He wanted to. Really, he did. Except it was so hard to get up. And so easy to just settle down into the snow and stay here.

Problem Four: You're going to die.

Solution: Accept it.

They'd left him here to die. That was why they'd taken his clothing. And he was going to die-right here next to Casey. It wouldn't take long now. Mitch wished he could leave Des a goodbye note. But he had nothing to write with. Doubted his fingers would be able to hold a pen anyway, even though he had them tucked inside of Casey's sweatshirt. What were the four degrees of frostbite? He'd just been watching a special about it the other night on The Weather Channel. The first degree was frost nip, which affected only the surface skin. Second degree, the skin froze and hardened but the deep tissue wasn't affected and you were still basically okay. But once you got to degrees three and four, the blood vessels, nerves and muscles started to freeze. That was when they started talking about gangrene and amputation. And then there was the whole hypothermia thing, which occurred when your body temperature dipped below ninety-five degrees. He figured that had to be on the table soon, what with the windchill factor and all. Bottom line? If no one found him in the next twenty minutes Mitch Berger, noted film critic, would achieve the fifth degree, which also went by the name Certain Death.

I don't want to die. I want to live. Please, God, don't let me die. Let me live. If you let me live I-I promise you I'll take back every bad word I've ever said about Danny Kaye. I'll even watch every single one of his movies, I swear. I don't want to die.

But he knew he was going to. This was the end. As he lay there on his side Mitch drew his knees to his chest and hugged them tightly, his teeth chattering as he waited for death to come. He didn't welcome it. But he accepted it. He had to accept it. Death was the only choice left to him. And he was okay with that, because he was very, very lucky.

I became the man I wanted to be. Did the work I wanted to do. I loved a special woman. When I lost her I didn't think I'd make it-until I met a woman who was even more special and I loved her even more.

That's pretty much all a man can ask for, isn't it? What else is there? Kids? Okay, he and Des didn't get that chance. But he did pretty damned good for a shlub from Stuyvesant Town. True, maybe this fade-out scene right here was a tiny bit on the sad side. Maybe he was blinking as he fought back the tears that had started to come. Blinking as the flashbulbs started popping before his eyes again, bright as could be. But this would be over soon. He just had to surrender to it. And so he did. Mitch closed his eyes and he surrendered.

"If a frog had wings he wouldn't bump his ass so much, follow me?"

CHAPTER 17.

THEY FLOORED IT TO Breezy Point, lights flashing and sirens blaring as they tore their way around the rush-hour traffic on the Post Road-Des in the lead car, Yolie on her tail with Tommy the Pinhead and Gigi Garanski handcuffed in the backseat of her cruiser. It took them ten minutes to reach the park turn-off on Route 1. When the road dipped under the Amtrak trestle, Des hit a pothole that was deep enough to rattle her spine. She slowed now as she drew nearer to the parking lot, her eyes searching the dusk for someone out walking. Someone large and Jewish who was desperately trying to find help. But she saw no one as she pulled into the deserted parking lot, her high beams sweeping the woods alongside of it.

If he's dead then I'm dead, too. I'll stop eating. I'll stop caring. I'll die. I'll just curl up and die.

She left her engine running, jumped out and threw open the back door to Yolie's cruiser. "Where are they?"

"On the beach," Tommy the Pinhead answered. "Like I told you."

"He'd better be okay. Because if he's not I swear I will shoot you both and leave you here. The coyotes will eat your remains."

"Tommy, she's scaring me," Gigi whimpered.

"Shut the hell up, will ya? The dude's fine," he assured Des. "I just gave him a little love pat on the head, that's all."

She slammed the door and zipped up her Gore-Tex storm jacket. Then she and Yolie started their way down the snowy, windblown path into the park. They needed their big Maglites to show them the way in the deepening darkness. And the walking wasn't easy. Every time she put her foot down it kerchunked on the hard, icy surface left by last night's rain and went plunging down into two feet of soft snow. Each footstep was serious work.

"MITCH?...!" she cried out, her ears straining for a response. She heard nothing over the wind. "Damn, I hope he didn't wander off and get lost."

"If he wandered anywhere it would have been back toward Route 1. We'd have seen him. Mitch ain't dumb."

"But he got whacked on the head, Yolie. He's already had one concussion this year. And this is Mitch we're talking about. For all we know he may think he's on a lion hunt with the Ale and Quail Club."

"The Ale and Quail who?"

"You never saw Palm Beach Story? I swear, that sequence on the train has to be the funniest ten minutes I've ever ... Will you listen to me? I'm even starting to sound like him. I swear, if that man's still alive I'm going to kill him."

"Okay, here we go," Yolie said as they reached the narrower path that snaked through the woods to the beach.

She could hear the surf washing up on the rocks as they made their way down the path. It was considerably windier out on the open beach. Blowing really, really hard. The windchill was something fierce. They waved their flashlight beams out along the water's edge and spotted two large shapes out there in the snow. Two large, motionless shapes.

"MITCH?!...." Des screamed over the howling wind.

Nothing. No response.

Des broke into a mad sprint through the deep snow, her legs straining, chest heaving as she gasped and gasped and gasped. "MITCH?!...."

Still nothing.

The first person her flashlight beam found was Casey, who was curled up dead like a giant, frozen worm. Huddled a few feet away from him was Mitch, who lay on his side wearing only a Pats hoodie, a pair of white socks and a bloody shower curtain that had slid down around his knees. He was ... blinking at her. Or trying to. His eyes were practically frozen shut. And he was shuddering so violently she could hear his teeth chattering. He had no pants on. Not even any underwear. The poor man's genitals were fully exposed to the howling wind.

She whipped off her parka and fell to her knees before him, tears streaming down her cheeks as she wrapped it around him. "Oh, baby, baby..."

"D-Do you?..."

"Do I what?"

"Any c-clam chowder?"

"What'd he just say?"

"He wants some clam chowder."

"Not a problem, big boy. We'll get some in you right away." Yolie took off her own jacket and put it over him.

"Can you believe they left him out here buck naked?"

"I can believe it."

"Would have been nice if they'd mentioned it."

"Girl, I think you need to accept that these are not nice people."

"We'll have to carry him back. I'll take him by his arms. You take his legs. Be real careful with his feet. If he's got any frostbite in those toes you don't want to squeeze them or rub them."

"Hey, I took the same lifesaving classes you did, remember?"

"Sorry, I'm just a tiny bit out of my mind right now."

"No, you're not. You're fine. We're all fine. Right, big boy?"

"K-Kids," he croaked as they secured their jackets around him.

Des frowned at him. "Which kids?"

"Our kids."

"He must be tripping." Des shined her light on the back of his head. "Yeah, he's been bleeding. Got whacked real good."

Yolie worked the zipper of her parka up toward Mitch's exposed genitals.

"N-Not sure I'm ready for our relationship to go this f-far," he told her.

"I've seen a man's tool before," she assured him, zipping him up nice and snug. "Don't think I've ever seen one so shriveled though."

"From the c-cold. I-I don't have frostbite there, do I?"

"Not to worry, stud. It strikes your extremities first. And, trust me, that ain't no extremity. Girl, is it always so small?"

"We are not going to have this conversation right now. And no."

"If you p-pop it into your mouth you'll warm it right up."

"He talking to me?"

"He'd better be talking to me."

Now he was muttering something under his breath about a frog having wings.

"You following any of this?" Yolie asked her.

"Not a word. Let's lift him on two, okay? One, two..."

They hoisted him up. Mitch was heavy, close to two hundred pounds. But not nearly as heavy as when she'd first met him. He'd taken off a good forty pounds of man-blubber since then. Which was a mighty good thing. It wasn't easy horsing him back through that deep snow, step by step by step.

"How you doing at your end?" Yolie panted as they worked their way slowly back across the beach.

"Okay..." Her shoulders and back were already starting to scream. "But I think he's unconscious."

"Probably just as well. Another ten seconds and he was going to be proposing to both of us."

They made it across the beach and started their way up the narrow, twisting path. By now every single muscle in Des's body was in agony.

"Need a break?" Yolie asked her when they reached the main path.

"No, I'm good," she gasped. "Let's get him in my front seat. I've got blankets in my trunk. I'll run him straight to Shoreline Clinic. Faster than waiting for an EMT."

"Deal. I'll secure this scene, then run those two pieces of human filth in."

They could see their cars now. Just another fifty yards and they'd be there. Not so far. Not so far at all. Not when her man's life depended on it. And, hell, the last twenty feet was plowed pavement. Easy-peasy. They set him down gently on the passenger side of her front seat. Des pointed all of the heater vents in his direction and got the blankets out of the trunk and wrapped them around him. He was still unconscious. Also exceedingly pale-except for his ears and nose, which were bright red. She jumped in behind the wheel and slammed the door.

He stirred, blinking at her from inside of his blanket cocoon. "Y-You found me."

"Of course I did." She backed the cruiser up, spun it around and took off. "Think I was going to let you freeze to death out there?"

"H-How?..."

"Rut called from the Rustic to tell me you'd vanished. We followed your trail from there to the Yankee Doodle, where we found a whole lot of blood in Bungalow Six." She eased off of the gas as she dipped under the Amtrak trestle, not wanting to jar him, then hit the gas again. Also her siren. "I was afraid it was yours, to tell you the truth."

"It wasn't."

"After that we convinced Tommy the Pinhead to tell us where you were. Two large, angry black women with semiautomatic handguns can be very persuasive-especially if one of them is Yolie."

She made a left onto Route 1 and punched it, veering around anyone and everyone in her path.

"Why'd they take my clothes?"

"Gigi thought it would be funny."

"She needs to work on her sense of humor."

"She'll have plenty of time at York Correctional."

"They teach comedy there now?"

"That was a joke, mister."

"Sorry, I'm not ... real with it."

In fact, he'd passed out again.

She hit ninety mph as she tore across the Baldwin Bridge and then up Route 9 to the clinic. Night was settling in as she pulled up at the ambulance entrance with a screech.

Mitch awoke with a startled yelp, his eyes wide with fright.

She put her arm around him. "You okay?"

"I-I thought I was back in that trunk again with Casey. It was like that scene in Out of Sight with George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez. After he escaped from prison, remember? Except it was pitch-black and he was dead. And I'd much rather have been stuffed in there with J-Lo. She was hot in that movie. Not Yvette Mimieux hot, but plenty hot."

She smiled at him. "You're jabbering. Have I told you recently how much I love it when you jabber?"

"Des, my head hurts."

"I know."

"And my toes really, really ache."

"Good. That means the nerves are still working. You won't lose them."

"Lose them?"

She got out, charged through the double doors to the ER and hollered, "Get some help here!"

A doctor and a nurse started toward her at once. Des had been in and out of the clinic a million times and was acquainted with the doctor, a brisk, efficient Asian woman named Cindie Tashima.