“There were dogs chasing me. Big black Dobermans and Rottweilers. I have nightmares all the time. But they’re usually the same thing. This was new.”
This was new. Lee listened to her frown her way through the disturbing dream from the side of his bed. That Sin was curled into the other side of the bed was enough to make him wonder if he was still asleep. He frowned back, but she remained oblivious.
“I’m not afraid of dogs. Not dogs that look like that. I’d never run. I’d face them. But in the dream I’m running from them, and I’m so scared. The dogs are about to catch me. I just know it. And I’m not afraid they’ll eat me or kill me. I’m afraid they’ll take me down.”
“Hmmm.” He responded. Not sure if he should respond to her fears or to the fact that she must have come in his room and crawled into bed with him. He’d woken with her nose pressed into his chest now for the third morning in a row. He found words and let them loose, “That sounds like one of those symbolic dreams.”
“Surely.” Sin was still curled there, on ‘her side’ of the bed, never mind that the entire bed was ‘his’. “I just don’t know what it symbolizes.”
Neither did he. He didn’t know what this new development meant either.
It was one thing in Phoenix. She’d been shaken by the preacher. Truth be told, he had, too. He’d never killed with people just beyond the door. That had not been on his terms. But when Sin had handed him the article, her fingers shaking just a little even then, he’d known she was going whether or not he went with her. And that’s what this crap with them working together was all about. He had to be there, especially when she was likely to do something stupid, like kill a man in his own church, with potential witnesses nearby. There hadn’t been a question.
Then he’d given a twenty-year-old, who’d probably never drunk anything in her life, two reasonably laced Jack and Cokes. So it was no wonder he had woken with her nose in his chest and her t-shirt the only thing covering those ridiculous leather undies. She hadn’t showered, hadn’t pulled the ponytails from her hair, hadn’t changed into her whimsical jammies.
Then she’d done it the following night. But again, they’d been in a bad motel, with only one bed, so no wonder. But now . . . this was his bed, in his room, and she had her own of both of those. “It’s probably from watching the news last night. They haven’t been trailing me before.”
“Clearly they were. Or they wouldn’t have shown up now.” He wanted to laugh out loud. He’d wondered more than once if maybe they each had an entire task force assigned to them.
The news last night had been unsettling. One of the reporters had refrained from harassing the FBI agents that had scoped the scene. Only one agent had shown up on screen and he didn’t say much. Just that they were checking out the situation. This reporter had a clip from him, but more importantly she had research. She’d found other police reports of victims with red bows and tags, and put two and two together. She asked point blank, “Given that there are other victims like this man, and that the FBI is on the scene, are we dealing with a serial killer?”
The agent had given nothing away. He’d looked like there wasn’t anything in him to give. That made Lee feel a little better, that the agent tracking them had the brains of the cocker spaniel he resembled.
But that had been short lived. As soon as the agent had walked away, the reporter had faced the camera and delivered her line, “While the FBI won’t speculate, at least not for us, the local police believe that we do have a serial killer on our hands, and have even gone so far as to dub him ‘the Christmas Killer’. Back to you, Jason.”
That had been the kicker. That ‘back to you, Jason’, so that they could do a piece about which local plastic surgeons did the best boob jobs, the Christmas Killer all but dismissed.
He scrubbed a hand through his hair, hoping that would be the end of it, but certain that it wasn’t. A serial killer in the hands of the media wouldn’t go away. Not unless he and Sin did. And he wasn’t sure they could.
He left her there in his bed, trying to ignore the woman who wasn’t supposed to be there. If he’d begun to achieve it, the frog jammies would have made it impossible. She didn’t roll back over though, but climbed out after him, making him want to climb back into the bed now that it was vacated. Instead, he headed into the living room, wearing only his boxers and t-shirt, and flipped on the small screen TV tuning it in to a Phoenix station, as they were about to cue up their six a.m. news, and more actual news was reported at that time than in the later broadcasts. Sin turned the second one on and hooked into CNN.
For a while they just watched in silence, then he pointed and Sin pushed flush against him to see the tiny screen he held. Phoenix was reporting that they had found at least three other murders that could be linked to the Christmas Killer and that the police had clamped down on information.
When CNN offered a small aside to the Phoenix murder, they mentioned that the tapes were being considered conclusive evidence that the preacher had committed many of the crimes he’d been accused of. Sin’s lips curved, and Lee caught it from the corner of his eye. It was a true smile. He blinked twice, almost missing the anchor’s mention of the FBI’s involvement.
They were fucked.
Pushing the power button on her TV, Sin pushed up and left the room. She returned, fully dressed, not more than five minutes later. “I need to shoot something.”
Owen sat on the edge of Nguyen’s desk, coffee cup in his grasp. But he didn’t so much as sip from it. Instead, he fidgeted with it, needing something to do with his hands. He didn’t speak.
He’d set files on the counter next to Nguyen. This time Nguyen was looking at charts he’d prepared. One was the old chart of Peter Svelichko. The second was the same black ink outline of the body and the room, but of Reverend Deehan. The third was of Leopold – but that was just a body outline as he’d been found in the water. Even the outline looked bloated to Owen. Small marks, circles and x’s, covered the bodies in red ink, clearly marking wound points. Nguyen was deep in comparison and Owen didn’t want to interrupt that. On more than one occasion before, Nguyen had blown a case wide open with his lab sleuthing.
He’d probably been sitting there about three full minutes when the scientist looked up, but Owen couldn’t be sure as he didn’t want to move, even to look at his watch. It might have been an hour for how it felt, but his brain told him he was over-reacting.
“Dunham!” It was exclaimed as though he’d just shown up. “What can I do for you?”
“We finally got to those files. The ones we sorted for the executed dogs.” It had taken quite a while, what with all the clean-up on the preacher man’s death and the sudden swamping of media. Blankenship had fielded it with his usual talk-a-lot,-give-away-nothing answers. The reporters weren’t a problem except that they existed, and they were like ants. You could crush them, but there were so many. You could stomp them out, but more would surely come. And they were digging. Who knew what they might find? But, as of yet, no individual one had been a problem.
“And?” Nguyen prompted. He hated being interrupted unless there was a point. So Owen always gave him one, just not always as fast Nguyen would have liked.
“We got a lot. Mafia hits. Centering on the Kurev family.” He pushed over the top three files and waited while his friend took a quick flip through.
That was all that was needed. “No martial arts weaponry at all.”
“None. Just bullet holes.” That had been disturbing in and of itself. “And dead dogs.”
“Weird.” Nguyen looked at the photos that had been taken at the time. He checked out the documentation at too rapid a pace to get the details. But Owen knew he’d gotten the major points. His words confirmed it. “So she had two M.O.s?”
“Two entirely separate M.O.s. There are no notes, no gift tags. And these guys are as dirty, and some dirtier than, the ones where she did leave notes. She killed the dogs. Broke windows, shorted the security systems, and shot with the skill of a marksman the likes of which I don’t think I’ve ever seen.”
Nguyen nodded. All of it was true. “So she did that until she was up to par with the weapons, and devised the new method she’s using to get into the houses.”
Owen nodded. He hated that one. “It still seems to be ‘transform into vapor and flow in through the vents’.”
“Dracula method.” Nguyen smiled.
Owen didn’t.
Nguyen tried another tack. “Just mafia guys? Or were there external kills as well?”
“We’re pretty sure there were externals. It’s hard to say, and harder to sort, as everyone and their brother has bullets. We’ve got a pimp taken out with knee-capping, bone shattering shoulder shots, and a slew of symmetrical wounds to the abdomen. A few others.”
Not having bothered to slip out of his white paper coat, Nguyen finally pushed the even stupider looking surgery cap off his head, and looked at the files again. “So that’s all the same.”
All Owen gave was a nod.
Nguyen filled in the blanks. “So she’s doing the same thing, tormenting them, taking out the same kinds of people, but with an entirely different M.O.” For the first time he met Owen’s eyes. “Dunham, are you thinking you have a multiple personality disorder person here, and both personalities are after the mafia?”
“Now that’s funny.” Owen finally unclamped his hands from around the coffee cup, which he’d almost worried a hole into, and shook his finger at Nguyen. “Because I actually had that exact thought go through my head. It does explain a lot, except that this case is already so out of hand, and there’s no way we could take that to the media.”
“But if it’s the truth . . .” Nguyen re-stacked the files. “It would explain her proficiency.”
“What?”
“Well, MPD is usually the result of a trauma, a really severe one, often repeated. Severe child abuse, repeated rapes, that kind of thing. The personality fractures, leaving one persona to handle the abuse and the other to live a life free of it, often with no knowledge that it even occurred.”
“Because that personality wasn’t there for it. But how does that make her proficient with those weapons and the guns?”
“It usually happens at a young age. The personality splits while it’s still forming. In adults it’s already cemented and we can compartmentalize it that way. That means she’s likely been out for blood since a young age. Lots of time to practice.”
Owen frowned and thought that one through. He’d already dumped the theory of MPD, but there was a nugget here he needed to hang onto. He just had no idea which one.
Nguyen spoke again. “It’s too much, though. It also has holes: like there should be one psycho-killer personality. The other should be trauma free. Why two traumatized and vengeful personas? We need to go Atcham’s Razor here: the simplest explanation.”
“It’s not simple. None of it will ever be simple.” He shoved the remaining two files at Nguyen.
With a quick upward glance to see if Owen’s face would reveal anything, which it didn’t, Nguyen tackled the remaining two folders. Only, very quickly, he realized he knew one of the cases. “This one’s part of the ninja file already.”
They were older murders. Owen had been buying into the multiple personality disorder theory until he saw these. He waited.
Nguyen read, his brow furrowed. He skimmed, knowing the other agent held out a link and not knowing just what it was. After a minute, he spread the papers out across the desk so he could scan them as a whole. Nguyen was always fast like that. Owen could see the exact moment Nguyen found it.
“Holy shit. The dates are the same.”
Of all the files he had – and Blankenship was still looking for more, periodically finding them, too – these had been the most disconcerting. “Sure, two personalities could have plotted two separate murders, down to this degree of detail, and carried them out separately on the same day.”
Nguyen pointed. “But these are in separate states.”
“They’re across the country.” He clarified. “There’s no way one person did both of those. Unless we have our times mixed up.”
Nguyen shook his head. He knew the labs. He’d done a lot of the work himself. “There’s no way we’re far enough off to get her from one of these to the other. There’s just not time.”
Owen nodded. “Not to mention that everything has always appeared flawless, and that means planning. There’s no point in planning two at once. With different methods. Just the tools alone would be hard to gather.”
Nguyen didn’t speak for a moment. When he did, it was with a question in his voice. “So these were committed by separate people? Same grudge, same ideas, different methods?”
Owen nodded, then asked his question. “What I need to know is: was Svelichko alive when the bullets went in him? Was Reverend Deehan?”
Nguyen nodded ‘yes’ to both of those.
Owen felt his heart shrink. He’d been so hoping Nguyen would say ‘no’. That there’d be an alternative. But there wasn’t. “And those two people are now working together. The Christmas Killer is two people.”
“Damn.” Nguyen almost lifted his hands into his hair, but stopped himself. He didn’t touch his head, his face, didn’t scratch anything while he was doing his lab work. So even just the beginning of the gesture was a sign that he was shaken.
“I need you, bud.” Owen set the cup down. “I’ve got a stack of files on this grudge gunner, and I need to know everything I can about her. Or him.”
Nguyen put his hands in the air, peeled his gloves, and motioned for Owen to bring on the paperwork. “You win, I’m fuckin’ hooked.”
With a heavy heart, knowing that his caseload had just doubled, and the likelihood of solving the thing had just cut in half, Owen looked into his coffee cup. He didn’t like seeing the thin ring of brown at the bottom and decided to remedy that immediately. Not to mention the muscles at the back of his head were tightening. Whether that was due to the fact that he hadn’t had caffeine in a good two hours, or that his grudge ninja had a friend and he had a mountain of work to do just to get up to speed, he couldn’t say. But a full cup of coffee would soothe, if not solve, some of the ills of the world.
He left Nguyen and went to re-fill the dark liquid from the break room. Then sent an aide back to the lab with copies of all the grudge gunner files. Blankenship fielded calls from the media off and on throughout the rest of the day, and handled Agent in Charge Bean. Bean was pissed about the media, but Owen was grateful for the way it went down. The cleaning lady had told all the sordid details before the Tempe cops could shut her up. So none of the people who knew better was at fault. There was always an air of suspicion when leaks occurred, always the background murmurs wondering if the agent had let out some of their own info just for the notoriety. So, no matter the trouble, Owen was glad that he wasn’t coming under scrutiny for that, too.
But he could still practically hear Bean from all the way down the hall yelling at Blankenship. “You two close this down and close it fast!”
By seven, Owen’s stomach was grumbling, and he knew if he didn’t high-tail it out of here, and fast, he wouldn’t even get to see Charlotte today. So he closed the files and headed home. Thinking while he drove, he mused that, with the very recent death of Reverend Deehan, and the obvious planning that went into each slaying, the world was probably safe from the grudge ninja for a while. But was the world safer?
That was a tough question.
He hadn’t answered it by the time he pulled into the driveway, although he was ready to concede that he likely never would.
He ate quickly and read to Charlotte when she was tucked in. His mind wandered during the chapter, thinking that his daughter and wife were safer with the ninja and the gunner out there. Lord. He needed to quit.
He said exactly that to Annika when he walked into the living room. She was sitting on the couch with the remote in her hand. She didn’t even acknowledge that statement. He would have thought she would be jumping up and down, but no. She just wanted him to come sit by her. Pushing her arm out straight, she punched a button on the remote, “Watch.”
He could see by the recording bar, registered at the bottom of the screen, that she’d recorded something for him and rewound it.
Tickers sprung to life across both the top and bottom of the screen, streaming far more information into the human brain than even the sharpest of people could keep up with. But it was the talking head that got him. She was rattling off bits of information about the Deehan tapes and what had been on them. About families stepping forward to sue the church, the organization, whomever they could get their angry legal hands on.
Owen didn’t see much point, but the woman did say that, under their own investigation, it appeared at least five other murders were tied to the Deehan murder. Specifically, she mentioned, the campus rapist in Kansas eight months prior.
Blinking, Owen wondered where she’d gotten her information, and realized that it hadn’t been any of his people, when she used the words ‘interrupted an attack in progress’.
Still it wasn’t much more than he had been seeing over the past few days. Little bits were filtering out to the public here and there. But he’d expected that. There had been a dam, and it had sprung a leak. It would continue to leak, no doubt.
He watched all the way to the end of the brief report, when the woman closed with “FBI agents have been tracking the killer, but so far have no solid leads and remain baffled.”
She went on to her next story as Annika paused the program again, leaving the woman with her eyelids half dropped and her mouth hanging open in what looked like a drunken slur. He was glad she looked horrid between frames, he didn’t like her.
“Well, what do you think?”
Huffing, he turned to his wife. “We are not baffled. We have plenty of info.”
Her wide mouth turned into an even wider grin. “That’s not what I was talking about. But you should ignore that.”
“I’m tempted to go hand her all our stuff and tell her to crack the fucking case wide open herself.”
This time Anni flat out laughed at him. “That’s exactly why she said it. She’s hoping one of you will come prove her wrong, and she’ll have the scoop. But has anything else leaked?”
He shook his head.
“Then what is it?”
“There’s two of them.”
She nodded. “A shooter and the ninja, working together.”
Only his eyes moved to look at her. He loved her, and sometimes he hated her, just a little.
Lee was getting more and more afraid that he’d need to see a doctor if he didn’t learn how to unclench his jaw. A month after the good Reverend Deehan had been put down, Sin had held another article out to him. Lee had said ‘no’ in no uncertain terms.
They couldn’t afford another fast job. They couldn’t afford another job out in the open after the last had been so iffy. The media coverage had died down fairly quickly, although there was still the occasional report of another old murder tied to the Christmas Killer. The online rooms were full of all kinds of stories, and Lee printed some of it out when they traveled the next time. They had been off gathering supplies and info in Florida when he’d brought the pages back to her at their hotel room and held them in her face. “Did you really do all of this?”
True to form, Sin hadn’t batted an eyelash, she’d just taken the printouts from his hand and said, “yes, yes, no, no, no, yes, no, no, no, yes . . .” right down the list. Then she’s handed it back and said what a shame it was that Robert Listle wasn’t going to make the list. She shook her head the way most girls would about the first boy who’d dumped them. His jaw had clenched a little tighter.
Only then had Lee realized that she was sitting in the middle of an orgy of shopping bags. “Did you knock over the mall?”
“No.” She had the nerve to look put out. There went the jaw again. They’d gone out to do research and it looked like she’d spent her time shopping. “We’re finally staying someplace nice enough that this doesn’t look suspicious.”
That was true. She’d pulled out a fake ID and a credit card to her account still in Texas. It was risky but, they decided, worth it.
Sin smiled. “Besides, it’s Christmas time, everything’s on sale.”
“Thanksgiving was three days ago, it isn’t Christmas time yet.” Not that they’d celebrated Thanksgiving. Lee was pretty certain that they’d had banana and protein shakes from the blender he’d run off the generator, and ham sandwiches for dinner. He’d been thankful that no one could hear Sin shooting at the pop bottles as though they would fire back any second.
Her aim was much better these days, but that meant that she ran through ammo like water. At least water came up from the well, ammo was getting damned expensive. It was one of the things they were buying while they were down in the panhandle. He also had thought to train her on the rifles, but now he wasn’t sure he wanted her to be that deadly.
Given the glut of purchases she’d made, holding his tongue until they started back home had been difficult. Only, when they packed her old green Toyota full of all they had stocked up on, some of the gear had overflowed the trunk and had to be packed into the back seat. Sin had raised one eyebrow at him, then proceeded to cover all the exposed gear with tissue-papered and puffed-up shopping bags. Two were from Victoria’s Secret and one from Frederick’s of Hollywood. She’d placed those where the labels were visible and Lee had to agree that no cop in his right mind would go looking through that.
It still felt odd to have her driving him around, and he took the wheel more than once on the way home. It was more than a full day of driving, and coming up from Florida the weather got consistently colder as they went. The day stretched long on the drive. Still they made it home without incident, and for Christmas all Lee really wanted was for their luck to hold.
But he knew it couldn’t last much longer.
The cabin was cold when they arrived, and Sin stayed in the thick coat she was wearing along with her gloves and some sherpa-looking boots. They unpacked quickly, keeping warm until the generator could power the space heaters enough to warm the place up. Sin’s bags littered the living room and she began unpacking from there.
Lee stopped and looked at her, his head tilted to one side. “Did you just get things to get the bags or did you actually buy something at Victoria’s Secret?”
The girl had nerve. She looked indignant. “I bought things.”
“Those jammies? They sell those?”
Again her eyes flared. “I bought underwear.”
“I didn’t think they sold leather.”
She huffed and hauled her bags off into her bedroom to unpack them, which was really all he wanted her to do in the first place.
Aside from ammo and supplies, the trip had yielded knowledge. Most importantly, while they’d been gone, they spent a good deal of time in the room watching the three hundred satellite channels they’d paid good money for. That gave them three TV feeds instead of two. Because they were watching for the decision on the Sandoval case.
Sandoval had been acquitted.
The TV stations had caught it all from every angle. He’d left the courtroom, amid much fanfare, a free man. While Lee and Sin weren’t present to see his walk into the sunshine, friends had been there to shake his hand and slap him on the back. And, given all the camera coverage, there was no doubt that Kolya Kurev had been one of those men.
Lee and Sin were placing their bets on Idaho.
If they went and Sandoval wasn’t there, then so be it. Nice trip, gather more evidence, apparently Sin might shop, go home. They also had seven other names of men they would take out if they found one of them occupying the house. A few would be dealt with in slightly different ways, each according to both his crimes and what danger he might pose to them.
So they’d hightailed it back to the cabin and turned the generator on. While jackets were eventually peeled, the two didn’t really stop moving for the entire four days they were home. There was too much to prep. It was a long drive to Idaho, they knew from experience. And a roundabout route was the best, just in case they were followed, or if later someone came around with photos. Nothing like a straight line of people recognizing you, right down the interstate, to point exactly to where you were.
Sin worked out as much as she worked. At one point Lee found her atop the ninja poles, looking like she was asleep. On two feet, she was only hanging by her toes, because that was all that would fit. There should have been a little sway up that high, but Sin was perfectly motionless. Still, he’d interrupted her. “Do you want a gun for the trip?”
“What!” It wasn’t a question so much as a curse word. And while he watched, the great Sin toppled. She hit the ground in a graceless thud that made him feel bad about how much he’d enjoyed it.
Standing over her, not admitting her pain any more than she would, he asked again, “Do you want a gun for the trip? You’re barely proficient enough, but I trust you not to shoot me, so . . .”
She pushed herself to standing with more bruising to her pride than anything else. She’d rolled when she hit ground. Of course she rolled, it just hadn’t altered the fact that she’d hit the ground. Lee shook his head.
“No, I don’t want a gun. What I want is to know if you intended to damage me by sneaking up on me like that?”
“No.” That much was honest, and he hoped he’d conveyed that in his voice, rather than the glee that was still singing in the back of his head.
“Why the hell do you sneak up on me like that?” Even before she finished the question, she was asking another. “Why the hell can you sneak up on me like that? I have to move out. I’ve gone soft since getting here. I’m going back to Texas to play with the big boys.”
Lee laughed outright at that. “You didn’t play with anyone in Texas, if you recall, and you haven’t gone soft. At least I hope you haven’t.” He ignored the fact that she was rubbing at her knee, and prayed it didn’t mean she’d be injured in Idaho. “I assume I can sneak up on you for the same reason you can sneak up on me.” He didn’t add that that seemed to include into his damned bed in the middle of the night. What with the traveling and all he’d woken up with her nose pressed into his chest more mornings than he hadn’t. “You’ve filtered me out. That part at the back of your brain that listens still hears me coming. But disregards me as ‘safe’.”
“You believe that?” She would have looked more menacing if she’d been taller. But as it was she was three inches from his chest and practically looking up his nose.
“It’s the only explanation that allows for the fact that I can hear that there’s a large cat just off to the north of us right now, but not hear you when you come up behind me.”
She leaned over and rubbed the knee again, “Yeah, I heard the cat, too. I was hoping it’d come up for a fight. I never fought a cat before, and I’ve got some energy to burn.”
Lee shook his head. He wasn’t gracing that with an answer. He didn’t know which was more concerning: that she had energy to burn, that she wanted to fight the cat, or that he had thrown in his lot with her. Leaving her there rubbing her knee, he was grateful that she didn’t want a gun. What the hell had he been thinking?
Maybe he’d just wanted to know what his chances were that she’d grab one off him during a key moment and maybe use it on him. Those pop bottles sure had paid for the crime of bearing high fructose corn syrup to sedentary children.
Two days later a cold snap came in, unfortunately it was preceded by a wet snap. People remembered the beautiful pictures of the Appalachians softly blanketed with snow. Singers had praised its glory, but after several winters here, Lee was waiting for the country tune about grandmamma dying in the ice storm.
The abrupt change in the weather didn’t stop them, it only delayed. Still they’d started out at four a.m. as planned, the world dark and glassy around them. They’d lifted heavy duffels, and Sin had tucked her teddy bears into bags and under her coat, and Lee had considered telling her to leave them behind, but they served a purpose far more useful than Sin’s comfort.
They were both loaded to the gills, like usual. But the climb was uphill, and given the ice, they literally slid back every time they tried to go up. After a handful of attempts, and wet gloves from the number of times he’d gone down and used the palms of his hands to save himself, they’d tried another tack.
Using an old piece of plywood and sturdy rope, they rigged up a piss-poor sled. But they climbed one step at a time, anchoring themselves as they went, and handing the sled up, bit by bit. The path leveled out about a quarter mile up, and the trees grew denser the further they got from the cabin, which cut back on some of the wind that had been biting at them. But it was also narrower here. That meant they had to unpack the sled thing and haul their own bags. And the ice was no less here than it had been earlier.
The rain that had come before the snow had puddled, and frozen over as such. Pine needles and fallen leaves were trapped in white or black glass panes under their feet. The debris trapped in the ice were sometimes the only thing that kept his feet from going out under him, and sometimes even that wasn’t enough. His ass would have been as wet as his hands if he hadn’t invested in a good long coat.
Sin, of course, walked the icy path like the damned ninja she was. Footholds apparently spoke to her, and she stepped with purpose, her feet finding flat on clear spots and setting straight down, her body gliding from position to position as she went. She admired the beauty of the landscape along the way. Distracting Lee from the taxing job of just walking.
“Wow. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this.” Her voice came out on a breath that he could see.
Lee had finally wised up: he put Sin in front and stepped where she stepped. While it still wasn’t perfect, it was a huge improvement, and he didn’t go down or fight to stay upright nearly as often. He also quit answering her and focused on his feet rather than his side of the conversation.
Sin didn’t seem to notice. “I wonder if this is what Winter Wonderland was written about.”
Lee snorted and thought about composing Grandmamma Died In The Ice Storm himself. But Sin kept pointing to icicles and trees with clear glass casings, having frozen when wet and dripping. “Look, every needle is covered.”
She held out a branch for his inspection, snapping the ice in several places as she moved it.
This time he did respond. “And Idaho is getting further away. We’re likely driving on icy roads for a while. So get your butt in gear.”
The little TVs had saved their hides. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d watched the weather channel, but he knew he’d been dressed in a suit and tie with a steaming mug of coffee in his hand and concerns about the cream colored carpet. But he’d watched for all of five minutes this week, then traipsed out to each of the cars and put chains on the tires. Once he unfroze them, he’d be glad they were there.
It took forty-five minutes to get to the kitty, Sin ooohing and ahhhhing the entire way. He really wished she’d just complained. Instead she volunteered to drive so he could get out of his wet clothes.
“My clothes are fine.” The coat had literally saved his ass. He picked at the lock for a minute on the driver’s side, finally getting the key in and watching the button pop up. He threw his bags into the back seat, before leaning in to start the engine.
Sin waited patiently on the passenger side, watching him, probably wondering when he’d help her out. Her hands were full of bags, her jacket bulged in lumps from the bears she wore underneath it, made worse by the straps criss-crossing her torso. Her eyes peaked out from under her burgundy knit cap, which didn’t match a damn thing she was wearing. She only blinked at him and waited, pressing her lips together to ward off the cold or get rid of the strands of hair that had blown and stuck to her mouth. Even while she waited, little gusts of wind turned wisps of it into phantoms dancing around her head.
Lee decided that it would be easier and better if he crawled across the driver’s seat and pulled the lock up himself. He’d worried about damaging the mechanism when he broke through the ice. So he shucked his coat and stuffed the too-puffy-to-be-manly garment into the back. When he stood up straight, he promptly slipped and fell on his ass.
Sin cackled. She threw her head back. She grabbed her belly. She traipsed around to his side of the car still loaded with heavy bags. All the while unable to keep it together, yet somehow able to keep on her feet. Bitch.
He felt the wet seep through his pants as the word seeped through his brain. For a moment he wondered if he deserved it. While he attempted to find his feet, and failed once, Sin stuffed her gear into the back, even artfully arranging her bears across the tops, so they could watch out the window. She peeled her coat and stuffed it down into the foot well. “What do you need?”
“I’ll get it.”
Even shoving her aside didn’t knock her off her feet. But at least she didn’t say anything. He pulled sweats and boxers from his duffel bag and tried not to stomp angrily around to the passenger side of his own damn car. The last thing he needed was to go down again.
Sin’s face glowed. She’d been itching to drive his kitty from day one. And here it was in the worst possible conditions. Lee amended that pretty quickly, ice wasn’t sleeting onto them at the moment. Although he thought his wet ass might be freezing over.
Slipping into the driver’s seat, Sin motioned for him to get in, wind was whipping away all the heat the engine finally produced from the car. He blinked to realize that she’d already folded a towel and laid it across the seat for him, and he slid in managing to just restrain his huff.
She was backing slowly out of the ‘garage’, her hand on the back of his seat, her head cranked around. Lee couldn’t look. He waited for the car to shudder from impact, even though he’d ridden with her time and time before. But that was in her own car, where she was fearless. He wasn’t sure he wanted her to be fearless with his kitty.
He didn’t change his clothes yet. Not wanting to be found dead with his pants around his ankles was a strong enough motivating factor to keep him there with his frozen ass until she made it to the highway. Sin looked for other drivers, unwilling to pull onto the road in front of anyone. But Lee wasn’t surprised that no one else had ventured out in this. It was shameful to think they might have better weather in Idaho. But he wasn’t counting on it.
Once they were a few minutes down the road, the chains clanking through a light dusting of snow and Sin’s pace just above what he himself would have done, he stripped his shoes off and peeled the offending garments down his legs. Sitting bare assed on the now wet towel was no picnic, but Sin politely kept her eyes on the road. Which was a good thing, because he was hanging in the breeze.
He tugged at the front of his sweatshirt thinking he might stay covered and only then realized that there was a huge wet spot on the back of it as well. At that point he gave up. Lee peeled it, too, and sat buck naked in his own passenger seat blessing the heater while Sin’s mouth fell open.
“We’re going to get arrested. And it’s going to be for nakedness?!!?”
He gestured to the surrounding area, devoid of any life besides themselves. “No one’s looking.” Hell, even Sin wasn’t looking, her eyes were glued to the road ahead. “Close your mouth.”
For once, she did what she was told.
He slid the dry pants up, slipping the towel out from under him as he did, and settled his dry ass into the cold seat of the kitty with a sigh of relief. He threw the wet clothes into the back and dug out another sweat shirt. Idaho was going to be a fucking barrel of monkeys.
He clicked into his seatbelt and managed to unclench his jaw each time he found it locked from Sin’s driving. An hour later, they’d gotten all of twenty-five miles from the cabin, but he was able to get out and take off the chains. He didn’t slip and fall on his ass either, which was another blessing. And he demanded the driver’s seat back.
Picking up speed, he even laughed as Sin hollered. “Lock up your daughters and hide your hookers! The Christmas Killers are coming!”
“I’m not the Christmas Killer. You are.”
“We are.” She amended.
He kept his eyes glued to the road. Just because they’d taken off the chains didn’t mean the driving was safe by any measure. “By the way, I take offense at that. I’ve never killed anyone’s daughter or a single hooker.”
She nodded. “Me neither. But I feel I ought to, what with the label ‘serial killer’ and all. Isn’t that who they kill?”
Lee sighed and pushed emerging thoughts of Bethany back from where they’d come.
Sin’s voice was soft as she saw something, “Sorry.”
Lee didn’t grace it with a response, but his brain latched on and wondered where this sensitivity had come from. Wasn’t Sin made of granite?
He merged onto I-40 and kept heading west. They went straight through Knoxville, which was awakening to rush hour. The roads were ice free, as Knoxville was used to this, so the residents might slip and fall on their asses getting to their cars, but once there, they didn’t even need chains. Lee and Sin were only in the crush because it had taken so damn long to get out.
They drove with just bathroom and food breaks until they called it a night in Little Rock. And damned if he didn’t wake up with her nose in his chest again. He’d thought of her as a girl, but that was a mistake. It took a woman to exasperate a man that bad.
She compounded it the second day when she declared herself bored halfway through the drive and simultaneously produced a sci-fi novel and a CD player from nowhere. The novel was already partially read, much to Lee’s surprise, and the CD player had some volume on it, so she could share Aerosmith with him. He paused for a moment to be grateful that he liked Aerosmith.
It took four days to get to Idaho. Even though he was used to logging time in the car, Lee was worn out from the hours of heavy pop she played. Even more because his sleep was disturbed by the fact that the girl who had once clung to the edge of the bed could no longer seem to stay on her side.
Each day he’d tapped out a little earlier and handed her the wheel. Each day she smiled and accepted. So he was asleep in his own passenger seat when they passed through Boise in the dark of night, only vaguely aware of the thick blanket of snow riding the rooftops of anyone who dared build a house out here. The roads were clear of all but the lightest of dustings, something done better by northern cities who knew what snow was about. Lee only truly woke when Sin pushed at his shoulder, “Lee, look.”
He blinked and did as she commanded. The house in front of him loomed large and softly dreamy-looking, glowing a sweet melted butter color through the hedge of snow. He blinked again, realizing that not only did he know the house, but it was the house. And it was occupied.
Sin turned the wheel and smiled, not saying anything more as she headed away to find a motel in Horseshoe Bend, just beyond the house, and further from the city.
Lee stayed awake and useful through check-in. Letting Sin hang on his arm and chew loud gum, moving those pink-glossed lips she always did up in public. They made their way around back, Lee having made his usual insinuation about noise. As the clerk was male, he just smiled and gave them a key, even as he looked Sin up and down. She hid her face beneath the ball cap but otherwise played it up.
Once inside, they set about unpacking, hiding weapons, locking up the one window with the club. Sin stuck a screamer to the upper corner of one pane, then tapped the glass before sighing and yanking it back off. “Damn thing’s not glass. We’ve finally gotten so cheap the windows are plastic.”
Lee had braced an extendable rod under the door handle and locked it in place before unloading the bags of guns and ammo. Sin ripped stitches on her teddy bears, then sat in her jammies with the dancing teacups and sewed the butts back together. She’d been sticking the weapons in that end for a few trips now, which of course had raised Lee’s eyebrows and invited a slew of comments, all of which he managed to hold back. Sin thought the necks were getting a little too much wear and tear from all the opening and closings. If you didn’t notice the wicked looking blades behind her, that Lee knew for certain had dripped blood on many occasions, then she’d look like any female sewing, repairing a teddy bear.
By the time she was finished, he’d already crawled into bed in his t-shirt and boxers. She plumped her bears, and stashed her blades around the room, she set all but one of the bears in a cute array on the tacky side table that probably cost less than the stuffed animals. The last bear she hugged tight while she turned the switch at the base of the lamp. Lee didn’t know what to do when he felt the bed move beneath her weight, then shift as she settled into him. But somehow he fell asleep.
He woke with her in the same position, grateful that he’d found some sleep after all. Sin seemed to wake with the motion of his eyelids, and she was up and pacing forms before he even managed to throw his legs over the side of the bed.
He figured that by now he’d be used to the sight, but he still had to hold back laughter at the forms she mocked with deadly accuracy in those damned ridiculous pajamas. Every movement spelled her skill. He got the impression that he could yell ‘freeze’ at any minute, and she would‒could. He entertained fantasies that it would work if she was midair and she would just hang there until she decided to move.
When she finished, she pulled the kamas from beneath the mattress and bowed to an imaginary partner before she silently ripped him to shreds. Lee was reminded of the first time he’d seen her handle the weapons, they had danced in front of her, even left her hands, but never her control. He’d had the opportunity to pick them up again and give it a shot in recent months, but he’d always failed miserably, still more likely to injure himself than someone else if he let go of his death grip on the handle. Once her imaginary partner was summarily dispensed, Sin bowed again, and looked at him once before heading off to the bathroom.
He changed while she was in, an old routine by these days, and was in dark heavy jeans and woolen socks when she emerged. He found shirts and layered them while she added a few more to her own outfit, then pulled on a cap she picked up the night before with a local logo on it.
Her hair hung down her back, and she was getting antsy, being over-warm for the room. She charged out into the day, only the dagger and throwing knives accompanying her, and so well hidden under the clothes that no one would know they were there. Sin spun in the parking lot, admiring the fresh blanket of snow that had appeared while they slept. Lee worried about the tracks they were going to leave, and whether Sin might just lay down and make snow angels.
They grabbed drive-thru breakfasts and sat outside the house watching through binoculars. The snow was too heavy, and the wind too high for Lee to use his listening dish, but still, by ten a.m. they were certain that Sandoval was indeed the man inside.
They left mid-afternoon, knowing what they needed, and returned just after dark, Sin for once without her usual leathers. They’d had to dress in whites, jeans and thick jackets, with an under-layer of thermals. They both wore fleece caps in a creamy color, and Sin had wrapped her hair up under it. For once her coloring was working against her. Still she had no doubts and no fear. The white color may look more angelic, but she was still Sin.
Armed to the hilt, they crept in closer to the house, following the path they had decided on before. Sin let Lee take out the dogs, since she hadn’t been able to get close enough earlier to make friends. They were kenneled unless someone came out with them, so there was nothing for it but to take them out of the equation. She made that same sign that he’d seen before over each of the bodies, and they headed up to the house.
Using the rope, they climbed in, thankful that it had been cold enough here to snow consistently, not rain then freeze. They skimmed the roof, watching for ice, and leaving footprints that told everything anyone would need to know, then popped open the vent.
Inside, they stayed silent for nearly an hour before moving further. The house was closed down for the night, Sandoval having turned off the lights hours earlier. On silent treads they made their way painstakingly to the bedroom, and slowly opened the door.
Lee hung back, just outside the frame as Sin positioned herself to throw the first knife. Wanting to stake the man to the bed, and do what she’d intended to do with Svelichko, she’d been hoping to catch Sandoval in bed like this.
What she caught was a hail of bullets.