Blackmail the blackmailer. He was ruthless, but no dummy. He would either cooperate eagerly, or eagerly try to have me killed. Either approach would be time-consuming. Shay would have her wedding.
Yet, I was reluctant to continue shooting as Dutch, who’d stripped his shirt off, began goading Mattie to dance, taking her in his arms and turning her in slow circles as Carol shrieked, “My God, I wish I had a camera. This man could make poor ol’ Lucy Hunt smile. No, wait! I take that back-no one can know about this!” as she laughed and danced with Bandanna Man, then reached to touch his face. “Ritchie? You are the sweetest, dearest young man I’ve ever met. I mean that. I think you’re just… a beautiful person.”
I was remembering what I’d read about the drug called Icebreaker.
It is common in group MDA experiences for people to explore mutual touching and the pleasures of physical closeness. Participants may feel very loving toward one another. They describe a “warm glow” that radiates gradually…
I told myself it wasn’t my concern. Mattie and Carol were adults. I was here to gather evidence, not make moral judgments.
I put the camera to my eye and touched record.
Carol was feeling it now, drunk but more than that, judging from the way she lifted her arms, sleepy-eyed, cooperating as Ritchie began unbuttoning her dress, his hands pausing on her breasts as she arched her back in invitation…
But Dutch wasn’t getting the same cooperation from Mattie at the other end of the pool, where he’d danced her into the shadows. I heard Mattie yell, “Hey, that’s enough, damn it. Please quit!” She pushed his hands away as he tried to slide the straps of the yellow dress off her shoulders.
… for a small percentage of users the drug has the opposite effect, causing paranoia…
I remembered reading that, too.
Mattie was having a bad reaction, but Dutch wouldn’t stop. He was forcing it, holding the woman close, kissing her neck as she tried to fight him off-“Get your hands off me. I’m serious.”-and now Peter Lorre was there, too, sandwiching her from behind as she tried to wrestle free until the spaghetti straps broke, both men grinning as they peeled the yellow dress to her ankles… then began to laugh at her oversized white panties and bra.
“Hey… hey!” Carol had finally noticed. “What are you doing over there? Stop that!” She turned, holding her unbuttoned dress together, speaking to the sweetest man she’d ever met. “Ritchie-look what they’re doing! Are your friends drunk? Make them stop. Please.”
Bandanna Man’s grin turned nasty. “You on our island, why should we be the ones got to leave? Most old women, they’d love a chance to party with me and my boys.” When she started to reply, he cupped his hand behind her neck, laughing.
I’d already stowed the camera and Golight in my backpack. I was moving downhill when Carol screamed.
16
Someone was following me as I jogged down the trail. Who? How?
I stopped, listened. The reflective tape I’d tied to the bushes was only visible through night-vision optics, infrared switched on. Because I was wearing the green-eye, strips of tape glowed like road signs as I turned to look uphill.
I heard a faint, rhythmic crashing of brush in the distance. A man running through ferns? No, not a man… but something.
Wait…
A beam of light was now scanning the tree canopy, but there was something odd about the light.
Experimentally, I killed the night-vision monocular and the beam vanished… vanished into a night hollowed by tree shadow and stars. I flipped the power switch and the monocular glowed green-and the light beam reappeared, sweeping along the ridge above me.
Someone was up there with an infrared spotlight. I wasn’t the only one wearing night vision.
Wolfie?
No, the light was farther up the mountain, to the east of the camera blind. Whoever it was had found my trail, but continued to pan back and forth over a single section as if they’d spotted something of interest.
Then I saw it… two coal-red eyes dolphining in rhythm to the crashing noise that was closer now, coming fast.
A dog.
Wolfie’s pit bull was after me. Had he sent it after me, or had the dog reacted to the noise of me descending the trail? No way of knowing. But some unknown person was up there using an infrared spotlight to follow the animal as it charged downhill, scenting my trail.
Shit.
I turned and ran. For the first minute or so, I ripped the reflective ribbon from bushes as I rumbled past, but then it came into my mind the dog was using its nose to follow me, not its eyes. Canines have better night vision than primates. With the green-eye, though, my night vision was a hundred times better than the dog’s. Unless the person with the infrared spotlight was after me, the tape wasn’t worth slowing for.
I was on the narrowest section of trail-the spot where I’d thought about stringing a trip wire. Why the hell hadn’t I? The path was only a couple of feet wide, rain forest to my left, darkness to my right, where a gravel incline descended a hundred feet onto more rocks. Through the monocular, the rocks resembled miniature volcanoes.
On the next turn, I slipped… caught a bush as my feet swung from beneath me over the precipice. As I hung there, heart pounding, I could hear the hard, scrabbling sound of the pit bull’s paws clawing for purchase.
I also heard a distant scream-Carol? No… Mattie.
I panicked. Came damn close to risking the fall onto the rocks rather than waste more time or face the pit bull. Instead, I got my feet on the ground, checked the trail behind… and could hear the dog coming, growling now, aware the quarry was near even though it couldn’t see me.
I couldn’t outrun the damn thing, there were no low limbs to grab, and the panic in me was turning into fury. In my left hand was the Golight, power off. I removed the infrared filter and put it in my backpack. The lens-the size of a paperback book-would blast a white, blinding beam when I hit the switch. In my right hand was the little Colt semiautomatic.
Facing the trail, I squatted, focused the monocular, and waited for the dog to appear.
Come on, you bastard…
It did, running hard, eyes glowing, teeth bared. I could see the animal clearly in the eerie green world of night vision… but the dog couldn’t see me, I realized, as long as I remained statue still.
Come on…
I was going to kill it. Didn’t want to use the gun and alert Ritchie and the others, or some distant cop. What I wanted to do was break the animal’s damn neck-all the fear in me now converted into anger-but that was irrational, so, yes, I would use the gun. Try to drop the dog with one shot, which meant I couldn’t shoot until the animal was almost on me.
I thumbed back the gun’s hammer, feeling the weapon’s metallic density as I leveled the sights. Could hear the pit bull’s harsh breathing now, its eyes a dull dead yellow as it closed in… twenty yards… ten… shoulder muscles rippling horselike.
The dog still hadn’t seen me as I touched my index finger to the trigger… but suddenly the animal sensed a change in polarity; maybe sensed that the quarry had turned killer, because it abruptly slowed to a trot, pointed ears alert, growl deepening.
Five yards away, the dog stopped. Now it could see me. The dog pivoted one ear toward me, then the other, nose up, sniffing, as it gathered sensory data. It took a step toward me… then jumped away, as if dodging a striking snake.
I waited and watched, gun ready… then slowly lowered the gun, surprised, as the pit bull dropped to its belly and began crawling toward me, no longer growling but making a whining sound of submission as its stub of a tail thumped the ground.
What had Tomlinson said about sharks sensing their kindred?
I reached out a tentative left hand. It took a few seconds for the dog to find my hand with its nose. Then it lifted its head into my palm-a beta animal requesting acceptance.