Ice Read online

  He shifted upward, lifting his weight from her. She gulped in a deep breath and tried to gather her strength, then he rolled her over and started yanking again at her jeans.

  “Don’t,” she said, sobbing. “Please. Please don’t.” She hated to beg but she couldn’t seem to stop herself, and what did pride matter anyway? She’d do anything to get him to stop. Desperately she searched for some reason she could give him, something that would appeal to him. “I can pay you. I can give you all the money I have.”

  He didn’t seem to hear her at all.

  The kitchen was dim, with only the scant light from the window, but she could see that he was almost as thin as the woman, most of his teeth were dark with rot, and his eyes … they were strangely wide open and feral, glittering with something that was inhuman.

  Drugs. He had to be on drugs, both of them did. There wouldn’t be any reasoning with him, so she stopped trying. He continued jerking at her clothes and she kicked, she screamed, she clawed at any patch of skin on him she could reach, but his coat was heavy and protected him from her nails, so she went for his face. He couldn’t hold both her hands and undress her at the same time, so she punched and clawed at him with every ounce of strength she had, but the blows didn’t seem to affect him at all.

  He got her jeans halfway down and reared back to unzip his own pants. Laughing, he clamped one hand around her throat and leaned his weight on it. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t reach him … her vision grayed, and she couldn’t see anything except his grinning face above hers. Tunnel vision, she thought vaguely, and knew she was about to pass out. If she did, she’d be entirely helpless, and his maniacal face with the rotten teeth would be the last thing she ever saw.

  Desperate, on the verge of unconsciousness, she tried to jerk her knee up. He shifted, blocking the movement, and laughed.

  “Darwin, you son of a bitch!” the woman yelled in a grating tone.

  The overhead light came on, the lights shining right in Lolly’s eyes and blinding her. The weight on her throat eased and she coughed, sucking in air. Darwin was very still. “I was just having a little fun,” he said sulkily.

  The woman with the stringy hair stood over them both, and with blurred vision Lolly looked up at her. There was no sympathy in the woman’s face, no woman-to-woman empathy, nothing but fury. She had a gun, too, and she had it pointed at Darwin’s head. “Get up.”

  “Now, Niki,” he began, belatedly placating as he realized where the pistol was pointing. “Baby, I—”

  “Don’t ‘baby’ me, you two-timing son of a bitch.”

  Darwin’s gaze shifted from Niki, back to Lolly. She saw the animal in his eyes, saw him weighing his options. He smiled a little, and then he forced Lolly’s thighs farther apart.

  Niki swung her pistol and hit Darwin on the side of the head with it. He yelped, and finally … finally … moved off of Lolly. “Fuck, Niki, you could’ve killed me!” he shouted, getting to his feet and pulling up his pants from where they’d drooped over his skinny ass. “Are you fucking crazy?” He grabbed a dish towel and pressed it to the bleeding wound on the side of his head, where the pistol had split the skin.

  Lolly struggled to pull her jeans up, scooting across the floor as she did, toward the back door and icy freedom. Maybe these two bags of shit would kill each other. She was dimly shocked by the violence of her own thoughts, but if she could just get away, she didn’t care what happened to them.

  Niki’s gaze swiveled from Darwin to Lolly, and so did the pistol barrel. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” she spat, then glanced at something in her hand. Lolly froze, blinking. “Lorelei Helton. Portland,” Niki said, and Lolly realized the something was her own driver’s license. Niki had apparently been going through Lolly’s purse while Darwin had been trying to rape her. “What the hell kind of name is ‘Lorelei’? It sounds like a hooker.”

  Lolly didn’t bother arguing, just nodded her head in agreement.

  “Get up,” Niki said, and Lolly obeyed, using the motion to take another step back, toward the door. Could she beat both of them, and a bullet? They were druggies, they were likely high right now … their eyes were wide, the pupils shrunk down to tiny dots. How clearly could they think?

  Clearly enough. Darwin suddenly said, “Whoa there, bitch,” and lunged across the kitchen to place himself between her and the back door. He shoved her forward.

  Niki shook her head and stuck the driver’s license in the front pocket of her baggy jeans. “For a woman driving a Mercedes, you don’t have much money on you,” she growled. “Where’s the rest?”

  Lolly tried to think, to reason. Her heart was pounding, she was shaking from head to toe and nausea roiled her stomach, but she could still think. Right now, her brain was the only weapon she had. “In the bank. We can go to town and I’ll give it all to you, I swear I will, just … don’t kill me.” She shot a glance toward Darwin. “And don’t let him near me.” If she could actually get to town with these druggies, she’d find a way to escape … to get help.

  “They’d be closed now, right?” Niki asked, looking at the last gleam of light that pressed against the windows.

  Dear God, she couldn’t spend the night in the house with these two. Her stomach lurched, and she barely controlled the urge to vomit. “Yes, but I know the bank manager,” she lied. She had no idea who the manager was now, and she had never banked here anyway. The first and only account she’d ever opened was in Portland. Would they realize that, if she lived in Portland, she wasn’t likely to have an account here? Desperately she plunged ahead. “He’ll open up for me. We can leave right now.”

  Niki considered it, her head tilted to the side and her feral, too-wide gaze locked on Lolly, but after a couple of seconds she shook her head. “No, he’d get suspicious if you did that. We’ll wait until morning.”

  Lolly’s heart lurched, just like her stomach. She felt the hard beats hammering inside her chest. The ice was coming; by morning there would be no way down the hill. The road would be a sheet of ice, and she’d be stuck here with these two. She heard what sounded like frozen rain hitting the kitchen windows; maybe it was already too late.

  Niki gestured with the gun, waving Lolly forward. Lolly followed the silent direction, passing the woman with the gun more closely than she liked, exiting the kitchen and walking through the dining room with Niki directly behind. When they reached the living room, Lolly saw the contents of her purse scattered across the couch and floor. Her key ring, with the key to the Mercedes between the key to this house and the one to her apartment door, was resting between two cushions. If she could get to the Mercedes, she’d take her chances driving on ice. Even if she slid off the side of the mountain, that was better than being stranded with these two. She needed those keys …

  Niki gave Lolly a shove toward the staircase. “Go on,” she said, jabbing the pistol barrel hard into Lolly’s spine. Lolly took the stairs, her knees shaking so badly she half-expected to fall at any moment. Niki led her to the bedroom closest to the head of the stairs, which happened to be Lolly’s own room. “Any guns in the house?” Niki asked brusquely as she switched on the lights and looked around the neat, sparsely furnished room. “And don’t lie, because if you say no and we find some, I’ll shoot you in the face. Got it?”

  “No, no guns,” Lolly said, her voice shaking so much her words were barely understandable.

  Niki opened all the drawers, gave the contents of the closet a cursory glance, and was satisfied. There wasn’t much here, so searching wasn’t exactly a chore. There was Lolly’s underwear in the top drawer of the chest, some pajamas, and four clean changes of clothing hanging in the closet. Niki looked out the dark window, noting the two-story distance between the window and the ground with some satisfaction. Lolly looked, too, but at the window. Was that a film of ice already forming on the glass?

  Niki’s crossed the room, and Lolly stepped out of her way. “I’ll be watching this door from downstairs,” she snarled. �€