Ice Read Online Free PDF Page B

around, she eased over to the door and turned the lock. Niki was right: the lock was too insubstantial to stop them for long, but at least she’d have a moment of warning before they walked in on her.
    With any luck she wouldn’t be here when they decided to return, because she’d rather take her chances with the ice than with them. She took a deepbreath, willing her head to stop spinning, and went to the window to look out. Yes, there was definitely ice on the window, and very little light left as the pressing clouds brought a premature twilight. She didn’t have much time, because conditions were only going to get worse.
    The ground below looked so far away that her instincts screamed she’d kill herself if she jumped, but she didn’t intend to
jump
. It was a straight drop from her window to the ground below, with no roofline or eave to assist her, but there were sheets and a couple of thin blankets on the bed. The down comforter was probably too thick and bulky to be useful, but if she tied the bottom sheet to the top sheet to the blanket and then tied the makeshift rope off well, she’d be able to get close enough to the ground to drop down safely.
    Swiftly she ripped all the covers from the bed and began tying her makeshift rope. The sheets were easiest, because they were the thinnest. She knotted the first corner to the foot of the bed, tugging hard to make certain the knot would hold; she’d never been a Girl Scout, wasn’t a sailor, didn’t know a damn thing about knots beyond tying her shoes. She just hoped a regular old knot would be sufficient.
    After the sheets came the two thin wool blankets. She would love to have one of the blankets to huddle in as she made her escape, but she needed both of them for length, since the best place to tie off the rope was the end of the bed and it was eight, maybeten feet from the window. She had always loved the spaciousness of the house, but now that space was working against her. She couldn’t move the bed, not without attracting more attention than she wanted. She had to get out, and she had to do it quietly.
    When that task was finished, she forced herself to sit quietly for a minute, to give her racing heart time to slow. She was sweating a little, and that wasn’t good. One of the first rules of surviving in the cold was not to overexert yourself, because that caused sweating, which would freeze on the body and cause hypothermia to set in even faster.
    Then she shook her head at herself. Hell, it was raining; she was going to get wet, anyway. How was a little sweat going to make things worse? She must still be a little shocky, addled but functioning. She just needed to function a little faster, because at any time they might come up those stairs to check on her.
    She took every piece of clothing available out of the closet and the chest of drawers, tossing them onto the bed. Before she went out the window, she needed to get as many clothes on her body as possible. Her big, heavy, weatherproof coat and boots were downstairs, so her only chance of surviving the cold rain and ice was to keep dry as long as possible, and that meant layers … a lot of them.
    Quickly she kicked off her shoes, then stripped off her jeans and sweatshirt and began pulling on thin layers. She’d brought a pair of insulated long underwear and she put that on first, then began pulling onT-shirts, the thinnest first, the looser ones on top. One flannel shirt, the one she wore while lazing about, she laid aside to tie over her head. There was one pair of old sweats, as well as the sweatshirt she’d been wearing, but before putting on the bulky stuff she stopped to tug on as many pairs of socks as she could fit on her feet.
    Her shoes weren’t waterproof; her feet
would
get wet, no way around it. The only question was whether she’d be able to get down the mountain before hypothermia killed her. If she managed that, then she’d worry about losing her feet to frostbite.
    Then an idea