Free Bitter Cold by J. Joseph Wright Page B

didn’t wait to see if they’d come after her. After the first few steps on her knees, she managed to get to her feet. Her head throbbed. She had to run, knowing her only chance was to make it back to Jeff’s house. It had to be close. The lights from the homes on Jack Falls Road twinkled on the hillside.
    “Goddammit! Get back here!” McCullah’s command only made her sprint faster into the heart of the canyon. It grew even darker and quieter. The lights from the houses disappeared behind the steep ridge.
    As her eyes adjusted to the moonlight, muted from an overcast sky, her senses sharpened. Her thoughts began to race. Though the two men chasing her had murder on their minds, suddenly she sensed danger from some other source.
    The snowy hillsides on her flanks looked familiar. With each step, at every turn, she felt more and more an enduring sense of Déjà vu. She’d been there before.
    Then she saw something in the clearing ahead and stopped in her tracks. The dark played tricks with her eyes, yet there was no mistaking the dull shine of the chrome handlebars, the moonglow bouncing off the silvery mag rims. Dexter’s Kawasaki.
    Her blood turned icier than the air. Without turning her head, she looked left, then right, scanning for movement in the shadows, feeling like the black snow somehow knew she was there, and it was watching.
    A popping sound startled her, shook her from the paralyzing fear. Next to her, a bit of frost exploded into a dust cloud. It took a second to realize what happened. She’d been shot at.
    She put her hands in the air, still studying the darkness, looking for something that might have been impossible to find. Unless it wanted to be seen. Then it might have been too late.
    “You’re going to shoot me?” she yelled. “What happens when the police find my body full of bullets? Huh? What then? How are you gonna make that look like an accident?”
    McCullah hurried to the bottom of the steep incline, Armstrong lagging behind. “Stupid, stupid girl. And I thought reporters were supposed to be intelligent.”
    He seemed to be the only one with a gun. The full moon peeked through the cloud cover and reflected on the shiny metal. Aside from what her grandfather had taught her about his old Winchester, she didn’t know much about guns, so she didn’t have a clue what kind McCullah had pointed at her face. What difference did it make? It looked big and, most important, deadly.
    “Hurry up and do it!” Armstrong’s harsh voice was an icy needle in the night. “Let’s get out of here!”
    She searched McCullah’s dead stare. “You’ll never get away with this. Somebody’ll see my car and come down here.”
    “I guess we’d better hurry this up, then, huh?”
    “You don’t have to do this,” finally, she pleaded, compromising her own ethic. “Listen. I won’t write the story. My editor’ll be pissed, but I’ll tell him the story has no legs. He thought it was bullshit, anyway. I’ll tell him he was right. I’ll kill the story”
    McCullah tilted his head.
    “I’ll tell you what,” he aimed with one hand. “I’ll kill the story, myself,” he took one last moment to look her up and down. Shaking his head, he issued an audible tisk-tisk . “A damn shame, too. Nice piece of ass. Oh well...”
    She fell to the ground, covered her face, and pulled her knees close to her chest, shielding her head and mid-section. Maybe the rounds would only penetrate through her arms or legs and not hit her head or any vital organs. That’s all she could hope for.
    Or could she hope for something else?
    Instead of a gunshot ringing out in the frigid night, she heard McCullah shriek louder and higher than she’d thought possible from such a burly man. She looked up, and her heart jumped into her throat at what she saw. From behind a large rock, the shadowy creature crept in thin protrusions, becoming an inky pool and circling McCullah’s feet. Its pungent smell burned her nostrils as it