The Girl From Convict Lake by Sharon Shipley

Author:Sharon Shipley [Shipley, Sharon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Damaged Goods; Woman In Jeopardy; Home Alone; Horror; Storm of the Century; Detroit; Painted Lady; Blizzard; White-out; Wallflower; Isolated Snowbound
Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
Published: 2022-11-22T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 22

Killing Cold

“Hunting’s not hard. It’s the killin’.”

“Yah. Would expect that. Wouldn’t think I’d have any trouble.” Lance laughed, self-deprecating. “Up to my elbows in blood half the time…” Lance babbled on, trying hard, and succeeding in being pleased to be included—and outside the chilly warrens of the Victorian monstrosity plus Nutmeg’s odd moods: first cold as a well-digger’s butt, then she’s all warm and gushy toward Zak. The bite of cold, cobalt sky, and hot sun was icy vodka and rum-warm.

“Damn! Could eat my shoes,” he burbled.

“Hope we find somethin’ tastier ‘n your dirty sneakers.”

Lance checked for the weathervane, but Zak motioned him farther into the thick featureless snow-blind woods. Between one step and the next, the old weathercock vanished. He turned back unwittingly the opposite way.

Panicking slightly, feeling veins in his neck thumping, Lance rounded a fir, plunging into a brown declivity left by a felled tree; one minute stepping over brush, the next, skidding arse over teakettle into a pit.

Clawing his way back, true panic blossomed. Where’s that stupid fuchsia hat? “That fat head. Zak could tell Meg anything!” He muttered gloomily. Like he looked for me…Be damned if he’d call, though. “Yeah, then he and Magpie, can split the inheritance. Can’t tell me that’s all there is. Gotta be safety deposit boxes with bearer bonds and old silver, or coin collections, maybe Grandma’s jewelry kept back from bankruptcy courts. Uncle Dez wasn’t that stupid. He built a damn empire!” Such were his dark rumblings.

At last, spying the cap to the far left of where he thought Zak should be, he took a deep breath; brushing snow, hustled without seeming to, before he lost his game face, when a shaft whizzed by his head causing a rush of artic air, thunking into a sheared-off pine. He stared at a thread of his mob cap pinned deep in the bark, at the same time feeling his head. A thin smear of blood came away on his gloves. “Hey!” He yelped before crouching in a hiding stance. “What the hell. Ya only shot at me!”

“Stop foolin’ around. Where the hell were you? Keep up.”

“Here you maniac! I’m right here where you almost killed me, you ass!” Lance tried to calm. Not show fright in front of Mr. Wonderful. “What the hell!”

Ahead, Zak stepped from beyond a fir holding his bow loosely at his side and waited with an offensively bland expression.

Lance blew out a breath. He didn’t have to hide in the woods going in circles until he died of hyperthermia. He didn’t have to get to the house before Zak. All was cool—except Zak was damned careless. “Yah! Right! You didn’t know it. You merely happened to let loose an arrow in my direction!”

“Don’t be stupid, Prancer! I was shooting at a squirrel!”

He walked over and yanked the arrow out of the tall stump of a dead pine. “Keep up pilgrim. I thought you were right behind me. You can get lost here,” he announced and stalked off.

Scowling

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