“Emily Ann, go find Bob.” Her ears pricked a little at his name. “Go to Bob.”
I let go of her. She hesitated for just a moment, touched me once with her nose, and slid away in what I hoped was the direction of the cabin. Her feet made little more noise on the crackling leaves covering the ground than a puff of wind would have done. She’d been out of my sight for less than a minute when I heard the roar of the gun once more.
Oh my god, my sweet Emily Ann—had he shot my dog? The thought froze me in place. She was my heart. If she was dead…
A breeze from the direction of the lake shook the leaves around me, and the rustling made me look around. I had to keep moving, I had to get away. I forced myself to my feet and blundered on, pushing blindly through the accursed trees and vines and bushes. Trying to be quiet. Knowing I was doing a lousy job of it. My heart beating in panic kept me moving but my frightened brain seemed barely able to think about where I was heading.
In perhaps ten minutes I stumbled into a little clearing. I stopped short at the sight of a large man, smiling and pointing a gun at me
Chapter Thirty
It was the first time I had seen Carl up close. Neatly cut dark hair with dramatic gray temples over a handsome mask of a face: gray eyes, regular features, nothing out of place. His progress through the woods had left him no more ruffled than a stroll through a city park would have done.
I bleated as I jerked to a stop. His smile grew larger and more frightening.
“Ah, here you are.” His voice purred with satisfaction. “The woman who keeps getting in my way. Well, well, this is nice. In fact this is quite satisfactory. I’ll be able to get everything wrapped up this morning after all.” He sounded as though he had to run a few errands, a little shopping trip. His eyes glittered like old ice.
“You—you shot Bonnie,” I blurted. I hated the shake in my voice because I could see how much it pleased him. The corners of the video cassette tucked into my waistband poked my lower back. The video had slipped down as I ran. I hoped my shirt still hung over it but I didn’t want to draw attention to it by checking.
“I did shoot her,” he agreed pleasantly, “and you’re next. But first I want that tape.”
“Tape?” I injected all the innocence I could muster into my voice.
“Yes, the tape. The tape that you grabbed as I looked through the door of that rickety cabin. You left the box for it on the kitchen counter.”
I forced some air into my lungs. “I don’t have it. I dropped it somewhere in the woods.”
“Oh, come, come, my good woman, we both know you have it. Give it to me now.”
My good woman? This was even more patronizing than being called lady. “I tell you I don’t have it,” I insisted. The plastic shell burned a hole in my back.
He shrugged, waving the gun a bit. “It doesn’t really matter. I'll find it when you’re dead.”
I scowled at him. I was afraid, but I was also hot and muddy and out of breath and I felt like most of Burnham Wood was entwined in my hair. It made me cross.
“You know, you can’t keep getting away with murder. The odds are not in your favor,” I said coldly. “People who have been shot are far less plausible as suicides.”
“You and my lovely sister-in-law will be at the bottom of the lake in a few minutes, and no one will ever know I have been here,” he said. Smugness oozed from him. “Believe me, I will get away with whatever I choose. And if you really did drop the tape, if it's not on you, I shouldn’t have any trouble following your trail through the woods.”
I looked at him standing there so casually, pointing that evil gun at me and unable to resist a schoolboy taunt. Every hair gleamed in place, the knife-sharp creases in his slacks absolutely pristine. Once I noticed them, those creases really annoyed me. They were ostentatious. The man had no sense of what was appropriate attire for chasing people through woods.
That thought led my unruly brain back to the picture of Bonnie crashing to the ground, and the imagined one of Emily Ann being shot. I conjured up Bob—this jerk could keep me from ever seeing Bob again, or hearing him laugh, or feeling him kiss me. To have finally found someone warm and vital and sane and to have my new happiness taken away by this—this arrogant stranger was more than I could bear. I gave my head a shake.
As I did, I had another vision of Carl at his bank denying loans to people who needed them.
I don’t know where the words came from.
“I’d like to apply for a small business loan.” I was as surprised by my words as he was.
The gun wavered as a variety of expressions played across his face. “What?”
“See, I've always wanted to have my own business.” My voice was earnest in the extreme. “It's been my dream for years. I feel positively evangelical about it. I want to have my own business putting in skylights.”
Skylights? I'd never given a thought to skylights in my life. And the thought of me climbing around on a roof with tools was worse than ludicrous. I was babbling. But—and this was a definite plus—he hadn’t shot me yet.
“Skylights,” he repeated. His voice was puzzled. If he wondered where this was going, well, so did I.
A faint rustle from the bushes caught my attention. The noise was so slight it could have been the breeze, if there had been a breeze. But the air was still. Behind Carl I saw Jack. He was moving stiffly and nearly silently, stalking Carl, his lips pulled back in a snarl, his eyes narrowed in an unblinking gaze of absolute hatred. Sweet, funny Jack with his silky ears and exaggerated body—how could I have known he was hiding a mouth full of carpet knives under his floppy lips?
Keep talking, one of the voices in my head commanded. “So many people live in dark houses,” I rambled on, forcing my eyes away from Jack and back to Carl’s face. “Light makes such a difference. It changes your whole outlook, not to mention the way it improves your physical health. They’ve done scientific experiments about it. And not just any light. It has to be pure, natural, organic light—”
“This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life,” Carl said. His gun came up, aimed at my chest. At the sound of his voice, Jack sprang. He launched himself as silently as he had crept up on us and he sank those carpet knives in Carl’s butt. Carl shrieked in surprise and agony, his arm flew up, and the gun went off.
If a running mouse could make me levitate onto the sofa last night, a gun going off a few feet away—a gun that had just been pointed at me—had the power to make me fly. I launched myself toward Carl, not away, reaching for the gun. At least I started out to fly, but my foot encountered a rock on takeoff and I tripped. I fell heavily against Carl. My hands clutched for the gun. We crashed to the ground. Jack bounded back and whirled around to come at Carl’s face. Those long doggy teeth snapped on the air inches from Carl’s nose. I gripped his wrist, trying to shake the gun loose, but the bastard wouldn’t drop it.
He was taller and stronger than me, but I was on top and my weight was an advantage. And he could not possibly have been as angry as I was. He tried to roll over, but Jack was everywhere he turned his face, snapping and growling. We writhed on the ground. I panted, “Drop it, damn it, drop it. Drop it!”
The tape popped out of my waistband and clattered to the ground. Our struggle paused as we both stared at the tape. Then he began to fight harder. A few more seconds of struggle and he would break loose. He’d shoot me and Jack and grab the tape and he would win. He would dump our bodies in the lake, and go back to his comfortable life. He would find some way to take Bob out of the picture.
I was not going to let that happen. Perhaps Jack inspired me.
I bit him.
The man tasted vile but I savored the savage satisfaction of grinding my teeth into the bones of his wrist. I think I was growling.