Stake & Eggs Read Free Page A

growing season, that was.
     The
other
season here in the Midwest.
    Gazing out across the field, silent and white and swirling, Suzanne couldn’t spot
     any sort of trail.
    Wait a minute.
A trail. All I have to do is follow the snowmobile trail.
    The notion struck her as being incredibly simplistic.
    Then why hadn’t she thought of it sooner? The answer came easily. Because that nasty
     machine had been buzzing like a killer gnat inside her brain.
    Back at the machine, Suzanne peered at the rounded depression in the snow. The snowmobile
     had come from the west, obviously wending its way through the small woods that stood
     at the back of the Cackleberry Club. She stepped onto the trail, sinking down to the
     tops of her boots. Then, ducking around a stand of birch, she plunged down the trail,
     wending her way past buckthorn, poplars, and cedars. Fifteen feet, twenty feet, dodging
     trees, until she suddenly caught sight of a dark shape lying motionless in the snow.
    Dear lord.
    That had to be Ben, slumped in the snow. Not moving, not even twitching.
    Her first thought was that he must have hit his head to be lying so still. After all,
     the snow was so deep, it would have been merely cushiony if he’d just dumped over
     sideways.
    Hurrying toward the lump, she called out, “Ben, are you okay?”
    But she knew he wasn’t. He needed an ambulance, a doctor, a nurse, anything. Pronto.
    Suzanne faltered, almost falling forward, as the toe ofher boot stubbed against something. She caught herself, took another half step, then
     reached down and put her hands firmly on Ben’s shoulders. She decided the best course
     of action would be to roll him onto his back. That was the safest position for a back
     or neck injury. Then she’d dash back, grab a blanket, and get an ambulance out here.
    “Okay now,” she said, keeping her voice calm and even, just in case he could hear
     her. “I’m going to ease you over…” Suzanne knelt down in the snow, slipped her arms
     around the shoulders of his shiny blue-and-yellow snowmobile suit, and gave a gentle
     push.
    Ben rolled over fairly easily. Except for one weird thing. Only his torso and legs
     seemed to roll.
    Huh?
    Suzanne scrabbled backward in the snow as new flakes continued to rush down from the
     sky. She was staring. Gaping. Trying to figure out what was wrong with this picture.
     And suddenly realized there was just a mangled bloody stump where Ben’s head should
     have been.
    “Uhhh!” she cried out, frantically backpedaling away from him.
    “He’s…he’s…” she babbled. “Is that what I stumbled…?” But her mind refused to go there.
     Her reluctant, darting eyes took in Ben’s limp body, while her mind chose to retreat
     to a safer place for now. Suzanne clambered to her feet so rapidly her knees popped,
     then she leaned against a birch tree and vomited softly. Thought about Ben. Headless.
     Vomited again.
    It was only when, limp and sick, she sank to her knees, hot tears streaming down her
     face and quickly turning cold on her skin, that Suzanne saw Ben’s head lying in the
     snow. His eyes were squeezed shut, a red knit stocking cap still covering his dark
     hair.
    Like Lot’s wife, struck by the angels of deliverance and turned to stone, Suzanne
     froze and stared straight ahead. And that’s when she caught the faint glint of wire
     stretched tautly between two wooden stakes.

CHAPTER 2
    T HEY called Sheriff Roy Doogie, all of them jabbering into the phone at the same time,
     shouting for help and probably scaring the poop out of the dispatch operator at the
     Law Enforcement Center.
    “We’ve got eight calls ahead of you,” the dispatcher told Suzanne. The dispatcher
     was a woman named Molly Grabowski, who was also the county’s go-to foster mom when
     it came to providing emergency shelter for kids in need. “Plus there’s a jackknifed
     semi trailer out on Highway Eighteen,” Molly continued, “as well as a stuck school
     bus and a