Snow Page 15

  He hadn’t spoken since they got in the car, his focus entirely on the road ahead of them.

  She chanced a look his way. “Where are we going?”

  “Mom wants to see you.”

  Shit. “Really? Come on, Jimmy, I’m here. I stopped running. Dumped that loser who was dragging me around. Just you and me now. Do we really have to bring her into this?”

  “You went to the police, Lil.” He said it like it was some kind of betrayal. Like he was hurt.

  Because you killed a girl, you sick fuck. “I was scared. I tried to back out of it but they wouldn’t let me. The cops practically kidnapped me, Jimmy. I kept running. Did you hear that from anyone? I didn’t want to help them, I kept trying to get away. Would I be here otherwise?”

  “You would if you were playing bait. Your boyfriend following us, hun?”

  “No.” At least that wasn’t a lie.

  “See...” He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, frowning. “I called Mom when I saw you outside the shop there. And she said you’d try to sweet talk me, convince me you weren’t involved in this police stuff. Not to believe you.”

  “Your mom hates me, Jimmy. She always has.”

  “Doesn’t mean she’s wrong.”

  Liliana sighed dramatically, tried to make it seem like a typical couple’s argument—the kind they’d had so many times, when she would push just enough that they got shouting but not enough to really trigger his temper—even as her heart beat violently in her chest like it might explode from fear. “I could’ve kept running. Jesus, Jimmy, I walked through snow up to my waist to get to town, hoping you’d be there and get me out of this mess.”

  “You ran to the police, Lil. We can’t just forget about that.”

  “I saw you standing over Polly’s body, of course I ran. What d’you think anyone would do?”

  “Stupid bitch,” he muttered. “She comes at me telling me she’s pregnant, right? That it’s mine? Fuck, you know me—never not used a condom. Bitch thought she could cheat on me and I wouldn’t figure it out? Mom was so mad. So fucking mad.”

  Did that count as a confession? Should she tell him now he’d just confessed, basically, to murder? Or at least the motive to one, and hadn’t denied it when she mentioned seeing him with the body? He might flip out on her but he was driving, he had to keep the vehicle going. She might survive his rage if he had to focus on staying on the road.

  Unless he runs us into a tree.

  Christ, she wished O’Hara was there.

  She had the gun still, though. She’d looked at it off and on while walking toward the lodge parking lot. Even squeezed off one shot when she thought she was far enough away from the cabin that Mike wouldn’t hear and freak out. She could shoot Jimmy. Probably.

  Preferably not while he was driving, though.

  The shops and houses were in the distance behind them now, the land on left and right stretching into larger homes and farmland. Snow topped trees and rolling hills were blanketed in white that glowed in the darkness.

  With a sinking feeling, she realized they likely weren’t going back to the busy city with all the lights and the witnesses. No, wherever Jimmy’s destination was, it likely involved a place no one would hear her scream.

  Liliana hunched in her seat, braced against the door while Jimmy sped over the snowy stretch of road. She had who knew how long before they reached Elise to talk him out of doing something stupid.

  “They’re going to be looking for me,” she said.

  “Though you said you slipped your boyfriend.”

  “I did but he’s not stupid and he’s got friends. They live around here, they know the area. C’mon, Jimmy—”

  “You had your chance, Lil!” he snapped. “Your chance to come home. To make this up to me. You ran.”

  Fuck.

  Then he slowed the car and Liliana grew even more apprehensive. There were no buildings around here, nothing but woods and a few dirt roads covered in snow. A metal sign streaked with snow mentioned a lake.

  She tried to slow her heartrate as he turned down one of the roads, fear spiking her veins with adrenaline. She thought they’d head back to the city.

  “Jimmy, where are we going?” The thread of fear in her voice was unmistakable—nothing she could do to hide it.

  And the lie in his was just as obvious. “Just a quick stop.”

  Goddamn it. Was the phone still recording? Would O’Hara be with his team by now? Able to check the cloud storage, listen to what was on there so far? In a movie, she could describe where they were, give the others clues. But she had no idea if they would be listening.

  “What lake is this? Where are we going?” The car passed the sign to the lake but though she craned her neck to see, she couldn’t make out the name of it past snow sticking to it.

  “You shouldn’t have gone to the cops, Lil,” he said in a low voice. “Can’t trust you now.”

  Fuck, fuck. “Jimmy—”

  “Shouldn’t have gone to the cops.”

  Her fingers flexed, debating going for the gun, but the path was rough and the car jostled them around—she wasn’t stupid enough to try shooting him when she could just as easily damage herself in the process.

  “Mom was pissed at me but even more pissed at you. She’s not gonna forgive you for almost getting me into trouble.”

  Twisted bitch, that one. That was what the Huntsman had said, and he tortured and murdered people for a living. Christ, what the hell did Elise have in store for her?

  The lake opened ahead of them, glistening in the rising moonlight. Half of it was frozen, icy patches between spots of water—if the temperature continued to plummet, all of it would freeze. Jimmy swung the car in a half-circle so fast she could barely take in the scenery.

  He brought the car to a halt and sat there in silence, staring over the dashboard at the lake in the distance.

  “Jimmy.” Her lips trembled around his name.

  “Let’s go for a walk, Lil.”

  “Jimmy—”

  “Now!”

  She shrank back as he shouted, the glint in his eyes the same she’d seen when he strangled Polly, just a hint of it living there throughout their previous relationship.

  He turned from her, opened his door, and a breath of cold air rushed into the vehicle. When he slammed the door shut again, the car rocked, and Liliana sat there shaking. Though she popped the seatbelt, she didn’t exit, instead reaching for the phone and thumbing over the screen, struggling to remember the names of Mike’s co-workers. Her gaze hit Kristof’s number and she autodialed.

  “Hello?” he said half a ring in, the unfamiliar voice filling the car. “Liliana?”

  Thank God, O’Hara must’ve met up with him. Her lips parted to speak.

  The door beside her flew open and she screamed as Jimmy grabbed her hair, dragged her from the vehicle. She lost her grip on the phone and it fell somewhere below her seat, then she was in a heap on the snow beside the car.

  She swung at him, kicked, screamed again as he didn’t release the tight grip on her hair. Where he was dragging her, she didn’t know, but there was no sign of anyone out there, just the bright lake and the darkness of the woods.

  At last he released her but a moment later pain exploded in her gut, his foot connecting with her stomach. His next kick struck her jaw, snapped her head to the side.

  She rolled in the snow, struggled to breathe. Blood flooded her mouth. Her right hand fumbled for her jacket pocket just as he grasped her shoulders and turned her onto her back.

  Then he was on her, straddling her stomach, his hands around her throat squeezing, squeezing, his face reddening from the effort. She gasped, fought and twisted against him.

  Her hand clasped the gun at last, fingers wrapping around the cold grip.

  She jerked the gun out. Her face was swelling as he squeezed at her throat, her vision going blurry, but she caught the sudden widening of his eyes as he saw the weapon.

  Hold it in your rig
ht hand, steady it with your left. Aim for the torso.

  That’s what O’Hara said but she couldn’t get her left hand out from under his knee. She held it in her right, hoped like hell it was his torso she was aiming at, and squeezed the trigger.

  The gun gave a deafening bang, louder in close quarters than it had seemed when she tried it earlier in the woods. Her ears rang and blood sprayed across her jacket.

  The grip on her throat loosened and Jimmy’s eyes glazed over. His body went slack, tipped over on top of her.

  Liliana dropped the gun and braced her hands against his body, shoved him to the side, panting and crying. Blood spilled over the snow staining it dark.

  Jimmy didn’t move.

  Oh God, I killed him.

  She expected to feel sick but it was only relief filling her now. Her throat hurt when she swallowed, body ached anew, but she managed to roll over onto her knees. Snow flattened beneath her, crunched as she crawled away from Jimmy’s body. The car was just a few feet away, door still open and interior light on.

  She started to rise, half-stumbled, and fell to her knees by the car, searching for the phone. Her fingers brushed the edge of it, but wet from the snow it skidded away.

  “Fuck!” she screamed, reaching farther until she caught the edge of it. She grasped the phone at last, pulled it out from under the seat, and sat back on her heels. The call had ended so she dialed again.

  “I’m at some kind of lake,” she blurted out as soon as someone answered, not even waiting for a hello, “and I just shot Jimmy and there’s blood and—”

  Something struck the back of her head, pain exploding through her skull.

  Liliana slumped forward, her forehead striking the seat and cell phone spinning from her hand.

  Stars played over her eyes, her brain blanking and thinking going fuzzy. She blinked hard, tried to roll over and managed to flop to her side.

  “You shot my Jimmy.” Elise Hartley stood over her with a tire iron, which she raised and brought down again.

  ****

  Liliana opened her eyes to see the star-pricked dark sky above her. But it was blurry, glassy. Her head ached all over and she tasted blood.

  She tried to lift her head, bumped it on something she couldn’t see. What the...?

  Glass.

  She was surrounded in glass.

  She frowned, tried to turn, her hands flying out on either side of her only to strike more glass. Two feet wide, barely. She tilted her head, looked down, bumped her head on another barrier. Saw her feet.

  Dear God, she was in a glass coffin.

  Panic filled her, tears pricking her eyes. She twisted her head, realized then where she was.

  Out on the lake.

  What the ever-loving fuck?

  Her gaze narrowed then on the dark figure to her left. Elise Hartley, still with her tire iron in hand.

  “You shot my son. My Jimmy.” Tears streaked down the other woman’s face, highlighted by the full moon above.

  Oh shit. It came back to her then, the last several minutes before she blacked out coming back in a rush. Jimmy grabbing her hair, his hands on her throat, the gun going off. Elise must’ve been there out of sight.

  “I had this made especially for you.” Elise tapped the glass gently with the edge of the tire iron. “I’ll be watching from shore. Enjoy your view of the water. I’ll be enjoying mine.” She turned and strolled several feet back, the ice beneath the coffin creaking.

  Then she struck the ice.

  It wasn’t enough to break the ice but it began to crack, bit by bit, the snapping sounding beneath Liliana. The weight of the coffin was too much for the thin layer of ice over the water to bear, and another hard snap came just below her. She screamed but the sound simply bounced back at her. The glass fogged from her breath, clouding her view of everything outside, but she didn’t need to see to hear the ice breaking, to know what was coming next.

  The ice gave way and the glass coffin sank into the dark, icy depths of the lake.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The second call cut out after the scream and despite redialing his own number while using Kristof’s phone, Mike hadn’t been able to get through to Liliana again.

  Benji drove, the SUV barrelling down the narrow, snowy roads, GPS on the dashboard synced to the location of Mike’s phone and telling them where to go. Liliana had mentioned a lake and there was one about a kilometer ahead, where Benji headed now. Behind them, another car had caught up containing the other four members of Seven Security—the entire team would be on site to help if needed.

  And needed, they might be. Liliana also said she’d shot Jimmy. If he was out of the equation but Liliana wasn’t answering... Either Elise Hartley was there as well or the Huntsman betrayed them after all.

  Mike leaned forward, sitting in the middle of the second row of seats. Kristof was in the passenger seat, on the phone with the local authorities. There was no more hiding, no limiting involvement—Jimmy had Liliana, her life was in danger, and Mike would call upon every resource they could possibly have available to them to ensure she was found safely.

  And there would be hell to pay if she was harmed.

  Benji turned the SUV onto a dark narrow road based on the GPS directions, the headlights shining over fresh tire tracks. Someone had driven through recently in a smaller car by the looks of it. They didn’t know what Jimmy was driving but that could be it.

  Soon he glimpsed the lake through the trees to their left, then another vehicle parked, door open and interior light spilling across the snow. Farther in the distance was another car, a sleek sedan, with a figure sitting on the hood.

  “Is that Liliana?” Benji leaned over the steering wheel, squinting.

  The figure turned and by her movements, the lift of her head, Mike knew it wasn’t. “No. My guess is Elise Hartley.”

  Benji hit the brakes near the empty sports car, headlights shining over pools of dark red in the snow and an unmoving body. The corpse was Jimmy’s, he had no doubt—male, at the very least, and not Liliana’s. But he was flying out of the SUV anyway to check the car’s interior, looking at the blood on the ground.

  “Cut the car off!” Kristof was shouting, taking over cornering Elise Hartley as an engine revved in the distance, but Mike didn’t care. They had their assignment—stop Liliana’s assailants. He had his.

  Find her.

  He jogged through the snow with Benji at his heels, scanning the ground. More blood here and there—drag marks.

  Elise pulled her body to the lake.

  No, not body. She wasn’t dead yet—couldn’t be dead. Fuck, he wouldn’t allow it.

  Benji withdrew a flashlight, shone it on the ground ahead of them, highlighting what the moon did not. Mike scanned the snow. The drag marks changed to something else, no longer a body but something with a square edge. Footprints beside it, pushing deep into the snow—someone had shoved something heavy, right there at the edge of the lake.

  Cracked ice spread ahead of them. Mike took the flashlight from Benji and started forward, carefully stepping from one chunk of ice to the next. The light caught another partial drag mark in the snow-covered broken ice—she’d pulled something out there.

  Fuck. Fuck. Liliana was somewhere in the lake. Trapped.

  “Get back to the car and bring rope,” he shouted. “Call an ambulance and get help over here!”

  Benji did so without argument while Mike continued shuffling along the broken ice, casting the light around. What the hell did she put her in, a box? Christ, she could’ve stuffed her in a trunk. They had no evidence Liliana was dead but she could need medical attention and the dark depths of the water waited below with no sign of her.

  But Elise wasn’t that strong. Jimmy was already dead. If she’d shoved the box out there, she couldn’t have gone far.

  He located another drag mark but the ice was deeply split there, just dark water spreading about three feet wide. He’d bet money on it, something had gone down there.
>
  “Mike!” Benji called, tossing him one end of the rope. “Emergency crew is on its way—just wait for help.”

  She might not have time for help to arrive, though.

  He jerked off his jacket, stepped out of his boots so he was lighter, and tied the rope around his waist. Benji was cursing over near the shore but kept a hold of the rope, didn’t stop him.

  With the flashlight clutched in hand, Mike stepped off the ice.

  He plunged into the icy water, the freezing temperature shocking his system. He wouldn’t have long, he knew, before the cold became dangerous. He twisted, swung the flashlight around. The yellow light barely permeated the darkness, but caught a rush of floating bubbles. Lower still, it shone on something else, something that wasn’t the organic shape he expected in the water.

  Mike kicked his legs, which he could barely feel at this point, and swam upward until his face broke the surface. He took in a long, stinging breath of frigid air, barely heard Benji yelling at him, and then dove down again.

  This time he knew where he was going, swimming down several feet until the long rectangular shape was clear.

  A glass coffin.

  With a body in it.

  Her eyes were closed—despite the blur from the glass, the stirred dirt and silt from the lake’s floor, he could see she wasn’t awake. She lay still, untouched by the water.

  Limited air, though. Fuck.

  He cast the light around, knowing he needed to go up for air soon but delaying it as long as possible. His lungs screamed for breath, exposed skin was beyond stinging but numb now.

  A padlock hung from the lid. No key, no time to get something to pick it.

  His feet hit the sandy bottom and he leaned over the coffin. Took the flashlight, twisted it, and slammed the end against the middle of the glass.

  It didn’t break.

  Goddamn. Again, he hit. And again. Pounding against the glass and eventually a small crack snaked along the face of the coffin.

  He needed air but he needed to get her out more. Once more he struck the glass with the flashlight and this time the torch itself broke, light going off, leaving them in the near darkness of the lake.