The slow-moving water lapped against the silty riverbank. She had to stay silent. Her pursuers might still be searching for her, and they likely would have followed the river’s path.
Megan shuddered when something small and dark skittered past her. The ache in her hand returned when she swiped at a large fern to let the creature know that it wasn’t welcome. She held her palms up and examined the damage. Her skin was hidden under wet silt, but the throb told her that she had sprained her right thumb.
“Ouch. Get away from me, you little shit!”
It was a man’s voice, speaking English, on the opposite side of the river.
Megan’s mind melted into a pool of fear. Her body shook uncontrollably.
The sound of water thrashing, then, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, forgive me my sins, but I’m coming after you, you little bloodsucker…”
The voice was that of an older man, the accent unmistakably American. It had a brassy New York quality, like Brooklyn or Queens.
Megan crawled to the river’s edge, using the man’s shouts to disguise the sound of her movements. She spread two large fronds and looked across the river.
On the other side, several yards downstream, a naked man was standing knee-deep in water. He was short and had a slight build. His forearms and neck were brown, the rest of his skin pearl-white. Folds of skin sagged over his waist.
He suddenly jerked a leg out of the water, lost his balance and fell backward into the river. “That’s it, you little pecker…” Using a leafy branch, the old man whacked the muddy water with a fury while hurling colorful epithets at the unseen creature.
Eventually he gave up the battle and stepped onto the shoreline. A small brown man appeared from behind a thicket, passed the old man a ragged towel, and stood by as his pale companion dried himself. Next, the dark-skinned man handed pieces of clothing to the man and watched as he dressed.
When he finished dressing, the old man took something from his rucksack, kissed it, and draped it around his neck.
A large gold crucifix glinted in the sunlight.
Megan stuck her head out of the brush and glanced up and down the riverbank, looking for any sign of her assailants.
When she looked back, the dark-skinned man was pointing at her. The older man turned.
She ducked behind a palm leaf.
A second later the older man called out, “Buenos días. ¿Está bien?”
Megan took a deep breath, then poked her head out.
“I need help,” she said.
31
Luke bounded onto the fire road in a dead run and sprinted west on the upward slope of a trail into the interior of Griffith Park. He had moved methodically through the steep and heavily wooded hillside behind his property. It had cost him time, but disguising his tracks was his only chance. He hoped the cops were still combing the area that he had marked with trampled undergrowth and broken branches. He needed a few minutes of confusion.
The charcoal sky was giving way to shades of gray-violet, but the sun was still hiding on the other side of the hill. His lungs were already on fire, but he couldn’t stop to rest until he had at least a half-mile lead on the hunters. He’d spread them out, force them to expand the search area. If he could do that, his meager advantages would come into play. He knew how to use the shadows of early dawn to evade and conceal. He also knew the terrain, and how to disappear into it.
Echoes of an earlier life pounded at him as he raced up the hill. He could feel a dark core reigniting, smoldering ashes suddenly finding fuel. He fought to ignore the waves of dread that passed through him.
The whomp-whomp-whomp of a helicopter played in the distance. They couldn’t have vectored a helicopter in on him this quickly, he figured, but in another five minutes the sky overhead would be swarming with aircraft.
The jagged edges of half-buried rocks slashed at his bare feet. He lengthened his stride, ignored the pain. He couldn’t leave the trail until he had put more distance between himself and the hunters.
Speed and distance were all that mattered. Nothing else.
He held that thought until he came around a blind curve on the trail. A black Doberman was waiting for him, snarling, its teeth bared.
Luke dove off the trail and rolled down the slope, tumbling over sharp rock edges and scraggly dry vegetation until he finally came to a stop in tall grass on the lip of a small gully. He rolled into the depression and scanned the hill above him.
He mopped a painful spot on the back of his neck with his T-shirt. It came back dark red.
The dog stared down at him, growling and scraping at loose gravel on the edge of the trail. Small rivulets of sand streamed down the hill.
Ten feet to his right, a concrete culvert hung over the edge of a small knoll. He scurried over and tucked himself under the overhang. His chest heaved and he struggled to control his breathing.
A woman’s voice yelled, “Samson…Samson, get back here!”
More growling.
Then, the sound of loose gravel under hard-soled-boots. “Samson, what got into you? Calm down, boy.”
WHOMP WHOMP WHOMP WHOMP…The thunderous roar of a heavy chopper came out of nowhere. A moment later, the air blast from its rotor wash wrapped him in a cloud of gritty sand.
“STOP RIGHT THERE!” a loudspeaker commanded.
Luke brought his hands up to shield his head from flying debris. He leaned into the side of the knoll, tucking himself under the two-foot concrete overhang. The direction of the windblast changed as the helicopter moved overhead in a tight circle.
If the police were using thermal sensors in their helicopters — and they probably were — his heat signature would look like a 500-watt bulb against the damp ground and cool morning air. The hunters had everything he didn’t have — air power, logistical support, communications — but as long as the chopper was directly overhead, its heat sensors wouldn’t find him under the thermal camouflage of a thick culvert. Until and unless they backed away far enough to inspect the hillside from an angle and look under the drain, he was invisible.
The percussion waves weakened. The helicopter was climbing.
The loudspeaker again: “We’re looking for a man…six feet, brown hair, light green or gray clothing…”
Luke tried to open his eyes. The sand stung his lids closed. The dog was yelping in the background, terrified.
“Ma’am, turn back and follow the path west. Instruct anyone you come across to do the same. If you see someone fitting this man’s description, do not — I repeat, do not — approach him.”
Luke sat there for several seconds after the helicopter flew east toward his property. He hadn’t come as far as he wanted, and the trail was out of the question now. Worse, the orange hues of daybreak were peeking over the top of the hill. Soon, he’d lose any ability to conceal himself in the dry brush.
He had to move now, before the sun came over the hilltop, but his exertion was generating enough heat to light up any thermal sensor within five hundred yards of his position.
He cupped his hands and splashed himself with the cold muck trickling from the end of the culvert. When his body began to shiver, he stopped.
A moment later he disappeared into the hillside.
“You Indians are killing me. You know that, don’t you?” The old man was leaning against a large boulder along the side of the trail, trying to catch his breath while staring at his dark-skinned companion.
The old man’s name was Father Joe, and he was a Catholic missionary priest. Megan had never kissed a priest before, but that was just what she felt like doing when he offered to take her back to Santa Lucina. The priest and his helper, Paco, had two more villages to visit. After that, he promised, the three of them would hike out of the jungle.