“How do you intend to get back across?”
“Creatively.” Larry didn’t look away from the scope. “If you’re going to move, now’s the time. They’re getting themselves collected up there.”
“All right.” Mark put one hand in the snow, bracing himself on the steep slope, and said, “I’ll run with your first shot.”
There was a two-second pause, and then Larry opened fire again, this time sending the bullets into the trees, blowing chunks of bark and branch loose.
Mark put his head down and ran.
The first bullet into the ground beside him barely registered. It was nothing more than a puff in the snow. The second passed close to his skull, and he ducked involuntarily and promptly lost his balance and slipped, landing hard and painfully on his right side, but fortuitously also, because more bullets stitched the air above him. Larry returned fire, shooting faster now, connecting with rocks near the summit, and when the bullets aimed at Mark ceased, he stumbled to his feet and charged on, crossing the last fifty yards without taking fire.
At the edge of the gulch he slowed, but just then a new bullet separated the branch of a fir tree from its trunk only a few feet above his head, and he jumped into the boulder-lined gulch without further hesitation.
The drop wasn’t much, ten feet at most, but he landed in the loose rocks and fell backward. In another few weeks the fall might have ended disastrously, because massive rocks waited to catch his head, but today there was still enough snow to cushion the impact. It hammered the breath from his lungs, but it didn’t crack his skull. For a moment he lay there and fought for air, listening to the popping barrage of the gunfire from the summit-an AR-15 or AK-47-and the responding booms from his uncle’s Winchester. He hadn’t asked Larry how many rounds he had. He’d told Larry not to shoot to kill, but if his supply went low, he’d have to start making the shots count.
Mark got to his feet and scrambled up the gulch, holding the.38 in his right hand and using his left for balance. He was prepared for gunfire, but none came. Above him, all had gone silent. He was alone in the gulch, scrambling through the shadows, the sun below the mountain, the evening sky lit pink. He’d gone about a hundred feet and was breathing hard, the altitude taking its toll, when the gulch made a sharp bend to the left that was partially blocked by the massive root ball of an overturned fir. He hurried around it, the gun held down along his leg, not in firing position, when he thought he heard a whisper of motion and slowed by a half step. As a result, the softball-size rock that Lynn Deschaine slammed at his face missed by inches.
Her momentum carried her past him, into the tree roots, as he raised the.38 and almost fired. He’d partially depressed the trigger before he registered her long dark hair, a stark splash against the snow where she’d fallen.
“Lynn!”
She slipped and fell as she tried to rise and turn and finally ended up on her back, facing him, stunned. She was breathing too hard to speak. Mark looked from her to the chunk of rock she’d swung at him when she’d sprung from her hiding spot. She would have neatly crushed his skull if she’d made contact.
“Let’s go,” he said, reaching to help her.
She kicked him in the throat.
He was unprepared for it, and it was a hell of a blow. His breath split into agonized trapped halves between brain and chest and he stumbled and fell to one knee as she rose and chopped at his wrist and knocked the.38 loose. It bounced into the rocks and he watched her go after it without attempting to stop her, frozen by pain and shock.
She was three feet from the gun when a shot rang out and fragments of rock exploded just inches from the revolver.
Larry.
“He won’t miss next time,” Mark rasped. The effort of speaking raised specks of light in his vision. He sat down and rubbed his throat. Lynn was motionless down in the rocks, torn between reaching for the gun and believing his words. She looked back at him warily, like a trapped animal.
“Are you with them? Did you know?” She was panting, fearful but fierce, and he knew that if she reached the gun she meant to use it. “You left the motel and they appeared. That’s a coincidence?”
He thought of his own outrage, standing in her motel room discovering the undisclosed connection to his family, finding the Homeland Security ID, and he realized for the first time that his own sense of betrayal had to be nothing compared to hers when she’d awoken to find him gone and attackers at the door.
“I don’t know that I even believe in that word anymore, but I didn’t set you up.”
She breathed hard, watching him and trying to decide. He knew that Larry was watching her with a finger on the trigger.
Mark said, “Go straight down to the bottom of the gulch, and you’ll find a truck. Take it and go. You’re in the crosshairs of a scope, but he’s a friendly shooter to you. For now.”
Her distrust began to waver. She stared into the trees. “Who are you here with?”
“My uncle.”
She turned back to him. “You’re telling the truth?”
“I’m telling the truth. I came to help you, and to kill Garland Webb. That’s all. I left the motel room because I was thinking about my wife. When I came back, you were gone. And I…and I found my way here.”
She rose unsteadily, her chest heaving. Strands of hair caught in her mouth, and she wiped them aside. “I’m not going without her.”
“Without who?”
“Sabrina Baldwin.”
Mark looked up at the summit. It was backlit with that beautiful sunset, but below, everything was giving way to the encroaching darkness. They were out of sight of the shooters above for now, but he expected the shooters were in motion and that they knew the terrain. Time was short. If they were going down, it had to be in a hurry.
But he remembered Jay Baldwin’s face. What would you do to get your wife back?
“She’s up there?” Mark asked.
“Yes.” Lynn took a deep breath, eyes on him, and added: “She’s with Garland Webb. And your mother.”
64
The dart, as Sabrina knew from experience, carried a fast-acting tranquilizer. She hadn’t even had time to ask Why? before the blackness overtook her. Garland Webb had time to say “You stupid bitch” before his legs went liquid beneath him and he tumbled down the stairs, but he was large and strong and he caught Violet by her hair as he fell. She vanished from sight with him.
Sabrina, still bound to the wall, screamed.
No one answered.
As the silence settled and she realized she was alone without either immediate threat or immediate rescue, she tried to figure out some means of escape. Nothing. With or without Garland Webb, she would remain here.
Something moved on the stairs. A thump and a drag. Sabrina twisted her head toward the steps and stared into the shadows. Thump, drag. Thump, drag.
Someone was climbing the stairs.
Coming back for her.
She was braced for the sight of Garland Webb when Violet appeared halfway up the steps.
“Help,” Sabrina said. “Please, help me.”
Violet came up the stairs slowly, still holding the pistol, dragging her left foot behind her. It hung awkwardly, the ankle or lower leg broken, but she kept approaching with patient steps. She looked at Sabrina’s knots quizzically before giving up and going to the woodstove across the room. There she set the pistol down and picked up a hatchet. She tested the blade’s edge with her thumb.
“That woman wasn’t lying about my son, was she?”
Sabrina didn’t answer. She wasn’t sure what would help more now-the truth, which was clearly a torment for Violet, or the lie that she wanted to hear.