Ice Read Online Free PDF Page A

finally …
finally …
moved off of Lolly. “Fuck, Niki, you could’ve killed me!” he shouted, getting to his feet and pulling up his pants from where they’d drooped over his skinny ass. “Are you fucking crazy?” He grabbed a dish towel and pressed it to the bleeding wound on the side of his head, where the pistol had split the skin.
    Lolly struggled to pull her jeans up, scooting across the floor as she did, toward the back door and icy freedom. Maybe these two bags of shit would kill each other. She was dimly shocked by the violence of her own thoughts, but if she could just get away, she didn’t care what happened to them.
    Niki’s gaze swiveled from Darwin to Lolly, and so did the pistol barrel. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” she spat, then glanced at something in her hand. Lolly froze, blinking. “Lorelei Helton. Portland,” Niki said, and Lolly realized the something was her own driver’s license. Niki had apparently been going through Lolly’s purse while Darwin had been trying to rape her. “What the hell kind of name is ‘Lorelei’? It sounds like a hooker.”
    Lolly didn’t bother arguing, just nodded her head in agreement.
    “Get up,” Niki said, and Lolly obeyed, using the motion to take another step back, toward the door.Could she beat both of them, and a bullet? They were druggies, they were likely high right now … their eyes were wide, the pupils shrunk down to tiny dots. How clearly could they think?
    Clearly enough. Darwin suddenly said, “Whoa there, bitch,” and lunged across the kitchen to place himself between her and the back door. He shoved her forward.
    Niki shook her head and stuck the driver’s license in the front pocket of her baggy jeans. “For a woman driving a Mercedes, you don’t have much money on you,” she growled. “Where’s the rest?”
    Lolly tried to think, to reason. Her heart was pounding, she was shaking from head to toe and nausea roiled her stomach, but she could still think. Right now, her brain was the only weapon she had. “In the bank. We can go to town and I’ll give it all to you, I swear I will, just … don’t kill me.” She shot a glance toward Darwin. “And don’t let him near me.” If she could actually get to town with these druggies, she’d find a way to escape … to get help.
    “They’d be closed now, right?” Niki asked, looking at the last gleam of light that pressed against the windows.
    Dear God, she couldn’t spend the night in the house with these two. Her stomach lurched, and she barely controlled the urge to vomit. “Yes, but I know the bank manager,” she lied. She had no idea who the manager was now, and she had never banked here anyway. The first and only account she’d ever openedwas in Portland. Would they realize that, if she lived in Portland, she wasn’t likely to have an account here? Desperately she plunged ahead. “He’ll open up for me. We can leave right now.”
    Niki considered it, her head tilted to the side and her feral, too-wide gaze locked on Lolly, but after a couple of seconds she shook her head. “No, he’d get suspicious if you did that. We’ll wait until morning.”
    Lolly’s heart lurched, just like her stomach. She felt the hard beats hammering inside her chest. The ice was coming; by morning there would be no way down the hill. The road would be a sheet of ice, and she’d be stuck here with these two. She heard what sounded like frozen rain hitting the kitchen windows; maybe it was already too late.
    Niki gestured with the gun, waving Lolly forward. Lolly followed the silent direction, passing the woman with the gun more closely than she liked, exiting the kitchen and walking through the dining room with Niki directly behind. When they reached the living room, Lolly saw the contents of her purse scattered across the couch and floor. Her key ring, with the key to the Mercedes between the key to this house and the one to her apartment door, was resting between two