Stone Cross (Arliss Cutter #2) - Marc Cameron Page 0,71
a slurpy, sucking sound, which, when he thought about it, was a good description of this whole escapade he’d gotten himself involved in.
He pulled his head deeper into the heavy wool coat, hoping to keep the falling snow off his neck. To make matters worse, the idiot at the sporting goods place had sold him gloves that were too thin for this shit. He’d heard the bush maxim that “cotton kills”—after it was too late to get anything other than cotton jeans. They were soaking wet now, would probably freeze solid around his legs if the temperature dropped much more before he got back to the cabin. That would be just his luck—the ground would stay mud but his pants would turn to jean-cicles. It didn’t matter. His head was killing him and he was going to get him some coffee.
He’d heard voices earlier, like singing. The hunters couldn’t be much farther ahead, through the willows. Kilgore slowed, which made him colder. Hopefully, one of the hunters would have a warm hat.
None of it was supposed to go down this way. Kilgore had been happy to leave town for a while. An interdiction unit for the Arizona Highway Patrol had popped a couple guys in the club with enough fentanyl to kill half of Phoenix. Hell of a deal, really. All because of a blown tire. It was good to be out of Arizona until the dust settled. Kilgore had thought he might as well be in Alaska helping out one of his guys. Rick had been a hot mess for the last year anyway, as soon as he found out his son was dead. He’d done nothing but mope around the clubhouse talking about how he was gonna find out the truth. He planned to roast some kids’ heads on a spit because they let his boy die in the mountains—which sounded eminently reasonable to Morgan Kilgore. He didn’t have any kids that he knew of, but that kind of spinelessness couldn’t be left in the gene pool.
When Rick’s wife told him one of the kids in question was going to work at a remote lodge, it had seemed like the perfect setup. Boat up the river, snatch the kid, heat him up until he told his story—sometimes that took a while—and then get the hell out of Dodge. Easy peasy—except it had all turned to shit. Nothing was ever easy in this business. Guns jammed, knife blades broke, and bike tires blew out at the most inopportune times—like when you were carrying around bottles of fentanyl.
Kilgore was no woodsman, but he didn’t worry about finding his way back to the cabin, even in the dark and snow. He had a GPS for that. No, the bigger worry was freezing his ass off. If that girl was still alive when he got back, she could warm him up. Kilgore knew he didn’t look as mean as Rick. Having two eyes instead of one helped with that. The girl trusted him, which was stupid, but not surprising. It happened all the time, girls trusting him—until they got to know him. That always changed things.
He was dressed for fall—the way October was supposed to be, not this winter blizzard shit. A ball cap kept the snow off his head, but his ears felt like they were about to break off. They should have taken some more stuff from the lodge—at least some coffee, and maybe some gloves and a good hat, but the stupid Viking guy had gotten in the way while they were grabbing the Mead kid. Then the girl had stumbled in out of nowhere. Lucky for Kilgore, David Mead wore the same size boots—even if the dumbass had drawn little smiley faces on the toes like some kind of third grader. Killing him would be a service really.
Kilgore moved slowly toward the direction of the gunshot, keeping his flashlight off so no one would see him coming. He cursed under his breath each time a branch slapped him in the face or he slipped in the muck. This whole thing was one big soup sandwich. With the change in the weather, Rick was supposed to be working on a way for them to get out, but he was berserk with grief. Everyone mixed up in this thing was off, including Morgan Kilgore for bringing his ass to Alaska in the first place.
As bad as he needed coffee, he couldn’t quite get his mind off the girl. That piece