Stalking Death (42 page)

"Oh, I'm already sorry, very sorry. Maybe you can tell me this. Please. I know that Alasdair's going to drown... going into the lake with the car... but what do you have planned for me? I missed that part of the discussion."

Alasdair was standing a little apart, his back to us, looking out toward the invisible lake, bobbing and swaying like he was dancing to music inside his head. He didn't appear to have heard what I'd said.

"I think you'd rather not know."

"That bad, huh?" He nodded. "When we... it... gets to that point, could you... uh... do that thing you did with Donnie, so that I won't... so that I'm not..." My stomach rolled and I stopped talking. I didn't want to be sick.

"Awake?" he supplied helpfully.

"Awake," I agreed, choking down the hot acid that stung the back of my throat. To sleep. Perchance to die.

Chambers hovered nearby, ready to assist, his expression an unattractive combination of prissy and squeamish. The sacrifices the poor man had to make for the sake of his career. His legacy. So terrible.

It felt like we'd been here for hours as I skipped from one emotion to another like crossing a river on rocks—each step uncertain and unpredictable, unable to find steady footing. I'd counted thousands of breaths, each bringing me closer to what they intended to be my last. It had probably been less than ten minutes.

But ten minutes was too long for Alasdair. Suddenly he turned away from his self-involved dance and came back to peer into the trunk. "She's still in there? Come on. Let's get her out. Let's get this thing done. I've got a ride to catch." In the hand swinging loosely by his side, he held the axe.

Fear exploded in me like dynamite. Far away a siren moaned. Chambers and Woodson turned to look. I jerked at my hands, tearing through the last of the tape, pulled them apart, and pushed myself out of the trunk, springing past them and taking off down the road. I ran like the devil himself was chasing me. Or a crazy maniac with an axe. I ran for my life, straight down that dark and bumpy dirt road with three men chasing me, one of whom had a gun.

The words "broken field running" were muttering in my head. A strategy to avoid giving Woodson a straight shot. But it was damned hard to zig and zag when I couldn't see the ground. It seemed a better strategy to get off the road and into the woods. Sure, the sounds of my feet clomping over branches and rocks would be louder, but there would be lots of cover, too. As soon as I got around that curve I could dimly see up ahead.

I came around the curve and almost slammed into a car standing in the roadway with its lights off. I didn't wait to see if it was friend, foe or merely some local who'd come out to go parking or jack some deer. I thought I heard a voice yell, "Hey," but I wasn't stopping for anyone or anything. Not until I'd put a good safe distance between myself and the guys with the guns and axes.

I veered off the road into the woods, my arms raised before my face for protection. Branches slapped at my arms and snagged my hair. Sharp sticks scratched my cheeks and forearms and stabbed at my legs. Fallen branches and tangles of brush rose to trip me.

I moved through it all with the inexorable momentum of a juggernaut. Scraping, banging, and crashing my way deeper and deeper into the forest, tripping and falling and pushing myself up and going on, unable to hear whether I was still being followed because of all the noise I was making, and too afraid to stop and listen. Once, I heard what sounded like a gun shot. A commotion of voices shouting and then more shots.

When at last I paused to catch my breath, hands on my thighs, my chest on fire, I heard someone behind me and saw the broken beams of a flashlight filtered through the trees. Grimly, I used my sleeve to wipe the blood away from my eyes and started off again. I ran until my chest was exploding and pain stabbed my side, the thud of my feet reverberating through my skull.

I ran for my life, and because training with Andre had made me strong, it was a hell of a run. All those hours in the gym were finally paying off. I ran through the trembling muscles and the cramps and the gasping, pushing on, looking for that second wind until I stumbled up a slope, tripped over a slippery rock at the top, and tumbled down the other side, landing hard.

I lay there on spongy moss, groundwater seeping through my clothes, waiting for dizziness to subside so I could scramble up and go on. I could still hear my pursuer crashing through the woods. See those yellow beams getting closer, slicing through the forest like rays emanating from the hand of an evil wizard. I wobbled unsteadily to my feet, trying to pick out an escape route. He was so close now I could hear him panting. I crawled out of the open toward the darker shadows that meant brush, and shelter.

Suddenly, he was there at the top of the slope, the flashlight beaming down as he searched for me. I lay very still, glad I had dressed in black, hoping I just looked like more darkness, as the beam moved slowly over me and then moved away. My heart stopped when it found me. When the beating resumed, I thought he must be able to hear the thudding that filled my ears.

Then the beam stopped and moved slowly back toward me and I heard Alasdair's maniac chuckle. "Gotcha! They promised me I'd get to do this and I'm going to." For effect, he used the beam to illuminate the axe. All this way through the woods, he'd brought his favorite toy because Chambers and Woodson had told the little boy that if he was good and cooperated, he'd get to chop me up.

That must have been the conversation I hadn't heard because they'd moved away. It would have defied belief if I hadn't known all the events leading up to this. I scrambled to my feet, slightly blinded by the light, and staggered around, looking around for something to use as a weapon. There were some good-sized rocks, but I wanted a sturdy stick. No much of a weapon against an axe, but it would keep him at a distance.

I hurried away from him, back into the woods, searching the dark forest floor until I found the darker shape of a branch. Alasdair followed at a leisurely pace, keeping me fixed in the beam of his light, chanting "Run, run, as fast as you can... you can't beat me, I'm the Gingerbread Man." A vicious little monster with all the time in the world. Toying with me the way a cat plays a mouse.

Farther away, I heard someone call my name. Good guy? Bad guy? I didn't dare answer.

I also didn't dare turn my back on him. No one turns her back on a man with an axe, so I was backing away from him, my going ever more unsteady and uncertain. Reflected light gave his face an eerie yellow cast, his features hidden in shadow, as he came steadily on, determined and horrible. Maybe I should just drop the stick and run. I'd stayed ahead of him before. But my skin crawled at the thought of that axe.

I scooped up a rock and hurled it at him, my aim awkward with my bandaged hand. My "good" hand. He gave a hoot of laughter. "Leave me alone, you bastard!" I heaved another. It struck his forehead and wiped the smile off his face. He yelled and charged at me, waving the axe. I yelled back and in my own form of crazy bravado, I lowered my stick and charged, holding my sturdy long branch before me like a lance.

I struck him in the chest. He missed me. We galloped a little way past, turned, and charged again. This time my blow glanced off his thigh and his just missed my knee. Way too close for comfort. I valued my limbs, so this time, when I got past him, I kept right on going, scrambling up the slope and back the way I'd come. Bad guys or no bad guys, I wasn't lingering to duel with this monster.

Once again, fear made my feet fast. I come over the top, careful of the slippery rocks this time, and started down the other side. But when I raised my head, I saw another flashlight coming toward me. I veered left, away from both of them and farther away from the road, not knowing how much longer I could do this. My clothes were wet. I was chilled and my stamina was running low. Increasingly, my feet landed badly.

Behind me, Alasdair imitated a madman's laugh. A high, lunatic chuckle. "Run, run," he chanted. "Run, run, run." Why wasn't he getting tired? Was it the drugs?

My lungs burned. All the air I was sucking in didn't seem to be enough. Ahead, low, dense, darker shadows suggested thicker brush. I slowed so my steps were quieter, then dropped to all fours and crept toward it. I reached some fluffy, low-spreading branches, lowered myself onto my belly, and burrowed deep into the pungent, prickly evergreens. I felt around until I found a good-sized rock. Then I curled into a shivering ball and waited.

Through the thick branches, I got glimpses of his flashlight beam as Alasdair searched and listened, searched and listened. Once his footsteps retreated and I thought he'd gone, but then that bobbing beam was back, moving slowly over the ground, searching for my tracks. I'd probably left an obvious trail, crawling in here. But the brush was too thick for a quick escape and if I moved, he was going to hear me. I lay with my face on the prickly ground, taking shallow breaths, tensed in anticipation of a sudden blow.

I had seen the aftermath of a person attacked with an axe.

Now, unbidden and unwanted, that scene floated into my head. The deep gashes in counters and floors, everything smashed, dried pools of black blood on the floor, streaks and splatters of flung blood on the ceilings and walls. A good forensics expert could recreate the whole scene quite accurately. A good lay imagination did just fine, too. A shudder rippled through me, my skin puckering in waves. Fear pooled like acid in my stomach.

Not more than five feet away, feet shuffled and a branch snapped with a gunfire crack. "Come out, come out, wherever you are," Alasdair whispered.

I could hear the swish of branches as he searched. Coming closer. Moving away. Moving back. All the time, reciting bits from children's games. "Simon says put your hand on your nose. Take three giant steps. Tag. You're it. Am I warm or am I cold? I'm getting warmer, aren't I? Aren't I? Aren't I?"

A snap. A crack. A swish. An explosive "Gotcha!" The branches above me parted and his light blazed down onto my face.

I grabbed two big handfuls of crumbled leaves and sticks and needles and hurled them into the dark blur behind the light. "Fuck!" he exploded, the flashlight beam waving wildly in the air as he pawed at his eyes. I hurled my rock at him, twisted sideways, and stood up, pushing my way through the springy, resistant branches.

Swearing and grunting, he plunged after me, swinging the axe. It sliced through a branch inches from my hand.

Another light burst out of the trees behind us. A loud voice shouted, "New Hampshire state police. Drop your weapon and put your hands on your head."

I reached down inside myself and called up the reserves, a spurt of energy that sent me flying from the entrapping branches into more open forest. I ran toward the light. Toward the finish line. Toward the end of this race for my life, Alasdair right behind me.

The voice spoke again. "Drop your weapon, son. This is your last warning."

Alasdair came on. A gun exploded and suddenly, I felt emptiness behind me. A rush of cool air in place of the heat and noise of his insane pursuit. More explosions. I flung myself toward the light, my knees buckling, and I was caught by strong arms and pulled up tight against a metal nametag, the wiring of a shoulder mike, and a Kevlar-clad, iron-hard chest.

Chapter 33

I wore a jaunty bandage over the stitches in my head and an unflattering set of borrowed green scrubs. I was trying to hold the cup of tea Bushnell had offered between my gauze-swathed hands. I looked like a prize-fighter about to don her gloves. But my hands shook and the tea kept spilling. I gave up and set it down. I felt small and exhausted and chilled to the core. I didn't believe this shaking would ever stop.

"Pretty dramatic rescue," I said. "How on earth did you find me?"

"Hold on." Bushnell shoved back his chair and left the room.

I didn't have the wits to wonder what he was up to. Wondering took effort and I needed the little bit of starch I had left to stay upright. What I longed to do was curl up on the room's ugly vinyl sofa and sleep for a thousand years. Sleep until the aches left my body and my head healed and my mind healed and the sun finished coming up and a dozen rainbows filled the skies. Sleep until I figured out how I had come to be traveling down this particular road. Why my life was so different from other people's and what I could do to change mine.

I'd take up knitting. Read novels. Bask in the sun. Maybe I'd learn to use a digital camera and tap dance. I'd always wanted to tap dance. But I was big and clumsy and so I'd left dancing to the smaller, more agile girls. But now I thought—who cared? I didn't have to be good at it; I only had to have fun. Seemed like I was entitled to have some fun. Climb up out of the sewers of other people's problems and start living a normal, regular life. Let someone else be "Ms. Fixit" for a change.