Winter Prey

she sat next to him on the couch, instead of in the chair, and put a hand behind his head, on his opposite shoulder.
    “You didn’t drink hardly any of the wine. I drank two-thirds of the bottle, and now I’m finishing the cognac.”
    “Fuck the cognac,” Lucas said. “Wanna neck?”
    “That’s not very romantic,” she said severely.
    “I know, but I’m nervous.”
    “I still have a right to some romance,” she said. “But yes, necking would be appropriate, I think.”
    A while later she said, “I’m not going to be coy about this; I go for the aging jock-cop image.”
    “Aging?”
    “You’ve got more gray than I do—that’s aging,” she said.
    “Mmmm.”
    “But I’m not going to sleep with you yet,” she said. “I’m gonna make you sweat for a while.”
    “Whatever’s right.”
    After a while she asked, “So how do you feel about kids?”
    “We gotta talk,” he said.

    The guest room was cool because of the northern exposure, and Lucas put on pajamas before he crawled into the bed. He lay awake for a few minutes, wondering if he should try her room, but he sensed that he should not. They’d ended the evening simply talking. When she left for her bedroom, she’d kissed him—he was sitting down—on the lips, and then the forehead, tousled his hair, and disappeared into the back of the house.
    “See you in the morning,” she’d said.
    He was surprised when, almost asleep, he heard her voice beside the bed: “Lucas.” Her hand touched his shoulder and she whispered, “There’s someone outside.”
    “What?” He was instantly awake. She’d left a hallway light on in case he had to get up in the night to use the bathroom or get a drink of water, and he could see her squatting beside the bed. She was carrying the .22. He pushed back the blankets and swung his feet to the floor. The .45 was sitting on the nightstand and he picked it up. “How do you know?”
    “I couldn’t sleep right away.”
    “Neither could I.”
    “I’ve got a bath off my bedroom and I went for a glass of water. I saw a snowmobile headlight angling in toward the house from out on the lake. There’s no trail that comes in like that. So I watched and the headlight went out—but I could see him in the moon, still coming. The neighbors have a roll-out dock and it’s on their lawn. He stopped behind it, I think. They don’t have a snowmobile. There’s a windbreak down there, those pines. I didn’t see him again.”
    She was calm, reporting almost matter-of-factly.
    “How long ago?”
    “Two or three minutes. I kept watching, thinking I was crazy. Then I heard something on the siding, scratching-like.”
    “Sounds like trouble,” Lucas said. He jacked a shell into the .45.
    “What’ll we do?” Weather asked.
    “Call in. Get some guys down here, on the lake and on the road. We don’t want to scare him off before we can get things rolling.”
    “There’s a phone in my bedroom—c’mon,” she said. She padded down the hall, Lucas following. “What else?”
    “He’s got to find a place to get in, and that’s gotta make some noise. I want you down by the kitchen, just listening. Stay behind the counter, on the floor. I’ll be in the living room, by the couch. If you hear him, just sneak back and get me. Let’s call.”
    They were at her room and she picked up the phone. “Uh-oh,” she said, looking at him. “It’s dead. That’s never happened . . .”
    “He took the wires out. Goddammit, he’s here,” Lucas said. “Get on the kitchen floor. I . . .”
    “What?”
    “I’ve got a handset in the truck.” He looked at the garage door; it’d take him ten seconds.
    A loud knocking from the front room turned him around.
    “What?” whispered Weather. “That’s the doors to the deck.”
    “Stay back.” Lucas slipped down the hall, stopped at a corner, peeked around it, saw nothing. They’d left the curtains open so they could see the moon, but there was no visible movement on the deck outside the house, no face pressed against the glass. Nothing but a dark rectangle. The knocking started again, not as though someone were trying to force the door, but as if they were trying to wake up Weather.
    “Hey . . .” A man’s voice, muffled by the tri-pane glass.
    “What?” Weather had stood up, and was walking through from the kitchen toward the living room.
    “Get the fuck down,” Lucas whispered urgently, waving the pistol at her. “Get down.”
    She hesitated, still