The Pawn novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The Ice

I waited until the house went quiet, then waited another hour.

The east study was a small room off the back hall, with a desk and a window onto the lawn.

The window opened.

Lucio had told the truth about that, and it frightened me more than a lie would have.

It meant he wanted me to go.

I went anyway.

I didn't have another plan, and I couldn't stay in that house another night.

I took the sparrow bracelet off and put it in my jeans pocket so it wouldn't catch.

The letter opener went into my boot.

Then I climbed out onto the frozen grass in a borrowed coat and boots a size too big, and ran.

The cold came up through the soles first.

Snow had started to fall, light and dry, and the whole lawn was blue under a half moon.

I stayed low and kept to the hedge line, and I did not look back at the house.

At the bottom of the lawn the dock ran out onto the lake, and past it the water was iced over, pale and hard.

To the left was a stand of black pines.

Beyond them, somewhere, there had to be a road.

I ran for the pines.

My lungs burned after the first hundred yards.

I heard no shouting, no dogs, and no footsteps.

That was wrong, and I knew it was wrong.

I kept running anyway.

Inside the trees it was darker, and the snow squeaked under my socks.

I hit a fence.

It was chain-link, shoulder-high, with no wire on top, and I went over it badly and landed hard on my knees.

On the other side the ground sloped down toward the shore.

I followed it, slipping, and came out on a strip of frozen beach below a stone boathouse.

The ice began right there, and the far bank was a line of lights a mile off.

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