Chapter 42 - Blood in the Freezing Mist
The blast erupted through the floor of the boathouse in a deafening geyser of splintered cedar and boiling foam.
Arthur and Vance were hurled through the shattered doorway, tumbling across the snow-covered shoreline.
The shockwave tore the breath from Arthur’s chest.
He crashed into an icy snowdrift, gasping violently for air that burned like ground glass.
Behind them, the Blackwood boathouse groaned, buckled, and collapsed into the smoking crater.
Burning timbers hissed as they sank into the churned, blackened ice.
Vance rolled onto his knees, spitting blood onto the virgin snow.
"Arthur!" Vance wheezed, crawling toward him through the drift. "Are you breathing?"
Arthur could not answer.
His entire lower body was numb, and the agony in his ankle was a distant, thrumming roar.
The lake surface boiled with black mud, sulfur, and rising debris.
"She’s gone," Arthur managed to whisper, trembling so violently his teeth clicked like dice.
Vance didn't answer right away.
He stared through the swirling blizzard at the smoking hole in the ice.
A smear of dark red trailed from the lip of the rupture, vanishing into the pine trees.
Footprints.
Fresh, staggering, barefoot imprints pressed deep into the freezing mud beneath the snow.
Arthur’s heart stopped.
"No," Arthur whimpered, lifting his head from the frost. "That’s impossible."
"She wrapped the chain around the safe, not herself," Vance muttered, his voice hollow with dread.
The explosion had severed the chain, blowing her upward into the shallows instead of drowning her.
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A sudden, sharp metallic click echoed from the tree line just thirty yards away.
Through the falling snow, the barrel of a rifle emerged from the darkness of the hemlocks.
