“Everyone will understand.”
“Sweet pickles or dill?”
“Half and half.”
“Fritos or potato chips?”
“Half and half.”
“Give me five more minutes.”
She left them. Wes turned back to William and patted his coat pocket. “How much do I owe you for this?”
“I’ll put it on your bill.”
“Don’t itemize it.”
“As if I’d be that careless. Now, you said Dutch needs something for his face?”
Wes explained the cuts, and William gave him a tube of antiseptic salve, a free sample from the drug company. “This should keep them from becoming infected. If it doesn’t work, I’ve got something stronger.”
Wes read the label. “One of these days, you’re gonna get busted for handing out prescription drugs without a doctor’s authorization.”
“Oh, I doubt that. Who’s going to tell?” William asked guilelessly.
Wes laughed. “I guess you’re right.”
William motioned him out of the stockroom. As they walked through the shadowed store, Wes gave him an update on the morning’s events. “It’s a wonder both of them weren’t squashed to death. We had to send a stretcher down by rope. Dutch strapped Hawkins to it. Never heard such screaming from a grown man as when we pulled him up. Poor bastard’s not doing very well.
“Physically, Dutch is okay but fit to be tied because Lilly’s still up there with Tierney. Then there are the FBI guys. Buttinskis in topcoats. In addition to his personal problems, Dutch is having to cope with them as well as Millicent’s parents.”
>
“What’s the latest on the investigation?”
“I can tell you that.” Marilee turned as they approached the counter of the soda fountain, where she was wrapping sandwiches. She nodded toward the battery-operated radio that was tuned to the local station. “It was just reported that the FBI has identified Blue to be Ben Tierney.”
• • •
Tierney was weaker than he ever remembered being.
He was light-headed, partially from hunger, partially from the concussion. His injuries continued a relentless assault of sharp, stabbing pains or dull, throbbing aches. He clenched his jaws so tightly against the cold that he felt the pressure in the roots of his teeth.
There was no help for any of these adversities. In order to survive, he would be relying on sheer determination.
Unfortunately, self-will had no effect on the snowfall. It obscured the demarcation between earth and sky. It absorbed landmarks. He was trapped in a sphere of infinite white. Without a horizon for reference, he could easily become disoriented and hopelessly lost.
Nevertheless, he plowed on, wading through snow that, in places, came past his knees. Before leaving the vicinity of the cabin, he had made a brief stop at the toolshed to get a snow shovel he’d seen there. It helped somewhat to clear a path, but mostly he used his body to bulldoze through the drifts. The shovel became a walking stick to help support him when vertigo threatened to hurl him to the ground.
Even in the most extreme circumstances, habits die hard. Stubbornly, perhaps foolishly, he took a shortcut to avoid a switchback, knowing that eventually he would reach the road and would have saved himself several hundred yards. But in the forest were potential hazards he couldn’t see. He was bushwhacked by boulders, fallen trees, and stumps, buried under two feet of snow. Roots became snares that caused him to stumble and fall.
Breaking an ankle or leg, falling into a crevasse he couldn’t climb out of, or getting lost in this snow globe environment would mean death. If he paused to consider the life-threatening risks, he would stop, turn around, go back, so he willed himself to concentrate only on taking one step at a time, on pulling his foot from the well in the snow it had just created and planting it ahead of him to form another.
He didn’t allow himself to dwell on the cold, either, although it was impossible to ignore. His clothing was a joke for its inadequacy. When he left the lodge yesterday morning, he’d been dressed for a cold day spent outdoors—coat, scarf, cap. But today the concept of cold had been taken to another dimension. The temperature, he guessed, was in the single digits. Factoring in the windchill, it was fifteen to twenty degrees below zero. He’d never been exposed to anything like it. Never. Not in all his travels.
His respiration and pulse rate soon reached dangerous levels. His heart felt like a balloon on the verge of bursting. Common sense dictated that he stop and rest. He didn’t dare. If he stopped, even for a moment, he knew he would probably never move again.
Eventually his frozen body would be found. And along with it, his backpack. They would find the ribbon. The handcuffs.