Snowbound - Crouch Blake (мир книг .TXT) 📗

Her heart leaped as the plane touched down midway across the lake, Will stopping just fifty yards out from the lodge—he wouldn’t have to make the long haul to the outer lake.

The engine had cut off. Devlin was squinting, trying to make out the details of the plane, though it had almost reached the far end of the lake, more than a mile away.

Her smile faded.

Will had turned around, tracking back toward the lodge as fast as his snowshoes allowed.

Something was wrong. Will was wearing that same worried expression he used to get just prior to opening arguments for a big trial.

He reached them breathless and sweating.

“What’s wrong?” Rachael asked.

Will leaned over with his hands on his knees, drawing in lungfuls of cold air.

He shook his head, gasping between ragged breaths. “That isn’t our plane.”

The Lesser of the Evils

FIFTY-NINE

From the porch, Will and Rachael had an unobstructed view of the entire lake, the floatplane clearly visible at the far end—a piece of red amid all that blinding white.

Will lifted the binoculars to his face as sunlight and frigid air streamed in, adjusting the knobs, bringing the plane into focus.

“Okay, here we go. There are one . . . two, three . . . people standing in a foot of water, unloading the cargo pod, throwing duffel bags up onto the bank. They’re all wearing big white parkas, definitely dressed for the weather.”

“Hunters?” Rachael asked.

“They don’t look like hunters.” He drew in a quick shot of air.

“What?”

Will noted the sudden pressure in his chest, behind his eyes, strength flooding out of his legs as approaching footsteps echoed in the lobby.

“What?”

“I recognize one of them,” he said.

“Who?”

“Oh God.”

“Will? Who?”

He lowered the binoculars and stared at his wife. “Javier Estrada just climbed down out of the pilot’s seat.”

“That man you and Kalyn—”

“Yeah.”

“What’s he doing here?”

“What do you think? We took his family, left them for days in a burned-out mall.”

Devlin walked up, stopped between her parents, said, “So did you find out who they are?”

“Bad men,” Rachael said. “Very bad men.”

Will put his arm around Devlin, kissed the top of her head. “Who is it, Dad?”

“Javier. But we’re gonna be all right, honey,” he said, wondering if the words rang as hollow for Devlin as they felt tumbling out of his mouth. “I need to talk to Mom. Stay here for a minute, okay?” He handed her the binoculars. “Keep an eye on that plane at the end of the lake, and the four men who just climbed out of it.”

“No, Will. No fucking way. Absolutely not.”

Will and Rachael stood in the corridor, twenty feet down from Kalyn’s room.

“Rachael, we can’t do this on our own.”

“She betrayed you. Tried to trade our daughter.”

“I know, but we need her, and we’re running out of time standing here fighting about it.”

Rachael flashed her eyes at the ceiling, her most vehement eye roll.

“Wow, five years since I’ve seen that one,” Will said.

She smiled. “Missed it, huh?”

“I need you to trust me. As bad as Kalyn is and what she did, the man who’s coming here is ten times worse. We’re going to need her.”

“The lesser of the evils. That’s where we’re at?”

“Afraid so.”

Will looked through the peephole, saw Kalyn under the covers, asleep in bed.

“All right.”

Rachael slipped the master key into the lock. It turned, and Will nudged the door open with the barrel of the shotgun.

Kalyn sat up, her face swollen from a night of steady crying.

“We’re in trouble,” Will said.

Kalyn stared back, eyes darkened with shame. “I wanna see my sister. Is she okay?”

“Yes, she’s fine. A plane has landed on the inner lake.” He hesitated, as if by not speaking his name, it might undercut the reality that the man had actually, impossibly, found them, that he was here, less than a mile away. “Javier and three men.”

Kalyn’s face paled, the shame deferring to a crisp alertness, tinged with fear.

“Where are they now? Right out front?”

“No, far end of the lake.”

“And you’re sure it’s him?”

“I took a pair of binoculars from the supply room. There’s no question.”

“Who are the other men?”

“I don’t know. One is Hispanic, maybe another Alpha. Other two are white.”

“Well, we know why they’re here—for what we did to Javier’s family, to him, possibly those men I killed in Fairbanks three days ago.” She threw back the blankets.

“The Alaskan mob?”

“They’re probably cocounsel with the Alphas on this.”

“Aren’t you really the one they—”

“Oh sure. Walk out and explain the situation to them, Will. I dragged you into this. It’s all my fault. I bet they give you a pass, probably even fly you and your family out of here before the shit starts to fly.”

SIXTY

Rachael, Will, and Devlin were following Kalyn down the first-floor corridor.

“All right,” she said. “So here’s how I see it. What do they want?”

“To kill us.”

“No, you’re rushing ahead. Think of a more concrete motivation.”

“I don’t know.”

“First, they want to get inside this lodge. We want to keep them out, or at least know if they make it in and be ready to deal with that.”

“Okay.”

“So we start thinking about all the points of entry.”

“How many are there?”

“Right now? Probably more than forty.”

“How’s that possible?”

Kalyn stopped, opened the door of room 111, pointed to the window. “First priority is locking every room on every corridor.” She knocked on the wood. “These doors are thick, and the locks look damn near indestructible. That’s not to say they won’t be able to get through, but they’ll make a hell of a lot of noise doing it. You have a master key, Will?”

“Yes.”

“Give it to Devlin, let her go and do that right now.”

“I don’t feel comfortable with her running around by her—”

“I think we have some time to work with here.”

Will pulled one of the master keys out of his pocket, handed it to his daughter. “Go,” he said. “Be careful, and remember to check every door after you lock it.”

As Devlin took off back toward the lobby, they reached the alcove.

“Here’s our first trouble spot,” Kalyn said. “I’ll bet they try to come in through a window either here or at the north-wing alcove. Or both. We should station someone, maybe even two people, a little ways back in the corridor with shotguns.”

“Who? There’s just me, Rachael, and—”

“We’ll need help from Sean and Ken, maybe even some of the women. Come on.”

They jogged back down the corridor, emerging finally into the lobby.

Kalyn pointed to the entrance.

“I’m not terribly worried about those doors. We’ll lock them, but no one storms the castle through the front door. With those iron bolts, they’d literally need to blow it off the hinges. I’m not sure they’re going to announce their presence like that, since they won’t know what they’re facing.”

She led them through the passage, past the dining hall, to a door that opened onto the veranda. “We’ll need someone here.”

They backtracked into the lobby, now approaching the library.

Devlin was already to the end of the first floor of the south wing. Will could hear the doors slamming, locks turning.

They entered the library.

“No one can be in here, since they could pick us off through the windows. We’ll station someone in the lobby to watch this door and the front entrance and back up the corridors.” She opened the small door to the right of the fireplace. “This would be another great point of entry.”

They started down the spiral staircase, their footfalls echoing on the metal, causing it to vibrate, Will gliding his hand along the railing.

“Move very slowly,” he said.