Chill Factor (46 page)

Did she actually cry
out
his name? Or did she only think she did? Either way, it echoed loudly
inside her head, her heart.

Moments later, when he was buried deep inside her
again, she
gazed up at him, her eyes telegraphing a million things she wanted to
say but had no words for.

He smiled tenderly. He understood. Tierney
understood everything.

When Lilly came to, she was back in the main room of the
cabin. A
fire was burning in the grate, so she wasn't cold. Welcome sunlight was
streaming in through one of the windows, where the drape had been
pushed aside. Her neck was sore, but it was no more painful than a
crick.

And she was handcuffed.

Tierney!

God, she'd been dreaming about him, about last night, about
making
love with him. A sob of humiliation and outrage escaped her, but she
wouldn't indulge those feelings now. She would save them for later.
Assuming she survived.

She looked wildly about the cabin and listened for sounds of
him
moving around in the other rooms but quickly determined that she was
alone. She was seated on the floor beneath the bar that divided the
kitchen from the living area. Her hands had been secured to a metal
support bracket on the underside of the counter. Her hands had gone to
sleep from lack of circulation, and it was probably that discomfort
that had brought her out of unconsciousness.

She came up onto her knees to give her arms some slack and
much
relief. Her inhalers had been placed on the seat of the bar stool
nearest her, within reach if she stretched out her fingers. A cup of
water was also there. How considerate. Tierney wanted her hy-drated and
breathing well when he killed her.

What choice did he have? She had sealed her doom when she
found
Millicent's body.

He was Blue.

His explanations for the handcuffs and all the rest had been,
indeed, as false as they'd sounded. Probably he'd been on the mountain
to dispose of Millicent's corpse when the storm had forced a
postponement. He'd stashed her body in the most convenient hiding
place—her toolshed. As he was making his way back to his car,
Lilly had
intercepted him on the road.

All his actions and evasions since then seemed indisputable
signs of
guilt. How could she have believed him innocent even for an instant,
much less for an entire night? The answer was simple: She had wanted to.

She had desired him. His self-sacrificing, life-risking
kindnesses
toward her yesterday had seemed incompatible with a man who would then
wish to destroy her.

What a clever modus operandi. He befriended his victims.
Romanced
them into a sentimental stupor. Made sweet love to them. But at some
point, the tender lovemaking turned violent.

She'd had only a glimpse of Millicent's face before turning
away in
horror, but the sight was branded on her memory. Millicent hadn't died
in the throes of passion. She had been choked until her tongue
protruded from her lips and her eyes bulged from their sockets. Her
killer had been cruel and merciless. She hadn't died quickly. It had
been slow and awful.

Thinking of it filled Lilly with terror, but also with a
determination not to be Tierney's next victim.

Where was he, and how long till he returned? Was he disposing
of
Millicent's remains before coming back to deal with her? Whatever he
did, he would have to do it swiftly. He was under a deadline. He'd said
himself that Dutch or someone would try today to reach them.

When, when, when?

She yanked hard on the cuffs, knowing even as she did that it
was
futile to try to break free from them. If Tierney couldn't do it, what
possible chance did she have? God, had she really kissed the skin he'd
rubbed raw on his wrists and the scratches her nails had left on the
back of his hand?

She couldn't think about that now. Nor about anything else
they'd
done in the dark warmth beneath the blankets. That was last night. This
was today. She wouldn't die of shame. She wouldn't die, period. She
would survive.

Reaching up, she fingered the screws securing the support
brackets
to the underside of the counter. If she could loosen them enough to
pull the brackets out of the wood, she could at least slip the cuffs
free. Her hands would still be cuffed together, but she could run.

She tested the screws. There was no give in any of them, but
she
attacked them anyway. She broke her nails and abraded the pads of her
fingers as she tried to twist the screws. After five minutes, she
admitted that it was hopeless. She hadn't loosened one of them. All
she'd accomplished was to make her breathing more difficult and her
fingers bleed.

Unless she could devise another means of escape—and
nothing came to
mind—she would have to rely on someone coming to her rescue.
What kind
of scenario would be played out?

Would Tierney kill her quickly and flee? Would he hold her
hostage
while negotiating the terms of his surrender? Whether he left her alive
or dead, would he try to avoid arrest and get gunned down in the
process?

Would she die while looking into his face, her eyes imploring
him to
spare her life, just as they had implored him last night to make her
feel alive again after a four-year grieving slumber?

Or would she watch him lying motionless in a bank of snow that
turned red as the life flowed out of him?

She wasn't sure which of those two images caused her to start
weeping.

But the tears ceased abruptly when her cell phone rang.

"Dammit!" Dutch cursed. "Got her voice mail. Why isn't she
answering
the phone?"

The trip up the mountain was taking longer than anticipated,
and
Dutch's patience was long since spent. He knew the basic route of the
road, but the surface was covered with several feet of snow, icy in
patches, making each yard of it hazardous. The short straightaways were
no safer than the hairpin curves. Neither he nor Wes had a lot of
experience with snowmobiles. In his opinion, they were unreliable and
unwieldy vehicles.

His ski goggles had dug deep impressions into the puffy skin
of his
face. It was so swollen that his nose blended into his cheeks without
any differentiation. Some of the cuts had developed pus. To relieve the
throbbing pain, he'd taken off the goggles, but the sun's glare on the
snow had made his eyeballs ache so bad he'd put them back on.

Here on the mountain's western face, the wind was much
stronger. It
whipped snow into icy dervishes they couldn't always avoid. The
temperature was impossibly cold, although the heated grips on the
snowmobiles kept their hands from freezing. They had to ride single
file, so they'd taken turns in the lead.

Wes, who was presently leading, had signaled him that he was
about
to stop. "I need to take a piss."

Dutch had been annoyed by the delay but had used the
opportunity to
check his cell phone. When he saw that it was registering service, he
hastily pulled off his glove and punched in Lilly's number.

Wes had finished peeing and was plowing his way over when he
heard
Dutch ask rhetorically why she wasn't answering her phone. "Try it
again," he said.

Dutch redialed, with the same unsatisfying result.

"Don't jump to conclusions, Dutch. Just because she's not
answering
her phone, doesn't mean… well, you know. It could mean a lot
of things."

Dutch nodded agreement, but his heart wasn't in it.

Ever the optimist, Wes said, "Maybe she's tried to call you."

Dutch shaded his phone with his hand so he could read the LED.
There
were no calls from Lilly's number but three from police headquarters,
coming in at one-minute intervals. His officers would be wondering
where he was. Reluctantly he dialed the number. It was answered
immediately, but background noise made the poor connection even worse.

"Chief?" his dispatcher said. "Can you hear me?"

Was he kidding? They could have heard him in China.

"… looking for you. The… BI helicopter
has set down… school football
field… quick or else… gonna… without
you."

Dutch clicked off. Later he could claim he'd lost the signal,
hadn't
understood the message for all the breakups, hadn't heard the part
about the chopper's arrival.

"Begley's got his helicopter" Wes said, having overheard the
dispatcher's excited voice.

Dutch nodded grimly as he tried Lilly's number one more time
and
cursed when he heard the start of her voice mail message again.

"I don't get it," he said irritably. "Isn't she anxious to be
rescued?"

"She doesn't know that Tierney is Blue," Wes reminded him.

"I know, but she's been—"

"Listen!" Wes raised his hand. "Did you hear that?"

"What?"

"Shh!"

Dutch lifted his cap away from his ear and listened hard. But
all he
could hear was the whistling of the wind and the occasional clump of
snow landing on the ground after being blown from an upper tree branch.
After thirty seconds, he said, "I don't hear anything."

"I don't either now. Thought I did."

"What did it sound like?"

"Like these."

"Snowmobiles? Can't be. Not Ritt's anyway. I had the keys to
all
four of them." On the key ring that William had given him were four
keys for four snowmobiles. At the garage, it had been a quick process
of elimination to see which two keys they needed for the snowmobiles
they'd taken out. He still had the key ring in a pocket of his snowsuit.

Wes shook his head. "Guess it was my imagination. These things
are
so damn loud, they could do funny things to your ears. Anyhow, you were
saying that Lilly's been…"

"She's been up there for two days. Stranded. Without power.
Why
wouldn't she have her cell phone in her hand, willing it to ring,
trying to call out?"

"You'd think," Wes admitted. "But maybe she's not getting cell
service up there. Maybe her battery is dead."

"Or maybe
she
is."

"Dutch—"

"Or maybe she's hurt." Or maybe she was snuggled up in bed
with
Tierney and resenting the intrusion of the ringing phone. They might
not find her injured at all but rosy with health and purring with
sexual satisfaction. He looked at Wes and knew that he was thinking the
same thing.

"If she could get through, she'd be trying to call you, Dutch.
I'm
sure of it."

Before he yielded to the temptation to push Wes over the cliff
for
patronizing him like he was a mental patient, Dutch pulled his ski
glove back on. "If you're gonna lead, step up the pace."

Wes started walking toward his snowmobile. "I can't go any
faster.
These switchbacks are brutal."

"You knew that when you volunteered to come along. And by the
way,
why did you?"

Wes stopped in his tracks, turned back. "What?"

Dutch pushed his goggles up to his forehead and gave Wes a
long,
appraising look.

"What?"

"Why are you doing this, Wes? Don't get me wrong. I want a
crack at
Tierney whether or not he's Blue. But what's your stake in this?"

Wes shook his head with misapprehension. "I don't follow."

"Yeah, you do. Don't play stupid. You did everything but lick
my
dick last night to talk me into going after Tierney myself. I want to
know why."

"I explained why. You deserve the glory for capturing him, not
the
FBI. I'd bask in the glow of your success. Nothing wrong with that, is
there?"

"No, there's nothing wrong with that. But I think you have
another
motive. And I think it has to do with Scott."

"Scott?"

"You should know, Wes, that the more innocent you act, the
more
suspicious I become. Are you manipulating me? As I said, I want to take
care of Tierney anyway. I'd just like to know before I do that I
haven't been played for a chump." He gave Wes a hard look. "Did Scott
have anything to do with the disappearances of those women?"

"Right. Yeah. Like he had the hots for Betsy Calhoun. Support
stockings have always been a huge turn-on for him."

"I'm not kidding."

"Then if you're not kidding, you're crazy. That shrink in
Atlanta
should have booked you for a few extra sessions."

"Something's up with your kid."

"He's slipping it to his English teacher! That would make him
a
little fidgety, don't you think?"

"Is that all?"

"Isn't that enough?"

"Did he do something to Millicent?"

"How can you think that? You've known him since he was born."

"I've known you longer." Dutch's eyes narrowed. "Tell me the
truth,
Wes. Is Scott our culprit?"

"I'm not even going to honor that with—"

"Are you protecting him?"

"No!"

"I know you, Wes."

"You don't know shit!"

"You're covering for somebody."

"I'm covering for
me!
"

Dutch staggered back a few steps and gaped at his oldest
friend with
disbelief. His mouth went dry.

Wes blew out a gust of air, stared toward the tree line at the
right
shoulder of the road, then brought his gaze back to Dutch. "I was
fucking her, all right?"

"I know you, Wes. I gathered that much."

"Yeah, well." Wes gave him a shorthand account of his brief
affair
with Millicent, and the consequences of it. "Scott wouldn't have
anything to do with her after that, so my plan to end their romance
worked like a charm. What I didn't plan on was Millicent up and
disappearing.

"I didn't have anything to do with it. Scott didn't have
anything to
do with it. But I gotta tell you, pal, that this investigation into her
disappearance has made me nervous, because assholes like Begley are
looking at her life under a microscope, searching for secrets.