Free Ice Lake by John Farrow

into a mobile lab. He’d be her driver, as she had requested, and return with her to the States. At the end of heroperation, he’d use the truck for an enterprise of his own.
“What,” Andy asked him, leery, “enterprise?”
“I got something going.”
“What? I need to know.”
“I do believe I can sell the truck. That’s what I get out of it. The truck.” A salary was not enough. He was a dying man. Death was expensive, he’d been finding out. He had expenses. If he was not entitled to a share of the cigarette action, he’d score on his own.
“Where?” Andy questioned him.
“I know a guy in Florida.”
“Keep Lucy out of it.”
“No problem.”
Andrew Stettler accepted the deal, and Luc began to plan the truck-jacking.
Andy and Lucy dropped Luc off in town, then headed for the rendezvous point. They parked in a wooded drive, seldom used in winter but ploughed regularly, that led to a small electric transformer.
“I brought candles,” Lucy said.
“I’ll keep the motor running.”
“We might asphyxiate ourselves. Or run out of gas. Who knows how long Luc will be? I’ll light the candles. Keep the window open a crack. You’ll be surprised how warm it stays.”
After she had lit two candles, one on the dash and another between the front seats, Andy suggested that they get into the back.
“What for?”
“Guess.”
“Now?”
“Did you have other plans? Appointments?”
She smiled. She got out to climb into the back but Andy, in his eagerness, crawled over the front seat and was there to greet her with a kiss.
“How do you like the candles?” She spoke between kisses. “Warm, huh?”
“What happens if we get carried away and knock them over?”
“We go up in flames. Together. Romantic. I can’t tell you how many native boys and girls have gone out that way. You’d think we’d learn.”
She kissed him, and settled into the warmth of his body and the easygoing excitement of his embrace.
“I can hardly ever tell when you’re kidding me,” he confessed. “Not when you talk about Indian things.”
“If I were you, I’d assume I’m pulling your leg pretty much all the time.”
His hand went to her breast then, surprising her, and he kissed her roughly.
“Here?” she asked. “It’s not that warm.”
“No?” He pulled away from her to pull off his own jacket, sweater and shirt, as if to challenge her, to dare her to do the same. “We’ll make our own heat.”
“Too corny for words.”
“I’m showing no mercy today, Luce. This car. Two candles. I don’t care how cold it is outside.”
As she reached down and tugged her shirt out from her jeans, Lucy smiled. She loved this part. The moment when there was no turning back.
“Just so you know,” she warned him as her shirt came off.
“Yeah?”
She moved over top of him, straddling him, kissing him from above, reaching behind to unfasten her bra.
“I’m not showing any mercy either.”
Outside Massena, New York, a truck parked at the service entrance to a mall. Two axles. A separate cab. The rear box tall enough for a man to stand up in and just touch the ceiling on his toes, stretching. The vehiclehad driven up from Ogdensburg, as usual, where it had been supplied with cigarettes for the northern communities of the state. At Massena, more than 90 percent of its cargo remained aboard.
A problem that Luc Séguin faced had to do with the education of the driver. In the region where he normally hijacked trucks, drivers were aware of the practice. If they transported cigarettes or liquor they were given hazard pay, and if they were intercepted, they knew enough to hand over the keys when asked to do so by a friendly highwaymen who shouldered an automatic weapon while his partner aimed a grenade-launcher at the cab door. Heavy weapons pacified the victims, and rarely was there any need for violence. Peaceful upper New York State, on the other hand, could be home to truckers who hadn’t been educated. They might become emotional during the