“He’d better,” Jasper mumbled as he strained to see the road through the rapid slap-slap-slap of his windshield wipers. The snow was coming down so thick, he couldn’t drive very fast. More than once he considered turning back. But because the day had ended badly, he persevered, figured he might as well get this over with. Disposing of the body was always the worst part of any kill. He couldn’t simply bury “Kat” like his victims in the Lower 48; the ground was frozen.
He could try to outwait the storm and come back in the next day or two. The problem there was that if another cold front hit right away and then another, he might not be able to reach the cabin until spring. And he couldn’t leave it that long. If someone else beat him out there, for whatever reason, and found the body in the shed, it would spook everyone in Hilltop. Amarok would open an investigation and the locals would feel twitchy and frightened and doubt anyone they didn’t know well.
That could screw with his ability to get to Evelyn now that he was finally ready.
He shouldn’t have nabbed Kat in the first place, since he hadn’t been ready to take a victim to his house. But she’d been right there, walking down Spenard Road, the red-light district of Anchorage, which wasn’t far from where he lived, such easy pickings he couldn’t resist. And he’d known the hunting cabins in the mountains were rarely used after September. That constituted an Opportunity.
Besides, he’d been confident he could get away with whatever he wanted. Nothing he’d done had caught up with him yet. He’d been killing for more than twenty years, had fooled his parents whenever he needed to, two wives—both ex-wives these days—and various bosses.
Basically, he’d fooled everybody in one way or another, even Evelyn and Amarok last winter.
But he was now operating in a very different theater, and he should’ve taken that into account. Alaska offered him a lot of freedom and space, without a lot of police presence—outside of Anchorage. He’d kidnapped Kat a week ago and chosen to keep her in a cabin that wasn’t far from Hilltop so he could get to her more easily before or after work. He had yet to deal with the full brunt of an Alaskan winter, however, and this year winter was starting early. He might’ve underestimated how difficult returning there might be.
He gave the truck more gas. He could make it. At least he’d already scoured the cabin. Once he arrived, all he had to do was put her body in the back of his four-wheel drive, under the tarp he’d picked up at the hardware store last night. After the weather cleared, he’d drive her an hour or more to the other side of Anchorage and dump her in some isolated wilderness area. With any luck, she wouldn’t be discovered until spring.
Even if she was discovered sooner, she’d be so far away from Hilltop there’d be nothing to alert Amarok or anyone else in the town where he worked that they should take notice.
His tires slipped. He turned into the slide to avoid going over the side of the mountain and managed to regain control, but he was mad at himself for having to make this drive to begin with. He should’ve taken Kat’s body when he left her there the day she died. It would’ve saved him this nightmare of a trip. But she’d been such a weakling, she’d died before he was ready, and he’d had to get to Hanover House for work right after.
The radio had fallen to static, so he turned it off. If he had one complaint about Alaska, it was the lack of radio reception. Everything else he considered a plus, especially for a man like him. The sparse population. The isolated areas. The long, dark months.
Evelyn …
He immediately cheered up when he thought of the woman he’d fantasized about for so many years. He’d set everything up perfectly, recovered beautifully from what could’ve been a disaster last winter with Bishop. No one was as brilliant as he was. He was a good driver, too. He’d get through this storm, and he’d get around the small mistake he’d made letting Tex see him tear up that picture.
By the time he reached the cabin, he felt much better. He was humming “Heathens” by Twenty-One Pilots as he navigated the final hairpin turn. But then he saw something that made the hair stand up on the back of his neck.
There was a light in the window.
3
Sierra was trembling. She hadn’t found another person. She’d found a body—one with missing fingers, contusions, broken bones and ligatures.
Falling to her knees, she vomited everything she’d recently eaten. She couldn’t stop retching, so it took a while to gather even the small amount of strength required to stand. Her legs felt like rubber. But once she got to her feet, she forced herself to peer closer. She was hoping there might be a chance of saving the woman. Unlikely as that was, considering the temperature outside and the condition of the body, she’d read about miracles when someone who was thought to be dead had survived.
No. There was no chance, she decided. This poor woman wasn’t only dead, she was frozen solid. That was why Sierra could smell no stench, no odor of decomposition. And that was, undoubtedly, why the combination provided by the rental company hadn’t worked. Whoever had killed this woman must’ve used the sheet of paper the rental company kept on the counter with the combination to take off the original lock, after which they put on another, one of their own. So late in the season, he or she probably hadn’t expected the cabin to be rented but had taken that small precaution, just in case. The person who’d done this must also be the one who’d stacked extra wood on the back porch, which was how they’d gotten by until now.
“Oh God,” Sierra murmured, and scrambled away, nearly tripping as she burst through the hole she’d chopped in the door. They shouldn’t have come to Alaska, not in October, she told herself as she hurried back to the cabin and locked the door behind her. They’d been over-eager, determined to squeeze in the trip, despite the early onset of winter. Now her brother and his friends were out in the wilderness in the worst storm she’d ever seen and she was alone in a cabin where a woman had recently been murdered, her corpse dumped in the shed, and Sierra couldn’t run for help, couldn’t call for help, either. She couldn’t even leave or she might die of exposure—not that she’d go anywhere without her brother.
“What am I going to do?” she whispered aloud as she listened for the Ford Expedition the men had taken. Leland, Peter and Ted would be back soon. They needed shelter, wouldn’t be able to stay out in this weather for long. When they arrived, she’d run out, get in the truck with them and insist they leave immediately. She didn’t want to be here another second; she’d go crazy if they didn’t come soon.
But one minute after another ticked away, and she didn’t hear anything except the eerie rattle of the windows and the pounding of what sounded like torrential rain on the roof.
Calm down. Keep it together, Sierra. You have to be patient. There’s nothing you can do except wait—and get warm.
She added a log to the stove and sat in front of it, staring at the glowing embers as she rocked back and forth, back and forth. She was trying to get over the shock, but it didn’t matter how much heat the stove threw off; she remained cold as ice. Even when she finally recovered enough to pack—for her and all the people she was with—she couldn’t seem to get warm. And every time she peered out the window, the storm looked worse.
She hoped the guys had at least made it to the truck. Were they sheltering inside it, waiting for the onslaught to let up before trying to drive out?
If they didn’t get going soon, they could end up trapped. She’d never seen so much wind and snow. What with the narrow dirt roads they had to travel to reach the backwoods, it could already be too late.
Maybe that was why they hadn’t returned. They couldn’t.