Rescue At Cedar Lake

“Theresa, get down!” Alex shouted.

She turned toward him. For a second the world froze as she saw the strength that shone in his eyes. Then time sped up again and suddenly it was as if everything was happening at once. Alex dropped Brick’s wrist and pulled Theresa to the floor, knocking the couch over in front of them like a shield. A second gun blast sounded, then a third and a fourth, shattering what remained of the windows and tearing up furniture. Brick leaped to his feet, yanked a small handgun from inside his boot and returned fire, momentarily seeming to forget about her and Alex. Only then did she realize she no longer had a grip on the shotgun.

“We can’t look for it now,” Alex shouted. “Something secure. Somewhere low. Any thoughts?”

“There’s a hatch under the floor.” She pointed.

They crawled toward the hatch opening. Alex kicked it open. They tumbled through onto the brick floor below. The hatch snapped shut behind them. Darkness filled the space. Alex urged her up against the very corner of the wall. Then his body covered hers. His heart beat against her back. He pulled a rough tarp over them. Bullets and shotgun blasts rained in the cottage above them, roaring like a hailstorm. Then the noise stopped. Silence surrounded them, punctuated by nothing but the sound of their ragged breaths, their pounding hearts and whispered prayers mingling in the darkness. Her legs cramped beneath her. Her arms were pinned tight against her chest. She started to stretch.

“Wait.” Alex’s breath filled her ear. “Not yet.”

And then she heard the footsteps, one set, walking slowly through the cottage, stepping on the broken glass, kicking furniture aside. There was swearing in a muffled male voice.

Then there was the slow creak of the hatch door opening above them.

Light filtered down through the hole. Fear filled her chest. Panicked prayers filled her heart. Then the hatch clanged shut again, the footsteps moved on and eventually silence fell. After a long moment, Alex unfolded his body and crouched. “Stay here.”

He forced the hatch open and looked out. And she heard him sigh heavily, then pray for God’s mercy under his breath.

She crouched up beside him. “Everything okay?”

“I think we’re alone. The cottage is a wreck.” He hauled his body up through the hole. Then he looked back down at her face. “Brick is dead.”

* * *

Alex searched the rest of the cottage quickly, while Theresa waited in the relative shelter of the storage hatch. He found nothing. Except for Brick’s corpse, they were alone. The cottage had been so totally destroyed it was hard to imagine the criminals having any motive other than causing damage. When he returned to the living room, Theresa had already hauled herself up and was sitting on the edge of the hatch with her legs still dangling in the hole.

Okay, not quite where he’d asked her to wait. But no harm done.

“They’re gone, whoever they were.” He reached for her hand, helped her up and then closed the hatch behind her. “I only saw one shooter and it was a fleeting glance at that. He was about six-three, I would guess, masked, with square shoulders.”

“Sounds like Castor.” Her face paled as her gaze ran to where Brick’s body now lay. “But that doesn’t make sense. Castor knew I was here, too. He should’ve gone searching for me. But he barely checked the hatch.”

“We were pressed right up against the wall in the shadows,” Alex said. “If it was Castor, he probably thinks you escaped somehow. Do you have any idea why he would come back just to kill one of his men?”

“I have no idea.” She shook her head but she was still looking at Brick’s body. “But if it wasn’t him, it means somebody else is running around Cedar Lake destroying cottages. This is my fault. I didn’t think to check inside his boots when I was looking for weapons, and then I dropped the shotgun. If he’d run instead of returning fire he might not have gotten shot.”

Gently, he took her by the shoulders and turned her away from the body.

“Hey, it’s not your fault,” he said. “You do know that, right? It was chaos. That gun was hidden pretty deep inside his boot. I might’ve missed it, too. You pointed out the hatch. If we hadn’t hidden in there, we might not still be alive, and we can thank God for that.”

She nodded and looked down at the ground. Her lips quivered. He pulled her into his arms and hugged her. She hugged him back. Somehow standing there with their arms around each other felt as instinctively right as breathing.

If someone had told him, even an hour ago, that he would ever hold Theresa in his arms again, he’d have laughed. But he’d loved her once, she’d been his friend and right now she needed him. Something inside him whispered that he wouldn’t be able to keep those old, lingering feelings at bay forever, but for right now, he needed to be stronger than his heartache.

“How are you even here?” she asked. “There’s no way you could’ve made the drive that quickly.”

“I took a snowmobile across the lake.”

“That’s crazy.” She pulled back out of his embrace. “It’s been a really warm winter. Or, at least, it was until recently. The lake never froze properly. There’s no way the ice is consistently thick enough for that to be safe, especially in the middle. You could’ve fallen through.”

He crossed his arms. She was right. It hadn’t been safe. It had been downright risky. But her life had been in danger. He’d taken a calculated risk in order to save her.

“It was fine,” he said. “I kept an eye on the shifts in the colors of the ice patterns, followed the channel markers and watched out for the buoys. I know this lake.” He looked down. “You’ve got duct tape on your sleeves.”

“Castor taped my wrists together behind my back.” She ran her hands over her arms self-consciously. “Fortunately, he did it over the sweatshirt and not on my skin.”

Part of him wanted to ask if he was right in thinking the sweatshirt was his old one, and if so, why she was wearing it. But something inside stopped him.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “How did you get free?”

“I tore it loose on a metal bucket in the cupboard that they threw me in.” Her fingers picked at the duct tape. “I’m guessing you haven’t heard from Zoe and Mandy?”

His jaw tightened. Surely it couldn’t be a coincidence that gunmen decided to ransack Mandy’s cottage the same weekend that Zoe brought her up for a quiet study break, could it?

“No,” he said. “I tried Zoe’s cell phone again before I left the cottage but I couldn’t get a signal. I placed a really quick internet call to my boss, Daniel, on the laptop, though, and let him know what was happening. He said he’d keep trying to reach her and obviously that he’d also call the police and send them straight here. But considering the road and the distance, it’ll take the police a while to get here and we’ve got to get out of here, now.”

His eyes glanced at the shattered glass of the broken windows.

“Needless to say, we still have a lot we need to talk about,” he went on. “But not here. We’ve got to get somewhere safer and quickly. I don’t know who did this, but they could come back, especially if they think you’re connected to this secret trunk somehow. Grab your winter gear. I’m going to check out the body.”

He could see the desire to argue forming in her eyes. But she pushed it down.

“Okay, we’ll talk once we’re somewhere safe.” She ran for the back hallway.

He crossed over to the body on the floor. He’d always appreciated how focused Theresa could be when necessary. But he desperately wished Zoe hadn’t brought Theresa into it. Knowing this whole mess had put her in danger made everything harder. He crouched beside the body on the floor. Brick’s winter jacket and gear were a popular, mass-produced brand available from countless stores and told him nothing. He used the camera on his cell phone to take a picture of Brick’s face. Then he took the man’s wallet from his pocket, flipped it open and pulled out his driver’s license.

“Says his name is Kenneth Brick,” he called. “He’s from Port Hope, Ontario. Age twenty-three. Looks like he works as a cashier at a supermarket.”

“Never heard of him, and I’ve never seen him before.”

“Me neither.” Alex took a picture of the driver’s license, too, put it back in the wallet and set the wallet next to the body. “Should we?”

“One of his buddies said something that made me question if he was familiar with Cedar Lake.” She hesitated. “He alluded to an old nickname of mine.”

“Well, the kids around here had all sorts of stupid nicknames flying around, none of which were exactly original, so I wouldn’t take it personally. But they know who Mandy is, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some kind of connection to the lake. Let’s add that to the list of things we talk about later. Safety first. Talk second.”

She didn’t look convinced, but they’d paused here long enough and there really wasn’t time to draw this conversation out any longer. He grabbed the remains of a blanket and draped it over the body. When he looked up again, Theresa was standing behind him with a backpack in her hand.

He stood up. “What’s that?”

“My emergency kit.” She slung it over both shoulders. “It’s got a first aid kit, a change of clothes, duct tape, a fire starter, a CB radio and some snacks. Everything’s in waterproof bags, so it’ll be fine in the snow.”

He blinked—even though he knew better than to be surprised, considering it was Theresa. He waited as she slid a pair of snow pants on over her jeans and laced up a pair of winter boots. Then she pulled a heavy, hooded winter jacket on and zipped it up.

They ran for the back door and pushed out into the snow. It was already up to their calves and growing deeper by the second. She followed him down the driveway and into a small, wooden storage shed.

“The snow’s gotten bad.” Theresa shook the flakes from her hair.