TWISTED ICE (ONC 2023)

CHAPTER 13

The park ranger had said my lips were blue when he pulled Hunter's body off of me. I can't confirm the accuracy of that statement, but I know the frigid air made my teeth chatter and racked my body with chills. Once we got in the truck, he turned the heater up to full blast and gave me a blanket to wrap around me. The dash display showed the temperature had fallen to three degrees Fahrenheit, and I felt it down deep in my bones.

He kept saying how glad he was that he showed up when he did. He hated to take someone's life, but he had to put an end to Hunter's reign of terror. I could only smile and offer him my sincere thanks for saving my life.

Before we left the cabin, he double checked to see if Hunter, Jasmine, and even Chloe were still alive. The answer to that was no. Chloe and Jasmine had bled out from a puncture wound to the abdomen, and Hunter had expired from the shooting. Unfortunately, Isaiah's body would have to be retrieved when they could get to it. I told him how Hunter had attacked us all, but thankfully he had showed up. He said he was responding to a 9-1-1 call and asked if I had made it. I told him no because none of us could get a signal; I didn't know who made the call.

That night, he drove me to the county sheriff's office for questioning.

Three days later, after staying in a local hotel while the sheriff completed his investigation and the coroner performed the autopsies, I find myself in the sheriff's office for one last interview.

"So let me get this straight," the sheriff says, his chair squeaking as he leans back. "One last time for the record. Your so-called friend, Hunter McGavin, murdered your other friend Isaiah in the middle of the night while you slept in the cave. Then he wiped the blood from his knife on the tree stub to make it look like an accident."

"That's right." I nod, my lips pressed into a thin line. "We thought it might have been an accident, but then we got suspicious when his knife turned up missing from his backpack. The way he brushed it off and asked if one of us had stolen it seemed like an acting job."

"Did you?" he asks. "Steal it?"

"No." I don't hesitate, my reply rolling off my tongue, my eyes darkening. "He did it all during the snowfall."

"And he used the heavy precipitation to cover his tracks, you say?"

"Since the weather cleared, your men have combed the cave, the bluff, the rock formation, and the cabin. Isn't that what you found?"

"What we found seems to support your claims." He wipes his clean-shaven chin with a big burly hand and stares at me for a few intense seconds. His green eyes kindle a quiet flame under the fluorescent lights like a pair of glistening emeralds. "Then, according to you, he stabbed your other friend, Chloe, with the same knife, his knife. Under the cover of the blizzard before you stumbled upon the hunting cabin."

I nod again.

"Okay," he says. "The next to die was your friend Jasmine. Hunter stabbed her in the abdomen the same way he did the others." He sighs, the fire in his eyes dimming somewhat. "He seemed to have a thing for a knife in the stomach. Killed all three of your friends that way and then came after you."

"That's how it happened."

His brow furrows, revealing a forehead creased with wrinkles. "One thing I can't figure out."

"What's that?"

"Why did you go back to that small rock formation up on the hillside?"

"Because I thought he'd hidden the knife there. That's where he stabbed Chloe because that's where we found her bloody trail leading to the cabin. The rock formation seemed like the most obvious place to hide the knife and still be able to find it later, when he needed it. But it turns out he had his knife with him the entire time, or he had beaten me to it and had already taken it. I don't know which, but when I ran out of the cabin, he saw his chance to kill Jasmine."