Snow Burn (A Tom Rollins Thriller Book 4) Read online

  Snow Burn

  A Tom Rollins Thriller

  Paul Heatley

  Published by Inkubator Books

  www.inkubatorbooks.com

  Copyright © 2021 by Paul Heatley

  Paul Heatley has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work.

  ISBN (eBook): 978-1-7398132-9-1

  ISBN (Paperback): 978-1-7398132-8-4

  SNOW BURN is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Contents

  Inkubator Books

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Inkubator Newsletter

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  1

  The hunter hides himself in a bush, lying flat on the snow and trying to make himself comfortable.

  Down the pass, through the scope of his Mossberg Patriot, he spotted a Sitka deer. It’s coming his way. It wasn’t a clear shot, not at first. Too many trees, too many bushes. The deer kept stopping, disappearing behind branches, rummaging.

  The hunter waits for it to get closer. It is cold up the Chugach Mountains, but he barely feels it. This isn’t his first time, isn’t even his fiftieth, and it certainly won’t be his last. He’s Alaskan, born and bred, raised in the nearby town of White Spruce Hill. He’s never been anywhere else. Never hunted anywhere else, for that matter. Today, however, has not been the best day. No sign of any bucks. He was on his way back down the mountain, to his truck, when he finally spotted the doe. It’s small. He’s going to have to settle for it. It’s better than nothing.

  He hears its gentle footfalls in the snow as it gets closer. The hunter lets out a breath, nice and slow, and rests the stock of the rifle against his cheek. His movements are small and concise, so as not to make any noise. Nothing abrupt. Nothing that will startle the deer, that will send her running. She comes into view. She’s close. So close he barely needs to bother with the scope, but he uses it anyway. Sights her up, aims at the side of her head, between her left eye and her ear. The hunter readies his finger on the trigger. His breathing is calm and level. He begins to exhale, and prepares to place pressure on the trigger.

  “You might not wanna do that, buddy.”

  The hunter gives a start, almost chokes on his own breath. The voice comes from beside him, to his right. He did not hear anyone approach. He looks up, an eyebrow raised. A man is beside him, crouched low, watching the doe. From his profile, the hunter sees he has a sharp nose and blue eyes. His cheeks and jaw are covered in a beard that needs a trim. He’s wearing a wool hat pulled down over his ears, with jeans and a heavy, faux-fur-lined jacket over a thick sweater. He has a neon orange vest pulled over the jacket, much like the hunter’s own, to avoid being shot. The hunter looks back at his feet, sees he is wearing snow boots, and again wonders how he did not hear his approach. He checks, and can barely see his prints in the snow.

  The hunter spots three dead rabbits hanging from the man’s hip, then sees the Winchester M70 slung over his shoulder. “This is my kill,” the hunter hisses, staying quiet so as not to alarm the deer. If it bolts, if he loses it, he’s going to be pissed off.

  The man looks down at him, raises an eyebrow. “She’s been foraging,” the man says. “Don’t you see all the food in her mouth? She isn’t eating it. She’s taking it back to her fawns. It’s for them.” The man is silent for a moment, watching the hunter. The hunter feels uncomfortable under his gaze. “Do you really want to orphan those children?”

  “Man, fuck you,” the hunter says. “Mind your business.” He turns his attention back to the scope, to the doe, before she can disappear from view.

  The man puts his hand over the end of the scope, blocking the view. The hunter rears back, showing his teeth. “What is your fucking problem?”

  “I’ve told you my problem,” the man says. “Now, I’ve asked you nicely. I’ve appealed to your better nature. If I have to ask you again, I’m not going to be so polite.”

  The hunter bristles, feeling his temper rise. He doesn’t know who this asshole is, this wannabe savior of the mountain animals, and he doesn’t care, either. He starts getting to his knees, reaching down to his side where he keeps his bowie knife. “And I’m through entertaining your bullshit –”

  The man sees what he’s doing, where his hand is going. While the hunter is rising, the man grabs the barrel of the Mossberg and raises it fast, slams it into the center of the hunter’s face. The hunter is dazed, tasting his own blood as it runs from his nose down the back of his throat. The man grabs him by the back of his skull to stop him from falling, then punches him in the side of the head to keep him compliant. He lays the hunter down in the snow.

  The hunter blinks up at the sky through the branches, feeling sick. He manages to turn his head. He sees the man still crouching, watching the doe disappear into the bushes. The man watches until it is out of sight, completely gone from view, submerged within the branches, then he turns to the hunter. He looks down at the hunter, who is still trying to pull himself back together, to shake the fuzz from his head. The man watches him for a while, seeming to silently deliberate.

  Finally, the man reaches to his hip, pulls one of the rabbits loose. He places it next to the hunter’s Mossberg. “A gift,” the man says. “For doing the right thing, with such minimal persuasion.” The man stands and steps out of the trees.

  The hunter struggles to push himself up. The man had looked decidedly average – average height, average build (though he’d been wearing heavy clothes, which disguised his body size, admittedly) – and the hunter had never expected him to be able to hit so ha
rd. He manages to drag himself up to his feet with the aid of the nearest tree, then stumbles out into the opening, pushing aside the branches as he goes. It’s the noisiest he’s been all day, but it doesn’t matter now. The doe is gone. Taken from him, left to run free.

  And so is the man. There’s no sign of him. The hunter looks left and right. He tries to follow the footprints, but they disappear abruptly, and the hunter can only assume he has stepped into the trees and gone off through the woods.

  The hunter heads back for his rifle, wiping the blood from his top lip and nostrils as he goes. He spits a wad of it onto the snow, then looks back over his shoulder. Still no sign of the man. He retrieves his Mossberg.

  After a moment’s thought, he picks up the rabbit, too.

  2

  Tom Rollins has called Alaska his home for the last six months. More specifically, he’s called a small cabin in the Chugach Mountains home.

  After his brief altercation with the hunter out in the woods, he returns to the cabin. The hunter will not be able to track him. Tom is careful. He makes sure to cover his tracks. The spot where they were in the woods is an hour away from where Tom is now.

  The cabin is secluded, closed in on either side and around the back by tall pine trees. Without thorough directions, no one knows how to find the cabin. Few know it is here. Tom likes it this way. He likes the peace. His truck is parked down the side of the cabin, and there is a road, which only he uses, that takes him down off the mountain.

  The cabin is made of wood and, he has been told, has been here for more than thirty years. There is a stone chimney at the side, from which wisps of smoke from the remnants of the burning wood in the fireplace inside rise into the sky.

  Tom, despite the cold and the two dead rabbits on his hip, does not go straight in. Instead, he checks the area around the cabin first. Looks in the snow for footprints that do not belong to him. He goes into the trees on either side and checks in there, too. He looks his traps over – the bear traps and the snares. He’s dug a bear pit at the back of the cabin, outside his bedroom window, but it remains empty. They’re all empty, and there are no footprints.

  Old habits die hard, especially for a man with Tom Rollins’s past. He’s had enemies. Most of them are dead, but there are still a few out there. There may even be some he’s unaware of. Friends of enemies that he doesn’t know about. It’s always worth being prepared. His military background comes to the fore. His time with CIA black ops. It keeps him alert, even in a place like this. It keeps him paranoid. It keeps him alive.

  He goes inside the cabin. The logs in the fireplace are down to cinders and ash, almost burned out completely. The floors are bare wood, the varnish on them worn down and in need of a new coat. There is a rug in front of the fireplace, with a sofa directly opposite and two chairs, one on each side. The kitchen is to Tom’s left, all inside one big open-plan room. The bedroom is at the back of the cabin, with the bathroom opposite. The oven is powered by gas, the canisters bought in the nearest town, and the electric is powered by a gas generator.

  Tom puts his rifle down by the door, shrugs off his coat and hangs it up, then takes the dead rabbits into the kitchen. The rifle is not the only gun here. There are others dotted around the cabin, all of them within easy reach. He skins and guts the rabbits in the sink. Then, while they’re cooking, he goes down into the basement. The entrance is in the center of the kitchen. A trapdoor, with a bullring handle.

  When he first came here, the basement was in need of a good dusting. Spiderwebs clung thickly to every corner and every wall. The shelves, where he stores his dry foods, were an inch deep with dust. It’s spotless now. Tom made some further alterations, too. There is a wire pinned to a wall that wasn’t here before. It runs up through the floorboards, to where explosives are strategically placed throughout the cabin. When Tom leaves, he’ll disconnect them, take them with him, but in the meantime – well. Old habits die hard.

  His bag is down here, too. Kept packed in case he needs to move fast. It contains spare clothes, weapons, and his burner phones, which he takes down into town with him at least once every couple of weeks, gives them a chance to get a signal and see if anyone has tried to get in touch. There is no cell reception at the cabin. So far, there have been no missed calls or messages.

  He keeps the picture of Alejandra in his bag, too. Wherever he goes, he always makes sure to store her in the safest place. These days, there are some bloodstains around the outside of the picture. The blood is his. The Santa Muerte pendant she gifted him, long before she died, is kept with her picture.

  From the shelves he takes a jar of yellow foot mushrooms, and another two containing lowbush cranberries, and thimbleberries. He picked these before the snows came, and has stored them since, dipping into them every so often. There are cans of beans, green beans, and chickpeas on the shelves, too, items he has picked up in town when he has ventured down. His trips have been rarer since the snows came.

  Back upstairs, he fries the mushrooms and eats them with the rabbit. He sits out on the porch while he does, watching the sky. Looking at the snow. There’s little else to see, but he doesn’t mind. He likes it. He’s called this place home for the last six months, and he hasn’t tired of it yet. He enjoys the peace. The altercation with the hunter earlier is the closest he’s come to action since he was down in Arizona. Since he was stabbed. The wounds have healed, but they’ve left a big scar low down on his torso. Another added to the collection. He finishes the rabbit and mushrooms and has the berries.

  He’s kept himself busy. He’s stayed in shape. Works out every day, as well as his regular walks atop the mountains. Checking his traps, foraging for what he can. On occasion, he sees people down in town. Well, a person.

  He washes up, then throws his jacket back on, without the high-viz vest over the top of it this time. He goes to his truck and drives down off the mountain, drives to town.

  He’s careful on his descent. Takes his time. After that, it’s a couple of hours to White Spruce Hill. It’s getting dark by the time he arrives.

  Tom passes the town’s namesake as he drives through. Said hill, with the white spruce growing out of it, is smack bang in the center of the small town square.

  There’s not much to the town. Rows of small houses, and mobile homes. A post office that is open every day, but only between the hours of nine and eleven a.m. A bar that never seems to close, often frequented by the two mechanics who work in the garage down the road, passing time while they wait for another car to work on. The roads and the pavements here are often cleared of snow. It gets bunched up in the gutters, dirty and melting, shoveled by retirees looking to pass the time. It doesn’t make the streets look any better, though. It makes them look wet and miserable. The snow, at least, hides what is beneath. Makes everything look postcard pretty.

  White Spruce Hill is not a big place. Tom drives to the other end of it, to the local store, in a couple of minutes. He parks outside and goes in. It’s quiet. The owner, Emma Raven, is behind the counter, along with a younger lady who looks high school age and likely works here in the evenings to save money for the baby that is growing in her ever-expanding belly.

  “Tom,” Emma says, smiling as he walks toward her. “What a rare and pleasant surprise.” She winks at him. Emma is Tlingit. She’s never known her tribe. When her parents died in a car crash, she was still too young to have asked. She was adopted by a white couple who either didn’t know, or were willfully ignorant of her heritage. What they did give her, however, was an inheritance in the form of this store, which has been here almost as long as White Spruce Hill itself. “What can we do for you today? Have you come to peruse our selection of non-perishables?”

  Tom picks up a couple of cans of beans from a nearby shelf. “Can never have too many,” he says. “Especially with the weather being what it is.”

  “Uh-huh. Speaking of, I was thinking I might come up again, spend a weekend sometime soon.”

  “Well, it is your cabin.”


  Emma grins. “I’d be coming more for the company.”

  Tom winks. “You know I’ll be there. I need some more gas canisters, though.”

  “You know where we keep them,” Emma says, but she comes around the counter and joins him on the way to the far wall where they’re stored. “You heard there’s a blizzard coming in?”

  “I heard,” Tom says. “Due tomorrow night, right?”

  “Can feel it coming in already. Can feel it in the air.”

  “Can see it in the clouds,” Tom says, thinking of how they’ve been lingering on the horizon for a couple of days now, filled with threat.

  “That too. It’s been real dark lately.”

  Tom picks up a couple of canisters of gas.

  “Whenever it comes,” Emma says, “you be careful.”

  “I’m always careful.” They head back toward the counter, taking their time. “When do you finish?” Emma’s store is the only one in town. It stays open late.