Mortal Remains (17 page)

“You’ve got to help me!” he hollered one more time, knowing the gutless creep had probably run off, saving his own skin rather than facing up to his brainless act. He didn’t need his help anyway, he thought, reaching in his shirt pocket for his cell phone.

It was gone.

Oh God,
he thought, looking down where he stood. By the reflected glow of the headlight, he saw the end of it sticking a half inch out of the water. It had fallen out when he fell.

He snatched it up and flipped it open.

Dead.

He heard a soft
whump
behind him, and a sudden orange glow came from beneath the Jeep.

Ignoring the pain in his eye, he started to run along the streambed. If it blew, he’d get a backful of steel.

He cut right, and started scrambling up rocks coated in snow. He reached the road and, crouched low, made a beeline for the far side, slipping as he ran.

The Jeep exploded just as he reached the far ditch. He threw himself facedown on the snow-covered dirt and heard bits of metal fly over his head. Peeking through his fingers with his good eye, he saw the entire forest light up in the glow, the trees and glittering ground between cast in flickering gold.

That’s when he saw him.

In a growth of young birch a man stood watching, as casually as if at a bonfire, his eyes fixed on the burning car, gun held at the ready across his chest. The peak of a camouflaged hunting cap hid his face.

Mark’s insides crawled toward his throat.

What kind of creep would deliberately shoot someone off the road, then hang around watching?

A very dangerous one.

The initial burst of light subsided, throwing the interior of the woods into darkness.

Mark riveted his gaze in the direction where he’d seen the man. Could the guy be waiting to take another shot, the initial one intended to hit him after all? He’d obviously ignored the shouts for help.

No, don’t go overboard here. The man’s hanging around didn’t necessarily mean he intended to fire again or meant to seriously injure him in the first place. The guy could be watching to make sure he got out okay. Probably he hadn’t even expected the car would blow up, and was now shitting bricks, not knowing whether his “prank” had ended up killing someone.

Not that he, Mark Roper, was about to put the asshole’s mind to rest by standing up to show he’d gotten safely away.

Metal groaned as it twisted in the heat, lightbulbs blew apart with loud popping noises, and a sickening perfume of burning paint, melting plastic, and rubber filled the air.

But try as he might, Mark couldn’t ignore the darker possibilities running through his head. Icy rivulets of melted snow dripped down his back, and his eye throbbed more fiercely. The man could be a certified crazy. Having taken a potshot and done this much damage, he might decide to finish off his prey.

Or an even worse scenario: This was no random act, and Mark had been deliberately ambushed.

After all, in Chaz Braden he had an enemy with reason to want him out of the way. But how could that asshole or anyone else have known to lie in wait for him on this road at this time? No one followed him on the way out to Nell’s. There hadn’t been another car on the road.

He continued to stare into the forest. Had the man with the gun seen him run to this hiding spot?

Maybe not. He’d bent low and dashed to the shadows of the ditch before the blast illuminated the place he’d crossed.

But the guy would only have to check around the remains of his Jeep to find boot prints in the snow. What if the idiot took a notion to follow him?

Time to get farther away.

He ran along the ditch. After a hundred yards, repeated spills into a creek that meandered under the snow had him soaking wet. As he put more distance between him and where the man had been in the woods, the wind cut through his clothing, making him shiver. He’d soon be in big trouble with hypothermia if he stayed out in this for very long.

Yet the nearest house was Nell’s, ten miles back, and the first houses at the outskirts of town lay ten miles ahead.

Normally an easy run, he might not make either because of the cold.

His own home was less than three miles away, on the other side of a range of hills to his right. The distance wasn’t any big deal – a forty-minute walk in the city, plus he was in good shape – and the forest would provide cover, both from a pursuer and the wind. But it was across rough country, a trek difficult enough during the day, let alone at night.

He peered up over the edge of the highway.

Not a headlight in either direction. He could easily freeze to death waiting for someone to come along.

He looked over toward the fiery wreckage again. The glowing orb of light encasing it created the impression of a macabre Christmas ornament suspended in the darkness. At the edge of the sphere he saw movement, and the silhouette of the hunter strode across the road.

The man stood a few moments facing the fire, his back to Mark. He was as tall as Chaz Braden, but bulkier. Yet winter clothing under the camouflage clothing could produce that effect. Still cradling the gun, he reached into his outfit, pulled out a hip flask, and took a long drink.

Enough trying to second-guess a creep, especially one who was all boozed up.

Mark turned and, staying low, ran to the woods. A few yards into the trees he found it considerably darker, but could still see the pale surface of the snow on the ground and the trunks of the trees ahead of him. Holding his hands out to ward off any low branches, he pushed deeper, balancing speed with stealth. His only hope would be to get as much of a lead as possible before his attacker found his trail.

Glancing back over his shoulder and through the trees, Mark saw the man’s silhouetted form circle the car, then kneel where tracks would have been. The figure reached into his pocket, and, seconds later, a tiny beam of light shot out from his hand toward the ground.

Mark pressed ahead all the faster.

The floor of the forest sloped steeply upward, and his breathing quickly became labored. The trees overhead were old, big enough to have blocked the sun for the last hundred years, so there was little new undergrowth to ensnare him. But the rocks and wet leaves beneath the snow made traction difficult, and with each step forward he seemed to slide halfway back. Every now and then a branch caught him across the face, and the pain in his injured eye seared as hot as if a live coal were stuck in it.

But up he went, able to use the left eye by squinting the injured one closed. Having adapted to the dark, he could see enough to grab low-hanging branches and pull himself along whenever his feet started to skid.

Taking another glance backward, he saw the man with the rifle following his thin cone of light across the highway toward Mark’s first hiding place.

He kept going up, figuring he was now a hundred and twenty yards from the road and had probably climbed a hundred feet of elevation.

Two ridges lay ahead, each about five hundred feet high with a shallow valley between them, some of it open ground. But if he could reach the first ridge well ahead of the hunter, he could widen his lead going down the far slope, possibly even get out of rifle range. That might discourage his pursuer from following him.

His right eye, tearing profusely, clamped itself so tightly shut in reflex to the pain that he could barely keep his left one open. He had to use the fingers of his left hand to pry the lids apart. Even then he couldn’t manage more than a squint and found his field of vision cut in half.

He tried again to glance behind him. The man, little more than a dark shape in the open snow at the highway’s edge, stood directly below him now and looked right up to where he climbed.

He can’t see me,
Mark thought, keeping his panic in check.

His tracker shouldered the rifle and started after him, once more following the thin beam of light, presumably playing it over his footprints.

Mark estimated he had a hundred-and-fifty-yard lead. Not much of an advantage over a bullet. He redoubled his efforts. Everything depended on how far down the other side of the ridge he could get before the gunman reached the peak and drew a bead on him.

His breathing grew more ragged, and his boots kept slipping, sapping energy from his legs until his calves burned. But at least he wasn’t cold. The exertion made him warm, so much so that as sweat began to cling to his shirt, he hardly noticed his wet pants. Now and then he scooped a handful of slush into his mouth and gulped it down between gasps of breath. The coolness actually felt good. But as soon as he stopped to rest, his damp clothes would accelerate heat loss and quicken the onset of hypothermia.

But as much as the trees blocked the wind down here, high overhead it roared through the branches, obliterating any noises the man below made.
That better work both ways,
he thought. Whenever one of the low limbs he grabbed as a handhold snapped off with a
crack
, he imagined it could be heard for a mile. He tried not to think of the man stopping, unshouldering his rifle, and aiming at the sound. He took yet another furtive look. Mark could no longer see him, not even the thin beam of light. But he could see his own trail, leading to him like a tracer bullet.

Up he went, his legs and arms aching from the effort. He could only hope the man behind him had as much trouble.

As the slope became steeper, more slippery, he had to reach directly in front of him to grab rocks and roots buried in the ground so as to propel himself upward. He mustn’t slip now, or he’d slide a lot more than a few steps, possibly all the way to the feet of his pursuer. He tested each handhold before actually gripping it, his exposed fingers aching with wet and cold, and kicked at every toehold to secure an extra half inch of footing.

He must be near the top, he told himself. The wind sounded louder. And some of what he crawled over became bare rock. In spots it became even too steep to hold an accumulation of snow, and he crawled over bare rock, part of a granite spine that ran the length of the crest. That meant no tracks. Mark felt a sudden burst of elation. If the top was just as bare, he could not only get ahead of the son of a bitch, but run along the ridge before starting down, then lose him altogether.

He hoisted himself over a ledge and stood on a shelf of stone in a full blast of icy cold. He’d made it. He also instantly started to freeze. His damp clothes flattened against his skin, and the chill cut through him as if he had nothing on. The worst were his fingers, which immediately cramped and curled into claws. But the stony ground beneath his feet, though coated with ice, had been blown clean of snow just as he’d hoped.

He quickly looked around, making sure his would-be assassin hadn’t somehow beaten him by taking a different route. To the right and left he saw only naked rock disappearing into the gloom. On the horizon in front of him, the wind was rolling back the cloud, exposing a dazzling strip of stars and a full moon low in the sky. He must get to the safety of the woods before it got any higher. Once it lit up the snowscape below, he’d be like a mouse running from a hawk in the clearings.

Huddled low and keeping his feet wide apart so as not to slip, he thrust his hands under his arms and scurried along the top of the ridge. After about a hundred yards he jumped down onto a bushy shallow ledge on the far side. He saw a gradual, snow-covered slope fifteen feet beneath him. Once there he would be a dozen strides from the trees. He’d need to smooth over any prints he left, then count on the wind to do the rest. With a bit of luck, the man behind him might have already lost the trail and not be able to spot it again.

He moved to ease himself over the rocky edge and lower himself to the ground when a movement in the darkness below, another fifty yards farther to his left, caught his eye.

He stood absolutely still.

Staring down into the shadows, he saw nothing more and thought he must have imagined it.

Until a shape darker than the woods crept toward him and quickly became a human form.

But it couldn’t be.

He had such a head start on the man. How could he be here already?

Choices raced through his mind. Should he scramble back down the other side? Stay crouched on the ledge? Maybe he hadn’t been seen yet. Or any second there’d be a bullet. He drew his breath, determined not to scream and beg.

The figure crossed about ten yards below him. Mark could easily see the dark outline of a rifle barrel held upward toward the sky. But the man’s head seemed turned toward the forest, cocked to one side as if he listened for something down there. Not once did he glance up where Mark lay crouched.

Was it the same person who’d first shot at him? Had he found a less steep way up after all? Or was it someone else? His build looked slimmer, though in the dark Mark couldn’t be sure. An accomplice of the man who’d pursued him, perhaps, lying in wait, knowing his partner would chase the prey up to him?

Whoever it was remained focused on the forest below, looking down the hill, away from the ridge.

Some accomplice.

Mark breathed as softly as he could. The cold continued to rip through him, and he started to shiver. He clamped his jaws closed to keep his teeth from chattering.

The man beneath him continued to listen and stare into the woods, the white vapor of his breath whipping into the night.

If he turned, they’d be looking right at each other. Mark quietly curled into a ball and crept back against the bushes, burying his head in his arms to mask the white traces of his own breath in the frost. With his good eye he squinted along the ridge to see if the man he’d thought was on his heels had arrived.

No one.

Was the man not thirty feet from him the gunman?

No, Mark finally decided. From all the years he’d hiked and played around these hills he knew for certain there was no shortcut.

So who was this guy?

Just another hunter out poaching who had nothing to do with his pursuer?

Or is it me he’s listening for?

His shivering grew worse. His fingers ached. His eye throbbed.