Frogs croaked in a dismal chorus. A bird’s titter mocked the night.
On hands and knees, Blair Sharkey crawled.
The leaves of rushes stroked his face like loose sheets of paper. His forearms and calves squished in deep pockets of ooze. Filth encrusted him, a second skin.
He estimated the island’s size at no more than an acre. Maybe two hundred feet at its widest point. He could quarter it inch by inch, yard by yard, in no time at all.
He would find his prey.
Heart pounding.
Vision blurred.
Hands numb.
Trish had felt this way once before-after running two miles uphill at the academy on an unseasonably warm day. Her drill instructor made her lie supine until the faintness passed.
Dehydration and fatigue brought on the symptoms that day. Tonight she could add gunshot trauma and blood loss to the mix.
Lying prone, she’d been all right. But when she crawled into the pit, that lightheaded feeling had started, subtly at first, but growing worse.
She needed to lie down again, or at least put her head between her knees. But she couldn’t, not as long as she was huddled in this hole.
Okay, then. No medals for quitters. She would just have to tough it out. No medals for quitters. Stay strong, stay alert. No medals for quitters.
Her mantra helped a little. Fear helped more. The fear that kept her body supercharged with jolts of adrenaline.
Her enemy was near. She could sense it.
But she didn’t know where.
Blair had already covered much of the island’s eastern perimeter.
If Robinson and the Kent girl had come ashore at the north end, and if Robinson’s injury had limited her movement, then they would be close by.
Insects piped and trilled. The rushes whispered in a breath of breeze, cool and damp. Or perhaps it was Gage’s ghost that moved among the reedy stems.
Blair had never thought much about such matters. He supposed anything was possible.
Stay with me, bro, he told the ghost. You don’t want to miss what’s coming up.
The low clicking, like distant castanets, was the chatter of Trish’s teeth.
Ally studied her from inches away. Her face was pale. Sweat trickled out of her hair and beaded on her eyebrows, her lips. The gun in her hands wavered like a kite on a gusty day.
In the closeness of the pit, Trish’s trembling transmitted itself to Ally’s own body. Abruptly she recalled her silly fear that Trish wanted her to dig a grave. It didn’t seem silly anymore.
A grave was what it was, a grave for them both. In the morning they would be found here dead-like Marta-dead and buzzing with fat blowflies.
“Hold on, Trish,” Ally whispered, the words so soft she was sure they went unheard. “Please hold on.”
Things were very simple sometimes. She was fifteen. She didn’t want to die.
Blair’s imagined contact with his brother strengthened him. He crawled faster.
He could taste it now. Could almost see Trish Robinson sprawled facedown in the dirt, her brains red and strewn. Could almost see—
Explosive noise, rapid-fire beats, the nearby rushes rustling madly.
What the hell
For a wild moment he was sure he’d been discovered, sure Robinson was shooting at him, peppering the brush with bullets.
Then he understood.
Not bullets. Only a bird, nesting in the rushes, startled by his approach, bursting out of cover into the open air.
He caught a breath, then heard a new sound.
Gunshots.
Real gunshots this time.
And close.
Sudden commotion due east, and without thinking Trish swung sideways, impelled by panic and a desperate need to lash out, and she fired blindly into the night, four shots, five, then nothing, the magazine empty, her ears ringing, and overhead, brushing past the stars-a flutter of wings.
“Did you get him” Ally asked eagerly.
Shake of her head. “Bird.” Her own voice was barely audible over the violent clangor in her skull. “Just a bird.”
In the dark, among the rushes, Blair smiled.
The bird had drawn Robinson’s fire. Purple muzzle flashes had erupted like fireworks thirty yards to the west.
He’d pinpointed her position.
He had her now.
59
Tyler counted a half dozen shots, echoing from the island.
Was it Robinson who’d fired Or Blair Or both
No way to know. But if Blair was dead, Robinson could take Blair’s boat and reach the picnic area in a couple of minutes.
Cain and Lilith still weren’t here. To hell with them.
He didn’t need any damn backup. He could take care of the cop all by himself. Was looking forward to it, in fact.
Pocketing his binoculars, he hurried down the trail into a labyrinth of trees.
The Glock was out of ammo.
Trish removed the empty mag, then fumbled a spare out of her dump pouch and tried to heel it in. Ordinarily a simple operation, but not now. Weakness and confusion cheated her of dexterity.
She gave the Glock to Ally. “Load it.” Amazing how much effort was required even to speak a few words. “Just … just pop in the clip.”
Ally did so. Trish accepted the Glock with a nod.
Dimly she knew the girl wanted reassurance, but she had none to offer.
She’d messed up. Panicked. Now the killer knew how to find her. He could approach from any direction, fire at will. Even now he might be closing in.
She tried to focus her eyes, couldn’t. There were two and three of everything, and the edges of her vision were graying, and her ears still rang with the gun’s reports.
Nearly blind, nearly deaf, nearly crippled, nearly unconscious …
Nearly dead.
Blair circled southwest, putting distance between himself and the spot where the bird had burst into flight. On elbows and knees he approached his quarry from behind.
There.
Twenty feet away. Glitter of blonde hair visible through the rushes.
Robinson. Beside her, the girl.
They were hunkered down in a shallow pit, an improvised hiding place, their backs turned.
He could nail them both, as easy as killing two baby birds in a nest.
The man knew where they were.
That thought kept beating in Ally’s brain as she scanned the dark, looking everywhere at once.
He knew where they were. They had lost the element of surprise. It was an ambush no longer.
Ahead, the shore, flat and empty.
On both sides and behind-rushy thickets, five feet high, dense and opaque.
Anything could be hidden in that jungle of grasslike stalks. Anything.
“Keep your head down,” Trish whispered.
“I just-“
“Down.”
Reluctantly Ally shrunk deeper into the hole.
Now she could see nothing but four sandy walls and, at her side, Trish-clutching the gun close to her chest, hunched forward as she searched the dark with bleary, blinking eyes.
Ally’s grip on the arrowhead was painfully tight, the obsidian’s sharp edges chewing into her palm.
She had thought it was a good-luck charm. She’d been wrong.
Her luck-and Trish’s-finally had run out.
The girl had dropped out of sight, but Blair’s prime target was still within view.
Balanced on his elbows amid the tall, concealing stalks, he steadied the Glock in both hands.
Touched the pressure switch.
The laser beam printed an amber bull’s-eye on the back of Trish Robinson’s head.
Memory flash.
Cain in the living room, targeting Trish’s face. Pinpoint of light stamped on her forehead between her deep blue eyes.