Though my body was numb and cold, somehow my left ankle still seared with pain. I swung my other leg down, planted my foot against one of the roots, and stretched for a large branch hanging above me.
But as I did, the ice cracked beneath my weight.
Lunging for a closer branch, I caught hold of it.
It sagged and dropped clumps of snow on my head and all around me in the water, but it did not break.
Thank God, it did not break.
One hand at a time I pulled my way toward shore.
You let Ellory go.
You let him die.
Finally, the river was shallow enough to stand, but I was too fatigued to do it; I crawled ashore, the wind-whipped snow lashing my face, the arctic cold immediately making its way through my drenched clothes.
Backup, they’re coming.
No, not without a GPS lock they’re not.
My frozen fingers felt useless, but I fumbled through my pocket in search of my phone, only to remember that I’d given it to Sean before I took off on his snowmobile.
Thoughts blurry.
Lost in a fog.
I tried to stand but couldn’t even push myself to my knees. No shivering meant my pulmonary system was bypassing my limbs to keep my core warm enough to survive.
But it was failing.
I collapsed, able only to draw in shallow, quick breaths.
Then I felt my stomach clench, and I vomited a mouthful of water.
As best I could, I dried my face with my gloved hands to forestall frostbite. My thoughts bumped into each other, piled, buried themselves beneath the moment. I was both aware of where I was, and not aware, all the world unraveling like a thin, warped dream.
You let him go.
White merged with black, then somehow blurred with the pain riding up my leg.
Alexei got away. You let him get away.
And Ellory is dead.
Grief struck me, but so did the cold, and it seemed to be a living thing with a will and a goal-to swiftly and resolutely take my life.
I fought off the dawning realization, but it was stark and undeniable: unless I could get dried off, warmed up, I had only minutes to live.
Clouds and snow and water and death.
The driving snow was letting up, at least for the moment, and I scanned the area, didn’t see Alexei anywhere. My breathing became rapid, shallow, quick, quick, quick, and then the world turned into a sea of white.
One last time I tried to stand, but couldn’t. Dropping to the snow, I was vaguely aware of the river snaking along beside me, a stretch of white marred with a gash of black where the water refused to freeze. The water that’d taken Ellory beneath the ice.
He’s dead.
And you let it happen.
I looked toward the bridge and saw that the semi had pulled to a stop.
The world became dim in a sweep of gray, then the moment enveloped me and became threaded with images of winter trails winding through a forest-the snow cruelly dotted with the blood of a mother and her four-year-old daughter.
Images.
A dream.
Of dark water rushing through the trees and flooding the trail, carrying the body of Bryan Ellory, dead and bloated, toward me. I’m up to my chest in the waves, and as I try to move away, he bumps into me, his arms wrap around me, and his flaccid lips press against my cheek in a cold, cruel kiss.
And then, all is black.
33
Alexei would have preferred letting the truck driver live, but when the man pulled a compact 9mm Beretta while he was taking possession of the semi, Alexei was forced to disarm him and, as he resisted physically, to deliver an immobilizing jab to the man’s throat, crushing his windpipe.
One strike was all it took.
The man fell to the ground, gasped, and clutched at his throat. Alexei turned away, heard soft garbling behind him, then thankfully, before long, it was over. Just a brief, weak struggle against the inevitable. A quick and quiet transition.
Returning to the body, Alexei saw that the man wore a wedding ring, and he hoped that there would only be a wife mourning his passing-that no children would now be growing up without a father.
In order to slow down the discovery of the missing truck, Alexei carried the driver’s body to the edge of the bridge near the shore. There was no open water here, but he tipped the body over the guardrail, sending it smacking onto a snowbank beside the river far below. Within minutes the falling snow would cover the corpse and, looking like just another mound of snow on the riverbank, it would be weeks, maybe months, before anyone would find him.
He returned to the still-idling semi.
Repositioning the mirrors, he saw a photo on the dashboard-the driver standing beside a slightly obese woman and a dark-haired boy of about seven or eight. All were smiling. A family.
He flipped the picture down so that he wouldn’t have to look at it, then glanced toward the river where he’d thrown the deputy in.
Through the blizzard he could just barely make out a body on shore. The clothes told him it was the federal agent.
But there was only one body, which meant that the agent-the one Ellory had, under slight coercion, informed him was named Bowers-had failed to save the deputy.
Alexei saw that Bowers lay motionless. If he wasn’t dead already, in this weather it wouldn’t be long at all before death took him.
Just a brief, weak struggle against the inevitable.
A quick and quiet transition.
Alexei gripped the steering wheel.
Paused.
It was impressive that this agent had tried to save Ellory, had actually jumped into the water to go after him. Not many people would do that, especially with an ice floe just downstream.
And now he was going to die for his courage, if he hadn’t already.
Alexei’s eyes found the photo he’d tipped upside down. He had a job to do, and there would always be casualties and consequences in this line of work, yes, of course, but he’d killed two people in the last five minutes, and that was more than enough.
A federal agent brave enough to rush into an icy river to save a drowning man deserved to live.
Alexei pulled out his cell.
For a moment he watched the snow pelt the windshield and waited to see if Bowers was moving.
He was not.
Alexei made his decision, tapped in 911, and told the dispatcher the location of the agent.
He found a tarp in the back of the cab, took it to the river, and wrapped it snugly around Bowers’s body to at least afford him some protection from the wind. Then he carried him closer to the bridge, and jammed a tall stick into the snow beside him so EMS would be able to find the agent if the snow covered him before they arrived.
It might not be enough, but it was something.
Then he returned to the vehicle, released the air brakes, and took to the road to put some distance between himself and the river.
It was time to find out who was really leading Eco-Tech, and what exactly they were up to.
Cell phone in hand, he punched in Valkyrie’s number and access code.
34
Alexei waited twelve rings, but Valkyrie did not answer.
He lowered the phone.
Nothing about this felt right on any level.
Maybe it’d all been a setup from the start, from that very first conversation with his mysterious employer last spring. But why? Just to make him look guilty for the death of a woman and her child? Could that be all? There had to be more.
He’d never had any trouble with Valkyrie before.
Yesterday, when Alexei had first heard about the Pickron murders, he’d tried to let the news of their deaths slide off him, tried not to let it distract him, but it’d crawled around in the back of his mind ever since. Bothering him.
You do not kill children.
And you do not kill women.