No one came to the door. Georgia waited. Then waited some more. She knocked again. No one. Crestfallen, she stepped back and reassessed the cabin. Had she come all this way for nothing? She’d been so sure Kitty Jarvis was hiding out here. But now, if she was honest, apart from unearthing an address in a remote location, the principal reason she’d come was instinct. And the memory that ten years earlier, another woman in trouble had done the same thing. The fact was that Kitty Jarvis could be anywhere. Just because a family cabin existed didn’t mean she’d fled to it.
Full of self-recrimination for faulty assumptions, Georgia trudged back to her car, keyed the engine, and blasted the heat. She checked for cell service. No bars. She couldn’t call Vanna or Jimmy, and she had no map to see if Lakeland Road was accessible from a different route. She recalled the road did make a circle around Sand Lake, which meant she could pick one end to stake out, but there was only a fifty-fifty chance of meeting Kitty, if she was here. She could come from the opposite or an altogether different direction.
In any case she couldn’t stake out the cabin indefinitely. It was too cold and the storm was still raging. She waited thirty minutes. And then ten more. She reflected on her life and how, despite the hard knocks, it was now full with Vanna, Charlie, and Jimmy. How she’d never imagined she would get over the heartbreak of Matt. And how, with Charlie so ill, she longed to fly back to Chicago to be with Vanna.
She was ready to start the drive back to the Duluth airport when she stopped the car, got out, and walked around the cabin to make sure no one was there. As she made her way to the rear of the property, she realized the cabin was only about a hundred feet from the lake. She could see the vague outline of a dock. She peered into a nearby boatshed, where a skiff, probably for fishing, was stored. She turned toward the lake, frozen solid, and shaded her eyes. Through the snow, she spotted a green pickup on the ice. Next to it was a shack perched on top of the frozen lake. It looked about a football field away, and snowy tire tracks led from the lawn where she stood across the ice.
Georgia had never walked on the surface of a frozen lake. The thought of doing it frightened the hell out of her. Then again, if the ice was thick enough to support a pickup, it must be okay for her Toyota. Still, she was loath to take the chance. A hundred yards wasn’t far to walk. She slogged through the snow to what would have been the shoreline, but there was no demarcation between land and water. She edged onto the ice tentatively. Although it was covered by fresh snow, it felt sturdy and solid. Not so different from land. She started off.
It wasn’t difficult to walk as long as she didn’t hurry. Her boots gripped snow rather than ice, and she felt supported. The cold and wind were more challenging. Her leather gloves did little to keep her fingers from freezing, and her muscles, still sore from the beating in DC, stiffened in the frigid air. She shuffled forward painfully.
She knew whoever was in the icehouse would see her coming, so as she approached, she waved to signal she was friendly. A few minutes later a figure emerged from the shack holding a pair of binoculars raised to eye-level.
Georgia waved again and smiled. “Yoo-hoo . . . Is Kitty Jarvis with you?” No response. “I need to talk to her.”
The figure, now that she was close enough to see, was a man. For an instant Georgia was surprised, then scolded herself for making another assumption. Why shouldn’t Kitty have a man in her life? If it was indeed Kitty inside the shack. A moment later a woman joined the man. He passed her the binoculars. She lifted them to her eyes, then passed them back to him with a little shrug. Georgia waved again. The woman stayed where she was, but the man went inside.
When Georgia was just a few yards away, the woman retreated into the shack. The male reappeared outside with a shotgun. He raised it to his shoulders and aimed the barrel at Georgia.