Winter Prey

standing, and Lucas scuttled across the room, caught her wrist in his left hand, pulled her down and toward a wall.
    “Somebody needs help,” she said.
    “Bullshit: remember the phone,” Lucas said. They both edged forward toward a corner.
    Another call, as if from a distance. “Hey in there. Hey, we got a wreck, we got a wreck,” and there were three more knocks. Lucas let go of Weather’s wrist and did a quick peek around the corner.
    “It can’t be him—that’s somebody looking for me,” Weather said. She started past him, her white nightgown ghostly in the dim reflected light from the hall.
    “Jesus,” said Lucas. He was sitting on the floor at the corner and reached up to catch her arm, but she stepped into the sightline from the deck, eight feet from the glass.
    The window exploded, showering the room with glass, and a finger of fire poked through at Weather. Lucas had already pulled her back and she came off her feet, sprawling, okay, and Lucas yelled, “Shotgun, shotgun . . .” and fired three quick shots through the door, pop-pop-pop and pulled back.
    The shotgun roared again, sending more glass flying across the room, pellets ripping through the end of the leather couch, burying themselves in the far wall. Lucas did a quick peek, then another, fired a fourth shot.
    Weather, on her hands and knees, lunged toward the kitchen, came up with the .22 rifle she’d left there, and started back.
    “Fucker!” she screamed.
    “Stay down, that’s a twelve gauge,” Lucas shouted. Another shotgun blast, then another, a long five seconds apart, the muzzle flash from the first lighting up the front of the room. The flash from the second seemed fainter, the pellets ricocheting around the stone fireplace.
    Five seconds passed without another shot. “He’s running,” Lucas said. “I think he’s running.”
    He got to his feet and dashed into Weather’s bedroom, looked out on the lawn. He could see the man there, a hundred feet away, twenty feet from the shelter of the treeline, fifteen feet. “Goddammit.” He stepped back and fired two quick shots through the window glass, shatteringit, then one more at the fleeing figure, a hopeless shot.
    The man disappeared into the trees. Lucas fired a final shot at the last spot he’d seen him, and the magazine was empty.
    “Get him? Get him?” Weather was there with the rifle. He snatched it from her and ran down the hall to the living room, out through the deck and into the snow. He floundered across the yard, through snow thigh deep, following the tracks, through the treeline . . . and saw the red taillight of a snowmobile scudding across the lake, three or four hundred yards away. The rifle was useless at that range.
    He was freezing. The cold caught at him, twisted him. He turned and began to run back toward the house, but the cold battered at him and he slowed, plodding in his bare feet, his pajamas hanging from him.
    “Jesus, Lucas, Lucas . . .” Weather caught him under the arms, hauled him into the house. He was shaking uncontrollably.
    “Handset in my truck. Get it,” he grunted.
    “You get in the goddamn shower—just get in it.”
    She turned and ran toward the garage, flipping on lights as she went. Lucas peeled off his sodden pajama top, so tired he could barely move, staggered back toward the bathroom. The temperature inside the house was plunging as the night air roared through the shattered windows, but the bathroom was still warm.
    He got in the shower, turned on the hot water, let it run down his back, plastering his pajama pants to his legs. He was holding on to the shower head when Weather came back with the handset.
    “Dispatch.”
    “This is Davenport down at Weather Karkinnen’s place. We were just hit by a guy with a shotgun. Nobody hurt, but the house is a mess. The guy is headed west across Lincoln Lake on a snowmobile. He’s about two minutes gone, maybe three.”

    “Weather, that’s the damnedest, stupidist thing . . .” Carr started, but Weather shook her head and looked at the blown-out window. “I won’t leave,” she said. “Not when it’s like this. I’ll figure out something.”
    Lucas was wrapped in a snowmobile suit. Carr shook his head and said, “All right, I’ll get somebody from Hardware Hank out here.”
    The gunman had come in on snowshoes, as the LaCourt killer had. By the time an alert had been issued, he could have been any one of dozens of snowmobilers still out on the trails