Cold Heart by Chandler McGrew Read Free Book Online

truck, meandered away into the trees.
    She squared her shoulders and scooped up her backpack. There was nothing she could do about the trunk. She glanced up at the mountains already buried in cloud and started hiking.
    Thirty yards into the trees a growling noise caught her attention and she froze. The Glock was stored away in the pack. But Zeke had informed her that the pistol was pretty much worthless where she was going, anyway. Nothing smaller than a.357 magnum had any chance of stopping a bear.
    The Honda four-wheeler cleared the cusp of the hill beforeshe realized that what she was hearing wasn't in the least bearlike. It didn't dawn on her until later that no self-respecting, hibernating bear would be stupid enough to be out on a frigid day like this. The little vehicle looked like a cross between a motorcycle and a riding lawn mower but it bounced down the rough trail with the confidence of a mountain goat. The driver was going so fast that he couldn't stop and wheeled around Micky, coming to a halt facing back up the trail. Micky had a bewildered expression on her face when the driver flipped back his parka hood and offered a gloved hand. Micky reached across the handlebars and felt a small but powerful grip. She stared into the face and was surprised to discover the driver was a woman.
    “Rita Cabel,” said the driver, in a voice like steel wool. She had thick gray hair and bright blue eyes. Micky guessed her age at fifty but she might have been ten years older. When she climbed off the four-wheeler and tossed Micky's pack into the rear basket, she seemed closer to thirty. She moved with the easy grace of a younger woman.
    “Get on,” said Rita. “Unless you want to stay out here and freeze to death. Damon mentioned you'd be coming. I knew he'd forget.”
    “He forgot me?”
    Rita laughed. “You must know how he gets if he's onto something. He and Marty cooked up some scheme to boil water in barrels and heat the ground around their claims by driving pipes into the ground and running steam through them.”
    Micky gave the woman a baffled look.
    “They're digging up gravel that way so they can have it ready to run through the sluices when the creek thaws in the spring,” said Rita.
    Rita drove Micky up to the cabin Damon had rented for her from Aaron McRay. The place was small but tidy. Rita's husband, Clive, had a fire going in the stove and coffee in the pot. Rita educated Micky in the intricacies of wood heat and how to tuck pieces of old blankets on all the windowsills and under the doors to keep as much of the draft out as possible. Then Rita and Clive said their good-byes with the promise of a tour of the town the next day.
    Micky locked the door behind them with the simple sliding latch. She listened to the giant hands of the wind, clawingat the eaves, trying to rip the roof off the cabin. She stared out into darkness so black that it was like being inside the middle of a giant squid and she shivered.
    But the cabin was snug, the kerosene lamplight reassuring, and the roof didn't sound as though it had any intention of losing its battle with the wind. She climbed up into the loft and found that the old feather bed, though smelling of dust, was clean and quite comfortable.
    She dug out the Glock, checked the chamber, and placed it beside her on the bed.
    And she wondered, yawning, just how much farther from anything she could possibly be. She fell asleep thinking of Wade.
    All the lanterns in the cabin burned brightly throughout that long arctic night.

MCRAY, FOUR YEARS LATER MAY 2, 11:30 A.M.
    M ICKY LEANED OVER THE rough-hewn table that was the centerpiece of her log cabin, concentration furrowing her brow. She wore heavy gloves. The custom-made soldering iron, even with its thick ash handle, was hot and she'd been burned before. She molded the lead strip around the irregular-shaped pieces of glass, delicately fitting the soft metal into the space between the panes and stopping to slip in a piece of