Winter Prey

suit, threw a leg over the sled and cranked it up. He watched as she turned on the headlights, backed out of her parking space. She had further to go than he did, so he sat and watched until he was sure she was turning left, heading out. She might still stop at the fire station, but there wasn’t much going on there except equipment maintenance.
    He turned back toward the trail, followed it for a quarter mile, then moved to his right again, into new snow. Stackpole’s Resort was over there, closed for the season, but marked with a yard-light. He could get off the lake on the resort’s beach, follow the driveway up to the highway, and wait for her there.
    He’d had an image of the ambush in his mind. She’d be driving slowly on the snowpacked highway, and he’d come alongside the Jeep with the sled. From six or ten feet away, he could hardly miss: the .44 Magnum would punch through the window like it was toilet paper. She’d go straight off the road, and he’d pull up beside her, empty the pistol into her. Even if somebody saw him, the sled was the perfect escape vehicle, out here in the deep snow. Nothing could follow him, not unless it had skis on the front end. Out here, the sled was virtually anonymous.

    The snow-covered beach came up fast, and he braked, felt the machine buck up, took it slowly across the resort’slakeside lawn and through the drifts between two log cabins. The driveway had been plowed after the last storm, but not yet after this one, and he eased over the throw-piles down into it. He stopped just off the highway, where a blue fir windbreak would hide the sled. He felt like a motorcycle cop waiting behind a billboard.
    Waiting. Where was she?
    There was a movement to his left, at the corner of his eye, sudden but furtive, and his head snapped around. Nothing. But there had been something  . . . There. A dog, a small German shepherd, caught in the thin illumination of the yard-light. No. Not a shepherd, but a coyote. Looking at him from the brush. Then another. There was a snap, and a growl. They never did this, never. Coyotes were invisible.
    He pulled down the zip on his suit, took the .44 out of the inside pocket, looked nervously into the brush. They were gone, he thought. Somewhere.
    Headlights turned the corner down at the lake road. Had to be Weather. He shifted the pistol to his other hand, his brake hand. And, for the first time, tried to figure out the details of the attack. With one hand on the accelerator and the other on the brake . . . . He was one hand short. Nothing to shoot with. He’d have to improvise. He’d have to use his brake hand. But . . .
    He put the gun in his outside leg pocket as the headlights closed on him. The Jeep flashed by and he registered a quick flickering image of Weather in the window, parka hood down, hat off.
    He gunned the sled, started after her, rolling down the shallow ditch on the left side of the road. The Jeep gained on him, gained some more. Its tires threw up a cloud of ice and salt pellets, which popped off his suit and helmet like BBs.
    She was traveling faster than he’d expected. Other snowmobiles had been down the ditch, so there was the semblance of a trail, obscured by the day’s snow; still, it wasn’t an official trail. He hit a heavy hummock of swamp grass and suddenly found himself up in the air, holding on.
    The flight might have been exhilarating on another day,when he could see, but this time he almost lost it. He landed with a jarring impact and the sled bucked under him, swaying. He fought it, got it straight. He was fifty yards behind her. He rolled the accelerator grip forward, picking up speed, rattling over broken snow, the tops of small bushes, invisible bumps . . . his teeth chattered with the rough ride.
    A snowplow had been down the highway earlier in the evening, and the irregular waves of plowed snow flashed by on his right. He moved further left, away from the plowed stuff: it’d be hard and irregular, it’d throw him for sure. Weather’s taillights were right there. He inched closer. He was moving so fast that he would not be able to brake inside his headlight’s reach: if there was a tree down across the ditch, he’d hit it.
    He’d just thought of that when he saw the hump coming; he knew what it was as soon as he picked it up, a bale of hay pegged to the bottom of the ditch to slow spring erosion. The deep snow made it into a perfect snowmobile jump, but he didn’t want to jump. But