Blood Trade: A Sean Coleman Thriller (34 page)

Though the ridge above gave him some marginal cover from the wind, his body felt
frozen. He could barely feel his fingers and his toes were getting there as well.
The hair in his nose had turned to ice and his face felt tingly. He struggled to
breathe.

The light above the ridge grew brighter as the driver of the snowmobile positioned
the vehicle so that the headlight pointed in the direction where Sean had leapt from
the road. Due to the steepness of the slope, Sean was still hidden in the dark. Only
the tops of the tree he clung to were illuminated. He kept still, poking his head
just slightly above the drift.

A man’s shadow crossed in front of the beam of light before his silhouette came into
view. He was bundled up tight, wearing a fat winter coat with a hood pulled firmly
over his head. He appeared to wear ski goggles. The fur-trim of his hood was so dense
that he
looked like a lion whose mane was fluttering wildly in the wind, a predator
stalking its prey.

He stared out over the ridge for a moment before disappearing and quickly returning
with a flashlight. Sean ducked down as its beam methodically traced the area. His
teeth began to chatter and he wrapped his arms around his chest to try and keep the
rest of his body from shaking.

The beam swept over Sean’s head a few times, never staying in one spot long enough
to make him suspect he’d been spotted. When the small red dot of a laser sight accompanied
the beam in its search, he held his breath.

“You must be freezing down there, mate!” the man’s voice called out in the thick
accent Sean recognized from earlier on the phone. It was barely audible above the
weather, but Sean managed to make out what he was saying. “Come on up here and we’ll
sort it all out back inside! I’ll throw a billy on the stove!”

Sean held still. His eyes rolled in his head. He knew there was zero chance that
Dr. Phil was going to let him live. If he popped his head up, it would be shot off
in half a second.

“You’ll die out here, you bloody bastard!” the doctor screamed, his voice raising
a couple of octaves. “Don’t be stupid!”

Sean knew the doctor could very well be right. If he didn’t die from being severely
underdressed in sub-zero temperatures, covered only in a sweatshirt and jeans, he’d
certainly acquire frostbite—the kind people didn’t recover from without losing parts
of their limbs.

The doctor was counting on desperation prompting a desperate move, but Sean knew
that a slim chance of survival was better than no chance. The one thing he had going
for him was that he was sure the doctor wasn’t going to try and come down the hill.
The drop-off from the road and the slope below it were terrain that couldn’t be negotiated
well with a gun in one hand and a flashlight in the other, especially with the weather.
For now, the two were stuck in a stalemate.

Sean gazed hypnotically at the partially lit landscape below him, blowing warm breath
into his cupped hands. He made sure to completely trap it with his fingers tight
together, aware that the doctor might otherwise see a virtual smoke signal rising
from his hiding spot.

Heavy, crowded flakes whipped by almost horizontally between trees and the large,
protruding rocks that rested under the frosty white blanket. His mind wandered to
the snowstorms that he and his sister used to watch in wonderment as kids from his
bedroom window. It was back before his father had left. Seemingly happier times.
Simpler times for sure. Snowfall like that would mean a day off from school. Diana
and he would spend it building forts in the snow and even the occasional snowman,
though Sean always thought they were corny.

Perhaps it was those memories that urged him to believe just for a moment that if
he could just last until the morning, everything would somehow be all right. His
adult sensibilities quickly kicked in, however, and chased youthful naivety off into
the night.

The doctor continued to call for Sean to show himself, shouting above the unrelenting
wind. Sean could barely make out what he was saying at times. The doctor’s rants
altered between impassioned pleas and angry tirades as his frustration grew. Sean
grew confident in his belief that his pursuer was too afraid to come down the hill
after him.

A quick flash of light from further down the slope suddenly triggered Sean’s attention.
It appeared between two large trees that jetted out from the hillside. Before Sean
could make out what it was, it disappeared. It did so in accordance with a change
in direction of the doctor’s flashlight, suggesting it was a reflection.

He kept his eyes trained in the direction of the now hidden object and he waited
for the flashlight to expose its outline again. When it did, Sean saw what looked
like a thin, horizontal metal rod. It was pretty far down the hill, which made it
look small, but he was certain
that it wasn’t merely part of a fence. It belonged
to something larger. A building perhaps. The edge of a rooftop.

He hoped it wasn’t a mirage brought on by wishful thinking, like an imaginary oasis
in the middle of a desert as portrayed in cartoons. The doctor either wasn’t interested
in it or couldn’t see it through the blowing snow. He kept reflexively pulling his
beam away before Sean could get a good look at it. If it was a building, maybe it
was a home. Maybe someone lived there—someone with a phone. Maybe even with a gun.

Sean’s instincts told him not to stray far from the road, even with what was happening.
If it wasn’t a building below, what would he do then? The road was the only other
sign of civilization he had seen since leaving the restaurant. He had no way of knowing
how remote of an area he was in, so if he lost track of the road or couldn’t get
back to it due to the incline of the hill, he might never find his way out of the
area alive. He also thought about the possibility of a snowplow or ranger driving
by. He wondered if he could somehow get a driver’s attention, even with Dr. Phil
hovering above like a vulture.

“Come on, Sean!” the doctor yelled in anger. “Get your ass up here! You’ll die if
you don’t!”

Leaving his hiding spot was a risk, but it was a risk Sean decided he had to take.
He waited until the flashlight beam and its laser shadow swung away from his position
before making his move. He lunged forward, crawling quickly on his hands and knees
through the snow. Lumbering downward at what felt like a sixty-degree grade, his
hands soon collapsed in front of him, their numbness making them unwilling partners
in his escape. He switched to his elbows.

He scurried around trees and over snow mounds until the hill grew too steep to continue
on headfirst. He swung his legs in front of him and began sliding down on his butt.

The glow of the flashlight suddenly whipped onto Sean. When he saw his own shadow
cast along a thick tree a few yards in front of him, he knew the doctor would open
fire. He snarled and lunged
forward, leaping through the air as the shots rang out.
They sounded like they came from a cap gun under the brutal wind that pressed against
Sean as he dropped back to earth.

When he landed, his momentum put him on spontaneous footing. He did his best to maintain
his balance, ducking and weaving around tree after tree to put as many obstacles
as possible between him and the doctor.

Shots continued to fire.

Sean heard a couple of bullets split through wood. One sounded like it ricocheted
off a rock.

When one of his feet dropped into a patch of unevenly deep snow, he lost control
and he went down hard. He tumbled forward, crashing through limbs and bouncing off
trunks and rocks. He managed to get an arm up in front of his face to protect it,
sparing him some stiff shots that otherwise would have broken his nose or done worse.

He plunged down the slope for what seemed like an eternity until he finally came
to a rest on his back along an unexpectedly flat patch of land. He held still for
a moment, realizing that he was still alive and in one piece. He lifted his head
and carefully looked over his shoulder, scouting for the doctor’s position. The doctor
still hadn’t left the ridge. The distant glare of his flashlight swiveled back and
forth erratically. He had lost track of his prey.

Sean slowly started to climb to his feet, but a sharp pain jolted up from his side.
He winced as he raised his shirt and wiped his sleeve along the tender area to check
for blood. It was too dark to tell for sure, but he didn’t see any. He also felt
no bulge. It didn’t look as though he’d been shot, but he wondered if he’d suffered
a cracked rib from the fall.

Other aches and pains could be felt throughout his body. They would slow him down,
but he could walk, and that’s all that seemed to matter now. With his face twisted
in discomfort, he surveyed the area and spotted the building he had seen from the
hill. It stood just
about twenty yards away. It wasn’t someone’s home. Far from it.
It looked to be a small storage shed with thin, weathered walls made of wood and
an arched tin roof. A blanket of snow covered the wall that faced the wind. Behind
the shed was an open area, perhaps a small meadow for grazing livestock or a patch
of land for farming.

He heard a faint buzzing sound in the distance, and when he looked back up at the
ridge, the beam from the flashlight was gone. He traced the headlight from the snowmobile
for a second as it glided along the ridge, back in the direction from which it had
come. It soon disappeared from view. The doctor had left, but Sean doubted he had
given up the hunt.

He tugged at his pants, circled around to the opposite side of the shed, and found
its door. A faint bulb from a light mounted at its side gave Sean hope that the shelter
was equipped with electricity. Unfortunately, a closer look revealed that it was
nothing more than a solar-powered landscape light, the kind people bought for a couple
of bucks at a hardware store to use as decor in their yards along a pathway or garden.
It served as a makeshift porch light, barely bright enough to reveal a padlocked
metal door latch at its edge.

A hard boot from Sean made short work of the lock, splintering the frame as the door
flung open. He trudged onto plank flooring inside and quickly ran his arm along the
wall beside him. His elbow bumped up against some hidden shelving and he knocked
small items to the floor as he searched for a light switch. He found none. He stepped
back outside just long enough to yank the light from the wall. It came off easy.
Pinning it between the palms of his hands because his frozen fingers were having
trouble gripping it, he looked around inside.

Being out of the wind let him catch his breath and wipe the tears from his eyes.
He was still freezing and shaking uncontrollably, but the elimination of the wind
helped him think straight. The light was so dim that he couldn’t make out which items
were what in the shed until he was just a few inches from them. He found some grease
guns and aerosol cans along the shelves, accompanied by some old rolls of duct tape,
twine, and a box of cloth rags. The layer of dust that covered everything suggested
that it had been a long time since anyone else had been inside.

He crossed over to the other end of the shed, his shins and knees knocking up against
solid metal items that felt like equipment. When he felt the corner of a table press
into his side, he twisted his torso in what narrow space he had and found a workbench.
There wasn’t much across the top of it. Some small stain cans, a metal coffee can
filled with nuts and bolts, and an anchored vice. On the pegboard mounted above it,
he found a number of dangling hand tools including a small hammer, and a few wrenches
and screwdrivers. There were also a few bungee cords.

He’d hoped to spot a hatchet, a knife, or something else that he could use as an
effective weapon if needed, but an oversized, open-ended wrench was the best available.
He managed to lift it from its hook and slide it under the waistline of his pants.
It dropped down into one of his pant legs.

“Come on,” he grunted, angry that his loose-fitting pants wouldn’t let him store
the weapon. He lifted his leg and let the wrench spill out to the floor.

There were some smaller plastic items arranged along the pegboard. A few paint brushes,
some zip-ties, and an item that widened Sean’s eyes the moment he realized what it
was.

He initially thought it was just another screwdriver, but it was a utility lighter.
Mostly made of plastic but with a metal nose, they were built to ignite a small flame
at the pull of a trigger. It was the kind people typically used to light outdoor
grills, but Sean planned on using it to bring his shivering body some warmth.

He dumped the coffee can upside-down and let all of the nuts and bolts inside fall
to the top of the workbench in a loud heap. He then placed the empty can on the floor
and filled it with some wadded rags he grabbed off of one of the shelves. He sorted
through the
collection of aerosol cans until he found some WD-40. He dropped to his
knees and depressed the nozzle with the palm of his hand, thoroughly dousing the
rags.

Getting the lighter to work was the toughest part. There was barely enough room to
squeeze one of his deadened fingers through the trigger. After he finally got it
hooked, he cursed as he worked on the complicated safety switch on top. Matching
the pulling of the two levers was a challenging task in eighty-degree weather; doing
so with numb fingers was nearly impossible. He eventually got his flame and wasted
no time holding it to the rags.

The rags lit up like an inferno, nearly knocking him backwards. He leaned forward
and held his open hands over the blaze. The fire brightened the inside of the room,
its flames casting dancing shadows along the walls. He couldn’t feel its warmth at
first, but his hands soon sensed the burn of being thawed out. He held them in front
of him for a moment, inspecting, and found no blackness. He breathed a sigh of relief.