The Dark Need Read Online Free Page B

that.”
    Matt shook his head and picked up the oar. It wasn’t much blood; the cut must be very shallow. A shaving nick. “Happens all the time. Carry an ax, people mistake you for the killer.”
    She smiled. A real smile.
    Cold around his boot warned him. He glanced down and, with a shock, found that the bottom of the boat had filled with icy water.
    “Shit.”
    She followed his gaze down, and her eyes widened with alarm. “Oh God.”
    “I don’t believe this,” Matt muttered.
    There was a half foot of water already in the boat. A leak in the bottom.
    Matt heaved at the oars. He was more than halfway across the lake. He tried to pick up speed, shoot the boat toward their destination shore. “Bail,” he said.
    “With what?” she shouted. “My hands?”
    “Use my hat!” He took it off, flung it to her.
    She caught it and snapped, “It’s porous!” She hissed through her teeth. “God. Don’t look.” Quickly she turned to the side so that she mostly had her back to him. Pulled her shirt off over her head. And—to Matt’s astonishment—her small hands reached around behind her and deftly unhooked her bra. A moment later her shirt was back over her head and she had turned toward him again, tugging the fabric down toward her waist, her bra, green, clasped in one hand. In the cold, he could see her nipples and the curve of her breasts against the shirt.
    A distracting stir in his loins. It had been too long.
    She saw him looking.
    “Shut up.” Her face flushed.
    It was an underwire bra, the cups firm, and she began bailing furiously with them. Matt drove the oars hard, a burn in his arms that he would pay for later. The rate at which the water in the boat was rising alarmed him. Bra cups and a hat: not enough.
    “Damn it,” he growled. “We don’t have time for this.” Dropping the oars, he scrambled to Crucifix Girl’s bench at the stern and grabbed the cord on the motor. Yanked it, hard. Again. Gas probably had frozen. Hopefully not, or not much of it. Again. A splutter. Again. The motor growled, spat, then roared to life—yes!—and the boat bucked beneath him.
    “Hold on!” he shouted over the roar, and cranked up the speed.
    They shot out over the water like an elephant’s charge, like a crowd’s cheer at the stadium, like a scream. No mistaking their arrival. The trees on the shore came to meet them,but they were sinking faster now. He saw lights flick on in some of the windows among the cedars, and he knew the killer could see him, too. He clenched his teeth. He’d died of the cold and airlessness once before; he didn’t plan on it a second time. He leaned over the tiller hard, as if by sheer will he might drive the boat quicker to shore.
    The water nearest the shore was sheeted with ice. He’d planned to slow the boat and chop at it with the oar until the ice was too thick to break, then walk the last few yards in. Now there wasn’t time. Quickly, he ran over his options, then gripped the side of the boat. The water sloshing about his knees.
    “Hold on,” he said. “Now.”
    Crucifix Girl glanced at him, then at the shore. Her eyes widened. She sat back on her bench, the water flowing up about her thighs. Gripped the gunwale with both hands, her bra forgotten in the water.
    “You’re crazy,” she cried. “You’re fucking crazy.”
    “I know!”
    His heart racing, he plunged his hand into the water in the boat, feeling it like needles of ice piercing his skin. Breathing in little gasps, he groped about by his feet until his fingers brushed the haft of his ax. Gripped it, brought it up out of the water. He did not want to lose that ax.
    Then the ice was hurtling toward them. He leaned back, tipping the boat upward, water beginning to slosh in over the stern. Crucifix Girl let out a long, wailing scream. Then the boat hit the ice and the thin edge of it shattered, and as the ice thickened, the boat slid up onto it. The motor tore loose, sputtering out, the ice cracked and