Snowball's Chance Read online

  Everything moved in slow motion as though she were underwater, yet images bombarded her. The two dead men at her feet. The flickering lantern on the center island, casting dancing demonic shadows on Treadwell’s face as he kept coming, his expression feral, not slowed in the least by the shot. The knife, huge, slick, and already stained with blood—

  Pop.

  He staggered back with a howl of pain, clutching his ear with his free hand. Blood trickled between his fingers, and his eyes went black with rage. But he kept coming.

  “I’m gonna peel your skin off your body real slow, bitch. Run if you can.”

  Damn it. She hadn’t hit him where it would stop him. God, it barely slowed him down, and he kept coming like a psychotic Frankenstein. She didn’t waste another shot; she was in motion. Backing away, she felt a total sense of unreality as she fired again. This time she got him in the leg. Not bad. Except that she’d been aiming for his groin. He yelped in outrage, but other than putting a pause in his step, the wound didn’t stop him.

  Kendall twisted around, running flat-out toward the front door. She noticed a man’s body only seconds before she stumbled over him in the entry hall. She jumped at the last fraction of a second, then almost tripped over an askew area rug. Blood made the floor slick, but she skated until she got her balance.

  She screamed as Treadwell’s fingers tangled in her hair, yanking her toward him. She kicked backward, sending him into the slippery pool of blood. Losing his footing, he almost took her with him, but Kendall risked a few bald spots by jerking her hair out of his grip. He went careening into the opposite wall with an inhuman scream of rage.

  She darted out of the front door without looking back. The frigid air stole her breath. The sky had lightened to pewter. The landscape before her looked like a Currier and Ives rendered in black and white. The enormous snowplow loomed in the front yard. Were the keys in it? Did she have time to look? How fast did the damn thing go? Fast enough to outrun Treadwell? She couldn’t chance taking the time to find out.

  Sticking her gun into her pocket for now, she looked around frantically. Where to hide? Where the hell to hide? The son of a bitch was like the Energizer bunny. He wouldn’t stop. Not while he still had a breath in his body.

  Chest heaving, she gulped icy, painful air, hard and fast. The guest cottages were to the left. There were empty cottages and trees behind which she could hide. She hauled ass across the wide porch, knowing he was right behind her.

  A flash of silver arced down to her left. She tried to dodge. But his knife ripped through her left sleeve. No pain. Just an ice cold jolt as the blade sliced through fabric and down to skin. But it would hurt later. God, would it hurt later when adrenaline and fear weren’t anesthetizing her.

  Run. Run. Run.

  He tackled her from behind, taking her down. Her head slammed on the wood floor of the porch, hitting hard, but she tucked and rolled as she’d been taught, managing to stagger back to her feet before he could grab hold of her again. She turned to race down the five steps leading away from the house—

  He grabbed her arm, swinging her into a support column with teeth-jarring impact. Several of the little fir trees she’d decorated yesterday toppled over. Lights, garland, and faux candied fruit bounced down the steps. He pulled her up by her collar, then clamped her throat in a one-handed vise. “Stupid. Stupid bitch.” His voice, as always, was chillingly calm. Which made it more frightening and ominous than if he’d been yelling at the top of his lungs. “You ruined it. You ruined it all.” He smashed the hilt of the knife into her cheekbone. She screamed with the blinding, white-hot pain. Brilliant dots danced in her vision as she struggled to stay conscious. It was a losing battle. There was a fuzzy buzz in her ears, then she slipped into silence.

  Minutes, hours, days later, Kendall came to in a rush of cold and bone deep terror. Oh, God. Oh, God. Treadwell had her slung over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

  Déjà vu.

  They weren’t in the front yard. Her hair hung over her face, and she surreptitiously parted the strands. She couldn’t see the house. Or the snowplow. Or Joe.

  Joe.

  Her arm was on fire. The pain intense. Nausea choked her. She heard nothing over the blood pounding in her ears, although the trees must be rustling in the wind, and his boots surely must be making a rhythmic sound as he trudged through the virgin snow.

  The wind whipped her hair silently about her head as she hung there like a bat, upside down, almost blinded by the dancing, swirling red strands and the blood rushing to her brain. She forced herself to remain limp. But it wasn’t easy. Every fight and flight instinct screamed at her to do something. She wanted to ask him about Joe but didn’t dare. She focused on that for a second, reasoning that if Treadwell had killed Joe, he’d have told her as much. She’d learned that about him during her captivity. Treadwell liked to regale her with the gory details of past trophies.

  She knew she just had to hang on long enough for Joe to realize that Treadwell had her. Just long enough for him to find her. Please God make it soon. Oh, God. Please … Her arm wasn’t totally useless. She might not be able to move it, but hot red blood dripped freely from her fingertips onto the pure white snow. She was leaving a trail of blood in Treadwell’s footprints. She could only pray that he didn’t look back.

  She swallowed convulsively, a blend of bile and terror. She didn’t want him to realize she was conscious. She could … would … as soon as … Unfortunately she ruined the element of surprise by puking down his back.

  “Jesus! You fucking bitch!” Treadwell growled, flinging her off his shoulder so she landed face first in the snow.

  He hauled her to her feet, but somehow she managed to break away. Run. Run. Run. She felt as if she was looking through the bottom of a thick glass. Tree branches slapped at her, though she’d stopped feeling pain long ago. Clutching her arm, she ran. Her life depended on it.

  He grabbed her around the neck from behind. She bucked and jerked, leaning her weight to counter his, hoping to slow him down. Keeping her completely off balance, Treadwell dragged her through frozen quicksand toward the tree line. Every time she tried to pull away he found another place to cut her. Her bright yellow coat was trailing ribbons of fabric, many of them now tinged red. She kicked and bit, screaming hoarsely as he took her deeper and deeper into the isolated landscape farther and farther from the house.

  She saw the snowmobile up ahead between the dark skeletons of the trees, black against the brilliance of the snow.

  No! Nonononono!

  “This has been fun, Kendall.” He spun around, grabbing her by the throat, squeezing hard enough for brilliant stars to explode before her eyes. “But you’re boring me now. Time to say b’bye.” Her weight was balanced against his chest and he used his knee as a wedge between her legs, freeing his hand to grab her hair at the scalp as he brought the knife to her throat.

  Paralyzed, Kendall stared at the knife inches from her face. “Not again. Damn you, not again.” Despite the pain in her scalp where he’d fisted her long hair, she wrenched her arm up, the small gun clutched in her bloody hand. She had no idea how many bullets were left. Or God, if any bullets were left.

  She pointed the barrel over her left shoulder and pulled the trigger.

  9

  Joe pushed through the snow following the blood trail deeper across the south paddock. Kendall-KendallKendall. An insistent mantra in his brain. Fear was a new experience for him. But it was real and physical. He’d heard her cries on the way back from the disabled chopper. Heard them, and known immediately that Treadwell had her. And if Treadwell had her, the men he’d assigned to protect her were dead. Ah, Jesus.

  Every breath was an effort in the icy air. His heart pounded with helpless frustration at his slow progress in the fresh, calf-deep snow.

  Uncharacteristically bloodthirsty images kept flipping through his mind as he ran, weapon drawn in his gloveless hand. He’d learned some i
nteresting techniques with a knife himself over the years. So far those lessons had been purely academic. He relished the idea of demonstrating his skill on Treadwell. Let the son of a bitch feel the terror of finding himself on the other end of a knife wielded by a madman. A madman who’d been trained in the art of knife fighting and wasn’t afraid to use those skills to fight dirty.

  The wind whipped Joe’s hair about his face and batwinged his coat about his body as he ran. Kendall’s cries, echoing in the isolation of the remote area, pierced him to the heart. She was alive. At least he had that to hold on to. He doubled his effort to reach her as fast as humanly possible as powder skipped and danced across the surface of the drifting snow, trying to obliterate Treadwell’s footsteps.

  He felt the beat of chopper blades overhead before he heard them. Three coming in fast, spotlights strafing the snow-covered landscape. The cavalry after all. Snow whipped up, blinding him. Damn it to hell!—he pointed in the direction of the tree line. Not that they would be able to land here. The terrain was hilly, and there were just too many damn trees. The three beams of light rose; the choppers moved off, taking their lights with them.

  Kendall cried out again.

  “I’m coming, sweetheart, hold on. I’m coming.” Correcting slightly to the west, he battled across the snow drifts, chest heaving.

  He was close. Two hundred yards and closing.

  Go. Go. Go.

  They were twined as closely as lovers, two indistinguishable silhouettes against the stark whiteness of the snow.

  Faster. Faster.

  A gunshot cracked through the predawn quiet. Joe’s heart jerked in response. Kendall …

  A hundred and fifty … forty … thirty … twenty … He saw the fiery blaze of her hair, the brilliant yellow of her coat, as she and Treadwell fell to the ground in a tangle of arms and legs and started rolling about. Joe saw the glint of a knife.

  Run, faster, damn it, run. Ninety feet … eighty … He took aim. Treadwell and Kendall rolled just as he was about to squeeze off the shot. Shit. She was blocking. They rolled again; this time Treadwell was on top. Joe fired. The other man jerked with the impact. He tilted.

  Sixty feet … forty …

  Kendall took the window of opportunity and shoved and pushed Treadwell off her. God Almighty! Instead of running, she surprised the hell out of Joe by jumping on top of Treadwell with a banshee scream of rage. Straddling the man’s waist, she started beating the hell out of his head and shoulders with her fists.

  Twenty feet … ten … Kendall— Joe grabbed her arm, flinging her aside just as Treadwell’s knife arced toward her chest. He grabbed the killer’s wrist, placed his weight on the knee he applied to the man’s chest, then dug the muzzle of the H&K hard to the underside of the guy’s chin. “Play with me, dick,” Joe said, his voice low and feral as he applied pressure to a tendon in Treadwell’s knife hand. The grip should have caused the person’s fingers to release whatever he was holding. But Treadwell’s fingers, slick with blood, remained fisted around the hilt of the cheap ten-inch kitchen knife. Joe dug his knee into the man’s chest and exerted more pressure on his wrist.

  “Talk to me, Kendall,” he yelled, keeping his eyes fixed on the killer. “Talk to me, sweetheart!”

  “I-I’m okay,” she replied, out of his line of sight.

  “I won’t go back there,” Dwight Treadwell told Joe vehemently, eyes wild. His brown coat was splotched with blood. It sure as hell better not contain one drop belonging to Kendall. “You can’t make me.” He attempted to jerk his hand free. Not going to happen. “I won’t go back.”

  Joe kept up the pressure of his thumb on the man’s wrist, but the knife remained firmly in Treadwell’s bloody but bloodless hand. In one lithe move Joe surged to his feet, dragging Treadwell up with him. The fingers he had around the knife hand remained there like a vise, his weapon stayed put under the weak jaw.

  “Oh, you don’t have to go back if you don’t want to,” Joe assured him with silky menace. “In fact I insist that you d—”

  “Oh, God! Joe, watch out!”

  He felt the sharp jab of pain in his side a second before Kendall’s warning. Damn it to hell! Treadwell surprised the hell out of him by producing a second knife—smaller and considerably more effective—and stabbing him right through the hide of his coat. Ah, crap. The other man was also left-handed.

  Twisting to deflect the depth of the strike, Joe lifted the H&K. Pop. Pop.

  Pop.

  Treadwell’s eyes widened in surprise as he crumpled to his knees, then slowly toppled to his side. His sightless eyes stared at the dawn-flooded sky as bright arterial blood drenched the snow at Joe’s feet a satisfying crimson.

  Joe plucked both knives from Treadwell’s limp fingers. He’d only fired two shots.

  Kneeling, he felt for a pulse beneath the other man’s jaw. Dead. Perfect. He turned his head to see Kendall, eyes narrowed, still standing in the classic firing stance.

  She looked like an avenging angel with her red hair blowing in the breeze, the golden glow of a new day backlighting her. “Is he dead?”

  “As the proverbial doornail.” Joe assured her as he rose. He kept his gaze on her face as he tossed aside both knives and walked toward her.

  “I’m not sure exactly what that is,” Kendall said with only a small tremor in her voice. “But if it’s very dead I’m all for it.”

  “Very,” Joe assured her, touching the blood on her face. Her coat was slashed. He wanted to strip her and check every inch of her skin. “Did he cut you?”

  “No.”

  “Liar. How bad?”

  “Bet I won’t need one stitch,” she assured him, clutching the front of his coat in both hands as she stood in the circle of his arms. Her casual tone was hard won, the terror was still clear in her expressive eyes.

  An unfamiliar aching tenderness gathered inside him. He had to clear the thickness from his throat before he could speak. “You won’t mind if I play doctor later, and check that out for myself.”

  “No playing. If you want to be my doctor you have to take the job seriously.” Kendall’s lips curved. “I insist on a complete and thorough physical.”

  “I concur. Top to bottom and everything in between. Let’s get the hell out of Dodge before then. Come on.” He wrapped his arm around her, and they started walking across the paddock. In the distance he saw the posse arriving. Dozens of local cops, Feebs, and federal marshals racing across the tinged snow toward them. There’d be questions and more questions—

  He veered off and headed in the opposite direction. “How do you like the great outdoors so far?” he asked conversationally.

  She pulled a comical face. “Not very.”

  “Yeah, I can see how the situation would require some rehabilitation.” Joe sighed. “The kids would like it out here, though.”

  She shot him an amused glance as they walked. “Whose?”

  “Ours.” He rubbed her arm. He was going to have to buy her a new coat. That would take time. “Four, do you think?” he asked.

  Her steps, in those sexy blue knee-high boots, faltered, but she laughed. “Don’t you think we should go on a couple of dates before we start naming our children?”

  They came to the snowmobile Treadwell had left under the trees. “Hop aboard,” Joe said, helping her maneuver onto the machine. “Aren’t we a couple of stages beyond dating?” he asked politely, starting the engine. The Christophs had a nice, secluded little summer place just over the ridge—

  “No,” Kendall told him, wrapping her arms about his waist and resting her chin on his back. “We are not several stages past dating. I want movies, and dinners, and flowers. You can start by calling me.”

  The snowmobile picked up speed. Anticipation made Joe’s heart pick up speed, too. Four miles to a bed. “I don’t have your phone number,” he shouted as the wind carried them forward.

  “I programmed it into your cell phone last night.” K
endall laughed, her breath warm against his cheek.

  They burst through the trees. Ahead was a pristine expanse of white, pure and fresh and untouched. It held only a few small shadows and was tinged with the promise of sunshine.

  Kendall tightened her arms about his waist as he shut off the engine. He turned to take her in his arms. “This looks good, doesn’t it?” she said softly.

  “Yeah,” Joe cupped her face between his hands. “This looks incredibly good.”

  And it was.

  Snowball's Chance Personal Guide

  (Includes Spoiler’s)

  Main Characters: Joe Zorn and Kendall Metcalf

  Setting: Helena, Montana

  Time of Year: Winter

  Serial Killer: Dwight Gus Treadwell

  Dossier Joe Zorn

  Age: Early 30′s

  Height: A good 5 inches taller than Kendall Metcalf

  Hair: Thick, Dark, Silky

  Eyes: Steady, Long dark lashes, Cool blue eyes, Steely dangerous.

  Body: Pale scar beside his lower lip almost buried in the crease of his smile, Potent smile, Sexy mouth, Lean cheeks, Could use a shave , Craggy, unseasonably tanned face, Massive shoulders, Arms like steel bands, Broad tanned chest, Long legs, Well-endowed in the “male” department, Rugged, Impressive physique bands of taut muscles, A bear of a man, Marlboro man type, Good looking, Sexy looking, Woodsy cologne.

  Dress: Thick off-white turtleneck and jeans.

  Voice: Deep, Low, Husky, Soothing

  Marital Status: Divorced from Denise Cameron

  Children: None

  Employment: Bodyguard

  Education: University of Montana

  Skills: Is a pilot, Trained in the art of knife fighting.

  Personality & Attitude: Intimidating, Over achiever, Annoyingly bossy, Sex appeal in spades, Has a nomadic lifestyle, A man of action and few words.

  Likes & Dislikes: Hates to lose at anything, Loves a mellow brandy on a cold winters night.