No hesitation now.
Brynn got a good grip on her side of the log and Michelle on hers. "Go!" Brynn whispered.
The log was twelve inches from the edge of the cliff.
"More!"
Six inches.
Which was when a sharp crack sounded on the cliff face only feet below Brynn and Michelle, and a shower of dust and stone chips blew into the night. A moment later the distant boom of a rifle shot filled the air.
The women dropped to their stomachs. Brynn crawled to Amy and pulled the hysterical girl to the ground, cradling her.
Another shot. More rock exploded.
"Who?" Michelle gasped. "That wasn't from them. There's somebody else out there! Shooting at us."
Brynn stared into the distant woods.
A muzzle flash from a long way off. "Get down!" She ducked and another high-velocity rifle round slammed into the log they'd been pushing forward.
Brynn risked a fast look downward. Hart had pulled his partner back onto the ledge but they too were crouching, not sure of what was going on. It seemed the shooter was focusing on the women but the men were probably wondering if they themselves were the targets. The two men, completely exposed, apparently decided to retreat back down the ledge.
Brynn said, "They're leaving. Let's get out of here."
"Who the hell is it?" Michelle muttered. "We almost had them!"
"Come on. Hurry."
They couldn't return to the clearing, where they'd be easy targets for whoever was shooting, so they crawled closer to the gorge, away from the sniper. They were soon safe on the other side of the hill, though nearby was a sheer drop into the gorge; Brynn eyed it warily and kept as far away as she could. She asked Amy, "Honey, did Rudy and your mommy have other friends who stayed with you? Somebody who wasn't at the camper tonight?"
"Sometimes."
That was probably it; a partner of Gandy and Rudy who'd seen the carnage at the meth lab and had somehow trailed them here.
The silence was interrupted by the beckoning sound of a big tractor-trailer downshifting as it came to the bridge. Brynn looked along the edge of the gorge. They could walk that way to the interstate under pretty good cover.
The sky was now growing lighter--dawn couldn't be too far off--and they could easily pick their way through the paths toward the highway. Brynn hugged Michelle. "We almost had 'em."
Not smiling, Michelle said, "Next time."
Brynn hesitated. "Well, let's hope there isn't one."
Though it seemed from her fierce expression that the young woman wasn't hoping for that at all.
"ANOTHER COP?" LEWIS
asked, referring to the shooter. He was flexing his hand. It wasn't broken but the rock had jammed his thumb. The man was mostly upset he'd lost his shotgun in the bramble patch. And his anger at the women had grown exponentially.
As they hunkered down behind a boulder at the foot of the ledge, Hart listened to the dead deputy's radio. Routine transmissions about search parties. Nobody had even heard the shots. Nothing about any other cops in the area.
"More meth people, I'll bet. On the way to the camper." Hart turned on his GPS. He had to tame his anger. They were so close to their prey. But they couldn't go after them; the ledge was the only way and they'd be sitting ducks.
"We'll go around to the left, through the woods. It's longer but we'll have good cover right to the highway."
"What time is it?" Lewis asked.
"What does it matter?"
"I just want to know how long we've been doing this shit."
"Way too long," Hart said.
HOLDING THE BUSHMASTER
.223 rifle, James Jasons looked at the rock face he'd just been firing at. He'd done the best he could, considering there was virtually no light and he was more than two hundred yards away from the target. He waited, scanning the area with his night-vision binoculars, but saw no signs of the men or the women. There would have been quite a story about how the cave-man confrontation--the two men dodging rocks and logs--had come about.
For ten minutes he scanned the field and forest around him.
Where were they?
The men had fled back down the rocky ledge. Since they had apparently lost their car they'd be making for the interstate--to flag down a ride. But there were a lot of different routes they could take to get to the highway from the ledge. The odds were that they'd be coming in this general direction. It was wildly overgrown but possibly Jasons could find them. On the other hand, they might have gone around to the far side of the hill, after the women. It seemed like a much steeper climb and would have to be made without cover, but who knew? Maybe the men were pissed off about the attack and hell-bent on getting their prey.
Still, Jasons didn't want to do anything too quickly. He looked over the brush, scanning with the night-vision binoculars. Much of the vegetation moved but that seemed due to the breeze, not escaping humans.
He saw movement not far away. He blinked and gave a gasp as he focused his binoculars. He was looking at a wild animal of some kind, a coyote or wolf. The night-vision system gave it a ghostly green-gray color. Its face was lean and the teeth white and perfect, visible through the slightly bared lips and jowls. He was glad the creature was some distance away. It was magnificent but fierce.
The animal lifted its head, sniffed, and in an instant was gone.
I'm a long, long way from home, James Jasons thought. He'd tell Robert an edited version of the story, in which the animal, though not the gunfire, would figure.
He continued to scan the nearby field and forest but saw no sign of Emma Feldman's killers. They could easily have been here but it was impossible to tell with the dense vegetation.
And what about Graham and the deputy?
The gunshot he'd heard before the killers arrived at the rock ledge hinted at their fate. It was a shame--but you can't get in over your head. Just can't do it.
Jasons waited another ten minutes and decided it was time to get back to the interstate. He slung the canvas bag over his shoulder and without disassembling the rifle melted into the forest.
THEY CONTINUED ALONG
the ridge of the gorge and toward the highway, the Snake River pounding over rocks far below. Brynn didn't dare look to her right, where ten feet away the world ended, a sheer cliff. She held Amy's hand, and stared directly ahead at the path in front of them.
She paused once, looking back. Michelle was hobbling along well enough, though clearly exhausted. The little girl appeared almost catatonic.
The time was still very early and, from what they could hear, there wasn't much traffic on the road yet. But an occasional semi or sedan would cruise by. And all they needed was one.
The bridge suddenly loomed ahead and to the right. They plunged into a band of trees and emerged into a strip of grass about thirty feet wide. Beyond that were the shoulder of the interstate and the beautiful strips of graying asphalt.
But Brynn held up her hand for them to stop; there were no cars or trucks in sight just yet and they'd come too far to make mistakes now.
They remained in the tall grass, like timid hitchhikers. Brynn found herself weaving a bit; this was about the first smooth, level ground she'd been on in close to nine or so hours and her inner ear's gyroscope was having trouble navigating.
Then she laughed, looking down the highway.
A car was heading around a curve toward them, on the shoulder. It was a Kennesha County Sheriff's Department car, its lights flashing, moving slow. A driver had heard the shots and called 911 or the State Police's #77.
Brynn raised a hand to the car, thinking: she'd have to call in immediately about the shooter at the ledge.
The car slowed and swerved onto the shoulder and then eased to a stop between her and the highway.
The doors opened.
Hart climbed out of the driver's side, his partner from the other.
"NO!" MICHELLE GASPED.
Brynn exhaled a disgusted sigh. She glanced at the
car. It was Eric Munce's. Her eyes went wide.
"Yeah, he didn't make it," said the partner, the man she'd come close to shooting back in the Feldman's dining room. "Fell for the oldest trick in the book."
She briefly closed her eyes in horror. Eric Munce...the cowboy had come out to save her. And charged to his own death, outmatched.
Hart said nothing. He held his black pistol and gazed at the captives.
The partner continued. "And how are you, Michelle?" Emphasizing the name. He pulled a woman's purse out of his pocket. Stuffed it back. "Nice to make your acquaintance."
The woman said nothing, just put her arms around the little girl protectively, pulled her close.
"You ladies have a nice stroll through the woods tonight? Good conversation? You stop for a tea party?"
Hart focused on Brynn. He nodded. She easily held his eye. He lowered the gun as a sedan on the far side of the divider cruised past. It didn't even slow. In the pale dawn light it might have been hard to see the drama unfolding in the grass on the other side of the road. Soon the car was gone and the highway was empty.
"Comp?" Hart asked, his eye on Brynn.
The skinny man glanced over, kneading his earlobe. "Yeah?"
"Stay right in front of them."
"Here?"
"Yeah."
"You bet," the partner, "Comp" apparently, said. "You want me to cover 'em?" He started to reach for the silver automatic pistol in his jacket.
"No, that's okay." Hart stepped directly in front of the man, facing him.
Comp gave an uncertain smile. "What is it, Hart?"
Only a moment's hesitation. Then Hart lifted the gun to his face.
Smiling uncertainly, Comp touched the blue-and-red tattoo of a cross on his neck, then his earlobe. He shook his head. "Hey, what're you--?"
Hart shot him twice in the head. The man collapsed on his back, left knee up.
Amy screamed. Brynn could only stare as Hart turned and, keeping his gun on the women and girl, stepped backward to his partner's body.
Michelle's eyes went cold.
Hart bent down and pulled Comp's SIG-Sauer 9mm from his waistband and wrapped the dead man's limp fingers around it.
So this was to be the scenario, Brynn understood. With the man's hand around the Sig, he'd shoot the women, leaving telltale gunshot residue on the partner's skin. He'd then stand over Brynn's body to do the same, putting a second gun in her hand--Munce's Glock, probably--and fire a couple of rounds into the trees.
The police would reason that the partner had killed the three of them and Brynn got off two final shots to take him out before she died.
And Hart would disappear forever.
A curious feeling, having only minutes to live. Her life wasn't replaying itself. But she was thinking of regrets. She gazed at the woods, the smooth edge of trees and brush severed by the shoulder and highway, tamed. She nearly expected their wolf friend to stick its head out and look their way before vanishing into the woods again.
Then Hart was twisting the dead partner's arm up and to the left, aiming at Brynn first with the SIG-Sauer.
Michelle pulled Amy even closer in front of her, and was reaching into her leather jacket, perhaps for their last Chicago Cutlery knife. She was going to fling it at Hart, it seemed.
A final, desperate gesture. And futile, of course.
Joey, Brynn thought, I--
Then came the shout, startling them all.
"Don't move! Drop it!"
Breathless and limping, Graham Boyd pushed from the woods behind Hart, holding a small revolver.
"Graham," Brynn cried in astonishment. "My God."
"Drop it. Now! Put it down." Her husband's clothes were streaked with mud--and blood too, she could now see--and torn in several places. His face was bruised and filthy too and through the mask his eyes shone with pure anger. She'd never seen him like this.
Hart hesitated. Graham fired a round into the dirt at his feet. The killer flinched, sighed. He set the gun on the ground.
Brynn recognized the pistol; it was Eric Munce's backup, which he kept strapped to his ankle. She remembered mentioning to Graham that he kept a second gun there. There were mysteries here but at the moment Brynn wasn't speculating about how her husband and Munce had come to be at the Snake River Gorge. She stepped forward, took the pistol from her husband, verified that it was loaded still and motioned Hart out of the grass and onto the shoulder, where he'd be more visible. And a better target.
Control...
"Kneel down. Hands on the top of your head. If a hand comes off your head, you'll die."
"Of course, Brynn." Hart complied.
More vehicles were hissing past now, drivers off late shifts or hurrying to early ones. If anyone inside the cars or trucks saw the drama unfolding on the shoulder, nobody was stopping "Graham, get his Glock and the other gun." Indicating the ostentatious silver SIG-Sauer that Comp had been carrying. "There's one weapon unaccounted for. Eric's. Search him." Keith had taught her always to count weapons at scenes.
Graham did and found the deputy's service Glock. He put Hart's black gun and Comp's silver one on the grass beside Brynn.
But he kept Munce's pistol. He looked at it closely. There are no safeties as such on Glocks. You just point and shoot. Graham knew this; Brynn had instructed him and Joey about how to load and fire hers. Just in case. He fired a shot into the ground, presumably to make sure it was loaded and cocked.
"Graham!"
He ignored his wife. In a low, threatening tone he asked Hart, "Who'd I talk to when I called? The dead one or you?"
"It was me," Hart said.
Graham turned the square automatic on Hart, who gazed past the muzzle, his gray eyes calm.
"Graham," she whispered. "Everything's going to be fine now. Help me, honey. I need some plastic hand restraints. Look in the glove compartment."
Her husband continued to stare into Hart's eyes. The gun pointed unwaveringly at his head. The trigger poundage was very light. A twitch was enough to release a round.
"Graham? Honey?...Please." There was desperation in her voice. If he fired it would be murder. "Please."
The big man took a deep breath. He lowered the gun. Finally he said, "Where? The restraints?"
"Graham, please, give me the gun."
"Where are they?" he snapped angrily. He kept the pistol. Brynn noticed Hart smiling at her.
She ignored it and answered her husband, "The glove compartment."
He stepped to the car. "I don't see any."
"Try the trunk. They'll be in a plastic bag. Maybe a box. But first, call it in. The radio's on the dash. Just push the button, say who you are, say ten-thirteen and then give the location. The engine doesn't have to be on."
Staring at Hart, Graham picked up the microphone and made the call. Frantic responses came from a half dozen deputies and troopers but, bless him, he said only what was necessary: location and the situation. He dropped the mike on the seat and popped the trunk.
Hart kept his eyes on Michelle, who stared back with pure hatred. He smiled. "You came close, Michelle. Real close."
She said nothing. Then he turned to Brynn and, in a voice that only she could hear, asked, "At the camper back there, after you crashed the van?" He nodded at the vastness they'd just come through. "When I was out of it, just lying there. You saw me, didn't you?"
"Yes."
"My piece was nearby. Did you see that too?"
"Yes."
"Why didn't you go for it?"
"The little girl was going to fall. I went after her instead."
"One of those hard choices." He nodded "They do present themselves at the worst possible times, don't they?"
"If they didn't, then they wouldn't be hard choices, would they?"
He gave a faint laugh at this. "Well, say the girl hadn't been there. Would you have taken my piece and killed me? Shot me while I was out?" He cocked his head and said softly, "Tell the truth...no lies between us, Brynn. No lies
. Would you have killed me?"
She hesitated.
"You thought about it, didn't you?" He smiled.
"I thought about it."
"You should have. You should've killed me. I would've, it'd been you. And you and me...we're peas in a pod."
Brynn glanced at Graham, who couldn't hear the exchange.
"There have to be a few differences between us, Hart."
"But that's not one of 'em.... You're saying you would just've arrested me?"
"You forget. I already had."
Another smile, both his mouth and his gray eyes.
A truck roared past. An occasional car.
Then Graham called, "I've got them."
Which was all Hart needed. As Brynn glanced up he sprang to his feet. He wasn't close enough to get to her--Brynn had made sure of that. But that wasn't his intent. He jumped over the body of his partner and sprinted the twenty feet to the highway. Brynn's shot missed him by an inch. She couldn't fire again because of the oncoming cars. Not even looking, Hart sprinted into traffic, an act of pure faith. He could have been killed instantly.
He made it to the center lane, froze, then leapt aside as the driver of a Toyota SUV swerved in panic. The vehicle rolled onto its left side and, in a shower of sparks and a hideous screech, skidded along the shoulder and right lane, missing the women and the child by feet. They dove to the ground, pure instinct.
The SUV jettisoned plastic and glass and metal bits and finally came to a rest, the horn wailing and airbag dust rising from the empty window frames.
A dozen other cars and trucks skidded to a stop. And before Brynn could draw another target on Hart, he'd run into the far lane, leapt over the hood of a stopped sedan, dragged out the driver--a man in a suit--and climbed in. He sped onto the median and accelerated past the stopped cars then into the lane again. Brynn aimed Munce's revolver but had only a brief clear target--between two good Samaritans climbing out of their vehicles--and she wouldn't risk injuring them.
She lowered the gun and ran to the Highlander to help the occupants.
A WITNESS TO
the carnage, James Jasons crouched in fragrant bushes a hundred yards down the highway from where the SUV lay on its side. Sirens sounded in the distance.
He believed he saw Graham Boyd helping some of the injured. The absence of the uniformed deputy, Munce, might explain the gunshot he'd heard earlier from deep within the forest.