Snowbound

SEVENTY-ONE

Kalyn held out her hands as she backed away from Fidel, realized she hadn’t heard anything from the Innises since the shotgun blasts a few minutes ago, wondered if they’d managed to get themselves killed.

Fidel’s knife didn’t look particularly menacing—a black plastic handle with finger grips supporting a four-inch blade, each side slightly serrated, the end curving to a nasty point. He held it in his right hand, moving nimbly on his feet, a hard, focused determination pulsing in his black eyes.

“This makes you proud? To fight a woman this way? You know I’m outmatched.” She was backpedaling toward the opening of the south-wing corridor, Fidel’s face becoming less distinct, more shadowy than firelit.

“This has not a thing to do with my pride,” he said. “This is only about causing you pain.” He lunged, swiped—a fluid, lightning motion, and before she could react, Kalyn’s right arm felt suddenly cold, blood running under the sleeve of her fleece jacket, dripping off the ends of her fingers, but no pain yet, only that awful metallic cold. Next came a ripping sound: fleece splitting. Another flash of ice, this time spreading down through her abdomen.

“Javier warned me not to touch you, but I don’t think he’ll mind a little innocent necking.”

She felt light-headed. The instructor in a grappling seminar at the Academy had said something that now banged around inside her head like a prophecy fulfilled. The most dangerous adversary you’ll ever face is an opponent who’s skilled with a knife. Avoid these confrontations at all costs.

She backed into the corridor, her legs weakening, blood streaming down her thighs, her shinbones, into her socks. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.

They will take you slowly apart if you don’t know what you’re doing.

She could barely see Fidel now—just a silhouette against the low light of the lobby.

He advanced on her again and she felt the draft from knife wipes passing within inches of her face.

He sliced her right hand. Carved a two-inch line across her cheek, just missing her nose.

They were midway down the corridor now, and every passing second, it hurt more to breathe, the cold transforming into a glow in her chest.

She tripped over Suzanne’s body, fell, scrambled back onto her feet. Fidel slipped on the blood but caught himself. He was close again, within three feet, and cornering her into the alcove. In the bright moonlight that came through the broken window, she saw her fleece pants slicked with blood.

Fidel said, “You are not bleeding too much I hope. This is foreplay. Don’t come yet. Javier would never forgive me.”

He opened the top of her left leg, but she didn’t respond to the pain, turning instead, as if to break for the stairwell, heard the floor creak as he lunged after her, Kalyn spinning to face him, catching Fidel in the exact mistake she’d prayed for—a wide, careless knife swipe—which she parried, now palming his elbow, her other hand grasping his wrist. A quick jerk broke the man’s forearm, just a soft snap followed by a howl of pain that was squelched when she punched him in the throat, a solid, direct hit, the hardest blow she’d ever landed, powered by hips and fear and rage.

With all her strength, she grabbed Fidel’s arm and shoulder and hurled him toward the east-facing window.

The springs squeaked.

Fidel screamed.

In the moonlight, she saw him pinned between the rusty jaws of the grizzly trap, his wrists caught, the teeth burrowed into his stomach, his back, and still struggling to close, the hinges creaking.

Through clenched teeth, he screamed Javier’s name.

Kalyn moved toward him, saw the pool of blood expanding within the circular boundary of the snare.

She reached down for his knife.

“Por favor,” he begged. “I can’t feel my legs.”

Kalyn smiled through her own pain. He spit at her.

“I want you to make this easy on me,” she said. “And on you. Tilt your head back. Show me your throat.”

He said something in Spanish that she didn’t understand.

“Look, I’ve got things to do. Wanna sit here? Bleed out slowly while the trap finishes its supper?”

“Dios,” he whispered. “Dios.” He couldn’t even cross himself.

Fidel stared at the ceiling and thought of a woman named Maria.

. . .

Devlin shouldered the shotgun, trying to remember what Kalyn had told her several hours ago. Kicks like hell, so lean into it. Aim at the head or below the waist. She was standing in the threshold, one foot in the room, one foot in the corridor.

Devlin aimed at the man’s head, slipped her finger into the curve of the trigger.

She squeezed.

Nothing happened.

Oh God, I didn’t pump it.

The baby screamed.

Javier glanced over his shoulder, spotted Devlin standing in the doorway.

As Will stepped out into the corridor and leveled his twelve-gauge shotgun on Javier, something rolled across the floor, between his legs.

Will was absorbing a slide show of images: Devlin struggling to pump her shotgun; Javier diving away, shielding his head; Rachael’s quizzical face as she stared at the black device that had come to rest against the toe of her left boot.

Then Will’s world exploded in a flash of brilliant, deafening light.

SEVENTY-TWO

Kalyn heard the explosion as she swiped the magazine for the Browning back from Fidel. She limped through the darkness of the first-floor corridor, desperate for some decent light to see how badly she’d been cut. It hurt terribly, particularly through her midsection, though she didn’t seem to be bleeding as profusely as before.

She stopped thirty feet from where the corridor opened into the lobby. The white wolf moved past the freestanding hearth, trotting in her direction, toward the south-wing corridor. At first, she thought it hadn’t seen her, that perhaps it was heading for the staircase, but its head was already dipped, hackles rising, and she could hear the deep, guttural rumbling in its throat—a low, malicious growl. The Browning was in the lobby, she’d left Fidel’s knife in the alcove, and there was no time to reach the only unlocked door in the vicinity—the room where she’d left her sister, unconscious.

There are weapons on the fourth floor—a shotgun and a machine pistol.

The wolf passed into the darkness of the corridor, and she turned and ran as hard as she could up the passage, every step sending a shock of agony through her abdomen.

She reached the alcove, heard the wolf panting behind her, closing the distance between them with every stride. She was telling herself she’d outrun him in the stairwell, thought for some reason he couldn’t move as quickly up the steps.

She turned into the stairwell.

The gray wolf was coming down the last flight of stairs, and it snarled when it saw her, its teeth wet in the moonlight, black with blood.

The white one was fast approaching.

She saw the window, the glass broken out, rushed over, climbed up onto the sill, glanced back, the wolves right there, yellow and pink eyes raging.