Winter Study

He had meant A

He meant to trample her to death.

That was so rude. It had crossed A

The fit of violence over, he stood in the ruin of the tarpaulin and looked around him, eyes narrowed against the snow, breath coming in wet gasps. He was so close, A

Tilting his huge head back, Bob sniffed the air. Less than three yards separating them, A

Bob’s i

Suddenly A

Bob didn’t merely want her dead. He wanted her, like Katherine and Cynthia and Robin, disgraced, ruined, savaged. He wanted them shamed, their memory shamed and the memory of their deaths in those still living to crush out the life and sow their souls with salt that nothing green could ever grow there again.

Bob needed to a

Burning holes in his too-fleshy face, his eyes sca

A

Pivoting, he searched the circumference of their shared landscape. Blue tarp twisted beneath his heels and rucked up in a ridge around his boots. The big gloved hands opened and closed at his sides. The eyes passed A

For the third round, he dropped his gaze to the ground. When he faced A

His chin pulled back. The slow, tucked-in smile started, then metastasized.

“Gotcha,” he said.

35

“Hi, Bob,” A

Bob’s smile pulled another half inch back toward his spine, his eyes momentarily invisible behind the slabs of cheek. Rictus apparently set in; the smile stayed exactly the same as the eyes came back out a fraction, and A

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you if you make a face, it will freeze like that?” A

“Did your mother ever tell you you’re a fucking cunt?” he asked with the same razor-edged merriment he’d used with Katherine.

He had to be in pain. His brain had to be crashing from the cat tranquilizer. The parts of him that weren’t past feeling the cold must ache with it. Still, it was clear he was begi

Tucking her chin against her chest so the blanket wouldn’t fall, A

Bob seemed to suck her words through the screen of spruce needles and into his nose. Against the gray static of snow and clouds, his head was enormous, and A

“What did Katherine say?” A

“You think if you keep me talking long enough, somebody will come and rescue you?” Bob put his hands on his knees and bent forward, the better to peer into her hiding place. “They won’t. The girl never gets rescued. Nobody fucking cares about you – any of you.”

“That has crossed my mind a time or two,” A

“Aaaaw,” Bob crooned. “You’re all shy and virginal now, got your blankie covering your face? Go

“Yes,” A

“She said, ‘A

“It seems we have something in common after all,” A

“What did she say after the cunt proclamation?” A searing flare of agony fired her shoulder as she moved her damaged arm. Pride touched through the pain when she did not let her hurts show, not in her voice, not in any untoward disturbance of the blanket covering her from head to toe. The story of the Spartan boy, the stolen fox held tight to his middle, showing such stoicism the guard questioning him never suspected until the fox had eaten so far into the boy’s i