Saving Mr. Bell

Chapter Five

Rudolf

I realized my mistake as soon as I stepped off the porch, my black Vans not designed for tramping through the snow. But with no alternative except to return meekly to the cabin and pretend I hadn’t flounced out of there in such dramatic fashion, I pressed on.

The air was biting, colder than it had been yesterday, but at least it wasn’t snowing. Yet. It would be just my luck if another blizzard started up before I reached civilization. I wasn’t buying Arlo’s story of there being no other cabins for twenty miles. Who built a cabin in the middle of nowhere? Surely even the most antisocial of people liked to have neighbors of some description. What if there was an emergency? Especially if bad weather fucked up the phone reception. Therefore, I reckoned I’d find another cabin a mile or two away. If you’re going in the right direction. Yeah, there was that.

With the snow so deep, it was impossible to tell where the road lay, so I just struck out in the general direction I remembered from the previous night. Except, it had been dark, and I hadn’t been sober, and I’d still been in shock over being abducted—could you class it as an abduction when you’d gotten into the vehicle of your own accord?—so it was possible my recollection was off. But this was the direction I was going in.

It was hard-going in the snow, the physical effort required to lift my leg to take a step already tiring before the cabin was even out of sight. The cabin where the door hadn’t opened, and Arlo hadn’t come after me. What was that about? Oh yeah, he cared alright. Not enough to leave a warm cabin to make sure I was safe, but he cared. Bullshit! He obviously expected me to return with my tail between my legs once I’d seen the unforgiving environment. Well, fuck that. He didn’t know me well if he thought I gave up on anything that easily.

Which, he didn’t.

Arlo and I had been acquaintances for two weeks, six years ago. Friends, he’d called it. Had we been? We’d certainly got along well, Arlo making me laugh like no one else could. And then he’d been gone. Without so much as a note. With friends like that, who needed enemies? And now he thought he could… what? Just stroll back into my life with his kidnapper’s kit and a smile. Technically, I knew there’d been a distinct lack of duct tape or cable ties involved in the previous night’s extraction, but the intent had been there. And fanning the flames of my indignation helped me pick up the pace.

I glanced back at the cabin in time to see the door open and a figure step out. Oh, Arlo had decided to move his arse, had he? That was big of him. I’d been avoiding the densely wooded area to my right, but with Arlo on my tail, I veered into it, more concerned about staying out of sight than I was about following a road I couldn’t even see. It was a decision I regretted almost immediately, the foliage only growing thicker the deeper I went, and snow-covered branches bombarding me at every turn. I took one directly to the face, the momentary blinding causing me to lose my balance and pitch forward into the snow.

“RUDOLF?”

I lifted my face and spat a mouthful of snow out. At least it wasn’t yellow. “Leave me alone, Arlo! Go back to your little prison cabin.” I struggled to my hands and knees, the snow feeling more like sinking sand. Not that I’d ever been in sinking sand, but that’s what I imagined it would feel like.

“You’re being ridiculous.”

I struggled to my feet, indignation lending me an extra burst of energy. “Oh, I’m being ridiculous, am I? And there I was thinking you were the one who traveled all the way to Austria, waited outside a nightclub, abducted me, and then brought me to a remote cabin in the middle of nowhere. But yeah, I’m being ridiculous by wanting to leave. Am I supposed to accept my fate meekly and spend Christmas with you?”

“You’re twisting things.”

He sounded far too close, my head start all but gone. I struggled on, my damp clothes making forward progress more difficult. Was the snow getting deeper? It felt like it. Or was it just fatigue setting in? The hangover didn’t help. The painkillers—and probably the food as well—had made it better for a while, but physical exertion had reawakened the pounding in my temples, and nausea had decided now would be a good time to rock up and introduce itself. “I don’t think I am twisting things. And we can see whose side the Austrian police take once I reach civilization.”

“You’re going to set the police on me?”

I leaned against a tree, using the excuse of looking back as an opportunity to take a breather. Arlo wasn’t close enough to see, but he was definitely getting nearer. With his clothes far better suited to the weather than my club gear, it was inevitable, he’d catch up. A case of when rather than if. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“You want me to go to prison? An Austrian prison at that.”

I rolled my eyes. “I don’t give a damn what happens to you.”

“I guess that’s where you and I differ.”

“I guess it is.” I slipped, this time landing on my arse. Great! Now my back was just as wet as my front. I might as well roll around in the snow and be done with it. I struggled to my feet again, the cold affecting my movements. Despite wearing gloves, my fingers were stiff and uncooperative, the wool sodden. And I wasn’t entirely sure I still had toes, my feet completely numb.

Was it cold enough to get hypothermia? Probably, if I was out here long enough. I tried to recall what I knew about it. Not much, apart from the brain getting confused at the end and interpreting the extreme cold as heat so that people took their clothes off and froze to death even quicker. Well, I had zero inclination to take my clothes off, so I took that as a good sign.

“You’ll get hypothermia. You’re not dressed for this weather.”

Fantastic! He was reading my mind now. “I’m fine.” If fine was wet, cold, nauseous, and miserable. “Never been better, in fact. Everyone should take a bracing stroll after breakfast.”

“Or frostbite.”

Fuck! I hadn’t considered frostbite. Was that what was happening to my toes? Would they turn black and drop off? I’d never considered having much attachment to my toes, but I’d prefer them to stay where they were and remain pink. And it would really scupper my audience’s fascination with my bare feet if a few toes fell off. “You’re just trying to scare me.”

“Not really. I’m worried.”

Arlo had to only be a few meters away now. He’d be on me in no time at all. I picked up my pace, trees giving way to… more trees, the forest uncompromising. How long did forests usually go on for? Miles? If so, I was fucked. “Well, you should have thought about that before you dragged me here against my will.”

“I didn’t think you’d be stupid enough to walk out of here.”

“Admit… you lied… about how far… the closest neighbors are.” My words were coming out in pants. I rarely worked out to this degree, my body screaming at me and asking what the fuck I thought I was doing?

“I didn’t lie.”

The words were so earnest they sent a shaft of alarm through me. “You must have done.”

“I didn’t.” I stopped dead, turning toward Arlo’s voice just as he stepped out from behind a tree. In contrast to me, he was all bundled up, and I couldn’t help but be jealous. “Jesus!” he said as soon as he saw me. “What happened to you?”

I sighed. “I fell. A few times.” I lifted one foot. “These shoes are shit for walking through snow.”

Arlo grimaced. “I have boots you could have borrowed if you’d asked.”

I laughed. “Oh, yeah. I’m about to run away from you and hope you don’t follow, can I borrow your boots to do that? Oh, and maybe your very warm looking coat as well.”

He came a few steps closer, his expression one of concern. “I wish you had done that.” He jerked his head in the direction I’d been going in. “Hopefully, you’ve seen for yourself that there’s nothing close to the cabin. Nothing but trees, anyway. There’s a river if you go west. But apart from that, it’s just trees and wildlife.”

“Promise me you’re not lying. Swear on your father’s life.” Arlo’s hat was too low for me to see his eyebrows, but I’d have bet anything he’d raised one in the way I remembered him doing.

“My father’s life?”

Something dreadful occurred to me. “He is still alive?” Arlo had talked a lot about his father during the couple of weeks we’d spent together when the cameras hadn’t been rolling. It was his father being an actor that had resulted in Arlo spending so much time in his formative years on film or TV sets. Without that, he’d theorized that a role behind the camera would never have occurred to him. He’d met his mentor when the man had filmed a documentary about Arlo’s father, and the rest was history, Arlo working as his number two until solo opportunities had come his way at a tender age.

“Yeah, he’s still alive.”

Relief slammed into me, sharp enough to make me forget for a minute how cold I was. “Good.”

Arlo smiled like I’d said something funny. “I’ll pass on your congratulations for his continued breathing next time I see him. You know, when he flies to Austria to visit me in prison.” He wanted me to say I wouldn’t call the police on him, but I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t yet. “I swear on my father’s life,” Arlo said, “that the closest cabin is twenty miles away. Possibly more. It’s not like I measured it.” He looked up as the universe decided it would be the perfect time to make it snow again, large flakes dropping from the sky.

I heaved out a sigh. “For fuck’s sake! Has it not snowed enough?”

“I don’t think it works like that.”

“Well, it should.” I sounded like the spoiled musician everyone liked to think I was. But in this case, it felt warranted.

“Let’s go back to the cabin,” Arlo urged. “We can get warm and talk.”

The sensible part of my brain knew that was the only option, but the stubborn part refused to admit defeat that easily. “I’ve come this far.”

“You’ve come a mile at most,” Arlo said. “One down. Nineteen to go.”

I glared at him. “There’s no need to disparage my achievements.”

He grinned as he held his gloved hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Okay, I won’t. I also won’t point out that you’re going in completely the wrong direction for the neighbor’s cabin?”

“You don’t know that.”

“I’m pretty sure.”

“Maybe someone built a cabin you don’t know about.” I picked a random direction and gestured that way. “It’s probably just over there.”

“Maybe.”

“And,” I said. However, I’d been going to finish that sentence blanked out of existence as a distant howl punctured the silence. I automatically moved closer to Arlo. “Was that…?”

“A wolf.”

Another howl answered the first, this one sounding closer, the hair on the back of my neck standing on end. “Wolves,” I corrected. “I thought you were making it up about Austria having wolves.”

Arlo shook his head so vehemently that for a moment, I feared it might go on forever. “I wasn’t sure, but…”

“You were making the bears up, though, right?” Another headshake, my heart dropping somewhere close to my frozen feet. “Fuck!”

“Yeah,” Arlo agreed.

We both started back in the direction we’d come, the tracks making it easy to retrace our steps. I was shivering now, the pause in movement having dropped my core temperature lower. “Can bears and wolves co-exist in the same habitat?”

“I have no fucking clue.”

“Next time you abduct someone, perhaps you should do more research.”

“I’m not planning on there being a next time. I wasn’t really planning on there being a first time.”

“I feel so special.” Another howl had us both stumbling, the distance back to the cabin suddenly seeming insurmountable. Was that one of the same wolves who’d howled? Or a different one? I bet there were people who could tell. Zoologists or wolf specialists. But as I was neither, in my head there were at least three wolves now prowling the undergrowth. Three hungry wolves who probably ate people.

Arlo had taken hold of my hand, the gesture surprisingly intimate despite us both wearing gloves and my hands being so numb that I doubted I’d have been able to feel him even if I wasn’t. He was using the grip to pull me along faster, Arlo clearly no more a fan of bumping into a wolf than I was. “Couldn’t you have abducted me in Acapulco? You could have dragged me off to a house on the beach where I could sunbathe naked and work on getting a tan?”

Arlo laughed. “You’ve never toured in Acapulco.”

“I know. Musical philistines, the lot of them. I should go there, anyway. Have you ever been?” Talking made me feel better, even if my teeth were chattering so much that words were a struggle, and I wasn’t entirely sure what I was talking about.

“Acapulco?”

“Yeah.”

“No, I haven’t. It’s a very specific place to bring up. I’m not even sure where it is exactly.”

“Mexico. I don’t know why it came to mind.” The cabin was in sight now. I could almost feel its warmth reaching out to me. “Going loco in Acapulco, maybe. You know that song?”

“Yeah, but I’m surprised you do.”

“Why? Because I’m supposed to eat and breathe classical music? I am allowed to listen to other stuff. I like a lot of old songs.”

“Like what?” Arlo seemed just as keen to keep me talking as I was on doing it. Either he was concerned I might collapse, and he’d have to carry me the rest of the way, or he appreciated something to think about other than wolves. Which of course got me thinking about wolves again and ignoring Arlo’s question about music. “Will they come to the cabin? Snow must make it more difficult for them to hunt, right? They might come looking for food.”

“I like the fact that you keep asking me questions about them, like I know the first thing about them. How many wolves do we have in the UK?”

“Zero.”

“Exactly.” He paused. “The cabin’s secure, though.”

“I hope so.”

“It is.”

We’d reached the ‘secure cabin,’ Arlo yanking the door open he’d not stopped to lock, and both of us throwing ourselves across the threshold. This time, he locked it and pulled the bolt across. When he turned to face me, he winced. “Shit! You’re blue.”

Shivers were wracking my body now, the warmth of the cabin only seeming to make me colder. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be warm again. Arlo gave me a little shove toward the bathroom, my physical state so poor I couldn’t have resisted even if I wanted to.

“Take your clothes off,” Arlo urged. There was a joke there somewhere, but I couldn’t grasp onto it, never mind vocalize it. “Once you’re undressed, get in the shower and stay in there for a while.” He helped me off with my outerwear like I was a child. Is that how he saw me, like I’d always remained seventeen in his head? It would go some way to explaining why he thought I needed rescuing, and why he thought he was the person to do it. Who else did I have, though? My mother died when I was seven, and most other people in my life had been hired by my father and reported to him.

“Can you do the rest yourself?” There was no impatience in Arlo’s tone, just a quiet concern.

“What?”

“The rest of your clothes? I can help you if not. I don’t mind.”

If I hadn’t had the approximate core temperature of an icicle, I might have blushed. Which was strange. Since when did I blush? I got plenty of sex and wasn’t shy about it. “I can manage.”

“Great.” Arlo backed off a few steps with an unreadable expression on his face. Did he want to undress me? That was food for thought once my brain started working properly again. “Wait… One minute.” He ran out of the bathroom, returning in less than a minute with a fluffy white bathrobe in his hands. “Put this on when you get out of the shower. I’ll put some soup on so we can warm you from the inside. Call me if you need help after all.”

“I’m sure I’ll be fine.” I wasn’t sure at all, but it seemed like the right thing to say. However, peeling my sodden clothes off with fingers stiff from the cold proved quite the challenge. So much so that by the time I managed it and stepped into the shower, I was considering adding it to my CV—that I didn’t have—under my greatest achievements. As I tipped my head back beneath the warm water, I had to concede that as escapes went, mine wouldn’t be breaking any records in terms of success.