobby resembled a collection of phantoms in the dark.

One of them yelled, “What you got there, Ethan?”

“Not your fucking concern!”

Ethan produced a knife from his pocket, grabbed her jacket, and sliced the blade through it, cleaving two layers of fabric—her fleece and the long underwear shirt. He ripped them off, then unbuttoned her jeans, slid them down her legs, and threw her to the floor. He tore off her pants, stripped away her long underwear bottoms, her panties, then set her back on her feet.

She stood dazed, embarrassed, and numb with shock as he shoved open the heavy iron doors to the storm.

“No, please, I’ll—”

He pushed her outside, and she stumbled back into one of the pillars. Ethan lifted a long, thin whistle to his lips and blew, the frequency too high to register with her ears. Then the doors slammed shut, Ethan ramming home the three bolts on the other side.

Her feet ached. She looked down at them, but they were submerged in the snow the wind had blown against the pillar. She ran at the door and beat her fists against it and screamed. On a summer evening, her voice would’ve carried across the lake and up the mountain slopes. This night, the blizzard destroyed the echo and her voice went wherever the wind took it. She turned away from the doors, looked down toward the lake. She stamped her feet, snow continuing to fall onto the porch.

She turned back to the doors, put her lips to the snow-glazed iron: “It hurts. Please.” She registered the desperation in her voice. It scared her like nothing else had.

Devlin shut her eyes.
I’m going to die out here.
She ran out naked into the snow. It was waist-deep, numbing. She collapsed, sank into a drift. Above the chattering of her teeth there was only the hush of the storm, until a howl erupted across the lake.

She looked up, her head nodding with cold. The howl came again, closer this time. She struggled to her ice-burned feet. In the nearby woods, more howls answered.
Not the wolves, please God, not the wolves.

Now she glimpsed something—a shape bounding through deep powder. There were tears and snowmelt in her eyes, and when she blinked them away, she saw the wolf. She looked back up the corridor of spruce leading to the lodge. The five-story tower, the projecting four-story north and south wings, stood black against the storm.

A series of explosions shattered the silence. She felt the vibration in her chest. Somewhere in the distance, an avalanche thundered down a mountainside.

An idea struck her—she envisioned climbing up to the veranda. She would break a window, slip into the library.

Now the wolf was coming toward her through the snow.

By the time she reached the end of the south wing, she was moaning from the pain. Her hair hung in her eyes and when she tried to brush it away, it broke off. To stay above the snow, she held on to the cold rock of the first level, making her way around the chimney to the back side of the south wing, coughing now in painful, choking fits.

Thirty yards from the veranda, her left foot stepped on something. She bent down, brushed away the snow. Screamed. A woman sat against the stone wall, naked, half-eaten. While new snow blanketed the dead girl’s face, Devlin pushed on toward the veranda, swimming through snowdrifts as deep as she was tall.

Now the burning had begun to subside in her feet and hands, her extremities assuming a clumsiness that made it impossible to grip the stone wall. She looked down at the deadweight hanging at the ends of her arms, imagined the flesh and the bone and the blood freezing solid in her fingers, wondered if she’d already lost them.

The steps to the veranda were buried, the balustrade covered. She fought her way through the snow, her cheeks going numb, the dull intoxication of hypothermia beginning to cloud her brain. From below she could see the French doors leading into the library, the glass panes fogged, firelight ricocheting off a wall of books.

Devlin heard something behind her, turned, saw three wolves emerge around the corner of the south wing, only their heads visible, rising and falling in the deepening snow.

She backed up to the foot of the stone steps, nothing to do now but watch them come, steel herself to die. She closed her eyes, felt the snow collecting on her face, her eyelids, the tip of her nose. Possessed by a strange, sudden warmth, she sensed the delusional euphoria lurking, and she welcomed it. Her lips moved in rhythm with her thoughts. She was thinking that she would have a little nap to gather her strength and when she woke she would climb out of the snow and go inside and sit by the fire.

But there was no great urgency. She could last the night if she had to. She could last until spring, until the thaw. She was finally comfortable and getting warmer by the minute.

Devlin heard the wolves coming now, tramping toward her through the snow, snarling, the sound of their great jaws snapping closed all around her like gunshots in the night.

Twenty minutes had passed since he’d thrown the teenager out into the storm, and in the dining room, the oblivious Texans were still playing Hold ’em for foolish stakes, trashed beyond all reason.

He’d lived in this lodge and run its business going on ten years, with nothing approaching this level of catastrophe—Gerald dead, now Paul, and that woman, Kalyn, still unaccounted for, though Donald, that imminently capable sociopath, would surely find her before dawn, as he had so many others.

Ethan reclined in one of the brown leather chairs in the vicinity of the library’s hearth, his legs stretched across the matching ottoman. He’d left his brother in his bedroom in that chair by the fireplace, Gerald in the south-wing alcove, where Kalyn had slit his throat. He’d deal with it all in the morning—the cleanup, public relations with the Texans, if they even remembered—and think of nothing more tonight but how monumentally fucked up he was about to get.

He filled his lungs with a hefty intake of smoke.

When it finally hit him, Ethan let the long bamboo pipe slip from his fingers and eased back into the chair, grinning stupidly at the ceiling, blowing smoke rings at the fire.

Through the opium fog, he heard a banging sound, thought for a moment it was his heart, since frequently, after a big hit, it raced and thumped in his chest like a blacksmith shaping out a piece of iron. But this wasn’t that. He could feel his heartbeat, which was soft and slow; there was something comforting about its methodically steady pace.

He rarely hauled himself out of the chair on nights he smoked, preferring to pass out before the warmth of the fire, letting the twisting flames and the coals and the sounds they made occupy his mind.

It took considerable effort to maneuver out of the chair. At last, he did, looked down at his feet when finally standing, puzzled at the strange sensation, as if he was watching appendages that didn’t belong to him. He certainly couldn’t feel them, even as he walked onto the freezing stone of the lobby, where Donald was already waiting in the vicinity of the door with his shotgun.

Ethan said, “Tenacious little thing, isn’t she? Give me that.” He swiped the shotgun out of Donald’s hand. “Wanna watch her go airborne?” he asked.

The guard chuckled as Ethan slid back the three iron bolts and pulled open the doors.

From Don’s perspective, it appeared as if the back of Ethan’s head exploded, his knees buckling, his body dropping like an inanimate sack of bones to the stone, a razor shard of Ethan’s skull lodged in Don’s eye.

A figure stood in the threshold, shadowy and formless in the candlelight. Don was backpedaling, reaching for the Glock in his jacket as a second muzzle flash blinded him, followed by a fragment of white-hot pain that was the end.

Will Innis, frostbitten, mauled, half-delirious with cold and exhaustion, limped through the open doors into the lodge, glancing down at the two men he’d shot, both undoubtedly gone, great pools of blood like black lacquer in the light of a nearby lantern.

Footsteps resonated through a passage at the other end of the lobby, and uncomfortable with the .45, the way it had seemed to spring out of his hand when he’d pulled the trigger, he traded it for the shotgun of the first man he’d killed.

Pumping it, he aimed down the passage as three shadows emerged into the lobby, silhouetted by candlelight.

One of them shouted, “Ethan, you having a little target practice without us?”

The first blast filled the lobby.

Will pumped again, fired again, the men running now, chased by two more thunderous booms that put everything quiet.

Will hurried across the lobby into the dimly lighted passage, glimpsed three men in kimonos on the floor, one sprawled and unmoving, two whimpering like puppies as they dragged themselves across the stone, leaving dark, sluglike trails in their wake.

• • •

Devlin lay on the porch in several inches of snow, shaking violently, naked. Will’s eyes flooded at the sight of his daughter like this.

He lifted her out of the snow, carried her into the lodge, and as he pulled the doors closed and shot home the bolts, a wolf howled somewhere out in that snowy dark. He hadn’t managed to kill any of them.

On the other side of the lobby, through an open door, what appeared to be fire shadows moved along the walls. Will carried Devlin past the freestanding fireplace into the library, where a fire raged in the hearth.

He placed his daughter down in the chair, stretched her legs across the ottoman, and pushed her close to the flames. In light of her disease, he couldn’t bring himself to even consider what her time in the snow had exposed her body to. She’d be going straight to a hospital the moment they left this place.

Pulling a stack of blankets off a shelf above the hearth, he wrapped Devlin in them, her body still cold to the touch, shivering.

He knelt on the floor, ran his hand over her thawing hair.

“Dad’s here,” he said. “You’re safe, baby girl.”

Footsteps echoed in the lobby.

He turned, stood looking through the open door at darkness and candle flames. Unlacing his boots and slipping them off so they wouldn’t squeak, Will hustled out of the library, softly shutting the door behind him.

He didn’t hear the footsteps as he ran across the stone back toward the entrance, waited there, listening to the moan of wind pushing on the doors, his face burning with frostbite, his legs sore from yesterday’s wolf bites.

Someone appeared in the passage beside the library—from his vantage point, just a silhouette-shaped black hole in the darkness. Will, who wasn’t standing in the illumination of any lantern or candle, wondered if whoever it was could see him, then wondered if the person standing there had the same thought.

He pumped the shotgun, held at waist level, aimed at the opening of the passage. When he spoke, he tried to make his voice sound bigger, more unfazed than he felt.

“That lantern mounted to the staircase … walk into its light so I can see you. I’m holding a shotgun, I’ve just killed five men, and I won’t hesitate to do the same to you.”

The dark spot in the passage moved forward, entering the illumination of a lantern, firelight giving texture and depth to the troubled face of Kalyn Sharp.

She said, “Will?”

Will lowered the shotgun and moved quickly across the lobby, feeling the cold of the stone through his socks. Drawing near, he let the shotgun drop to the floor.

They embraced, Will burying his face in the soft, warm side of her neck, just breathing her in. “You in one piece?” he whispered.

“Yeah. Where’s Devi?”

“In the library. They threw her out in the storm.”

“Oh God. Is she okay? She talking?”

“Not yet. She’s still unconscious.”

They came apart and Kalyn said, “What’s wrong with your face?”

Will touched the cut across his cheek, the blackened skin. “I had a run-in with some mean-ass wolves. Spent last night outside, all of today trying to find you and Devlin. Between the wolves and the cold, I’m in pretty rough shape.”

She glanced over her shoulder into the passage. “I see you took out a few of the guests.”

“Guests?”

“Don’t worry, they had it coming. But there’re three more of them, probably unarmed. They were playing cards in the dining room before you rolled in.”

“You okay? You seem—”

“No, I’m not okay. Look, Will, I have to—”

The library door opened. Devlin stood on the threshold, a blanket draped over her shoulders, hair hanging down in her face.

“Dad?”

Will smiled. “Hey, baby girl. How are—”

“Who’s that with you?”

“It’s all right. Just Kalyn.”

“No, it’s not all right.”

“Honey—”

“She was gonna leave us both here.”

Will looked at Kalyn, felt her beginning to pull away from him. He stared into her eyes, said, “What are you talking about, Devi?”

“Do you have a gun?”

“On the floor behind me.”

“Get it.”

“I think she’s confused from the cold,” Kalyn whispered. “Let’s go reassure her.” Kalyn started past him, moving toward the shotgun. Will grabbed her arm.

“Dad!”

“Where are you going?” Will asked. “Devlin’s over there.”

“You trust me or not, Will?”

He smiled weakly. “Of course. You take the gun. You’re better with it than I am.”

Kalyn smiled, said, “You gonna let go of my arm?”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry.”

“No, Dad.” Devlin was crying now.

“It’s all right, honey. I think you’re just a little confused.”

“I am
not
confused!” Will started toward his daughter, Kalyn toward the shotgun.

He suddenly spun around, saw Kalyn bending down, then lunged and shoved her across the floor.

As she fell hard on the stone, he picked up the shotgun.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“If I’m wrong,” Will said, “I apologize. Get up slowly, hands where I can see them.”

“Will, I can explain—”

“Maybe so. Maybe we’ll all have a big laugh about this in a little while. Walk toward the library. Devlin, we’re heading your way.”

Devlin stepped back into the library.

“Why don’t you trust me?” Kalyn asked.

“I’m not saying I don’t. We’re just gonna sort this out.”

They entered the library and Will closed the door behind them.

“She might have a gun or something, Dad.”

“Kalyn, sit in that corner and keep your hands on top of your knees.” Devlin sat bundled in covers by the fire, glaring at Kalyn as she took a seat against the base of the bookshelves.

Will stood several feet away, the shotgun trained on Kalyn’s chest. “Devlin,” he said, “tell me what’s going on here.”

“I’ve been in this lodge since early this morning, trying to keep from getting caught, looking for you. Then a little while ago, Kalyn found me. She took me upstairs. I thought we were sneaking out. Instead, she took me to this man named Paul. She was gonna trade me.”

Kalyn said, “Will, please—”

“Shut up. Trade you for what, Devlin?”

“Her sister, Lucy. They keep women here.”

“Why?”

“For the guests. So they can have sex with them, even kill them if they want.”

“Where’s Paul now? Was he one of the men I—”

“I shot him.”

“Oh, honey.”

“He was gonna hurt me. I didn’t have a choice.”

Will stared at Kalyn.

“You know me, Will.”

“No, I know my daughter. You’re a big fucking question mark right now.” Will stepped toward her, raised the shotgun, trying to spurn the blood lust he felt. Not even with Javier had he wanted to hurt something this bad. Kalyn’s eyes ran over, and she wiped her face.

Will said, “Did you have this planned from the start?”

“No.”

“To use us to help you get here, then trade my daughter for your sister? Was that the deal?”

“No, I just got caught. I never would’ve let them keep you or her. I would’ve—”

“I should kill you right now,” Will said.

“Let’s lock her up, Dad. In one of the rooms.”

“Do we have a key?”

“I know where you can get one.”

“All right, but meanwhile …”

He swung the Mossberg’s composite stock into the side of Kalyn’s head.