Chapter Twenty-Two. Frank groaned. What the hell?

Frank groaned. What the hell? His head ached something fierce. He wanted to touch the spot that hurt worst, but he couldn’t move his hands. Or his feet.

Then he remembered, and came fully awake. Hunter. He forced his eyes open, thin slits against the throbbing pain. He was lying on his side on a concrete floor. A pair of boots walked away from him.

Frank tilted his head to see the rest of her. Tall. Dark hair. She had her back to him and was searching the pack that had been strapped to his snowmobile.

He glanced around. A small electric heater, placed out of his reach, blew warm air in his direction but with little effect. A water bottle lay nearby. Beyond that a generator and two snowmobiles--one of them his rental.

His eyes drifted back to Hunter.

She was watching him. Her face was stone. Expressionless. Blood dripped from a gash on her cheek. The front of her white snowsuit was spattered with it. She studied him in silence, her eyes boring into his, until Frank withered under her unrelenting glare and looked away.

"That was really dumb, Frank. You said you know who I am," Kat chided in an almost friendly voice.

"Aw, Hunter, I had to try." Frank tested the bindings at his hands and feet. Shit.

"What am I going to do with you, Frank?" She stepped closer, looming over him, until he had to strain his neck painfully to see her face.

"Probably nothing I’m going to like," he managed.

"You may be surprised."

The chit chatty tone she was using was beginning to rattle Frank. His breathing picked up, and he started chewing on the inside of his cheek.

She leaned down until her face was only a foot from his. "Still think you can collect on the million, Frank?" he hissed. Her eyes were predatory. She bared her teeth in a savage smile.

He didn’t like that look at all.

Frank turned his head away from her. "Told you, I was just looking for the woman. She was the one who was after you. Not me. I don’t want to get in your business." He didn’t care about the money anymore, so he hoped it sounded like the truth.

She seemed to consider his answer. She paced around him for a long moment before speaking again.

"Frank, what do you think of Garner? Do you like working for him?" Her voice was gentle now, soothing.

Frank’s bushy eyebrows knitted together, and it took a moment for the question to register. Where is this going? "Well, he’s not a bad boss," he volunteered.

"What does he pay you? Enough for you to do what you want to do?"

Frank looked up at her. The wild expression was gone. She was calmly awaiting his answer. "The pay is okay. A grand a week, bonuses sometimes."

"Frank, this is your lucky day. I’m going to offer you a one-time-only incredible deal." She said it like she was offering him some grand prize on a game show.

The statement made him less afraid, and Frank was intrigued despite himself. Is she serious? He struggled to sit up but couldn’t manage with his hands and feet tied.

She came up behind him, took hold under his armpits, and pulled him up to a seated position. She did it like it was no strain at all. Frank was impressed.

"You’re going to be my patient and cooperative guest for a little while," Kat said, looking down at him. "And in return for your best behavior, I’m going to give you enough cash to take a nice, long vacation someplace warm when you leave here. How does that sound?" She cocked her head. The predatory smile was back, warning him to accept.

He began to see why she had the reputation she did. "Whatever you say, Hunter."

She nodded. "Good boy. Think you can forget where you are and how you got here?"

Maybe she really is serious. Might she actually let me go? He looked her right in the eyes. "That’s honestly no problem. The woods aren’t my thing, Hunter. I seriously doubt I could find this again even if I wanted to." He paused a beat. "And I really don’t want to find it again."

"That’s the right answer, Frank. Don’t make me regret my generous impulse."

Frank hoped she was being square with him and not keeping him alive for some purpose down the road. He didn’t have much choice in the matter, really, unless some opportunity presented itself. "Good as gold, don’t worry. And if you keep up your end, once I leave, I was never here." Screw Garner.

"I knew you were smart." Kat looked away from him for the first time to glance around the room. She believed Frank, but not enough to let her guard down. She went to the steel door that separated the garage from the connecting tunnel and keyed a set of numbers into the security panel beside it. She opened the door and looked back at Frank. "Don’t move a muscle, now. I’ll be back before you know it." Then she was gone.

He took her at her word and stayed where he was.

Kat grabbed a stuff sack from the bottom of one of the army barrels in the tunnel. It contained a down sleeping bag and pillow. In her haste, she didn’t notice that a pair of boots and a set of coveralls were missing from among the stores of gear in the hall.

She returned to the generator room and spread the sleeping bag in an empty corner, Frank’s water bottle beside it. She pointed her portable heater in that direction, but kept it well out of reach. It wasn’t doing much to heat the large room, but it would take the edge off and Frank would be comfortable in his snowsuit.

Kat took a long length of chain from her snowmobile--the solid, heavy one she used to pull the sled--and took it to the corner. She threaded it through a metal ring embedded in the concrete wall. Then she found a shorter, lighter chain in her toolbox, along with two sturdy padlocks, and laid them out next to the bag.

Frank watched her every move.

Now she was ready for him. She took two firm handholds at the back of the collar of his nylon snowsuit and pulled him a few feet along the concrete floor until he was next to the sleeping bag. She put the small chain around his hands and feet over the duct tape and secured it to the larger chain with both padlocks. He could move around only a few feet.

"I know that’s not very comfortable, Frank. But it’ll have to do for right now," she said.

Kat took her toolbox and the tool kits from both snowmobiles into the tunnel. After a final glance around for anything else he might be able to use, she nodded once to Frank. "Be good now, I’ll see you in a little while." She left through the steel door, closing it behind her.

Kat stood for a few moments in the tunnel with her back pressed up against the door. She wanted to check the weather forecast; she should do that next. Then fix herself up a little bit before she went to talk to Jake. That’ll give me a little time to decide what I’m going to tell her.

Despite his inexperience on snowmobiles, Otter had made good time getting to the crash site on the snowmobile he’d rented. He followed the trail out of Tawa that Frank had made.

He sat on the parked Polaris and swept his flashlight across the landscape. Two snowmobile tracks led away from the wrecked sedan. They came together not far away and led off into the woods. Frank had followed Hunter and gotten caught. That’s why he hadn’t come back. Otter was sure of it. He just had to follow Frank’s trail.

Satisfied with his assessment, Otter pulled a raspberry turnover and thermos of coffee from the storage compartment of his snowmobile. He had already wasted a lot of time renting the machine and finding warm enough clothing. But Otter was rusty and Hunter would be expecting trouble. Exhaustion could get him killed.

After a short break, he put away the thermos and started up the snowmobile. These damn things make too much noise. Probably how Frank got caught. But if he was to go any distance at all, Otter didn’t want to be doing it on foot.

As he set off on the machine, his mind drifted back to the last time he’d seen Hunter.

He ran toward the helicopter. It was more than a hundred feet away and already twenty feet in the air. Hunter was at the controls. He waved his arms for her to pick him up. He couldn’t make out her features, but he was sure she had seen him just before she turned the chopper and sped away.

Otter had always preferred to hit his targets from a distance. He was an expert marksman, at least in his heyday. But this one he wanted to do up close. He wanted to make absolutely certain Hunter knew just who it was who killed her.

Fifteen minutes after leaving the exit hatch, Jake found her forward progress slowed to a near crawl. Her knee was killing her. The adrenaline surge had worn off, and walking in the heavy, oversized boots was torturous.

She paused on the trail to listen, but the night was absolutely quiet. Surely, she thought, she must be getting very near to the rock wall she’d seen on the monitor, so the fact that she still couldn’t hear any trace of Kat was very disconcerting. She thought about calling out Kat’s name but was afraid the intruder might still be nearby.

Jake didn’t know she was lost yet. She worried only that Kat had been knocked unconscious in the snow--or worse. She took a deep breath and pushed ahead, wincing with every agonizing step. She had started to sweat under her coveralls.

There in the dark night, in the depth of the forest, she didn’t immediately notice it had begun to snow.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-30