Page 65 of K-9 Prime Target

“I don’t understand,” she said. “What do you want from me?”

“I want all of you,” he said. “You’re really all I’ve ever wanted.” He shot out his arm and grabbed her wrist, his fingers like iron prongs digging into her. “Come on. I don’t want to waste any more time.”

“What? No!”

“Yes.” He yanked her hard, toward the door. “You have to do what I say now. You’re coming with me.”

“At least let me put on my boots,” she said.

“If I let you have your boots, you have to promise not to run away from me.”

“Where would I run?” She already knew the answer to that question. The only thing around for miles was snow and freezing cold.

“You’re smart enough to realize that, at least.”

Her snow boots stood ready by the door. She shoved her feet into them and tightened and tied the laces, using the time to try to think of any way out of this. She saw no weapon within reach, and no way to call for help.

“That’s enough dawdling,” he said. “We need to go.”

Reluctantly, she straightened. “Where are we going?” she asked.

“Someplace where no one will disturb us.” He fit the helmet on his head once more, then took hold of her wrist again. “Come on. And if you think you can run away, remember I’m very fast with this knife, and the knife is very sharp.”

* * *

Liam was still thirty feet from the cabin when the door opened and two figures emerged. A man in a black helmet led the way, pulling Nina behind him, her blond hair bright in the moonlight. This was the man who had strangled him and left him for dead. It had to be Aaron Nicholson.

Liam’s first instinct was to shout and rush forward, but Nicholson had Nina and a knife. If Liam tried to run at him, he might very well use the knife on Nina. Sky stared at the pair and growled low in her throat. Liam grabbed the dog by the collar and held her close, his other hand clamped around the dog’s muzzle. Sky looked at him with hurt eyes but remained still. Angel said nothing. The little dog was shivering despite the quilted jacket he had put on her, and he worried how much longer she would last in the cold.

The man—he was sure it was Nicholson—pulled Nina through the snow, toward a snowmobile parked in a stand of fir trees. He shoved her onto the seat of the vehicle, then slid on behind her and leaned forward to work the throttle. The engine roared to life and they lurched off.

As soon as the snowmobile was out of sight, Liam ran toward the cabin. Once inside, he raced to dress in his warmest clothing. He grabbed his pack and laced on his ski boots. Then he stoked the fire, filled the dogs’ water and food bowls and headed out. “You can’t come with me,” he told them, as they watched him make his preparations. “You’d freeze to death out there.” He only hoped he didn’t do the same.

He blew out the propane lamp that provided the cabin’s only light, then set out on skis to follow the tracks of the snowmobile.

* * *

Nina’s heart pounded painfully as Nicholson’s arms tightened around her, holding her in front of him on the snowmobile. She struggled against panic. She needed to think. He had the knife out of sight now, maybe on his belt. She was sure he would keep it within easy reach. He raced the vehicle over the snow, jolting over the uneven ground so that her teeth repeatedly slammed together. She tried to brace herself with her feet, but they kept slipping on the icy running boards. If Nicholson crashed the vehicle, he at least had a helmet to protect him. She had nothing. The cold wind stung her nose and ears. She wished she could pull up her hood, but when she tried to move he didn’t even slow the vehicle, just reached up and boxed her ears.

“I need my hood!” she screamed at him. “My ears are freezing.”

He loosened his grip on her enough to pull the hood up over her hair, then patted her shoulder. “You’re welcome!” he said.

As if she would ever thank him. She stared into the darkness ahead, trying to figure out where they were headed. The moon bathed the landscape in silver light, and the snowmobile’s headlight projected a cone of even brighter illumination directly in front of them. Nothing looked familiar, but the landscape seemed to be increasingly more barren, with no houses or signs or even very many trees.

She decided they were climbing, possibly above the tree line. What shelter could he possibly have found up here? Or did he only mean to bring her somewhere more remote, where he would kill her and leave her to be found, possibly months from now, by summer hikers or fall hunters?

They climbed a ridge, then descended into a shallow valley. He slowed the snowmobile to a crawl. What she at first mistook for snow-shrouded boulders came into sharper focus as they neared, and turned out to be the ruins of mining machinery and a few log cabins. Several of the cabins were roofless shells, a rusting boiler on its side in front of one, a set of iron bedsprings visible through the open door of another. They bounced along past concrete pillars and coils of rusting cable. These must have once been part of a tram used to transport ore down to lower elevations. The mountains around here were pocked with such settlements, some restored as historical parks and tourist attractions, others, like this one, left to gradually melt into the earth.

Nicholson pulled up to a mostly-intact cabin and cut the snowmobile’s engine. Silence closed around them like the shutting of a door. Though they were no longer moving, it seemed even colder, every breath like inhaling ice. She hugged her arms around her body and shook. Maybe she would perish of hypothermia before Nicholson had time to kill her.

Nicholson climbed off the snowmobile. He prodded her. “Come on. Get up.”

“Where are we?” she asked, not moving.

“I found this place weeks ago,” he said. “When I first came to SkyCrest. As soon as I saw it on a map, I knew it would be perfect. I figured it had to be fate when you ended up trying to hide so close to here. You made things even easier for me.”

Nina didn’t see anything perfect about it. One corner of the rusting metal roof of this cabin peeled up, and the single window to the left of the door was devoid of glass.