Blood Hunt (48 page)
Authors: Ian Rankin
The voice sounded maybe a hundred yards away. Two-thirds of a yard per stride… Reeve started counting, at the same time snaking his way back up the slope, listening intently for any clue as to the line Jay was taking. He guessed he would simply follow the trail of blood.
Reeve was just below the crest now. Suddenly he heard a grunt as Jay started to climb. In a few seconds he would crest the rise, Reeve just the other side of it, hugging the land. Reeve stopped breathing. Jay was so close, not even six feet away.
Reeve concentrated all his energies, closing his eyes for a moment, finally taking a deep breath.
“Hey, Philos—”
He threw out his good arm with all his strength, plunging the dagger through Jay’s boot and into his foot. As Jay started to scream, Reeve yanked his ankles away from him, hurling him down the slope. Jay could see what was at the bottom of the slide and tried digging his heels, elbows, and fingers in, but the ground was slippery and he just kept on sliding. Reeve was sliding, too. The force of his momentum when he’d hauled Jay over the crest had sent him into a roll. His shoulder banged against the ground, almost causing him to pass out. Below him, he saw Jay slip three-quarters of the way over the precipice, his hands scrabbling for purchase. Reeve was rolling straight towards him. They’d fall into the ravine together.
Reeve struck out with his right hand, the hand which still held the dagger. The blade sank into the earth, but started to cut through it, barely slowing his descent. He twisted the blade so the meat of it was gouging into the wet soil. It was like applying a brake. He jolted to a stop, his legs hanging into space. He found the edge with his knees and started to pull himself up, but a hand grabbed one of his ankles. And now Jay’s other hand let go of the lip of the ravine, and he used it to gain a better grip on Reeve, hauling himself up over Reeve’s slippery legs while their combined weight started the dagger cutting through the earth again, so that as Jay climbed, Reeve slid farther over the edge.
He waited till Jay was preparing to slide farther up; while he was unbalanced, Reeve rolled onto his side, shrugging Jay off and at the same time lashing out at him with his feet. For an instant they were side by side, the way they had been that final night in Argentina, their faces so close Reeve could feel Jay’s breath against his cheek.
“Well,” Jay panted, trying to grin, “isn’t this cozy? Just the two of us, like it was always meant to be.”
“You should have died back in Rio Grande,” Reeve spat.
“If we’d stayed in that damned trench, we’d have died,” Jay hissed. “You owe me, Philosopher!”
“Owe you?” Reeve was clawing at the ground with the fingers of his left hand, feeling pain shoot through his shoulder. When he had a good handhold he started to ease the dagger out of the ground.
“Yes, owe me,” Jay was saying, readying to pull them both over the edge and onto the rocks below.
Reeve raised the dagger and plunged it into Jay’s neck. Blood gurgled from Jay’s mouth, his eyes wide in amazement as one hand went to the wound. He lost all grip and started to slide over the edge.
Reeve watched him go, the head disappearing last of all, eyes still wide open. He didn’t hear the body hit the ground. Reeve let out a roar which echoed down the chasm walls and up into the sky. Not a roar of pain or even of victory.
Just a roar.
“All debts repaid,” Reeve said, digging the dagger back into the ground, and for some reason he saw Jim in his mind, content.
Then he started slowly, carefully, to climb back up the treacherous slope, not relaxing until he was at the top, his head and trunk hanging over the crest of the rise. He closed his eyes then and wept, not feeling the pain in his shoulder or the chill damp ground robbing him of his core temperature, degree by willful degree.
TWENTY-SIX
THERE WAS A LOT OF MESS still to be cleared up: Gordon Reeve knew that. The police might or might not accept his story. It sounded pretty farfetched when he thought about it. But he had Jim’s computer file, and soon he’d have the documents to go with it, as soon as he could arrange a trip to Tisbury.
As for CWC itself and Kosigin… he didn’t know what would happen. He only knew that something would. The same applied to Allerdyce and Alliance Investigative. He didn’t really care anymore. He’d done what he could.
He made his way back home and staggered indoors. He knew he should clean his wounds, make fresh dressings, call a doctor. But he sat at the kitchen table instead. He wanted to phone Joan, wanted to tell her it was all right now, that Allan and she could come home. He wanted that most of all.
He wasn’t sure what they’d do after that. Go back to the old routine? Maybe. Or maybe he’d dig up some of their land, turn it into a vegetable garden… go organic, and worry less that way. He didn’t think so, though.
He started to laugh, resting his head on his forearms.
“I’m one of Nietzsche’s gentlemen,” he told himself. “I’ll think of something.”
Ian Rankin is the #1 bestselling mystery writer in the United Kingdom. He is the winner of an Edgar Award for Resurrection Men, and he is the recipient of a Gold Dagger Award for Fiction and the Chandler-Fulbright Award. He lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, with his wife and their two sons.
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