Excerpt From A Killing Frost
By Myrna Milani
(Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3)
The blood pouring from Will Ravencroft's gaping wounds slowly congealed in the thick crust of brittle lichen beneath him. Insects already had picked up the scent. It wouldn't be long before the other predators did, too.
Less than ten feet away, Tosamovich finished working on the detonator, manipulating its intricate inner workings with instruments so small and delicate, they looked like toys in his massive hands. With a grunt of satisfaction, he completed the arduous task, removed his grotesquely thick spectacles, then crawled into his sleeping bag for a few hours of rest before project Deathwatch would begin in earnest. He rolled on to his side with his back toward Ravencroft, his hand familiarly wrapped around the 9mm Beretta as if it grew there, the heavy oak club with its deadly spiked cap just out of reach. Soon his enormous body heaved rhythmically and he began to snore, a harsh, more animal that human sound.
Perfect.
Ravencroft's eyes swept the ground around him, seeking anything he could use as a weapon. Only a single oak twig, about eight inches long and a quarter inch in diameter, disrupted the uniform mat of woodland detritus that covered the ground between the rock that sheltered him and his quarry. He wouldn't have noticed it except there was nothing else to see.
Slowly he inched toward the twig, gritting his teeth to keep from screaming as the weight of his body sheered off razor sharp slabs of lichen that ground into his battered flesh and set the blood flowing again. Almost blinded by pain, he grabbed the twig and stripped off its few leaves and sharpened one end into a crude point with his teeth, all the while staring at Tosamovich lying in the dimming light, willing him not to awaken.
He would only have one chance.
And it wouldn't be a good one.
Tosamovich's myopic eyes flew open the instant Ravencroft rammed the sharpened stick deep into the bomber's ear canal and they remained open while Ravencroft repeatedly slammed the terrorist's impaled skull into the ground, one time for each time the demented genius had hit him with that club.
Some time later Ravencroft heard it, a sound so familiar and yet so out of place. When his eyes focused through the pain he saw it. A greenbottle fly, Lucila caesar, circled then alit and walked lightly over the velvety surface of Tosamovich's cornea to drank from the pool of blood that oozed from the corner of his eye.
The terrorist didn't blink.
This part, at least, was over.
* * *
It was over for me, too. I tucked Chandler McCarthy's latest book, Massacre in Monterey, back in my purse and stared out the plane window. If my former partner had Will Ravencroft ramming chewed sticks in people's ears by page five, I could imagine what his hero would be doing by page ten. Considering Tosamovich intended to blow up a plane filled with innocents such as myself, I decided to nap rather than read.
Of course, I dreamed. Who wouldn't after reading something like that? However, rather than dreaming about either Ravencroft or his creator, I dreamed that God was trying to kill me and one of my dogs, a corgi named Elizabeth. I screamed and then fell down a very long way, until I finally hit.
And then I bounced which, naturally, woke me up.
"Rough landing wasn't it?" asked my seatmate as the crowded plane taxied toward the LaGuardia terminals.
"Not as rough as dreaming God just tried to kill me and my dog," I automatically replied, struggling to rid myself of the unnerving dream and wake up simultaneously. I ran a hand through my gray-tinged curls and stretched my 5'4" frame in the cramped space as best I could.
"You dream about God?" the woman asked.
"Not usually." I stifled a yawn then babbled on while I searched for my shoes. "Although a week ago I did dream He planned to reincarnate me as a snappy poodle with chronic ear problems if I didn't get my life together."
A strangled gasp caused me to look at my companion for the first time since the plane left Denver.
"Oh, I didn't mean to offend you," I apologized to the older woman nervously fingering the large cross upheld by her ample bosom. "I work with a lot of problem animals and sometimes it spills over into my dreams."
Unfortunately I waved my newly discovered shoe when I offered what I considered that logical explanation of my work as a veterinary behaviorist, a gesture that caused her to leap up in alarm. After flinging a packet of religious pamphlets in my direction, she forced her way into the mob vacating the crowded plane and disappeared.
"Welcome to New York," I muttered to another passenger who just barely missed bashing me on the head with his laptop.
* * *
Weirdness begets weirdness. As I made my way toward the Upper Connecticut Valley Airlines hovel tucked in a remote nook of the Delta terminal, thoughts of former partner, writer/teacher/consultant/maybe sometimes cop/spook Chandler McCarthy cut into those of God trying to off me and my dog.
At the time I attributed the link between McCarthy and a vengeful God to exhaustion after giving a seminar on human-animal relationships to a group of veterinary colleagues in Denver, followed by a rough, crowded flight back to the East Coast and reading those few pages of his latest book. Being a quiet, peace-loving person, I tried to discount the uneasy feeling that he wound up in my head because the idea of dead bodies automatically reminded me of him.
Even though that explanation made extremely good sense.
However, I'd spent the last three months trying to forget the meticulous Chandler McCarthy and had no intention of letting a few dead bodies, even my own and my dog's, throw me off track now. True, I did purchase his book in the airport in Denver, but only because I needed something to read on the plane.
As I made my way through the airport, I cleared my mind of all but the most pastoral thoughts, a technique that sustained me until I stood at the Upper Connecticut Valley Airlines ticket counter a short while later. Once there even the power of the most positive thinking couldn't overshadow glaring reality: That damn plane wasn't going to fly. I knew it the instant the ticket agent refused to establish eye contact when he handed me my boarding pass.
If I'd missed that telltale sign, even a gerbil couldn't miss the fact that only two other people—a man and a woman—sat in the waiting area. Even if both intended to take my flight, a likely probability because there were no other scheduled flights at that time, it took no Wall Street wizard to realize it would cost more to fly the plane than the already struggling airline could afford.
"Will passenger Jeffrey Stone please come to the Upper Connecticut Valley Airlines ticket counter." The bored voice that suddenly blared through the ceiling speaker directly above me caused me to jump.
The man sitting in the otherwise unoccupied last row rose slightly then abruptly settled back into his seat, an aborted conditioned response if I ever saw one. When the message filled the room again, he appeared totally oblivious to it. I saw a similar phenomenon in problem dogs during retraining. They reached a point where they knew the right response, but it wasn't a habit yet and they still needed to consciously override the old behavior with the new. However, the fact that Jeffrey Stone chose not to acknowledge his page was his problem, not mine.
Still radiating the calm aura of an experienced, about-to-be-abused traveler, I sat down three seats away from the other woman passenger and removed Massacre in Monterey from my bag. However, my seatmate's constant movements made it impossible to concentrate on McCarthy's meticulous description of what a submachine gun modeled after a Heckler & Koch Model HK54 could do to a human body when fired a close range. Not that I really wanted to know.
First one, then the other expensive black leather boot tapped the dull gray carpeting next to me. Knees flexed and straightened repeatedly without disturbing the fine crease of the tan slacks. Slender fingers tugged at the pleats of an impeccably tailored white silk blouse and shot the cuffs of an equally elegant tan blazer. Even when the graceful hands appeared to lay quietly at rest on the rectangular handbag in her lap, the woman's right thumb swept the same quadrant of expensive black leather again and again.
Intrigued, I stole a look at her face and saw a mask so devoid of animation it looked uninhabited. She looked like a doll, an exquisite electronic doll whose flawed circuitry only permitted her to twitch, tug, and tap incessantly from the neck down.
I found this analogy so disconcerting, I swiveled my head quickly in the opposite direction—just in time to catch the waiting area's other occupant also staring at the woman. His presence startled me because I knew that he'd been sitting in a remote corner of the last row when I first noticed him. Now he occupied a seat less than six feet away. I tried to convince myself that I imagined he leaned ever so slightly toward me as if daring me to trust my middle-aged memory, the one that misplaced cups of tea and bank statements more and more often lately.
But it didn't work.
Unfortunately I possess a vivid imagination and near-empty airports with their brain-rotting fluorescent lighting create a stimulus void that aches for fulfillment. The man's cynical gray eyes shifted away from the woman and captured and held mine for less than an instant, but that was enough. I felt it in my stomach.
I felt it as my own pupils dilated as if to flee around the hard, precise limits of his.
I felt it in the instantaneous dryness of my throat.
Fear.
"Will Upper Connecticut Valley Airlines Flight 3524 passenger Jeffrey Stone pul-ease come to the ticket counter," stridently brayed the public address system once more.
There is was again. The almost imperceptible response of an almost trained dog. In the instant his eyes flashed upwards, I leaped from my seat and strode purposefully to the nearest bank of phones to reserve a rental car. True, the winged gods had yet to cancel the flight, but I needed some kind of normal activity to take my mind off those two or pretty soon I'd convince myself that they were both psychopathic killers or some damn thing.
Then because I still couldn't bear the thought of turning around and facing the disconcerting duo again, I called my home number. After four rings my own voice answered and somewhat primly informed me of my absence, a sentiment I found peculiarly metaphysical every time I heard it. When I entered the message retrieval code, my housesitter's cheerful voice bubbled forth.
"Uh, it's like, uh, so beautiful out that I, uh, can't imagine the plane not flying, so I, uh, fed and exercised the dogs and am, well, uh, I'm going camping with my boyfriend, Shawn, you know."
Grouchy Traveler's Translation I: My house-sitter, Sherry Pickering, had abandoned the pets in favor of a hot date.
Grouchy Traveler's Translation II: The pets would suffer irreversible physical and emotional trauma if not die of starvation if I didn't make it home that night.
I sighed, knowing both interpretations reflected my own sour mood far more than any reality. I couldn't ask for a better housesitter than Sherry and the pets undoubtedly would survive, probably in much better shape than their owner.
Just as I hung up on Sherry's disgustingly bubbly voice and turned back to the waiting area, a more mature voice from above gravely informed me that Upper Connecticut Valley Airlines Flight 3524 regrettably would not fly in spite of all their very best efforts due to bad weather in Lebanon, New Hampshire.
As this voice faded, the white-faced woman gave a strangled scream, grabbed her bag, and fled.
* * *
As usual, I found knowing where I stood—no matter how bad—preferable to not knowing. Now I could do something more than just sit and wait and read McCarthy's book. Now I could drag my travel-weary body down to the car rental booth, pick up the keys to some equally weary car, and drive five hours on some of the most congested as well as most desolate roads in the country.
Oh, yippee. That called for a stop in the restroom.
As soon as I pushed open the door I saw the white-faced woman retching violently over a sink and sobbing hysterically, a physiological and emotional combination I immediately recognized as potentially disastrous. Dropping my belongings, I rushed to her side, placed both hands firmly on her shoulders, and commenced a soft but steady steam of comforting chatter. When the retching subsided, I shoved some tissues into her trembling hands and let her cry it out. Only when the sobs gave way to whimpers and then silence did I address her directly.
"How do you feel?" I asked as I replaced the soggy tissues with dry ones.
"Like a damn fool," she replied with an accent I immediately pegged as British.
"Anything I can get you?" I couldn't help sneaking a peek at my watch and thinking about the long drive ahead as I made the required helpful overture.
She shook her head and smiled slightly, further verifying the fact that she was indeed a strikingly beautiful woman.
"You were flying to Lebanon?" I asked the obvious question even as my more rational self had already placed me out the door. "I was too. I rented a car. You're welcome to ride with me."
These uncharacteristically inane remarks resulted from the fact that a voice inside my head was simultaneously screaming at me while I spoke.
"Are you out of your friggin' mind? Dump this broad and get the hell outta here!" it shouted.
My conscience—I assume that's what it is—originally consisted of a whole chorus on inner voices. However after I met McCarthy, one of the more earthy ones assumed a more dominant position, probably to compensate for what it considered my tendency to take a somewhat romantic, pollyanna-ish view of life. It became even more vocal and testy when my sons presented me with a copy of The Single Woman's Guide To Self-Defense, co-authored by a retired marine drill sergeant and a militant feminist, after I'd had a run-in with a goatnapper and a killer.
Regardless what my internal inhabitant desired, though, the gorgeous traveler accepted my offer of a ride with sufficient animation to put a tinge of the faintest pink on either cheek and the glimmer of a sparkle in her already exceedingly lovely green eyes. That ignited a verbal fire storm in the minute area of my brain reserved for impolite expression.
"You idiot!" screamed my practically deranged alter-ego, surely jumping up and down and kicking some hopefully nonessential lump of gray matter. "You absolute idiot! Have you no brains?"
I, however, merely suggested to my new traveling companion that she freshen up while I get the car.