Then he was gone, lifted off her as if he were a child. Gabriel’s expression was cold and fierce as he hammered his big right fist over and over into Darwin’s face. Darwin was too stunned by the blows to fight back; he threw his arms across his face to protect himself and began sobbing. “Don’t hurt me, man, don’t hurt me,” he pleaded. “I ain’t done nothing to you, have I? Huh? What’d I do?”
Lolly struggled to a sitting position, staring at him in disbelief. He’d changed from enraged animal to pathetic loser in the space of a few seconds.
“Shut the fuck up,” Gabriel snarled, breathing hard. He wrenched Darwin’s arms behind his back, shoving them high, and looked around for something to secure them. “Get the laces from his boots,” he said to Lolly.
She didn’t want to get anywhere near Darwin, didn’t want to touch him in any way, but she made herself half-crawl to where Gabriel held him, taking care to stay to the side so he couldn’t kick her in the face. Gingerly she began picking at the leather lacings. They were wet and hard to handle, and she had to use both hands.
Gabriel’s head swiveled as he looked around. He was still breathing hard and fast, and his expression … he was really pissed, to put it mildly. “Where did the other one go?” he asked Lolly. There was a savage note in his tone.
“I don’t know,” she replied. She was doing some hard breathing herself, and she paused a moment to take a few deep breaths. “She turned off her flashlight, and I guess she ran. I haven’t seen her since then.”
Gabriel turned his attention back to a weeping Darwin. He wrenched Darwin’s arms harder and higher, putting agonizing strain on the shoulder sockets. “Do you have more ammo or weapons back at the house?”
“No,” Darwin said, shaking his head. “I swear, we don’t. Buddy, please, you’re tearing my arms out of my shoulders!”
“I’m not your fucking buddy,” Gabriel said. “And if you lie to me, I will tear your arms off and beat you to death with them, got it?”
“I’m not lying!” Darwin shrieked. Snot was running from both sides of his nose, dripping in his mouth. “Niki and me, we just have the two guns and what bullets are in them. That’s usually enough. Ow! Ow! Stop, please stop!”
Usually enough. Lolly wondered how many other homes he and Niki had invaded, how many women he’d hurt, raped, murdered.
Deep in the forest, there was a sudden crack as sharp as a gunshot, followed by a crash and a thud. For a moment of sheer panic Lolly thought Darwin had been lying and Niki did have another weapon, but then she realized what had happened: limbs were beginning to give way under the weight of the ice.
“What the hell was that?” Darwin asked, a new fear in his quavering voice.
Neither Lolly nor Gabriel bothered to tell him what was happening.
“Now what?” she asked, looking up at Gabriel before returning her attention to Darwin’s boot laces. They didn’t know where Niki was; Darwin was unarmed, would shortly be secured, but it wasn’t as if they could call the sheriff and have their prisoner collected and jailed within a matter of minutes. She didn’t want to spend the night in the same house with him, not even if Gabriel hog-tied and gagged him, and she didn’t think they could manage to get him down the mountain tonight. With limbs already beginning to come down, it was too dangerous to go anywhere tonight.
Gabriel opened his mouth to answer and Darwin suddenly threw himself backward in a convulsive movement that knocked Gabriel off balance, and wrenched his arms free from Gabriel’s grasp.
With an inhuman roar he went for Lolly. Crouched down the way she was, she didn’t have a chance to run. He knocked her flat; she was hit with a force that knocked the breath out of her, and banged her head hard on the frozen earth. She heard a ripping sound as she slid across the rough, icy ground, then he was on her and trying for her throat again.
Gabriel recovered his balance and launched himself forward, both hands grabbing Darwin by his coat collar and slinging him off Lolly. Darwin surged to his feet, came at them again. Gabriel pivoted, planted his foot, and smashed his elbow backward into Darwin’s face. There was a sickening crunch, and Darwin was suddenly boneless, his body oddly slack as he slumped to the ground. His eyes were open and staring, and twin black trickles of blood leaked from his nostrils.
Gabriel spared him only the briefest glance. “He’s dead.” His tone didn’t reveal a shred of regret. The elbow to the nose, smashing it and driving bone fragments into the brain, hadn’t been an accident.
Deep in the forest, another limb gave up its life with a sharp crack, and crashed down. Hard on the heels of it came another one, this one much closer.
Lolly was still on the ground, her eyes huge dark pools in a stark white face as she stared up at him. He leaned down and caught her arm, pulled her to her feet. “We have to go back to the house,” he said. “We can’t walk out now, not with limbs already coming down.”
Solemnly she nodded, but she asked, “What about Niki? That’s her name,” she explained in a vague tone. She gestured at the body on the ground. “His name is Darwin. Was Darwin.” A faint note of satisfaction leaked into her voice. Looking around, as if searching for the missing woman, she added, “She might be at the house.”
“Maybe,” Gabriel said grimly. “If she is, I’ll handle it. From what this asshole said, they’re out of ammo. If she didn’t go back to the house, if she’s out here somewhere … she can freeze to death, for all I care.”