She was wrong about that. She spotted him before John Paul did.
"Get the hell down," John Paul shouted.
Her response was to flip the safety off. Leaning against the door, she put her arm out the window, steadied the barrel of the
gun on the side mirror, and waited. She ducked down as much as she could.
When Monk crouched down and swung the rifle up, John Paul shouted, "Now!"
They fired simultaneously, again and again as they sped toward the killer. Monk dove for cover, then scrambled to roll over and get his weapon up. Avery kept firing, pinning him down as they flew past.
The road suddenly curved up the mountain. There was a dirt road that angled sharply to the south that would have taken them farther down the mountain, but John Paul knew that, at the speed he was going, the SUV would roll if he tried to make the turn. "I'm out," he said as he emptied the magazine. She was turning to look when John Paul grabbed the back of her neck and shoved her down. "Get on the floor," he ordered as the back window shattered. They were still climbing and had reached another sharp curve when Monk blew out the left rear tire.
The car went into a spin. They careened off the road into the brush, narrowly missing a tree head-on, but finally stopping when they hit a rock.
"Move it," he shouted as he leapt out of the car and raced around to the other side. Avery had no sense of where they were, only knew they were once again climbing. Her heartbeat, like the turbulent white water, was roaring in her ears. She raced up the steep slope, then skidded to a stop. "No," she cried.
John Paul stopped beside her. "Ah, hell." She wanted to weep as she stared down at the swirling water below. No. Not again. Shaking her head, she said, "I won't do it. I can't. You can't make me."
He looked genuinely sorry when he grabbed her. "Sure I can."
Chapter 25
Picturesque, my ass. If Avery saw another white-water anything, she thought she just might start screaming and never stop. At the moment, she was feeling malevolent toward pine trees too. Hated every one of them. She wasn't real fond of John Paul either. He had tossed her over the cliff like a discarded candy wrapper, and on the way down she had vowed that, if he survived, she'd kill him, just for the sheer joy of it.
She knew she was being irrational. She didn't care. Her bad mood intensified when she cut her leg on a jagged rock. If they'd been in the ocean, the blood pouring from her cut would have sounded the lunch bell for the neighboring sharks. Trying to stay positive as she fought to stay afloat, she told herself to be thankful there weren't any sharks around. And her leg didn't hurt all
that much compared to the searing charley horse in her calf that nearly caused her to drown. John Paul hauled her onto the
bank, half carried her into the trees so they wouldn't be seen, and then dropped her. She landed with a thud on her backside.
He dropped beside her. "That wasn't so bad, was it?" Since she'd taken in more than enough water to fill a backyard swimming pool, she was too waterlogged to answer the absurd question. Shoving her hair out of her eyes, she glared at him.
"It wasn't as bad as the first jump, was it? I don't think that drop was more than twenty feet," he said.
"You pushed me over a cliff."
Actually, he hadn't pushed her. As he recalled, he'd thrown her so she wouldn't hit the rocks jutting out from the base of the
cliff. He didn't think it would be a good idea to mention that now, though. "Did I have any other choice?"
She wasn't ready to admit that there really hadn't been any other alternative. Their guns were useless against a high-powered
rifle, and Monk was hot on their trail.
"I don't want to talk about it."
He grinned. "Cup half empty, sugar? Where's that optimistic attitude?"
"At the bottom of the river."
He stood and offered her his hand. "Come on. Let's get out of here."
She didn't know if she had enough strength to even stand. She was so tired and cold and wet. Suck it up, she told herself.
"Right," she said as she grabbed hold. When he jerked her upright, she fell against him. He put his arm around her and held
her tight while he made up his mind which direction they should go.
"Aren't you tired?" she asked.
"Yeah, I am."
She looked back toward the river. "Maybe he'll give up now."
John Paul shook his head. "That isn't gonna happen. He's a professional. He's taken the contract, and he won't stop coming
after us until…"
"He succeeds?"
"Or until I kill him."
"I vote for the second option."
They both heard the sound of children's laughter.
Avery pulled away from him and started running toward the noise. "I hope they have a phone."
"Doubt you can get a signal."
She actually smiled. "There's that negativity I so love. You had me worried, John Paul. For a minute there you were…"
"What?"
"Cheerful."
"The hell I was."
He sounded as though she'd just insulted him. She was laughing as she ran toward the sound. The reason for her sudden good humor was either joy or hysteria. A family of five was setting up tents near a little stream.
After a brief explanation, everyone piled into the father's minivan and headed toward a town the man remembered he'd driven through on the way up the mountain.
Thirty minutes later they reached the sleepy little community of Emerson. Downtown consisted of four streets. The father
stopped the van in front of a two-story stone building. The second they got out of the van and closed the sliding door, the
father sped away.
"I think maybe you scared him," Avery remarked.
"The faster he can get his family away from us, the safer they'll all be."
There was a police station, which was surprising, considering the size of the town. Sharing the same building, the police station was squeezed in between the volunteer fire department on one end of the building and Bud's Burgers on the other. There were three doors facing the street with signs above each one. They walked through the middle door into a wide hall. Swinging doors were on both sides. One connected to the restaurant, and the other to the fire department. The police station was directly ahead.
The aroma of hamburgers and onions and french fries filled the air, but the smell didn't spur Avery's appetite. It actually made
her nauseous. The lack of food, running for miles and miles, the cold, and the terror had taken their toll. She felt all used up. Getting from the door to the counter was suddenly more challenging than surviving the currents. Her feet felt as though they weighed a hundred pounds, and it took every ounce of stamina she had left to move at all.
John Paul could tell she was having trouble. She seemed to wilt before his eyes.
"You okay?" he asked as he put his arm around her waist.
"I feel like rigor mortis has set in," she said. "I'm not dead, am I?"
Smiling, he said, "You're still breathing."
He looked through the glass window and saw the police chief sitting behind his desk. There was a stack of papers on the
blotter, and he was poring over them. Every couple of seconds he would glance up at a television mounted to the wall behind
the counter. Dressed in navy pants and a white shirt with the name Chief Tyler on the pocket, the middle-aged man was
frowning as he picked up a sheet of paper.
A woman in her late sixties stood behind the counter with her back to the door. Her hair was as white as Avery's face. She seemed mesmerized by the program on the television.
John Paul could hear her talking as he pushed the door open. "Didn't I tell you something bad was going to happen? Didn't I tell you, Bud?"