Page 9 of A Bloom in Winter

“I already told you, it’s just an IT job.”

“Yeah, but doing what?” A whiff of cherry drifted over as the male crunched on one of the disks. “Sure, the pay’s good. That’s all I know, though.”

The K-turn was fun what with snow blowing all around, the onslaught alternating between a pixelated wall of flakes, a blank wash of no-see-shit, and a black void with a potential drop-off at the shoulder.

“When we get there”—Apex straightened the wheel and headed them forward—“I’ll give you more details.”

Apex had to give the guy some credit. The computer specialist was still rolling with the information void, which could have been his personality or maybe was due to the fact that he didn’thave any better alternatives when it came to work or people who wanted his company. Some things didn’t change, after all. Mayhem had been the only person in that fucking prison who had just wandered in and decided to stay awhile. He’d literally blown fifty years in that hellhole just . . . because.

The fucker was quirky to the point of stupidity. He also had a skill set that was mighty handy when you were wiring a drafty old Adirondack mansion like it was the White House.

“Can we at least start with where the ‘there’ is?” Mayhem said.

“Here.”

“How existential—”

“No, we’re here.”

Apex banged the turn signal, even though there was no one around to care, and piloted them into a break in the pine trees. Someone had been doing the plowing, so it was easy to get to the grand entrance to the property.

“Holy shit,” Mayhem remarked, “what is this place? A ranch that mines human kings and gold bars, right outta the dirt?”

The guy might have had questionable taste in haircuts, but he had a point. The wrought iron gate was all kinds of filigree and fancy with a golden monogram in the center, and looming, spear-topped poles on the top that looked like they’d been made to display decapitated heads. The setup did not belong in the Adirondack Park.

But no one was asking Apex’s opinion on the shit. Most especially not the male he worked for.

“Do you know a code or are we hitting the gas and just plowing through this gate?” Mayhem put his palms together. “Pleaaaase. For my birthday? Can we bust it open?”

Apex pulled up to a screen mounted on a pile of rock, put the window down, and stretched his arm out into the blizzard. As he entered a six-digit sequence and the two halves split down the middle to open, his passenger cursed.

“You aresucha snooze.”

He hit the gas when there was enough room to pass. “We are not here to vandalize the place.”

“So is now the time when you tell me what wearedoing?”

“Almost.”

On the far side, the lane continued onward, and the snow persisted even in the dense forest, the fluffy pine boughs not slowing down the fall. He kept the speed steady, even though everything was plowed and the road ahead was clear.

Just as they came up to a curve, he had the strangest premonition. Later, he would wonder how he knew—except had he really? At the moment he started to turn the wheel to the left, he only had a sense that something was coming, something important, that was—

The red taillights of a vehicle that was stopped in the center of the lane were glowing like a pair of evil eyes.

“Looks like the plow guy gave up,” Mayhem murmured. “Hey, maybe I can—”

“No.”

“You don’t know what I’m going to—”

“You’re not plowing anything.”

“That’s not what your mama said last night.”

Don’t kill him, Apex told himself.At least not before he syncs the sensors up with the monitoring program.

Opening the door—because either he got out of the SUV or “shotgun” was going to move out of the vernacular and into the locked-and-loaded-at-his-passenger zip code—he stepped free of the warmth and took his parka with him. As he walked toward the parked truck’s ass, he pulled on his Patagonia and tried to shield his face from the onslaught. The blizzard was going balls wild, the snow slicing into his eyes, going up his nose, trying to get into his mouth—

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