Stone Cross (Arliss Cutter #2) - Marc Cameron Page 0,115
gang-line from the sled.
“Are you kidding me?” Donna screamed. “Birdie! Forget the dogs and pull me out of here!”
Freed from certain death, Donna’s trapped team made a mad dash for the bank, allowing the sled to slip beneath the surface and tumble downriver under the ice.
“Birdie!” Donna began to sob. Pleading now, her voice wobbly with cold. Black water seemed to boil around her, hissing against the ice. “I can’t hold on—”
Cutter shifted the sled, taking it dangerously close to the edge.
Birdie gave a shrill whistle. She’d angled her headlamp slightly away so it wasn’t blinding the other woman. “Donna! Look at me.”
Side-arming, she threw a piece of yellow line, laying it expertly across Donna Taylor’s shoulder.
“Tie this around the rifle and we’ll pull you out.”
Donna lifted her hand to grab the rope, but slammed it back in place. “I can’t,” she said, panting, eyes wide. She tried to speak, took on a mouthful of water, then spit it out, sputtering and coughing. “It’s . . . It’s . . . pulling me under. I’ll go down if I let go. Please . . .”
Birdie inched out farther so her torso hung over the brush bow well beyond the front of the basket.
The ice snapped in earnest now, clearly audible over the wind, as the angle of Birdie’s lean focused more weight on a smaller portion of the runners.
“That’s far enough,” Cutter yelled. “Donna, the ice will break if she comes any closer. You have got to grab the rope.”
Donna shook her head. “You just want me to die.”
Birdie pulled the rope back, hand over hand, tied a quick loop, and then tossed it again. She was throwing into the wind and it took her three attempts to get it back in place across Donna’s shoulder. “Here,” she said. “All you have to do is get an arm through the loop. But you have to let go of the gun.”
“I never . . . planned . . . to hurt the girl,” Donna said, shaking her head. “It’s just that . . . My son . . . I have to know . . .”
“Where did you take the girl?” Cutter asked, seeing how this was going to end.
“Cabin,” Donna said. “Half . . . a h . . . h . . . half mile north . . . They expected . . . me . . . hours ago . . . killed her . . . by now.”
Donna’s arm slipped off the rifle. She flailed. Her chin dropped beneath the surface, then she caught herself on the gun, barely keeping her head above water.
“Donna,” Birdie pleaded. “Take the rope!”
“I . . . I . . . can’t . . .” Her voice was breathy, like she was falling asleep.
“You said they,” Cutter said. “Who has the girl?”
“Husband,” Donna said. She turned her head directly toward Cutter, staring hard, trying to make him out behind the glare of his headlamp. She’d stopped shaking now. A bad sign.
“My sweet little boy,” she said, her words hissing out of her. Both arms slipped off the rifle, and the water quietly swallowed her up.
Smudge barked once, standing on the bank looking down at the river. Cutter turned his headlamp on the little wolf-dog. No, animals didn’t have human characteristics, but this one didn’t seem too awfully sad that Donna Taylor was out of his life for good.
Birdie was still facedown, hand on the rope, staring transfixed at the spot where Donna vanished. Cutter whistled to get her attention.
“I’m pulling you in.”
Birdie wriggled backward on her belly, farther to the rear of the basket.
“Be careful,” she said, grunting. “I can hear the ice snapping under me.”
Cutter kept most of his weight on the runners, skating backward inch by inch toward the bank where the dogs were waiting.
“We’re almost there,” he said, pivoting the sled slightly.
“I trust you,” Birdie said, a moment before the ice gave way and they both plunged into the icy water.
CHAPTER 42
Cutter’s feet slammed into the gravel riverbed. He fell back ward from the momentum of the sudden three-foot drop, landing on the seat of his pants, clutching the back station of the sled as black water rushed in around him, slamming violently against his back, trying to push him downriver, under the ice. His chest and head were above water, and he still had a grip on the sled’s rearmost upright stanchion, but the sled and Birdie had both disappeared beneath the surface.