"One bullet," Blue Dog told her. "You only have one bullet left."
"That's all I need."
But she knew the odds were against her. She glanced around, hunting for another weapon, and her eyes landed on the knife he had used to torture her, which was lying on the floor just beyond the reach of the cot. If she could free her right hand, she could stretch her arm out and grab it. She knew the fish hook was somewhere under her body, and it would be easy to reach around and slash the cloth that tied her down, but that would mean putting down the gun first. She couldn't do that.
He smiled at her dilemma. "You're running out of time."
"You're not looking so good yourself."
His voice was casual, as if they were two friends talking over old times. "Back in Phoenix, I knew you got into it sometimes. A man can tell."
"Yeah, I really got into it. Sure. You stupid bastard."
"Some women get off on it. Like Tanjy."
"She got off on fantasies. I guarantee you, she didn't like the real thing."
"She wasn't supposed to like it. It was supposed to be punishment."
"What?"
He made his move, surprising her. He feinted toward the gun and then jerked in the other direction and dove across the width of the shanty. His fingers clawed at the wall switch. Before she could get off a shot, he slapped the switch, fell back to the ground, and rolled away.
The light went off. She was so blind that she couldn't even see the gun in front of her, and all she could do was listen. Where was he?
The storm was loud, and the wind leaked through the tear in the tape and the broken window at the rear of the shanty. Water kept dripping and falling on her body through the ceiling. She stared into the blackness and tried to remember what it was like in the light, so she could guess where he would go and how he would attack her. She pricked her ears for every creak and groan in the metal floor, but she didn't hear a thing other than the blizzard. He was waiting somewhere. Not moving.
One bullet.
She took a huge risk. If she couldn't see him, then he couldn't see her. She put the gun down on her chest and felt around the cot silently for the fish hook. When she heard a shriek of metal, and felt the shanty sway, she grabbed the gun again and pointed at nothing. He was creeping, moving, getting closer. She didn't have much time. She tried to find the hook, but she realized it must have fallen back to the floor as she struggled with Blue Dog. With the gun on her chest again, she reached back down and skated her fingers along the metal floor and found the hook. Quickly, she slid it into her hand. She eased the gun off her body, so it didn't slide away, and then she craned her body around, trying to stretch her left arm until she could reach the strip of cloth that tied her right hand.
The frame of the cot squeaked. She hoped he didn't realized what she was doing. The distance down to her right wrist was farther than she realized, and her body strained in protest as she twisted. The cut in her shoulder sent out ripples of pain and heat. Glass pieces from the beer bottle cut her skin and sprinkled loudly on the floor. Her head spun, and the darkness turned upside down.
Somewhere, he took two hurried steps, very close by, and before she could take up the gun again, he moved away and she heard the sickening sound of the clip being shoved into the grip of her own gun.
His voice came out of the night.
"Guess what I have?"
She had to move fast. She reached out again, pulling every inch of distance out of the muscles in her back, and her fingers trembled so much that she almost dropped the fish hook. She stretched as far as she could with her right hand in the other direction until the binds pulled her back. She didn't know how far away she was, but it may as well have been a mile. She couldn't get close enough. She couldn't free herself.
Blue Dog fired. The noise rocked the shanty. The bullet missed her head by no more than six inches; she could feel its heat as it streaked by. Bits of metal ricocheted off the wall behind her. She scooped up the other gun again and aimed where she had had seen the flash of the barrel, but she could hear him moving.
"I've got plenty of bullets," he said.
He fired again, and he was gone again, before she could return fire. This time, the bullet seared across the top of her thigh before burying itself in the wall, and she gasped loudly as her leg seemed to catch fire, and the fire spread through her body. He knew where she was. There was nowhere for her to go.
The silence and the waiting stretched out. She tensed, the gun in her hand.
He fired three times more in succession, flooding the space with explosions one after another, raining down metal and snow from over her head. Before she realized he was firing in the air, distracting her, he was already diving across the short distance that separated them. He came from her right side, like a meteor, lightning-fast. His shoulder collided with her left arm, and she felt all her hopes fly away and abandon her as the gun spilled from her hand and skidded away on the floor. He crushed her, all his weight on top of her, embedding glass in her skin. His breath was in her face, and he put her own gun to her head.
"You lose."
She wasn't going to cry. "Fuck you."
She searched the floor with her hand, hoping the gun was still within reach, but she couldn't find it. She almost screamed with frustration, knowing there was a bullet chambered close by that she could drill into this sadist's head, payback for all the humiliation and pain she had suffered at his hands. Ending all the nightmares and memories. But he was right; she had lost.
Reality was too much, and she wished she could find the empty room in her mind in which to crawl for escape. Every sensation pricked away at her sanity. The heaviness and smell of him. The hot circles of pain. The dizziness. The cold, glass, metal, and ice. The blackness, as if it were all happening in midair, disconnected.
Boom, boom, boom.
She heard a deep thumping somewhere in her consciousness, and for a second, she thought it was the panicked beating of her heart, but it kept on like a hammer. This was something real, something unexpected. Blue Dog reared up in shock and spun off her.
Someone was pounding on the door. She could only imagine one person. Jonny. Coming for her.
Blue Dog crept for the door. The floor sagged with his footsteps. She knew he had her gun firmly in his hand. He waited. There was a long pause, and then the pounding continued, as if something heavy were beating on the frame.
She heard a voice. "Billy! Open the door!"
Her heart sank. It wasn't Jonny. The voice was familiar, but it was distant, drowned by the storm. Not a cop. Not rescue. She couldn't see Blue Dog, but she could almost feel him relax and grin. He unlocked the door and pushed it outward, and even the night was brighter than the darkness inside, and a pale triangle spilled through the opening and made him a silhouette. The wind and snow swirled through the shanty.
He started to say something, but he never finished.
Orange flame sparked and disappeared. A shotgun detonated, so loud that the storm was hushed for an instant. The smoke smelled like burnt toast. Serena felt a warm spray across her face, and she realized it wasn't snow this time. It was Blue Dog's blood.
54
Stride cannonaded down a fire road that snaked through the forest toward Hell's Lake. The wheels of his Bronco chewed at the snow. Slender birch trees hugged both sides of the road, and caps of pine trees swayed overhead, making the road like a dark tunnel. He knew he was near the lake, and then the forest opened up, as if he had bolted through the door of a church into the open air. The sky vaulted over him, angry and gray, belching out sheets of snow. His Bronco thumped off the dirt road onto the thick ice of the lake, leaving the shelter of the trees behind him. Fifty-mile-an-hour gales ambushed him and nearly upended the truck. The blizzard was a banshee here, a woman in white stretching to the sky and screaming for the dead.