Frost Bite

Chapter 5

Jack

Josie doesn't see me as I follow her. I am the breeze at her back. I am the snow under her feet and I am there to make sure that she gets home all right.

Because I feel...responsible for her.

Oh, she is dangerous. Dangerous in ways I never could be, ways I never imagined could be dangerous. And her best friend is disgustingly in love with her and she doesn't realize it. Ryan keeps his hand around her shoulders and I think he's trying to make up for the fact that she was the one protecting him, trying to save him during the storm.

Humans.

They've gone about five miles when the air pressure drops and I know something is wrong. Josie looks around, her hand on Ryan's arm. Like she can feel it too.

"Jo?" Ryan asks, looking around bewilderedly.

I want to roll my eyes. I've met unobservant humans. But Ryan is obscenely oblivious. That's when snow goes flying in all directions.

Ryan yells for Josephine and she screams his name back and I see a dark figure holding Josie, gun pointed at her neck, long and dark and lethal. With the blink of an eye I'm no longer the tundra, no I have form and I'm standing in front of them and Josie's eyes go wide.

"Jack!" She cries my name and her relief is palpable.

I just look at the man holding her and I imagine him frozen, still, colder than I am. For a second, I feel warm as whatever it is that's frozen inside of me turns the man holding Josie into a people-sicle.

He lets out a howl and lets go of Josie as he freezes from the inside out.

Josie runs toward me and throws her arms around me.

"Thank you!" she breathes near my ear and I'm dizzy with the closeness of her. And then just as quickly she's gone and looking for Ryan.

I nudge the man I've just frozen solid with my foot. He's dressed all in black, down to the shoes and gloves that cover his hands. I go through his pockets, checking for a phone, ID, anything that will tell me who he is and why it is that he attacked Josie.

I find a phone and a pager of all things. I pull up the most recent message on the phone and I go still, so so still like only I can be still. Like the tundra, like the motionless diorama made lifeless under a weak and distant sun.

Frost cares about her. Take her alive.

I look up at Josie and she looks at me and she sees the look on my face like oh shit and she sets her jaw and Ryan is still yammering away, oblivious, always oblivious to how Josie will never love him back, not like that.

I walk over to her. "You're not going to like what I have to tell you."
 "I figured," she murmurs, looking up at me with those clear hazel eyes like she's inviting the whole world to spill its secrets to her. And it's surprisingly tempting to give in.

"He was targeting you," I say, handing her the phone. She takes it with a steady hand and it's amazing how brave she is, how adaptable and curious. "Apparently whoever sent him," I motion to the man on the ground, frozen through, "thinks that you mean something to me."

She laughs. "That's what you get for saving my life."

My eyebrows trip up my forehead in surprise. "You think this is funny?"
 "Sure. It's ironic. And rather than go crazy with worry, I'm going to laugh about it. Ha, ha, ha."

My lips twitch into an involuntary smile.

That is, until Ryan opens his mouth.

"Jo, we should leave. He's obviously dangerous, whatever the hell he is. If we get the fuck away from him they'll leave us alone."

"Were you born stupid or was it something you acquired later on in life?" I demand. Ryan's face flares a painful shade of red. "They saw me save your sorry ass from the storm. When this hired help fails to bring you to his boss – the person you really should be worrying about – they will assume, correctly, that I have saved you. Again. No matter how you distance yourself from me they will continue to come after you now."

Ryan opens his mouth to argue but Josie smacks his chest.

"Don't even. You know he's right."

Ryan throws his hands up in the air. "All right, fine. But that still leaves us up a creek without a goddamn paddle."

I shake my head. "They/re trying to get to me. You're caught in the middle. You have my protection."

Josie's eyes flash and I've known her for all of five minutes but I know that she sees this as an extended opportunity to puzzle me out. And I think she's just smart enough to do it.

"We have lives," Ryan protests but Josie smacks him again.

"Yeah, lives. Lives we can't live if we're dead," she interjects and the moron at the end is implied.

I hide a smile behind my hand and watch as Ryan and Josie fight a battle without saying a word. Josie wins easily, as Ryan looks down at his shoes with a clenched jaw after just a minute. She is a force to be reckoned with.