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A
“I’d seen the look before. On the face of my wife before she died. The wolves saved Katherine the trouble of killing herself.”
“Or you did.”
“I had nothing to do with her death. Not one damn thing. I don’t kill women.”
“How about wolves?”
“The giant bite marks?” He smiled. “People will believe what they want to believe. I just helped it along.”
“So you darted the wolf and stabbed it to death,” A
“An animal. The pound puts thousands to death every year. Fluffy and Bootsie and Socks. Don’t get onto me about an animal.”
Adam straddled Bob, took hold of his wrists and pulled him to a sitting position.
“You drugged me,” Bob said without bitterness, a sense of wonder in his voice.
“How do you like it?” Adam asked, standing over him, hands still clamped around the bigger man’s wrists.
“I don’t…” Bob rolled his head over and squinted to bring A
“I’m not going to kill you,” A
Bob leered. Snow was catching on his wiry hair and the fat of his cheeks where they pushed out beneath his eyes. “Adam said you were trying to frame me, Miss Ranger. Too bad you’re a fool.” His head rolled till Adam came into his line of vision. He had to let it flop back on his neck to look up at him. “Wearing a wire,” he said conspiratorially.
“How much did you give him?” A
“Enough,” Adam said.
“You told him I was going to kill him or set him up?”
“Divide and conquer,” Adam said. “Upsy-daisy, Bob.” Using himself as a lever, he rocked back and pulled Bob to his feet. They were no more than two yards from the edge of the basalt shelf, yet the drop was practically invisible, the white of the snow melding seamlessly with the white of sky and ice. A
“Don’t,” A
“Bob, see there?” Adam pointed into the void where the white on white of weather created a blank canvas for the ketamine to paint on.
“Robin wants to meet you there.”
“Don’t,” A
Adam spun around. The dead look was gone from his face replaced by the fury she’d felt the night she’d seen the photograph of him and his dead wife. “Get the fuck out of here,” he hissed, a whisper metastasized into a shout.
“Bob, do it, go. A
In the eternal second of the mind, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, huge and shapeless in ill-fitting clothes, ru
Her body reacted from years of training. She threw herself forward in a flying tackle aimed at the backs of Bob Menechi
“It’s a cliff, it’s a fucking cliff, I was going off a cliff,” Bob began yelling. Mad with the sudden realization of physical danger, he scrabbled backward. His knee ground over A
“You’re welcome, God dammit,” she shouted as she tried to roll out of his thrashing way. On hands and knees, Bob scuttled through the deep snow, moaning and bellowing like a mad boar. He didn’t stop till he’d reached the trees. There he pulled himself upright, using the bole of a tree, and screamed: “He tried to kill me. He tried to kill me.” The litany didn’t stop there, but A
Adam was still standing near the cliff’s edge, his feet inches from where the rock fell away.
“Why did you do that?” he asked softly.
“I don’t know,” A
“You know what he is?”
“Some of it. I think he drugged Robin. I think he did the same to Katherine, then raped her and took pictures to blackmail her into silence. I’m guessing he did something like that to your wife.”
“Cynthia,” Adam said.
“Cynthia,” A
“She was like Robin. Not raised like her or athletic like her, but with that i
“Cynthia had never been out of school – went straight from kindergarten through to her Ph.D. program. Her dad raised her by himself; only kid. Her mother died of appendicitis when she was barely walking.”
A
His attention returned from the trees where Bob had run. “Cynthia thought men were nice,” he said. “She thought they took care of women and children, saved kittens from trees and helped old ladies carry groceries to the car.” A hint of warmth touched his voice and it no longer sounded of frozen harp strings.
“I hadn’t thought of that in a while,” he said to A
“Too busy hating?” she hazarded.
“It was something to do,” he said, and most of the chill was back in the strings.
“Bob was her teacher?” A
“‘Outdoors Education.’ Two semesters.”
A
“Bob drugged her. He did it more than once. She didn’t tell me till she got pregnant. She was ashamed. She was afraid she’d lose me, that either I’d never feel the same way about her or that I’d go berserk and tear his head off and spend the rest of our lives in jail. She couldn’t tell anyone else. There were the pictures, and she knew what they’d do to her dad and me. Then she found out she was going to have a baby. I’d been on a six-week job in Manitoba when the baby was conceived. So she told me. Three days later, she got into the bath and cut her wrists.