Free White Heat by Serge de Moliere Page A

breasts, still bruised from his lovemaking, as lumpy and cold as two frozen snowballs. It was so cold that she could not feel most of her body beneath the waterlogged clothing. She felt the icy fingers of death creep up her thigh, then wrap her tightly in greedy hands. The sensation burned her flesh like pieces of dry ice.
    The pain gradually dulled as, against her will, she felt her eyelids grow heavy.
    Eventually they drifted closed.
     

CHAPTER TWO
     
     
    The hooded winter parka Josh wore, lined with the thick pale fur of a polar bear he had trapped and killed for its meat, kept out most of the cold. Yet it couldn’t relieve the deep chill of paranoia that never left him. Josh knew that somewhere out there they must still be hunting for him, searching for a clue that might let them find him.
    He narrowed his eyes. Screw them; let them try.
    He chose this area specifically because it was hard to reach and probably the last place they’d think to look. And even if they did, they would have one hell of a time finding him. Or taking him without a fight.
    There was a small, jagged fissure about three feet wide in front of him where the ice had cracked open like a clay flowerpot. He bunched powerful leg muscles and leaped over it effortlessly, throwing in a last-minute somersault. Then, just for the sheer exhilaration of it, he tried to do a handstand. He slipped, but managed to roll skillfully and spare himself any injury. A silly move, he knew, but it felt good. He dusted the snow off his heavy gloves, then threw back his head and bellowed like a beast. He felt strong, he was free, and he was alive.
    Even when it was too cold to go outdoors, he exercised relentlessly in his small cabin, practicing the gymnastic routines he had loved since he was a child. That—plus the never-ending exertion of striding around in deep snow drifts, of lifting heavy chunks of wood to feed his fire—had toughened his forearms and thighs beyond that of the average man, perhaps even beyond that of many professional acrobats.
    He still regretted the gymnastics career that had once almost been within reach but that was lost in the sinister world he was raised in, a world where the idols of crime loomed large and appealing; where the path to wealth and fortune glistened with criminality, as tempting and circuitous as the proverbial yellow brick road. So he had taken to it; run barefoot on its toxic surface until his soles absorbed venality like rocket fuel, until they bounded upward with it, elevating him to new heights of criminality. From this elevation, he fell, slamming into an underworld that was dark and pitiless but strewn with treasure.
    Yes, he had accepted its benefits; he had accumulated wealth, and the thought of the Swiss bank accounts that safeguarded his ill-gotten gains was comforting. Still, crime had its downside, and he suffered its fury now as an outlaw running from both the cops and his onetime cohorts.
    He shook his head, rubbed his eyes under the goggles. His lips curled.
    Somehow—he wasn’t quite sure how—some of his mother’s Quaker strictures had burned themselves into him and branded him with homespun morality. There were certain limits beyond which he refused to trespass. He remembered his mother’s work-hardened hand slapping his face when he cursed, or when he violated her moral code. He had resented it, resented her . But now, long after her death, he felt her constraints like corded rope. And it was those limits of his that had forced him to leave the gang, then run from the police and lose himself in the icy wilderness of northern Canada.
    He shrugged. It had been simple for him to give up the easy life, the late nights in clubs, the fancy cars, the drugs, the expensive whores, even the swagger that proclaimed him as a rich member of the mob without heralding the squalid means by which that wealth had been secured. He shook his head. The last job had ended with a security guard bleeding on the floor. He