On Thin Ice. Linda Hall

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СКАЧАТЬ he said uncertainly. “Pretty cold weather. You just out for a walk on the lake?”

      He didn’t know who she was. This was the sort of thing you would say to a stranger. She knew she had changed. In twenty years she had lost weight. “Pleasingly plump” was how her grandmother had described her back then. She had also exchanged the big, round, plastic glasses she wore for violet-tinted contact lenses. Plus she had cut her long “dirty-blond hair”—also a label from her grandmother—and now it was auburn in color and cheek length.

      An attempt to remake herself? Possibly.

      Flecks of snow landed on the shoulders of his bulky blue jacket. Up around his collar peeked a layer of red fleece. She fought the urge to reach up and straighten his collar.

      “Hello.” She looked directly into his eyes. Her voice was hoarse, a whisper. She needed to remember why she was here. This wasn’t about them. This was about her friends. People had died. She could be next. So could he, for that matter. Unless he was the one responsible for the murders?

      He peered at her, took off his glasses, folded them and put them in his pocket. He ran his hand over his face and squinted at her, then turned away. Then back at her. “Sorry,” he said. “I just…You…For a moment…you looked like someone I used to know.”

      “I am someone you used to know.”

      She could see recognition dawn slowly. His eyes went wide and he took a step back, staring, not letting his eyes leave her. “Meggie?”

      She nodded, winced slightly at his old pet name for her.

      He came close to her, and she felt all the power of him again, a strength that had kept her rapt and spellbound twenty years before. Control. She needed to remain in control. It was twenty years later and she wouldn’t be hurt again.

      She said, “I came to see you. I need to talk with you.”

      “Meggie. You look so…”

      “Different? I am different, Alec.” She took a breath before she could continue. “I drove up yesterday. I got here last night. Someone at the sheriff’s office told me it was your day off.”

      “You came…”

      She nodded.

      “After all this time…”

      “Yes.”

      “How did you know where to find me?”

      “A woman in your office said you like to ice fish on your day off. She told me where.”

      He ran a hand across his chin, still looking at her. “No, I mean Whisper Lake Crossing. How did you know I was here?”

      “I looked you up online.” Megan, who worked as a self-employed Web designer, had kept track of Alec over the years. She knew that he’d been the sheriff here for six years. She knew that he’d never married.

      She continued, “I needed to come and see you because of Sophia Wilcox and Jennifer Moore. Do you remember them? From the wedding party?” She clamped her mouth shut. Had she really said the words wedding party? She had vowed she would not bring that up.

      She shifted her position in the snow. Her toes were beginning to feel cold through her thin leather boots. “They died in separate car accidents last month. First, Sophia in California. Her brakes failed and she went down over a cliff into the Pacific Ocean. Then exactly a week later Jennifer died in Augusta. Here in Maine. Her brakes failed in precisely the same manner as Sophia’s brakes and she went off an embankment to her death. I don’t believe they were accidents….” She stopped, aware that she was now giving voice to her fears.

      “Meggie.” His voice seemed to have broken, or maybe it was the sudden gust of wind that had carried it from her. Seeing him in person was reawakening things in herself which had lain dormant for twenty years—things she had not allowed herself to feel. Why had she thought coming here would be a good idea? What could he do?

      “I know all about those so-called accidents,” he said. “You’re right. I’ve been wondering about that very thing.”

      “I think I’m next,” she said.

      “You might be.”

      This startled her. She drew a breath and looked up at him. What did he know?

      What happened next was so sudden it barely had time to register. His head jerked up. His eyebrows scrunched together as he looked at something beyond and behind her. Suddenly he reached forward, grabbed her shoulders with one arm and, with the other, he held her around the waist, brought her to him and dropped them both to the cold, snow-covered surface of the lake.

      “Stay down,” he said into her ear.

      “Wha…?” she managed.

      “Someone. With a gun. On the shore,” he breathed. His mouth was close to her ear. He held her firmly.

      It was then that she heard the sound of shots.

      Minutes passed. Alec flattened himself against her and held his arm across her back. She felt the keen alertness in him. It was unbearable being this close to him.

      More shots. Someone was after her! Someone knew she had come here! Long minutes passed, until finally, he crouched up beside her, his gun in his hand. “Stay down!” he hissed.

      “Okay,” she whispered. He didn’t have to worry. She had no intention of getting up.

      In the next minutes she felt or heard something that was like a thunder underneath them. In one horrific instant she thought the lake was cracking. She had visions of them escaping the shooter only to be plunged into the icy depths of Whisper Lake.

      “The ice,” she said. “It’s breaking up!”

      Alec brought his face close to hers and put a finger to her lips. “Shh. The ice is fine,” he said. “It’s just settling. It does that. It means nothing.”

      After several minutes of quiet, he got up but kept low. When she attempted to do the same, he cautioned her with his hand to stay down. She placed her gloved palms together and lay her face against the ice and watched him crouch toward the shore.

      The cold and wet ice was seeping up her pant legs and inside her jacket and soon she was shivering, whether from cold or fear she didn’t know. Probably fear. Someone had killed her friends and that same someone had followed her here! And she had no idea why.

      It all had something to do with the card. As soon as she was handed that card when she had walked into the coffee shop this morning, she should have turned around and driven right back to her Baltimore home.

      The shooting seemed to have stopped. She looked up. Alec was scanning the shoreline, frowning. Megan rose to her knees. “Are you sure you saw someone?” she asked. “Maybe it was a car backfiring,” she said.

      He shook his head. “I saw someone. With a gun.”

      She shuddered.

      His gaze seemed to settle on her for a long time. He pulled off his toque and gave СКАЧАТЬ