Page 96 of A Killing Cold

And for a moment, the present slips away, and I exist only in memory.

The man hasn’t moved in a long time. Not since he fell. For a while his body offered hers some warmth, but all of it is gone now. The amber glow of the star remained longer, but she can no longer keep her eyes open. She can no longer move at all.

Some part of her marks the crunch of footsteps, the voice, low and angry—

“What did you do?”

“He came at me. I was defending myself.”

“And the girl? She come at you, too?”

“I didn’t touch her.”

“How long have you been standing there?”

Silence. A disgusted sound and then hands on her body, on her neck. Fingers pressed against her throat, and more quiet. “She’s dead.”

The voice is wrong, of course. There is still, deep in her chest, the faintest flicker of a heartbeat. The cold is killing her, but its work isn’t done yet.

“What are we going to do?”

“We? You’re the one who did this.”

“Am I?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Maybe you don’t give a shit about me, Dad. But what about your darling granddaughter?”

“Get Vance. We need to clean this up.”

The cold sinks through me. The single star glares, so bright it’s nearly blinding, and for a muddled instant I can’t remember where—when—I am. The light isn’t the glowing end of a cigarette but the headlight of the UTV, and the silhouette cutting through it is Nick. He has to turn to face the slope to descend safely, his back to me. Farther along the hillside, I can make out Connor’s brown coat, the bulk of his body. He isn’t moving.

Unconscious, I tell myself. Not dead. He can’t be dead.

My hand is by my pocket. I dip my fingers inside. The knife is still there. I draw it out. My numb fingers fumble with the blade, but then it’s open. Nick reaches the bottom of the slope. I let my arm lie limp, the knife itself hidden in the pocket. I keep my eyes shut to slits and I don’t move. Don’t breathe.

“Teddy,” Nick says softly. “Teddy, can you hear me?” He steps so close I can feel him. His boots scrape as he crouches down, leans over me. “You still alive, Teddy?” he asks, and grabs my shoulder, pulling meover. I make my body stay limp. He grunts. Strips the glove from his hand. Reaches for the side of my neck.

The knife comes out of my pocket. I drive upward, shoving against the hard ground with my other hand. The blade goes in under his armpit and he howls, throwing himself backward. The knife comes free with a liquid sound, and ignoring the sharp pain in my back, my shoulder, my neck, I scrabble upright and launch myself at him.

No use going for the heart. Too many bones in the way; I learned that lesson once.

The throat will do.

He gets a hand up. Gets a blade through his palm for his trouble, and this one’s harder to pull out. He’s clawing for the rifle, but it’s trapped under him. He’s out of good hands. Closes the bloodied one around my neck anyway and squeezes hard. Instead of pulling away, I go slack. The sudden weight takes him by surprise. His elbow collapses and then we’re face-to-face and there’s nothing between me and the soft skin of his throat.

“Should have made sure I was dead,” I tell him. And I drive the knife up beneath his jaw.

44

Don’t get too close to a dying animal. Prey is not helpless and every predator can bleed.

I don’t make Nick’s mistake. I’m certain he’s dead before I pull the knife free and push myself, legs trembling from the effort, to my feet. I look down at him, eyes bulging, tongue thrust half out of his mouth, blood a solid wash across his stubbled neck, and I feel not an ounce of regret.

He stood there. He watched me die. Waiting for the cold to do its work because he was too much of a coward to do it himself—or maybe it was only that he was smart enough to know that fewer questions would be asked about a girl dead from exposure than one with a necklace of bruises, a bullet in the back.

He watched Liam die, too.

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