Dawn was coming. Here in the woods on the hillside it was still pitch black night, but Parker remembered the vague paleness against the mountains in the eastern sky. In half an hour, maybe forty-five minutes, it would be possible to see in here.
The question was, should he wait or not? The alternative was to try to get past Marten and on over the hill and down to the farmhouse. Marten himself might try that, preferring to be safely hidden indoors when daylight came. But it would be impossible to get to the farmhouse in the dark without sticking to the road, which could be dangerous.
If Marten would make a noise, any kind of noise, it would help. But he was silent; the woods were silent. Far away Parker could faintly hear birds starting to announce morning to each other, but the gunfire in this part of the woods had silenced everything.
Could he draw Marten’s fire? Parker felt around on the ground, picked up a small stone, and tossed it in the direction away from the road and the car. It fell into a bush with a faint rustling noise.
Nothing.
Parker waited, watching and listening. No response.
He didn’t dare wait for daylight. Marten could be on his way to the farmhouse now. Aside from Claire, there was the problem of letting Marten get set inside the house.
Parker moved. He inched around the tree and moved away at a diagonal away from the lit automobile in the road. When he could barely see the light through the trees he angled back toward the road again. He moved silently, the pistol in his right hand and the shotgun in his left, going in quick spurts from tree to tree, stopping and listening, hearing nothing, moving on.
He reached the road and crossed it in three running leaps. He progressed again on the other side, going uphill now, keeping the light from the car just barely in sight. He knew the road curved over there, and he curved too, planning to come back to it far enough along so he wouldn’t be silhouetted on it in the light from the car.
It was black here, totally black. He could see only objects between himself and the car; otherwise he had to move by feel. He’d put the pistol away now and was holding the shotgun down along his left side so it wouldn’t bump into anything and make noise. He moved along with his right hand out in front of him guiding him along among the tree-trunks.
He knew he’d reached the road again when his hand found no tree. He stood where he was a minute, the dim light from the car down to his left and behind him, and listened to the silence of the woods. The bird sounds were closer now but still not in this immediate area. Parker turned right and began moving cautiously along the road.
He bumped into the car, not seeing it. He felt his way around to the left side, but the window was rolled up and if he opened the door the interior light would go on.
This had to be Marten’s Ford Mustang. Parker would have preferred to put the car out of commission some way, but he had no knife with him and so had no silent way to do it. He felt his way on past the car and continued on down the road.
He’d gone three steps, when he was suddenly bathed in light. He spun around in the glare of four headlights, hearing the Mustang’s engine kicking into life.
Marten had gone back to his car. He’d been waiting there, probably for daylight, figuring that inside the car was the one place Parker wouldn’t expect to find him. He’d known that sooner or later Parker would have to come up this road.
Parker reacted at once, almost without thinking. The lights flashed on, he spun and saw them, he heard the engine turning over, and he raised the shotgun and fired. The right barrel. The left barrel.
The lights went out.
8
There was no one in the Falcon, though the door was still open and the light still on. Parker walked deliberately within range of that light and called softly, “Formutesca.”
“Here.”
Formutesca came grinning from the woods at the roadside. “I heard you blast away up there,” he said. “Then I heard the pistol shot, so I didn’t know who was the winner.”
“The pistol shot was me too,” Parker said. Marten had been wounded by the shotgun blast but not killed, and Parker had had to finish him at close range with the pistol.
Formutesca said, “So what now?”
“We go to the house. Where’s Jock?”
Formutesca jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at the woods. “In there. He’s dead.”
Parker didn’t ask if Jock had died from Marten’s shot or from something else. He just nodded and said, “Get in. We’ll drive on up to he house.”
“Fine.”
There was a faint paleness in the air now. Day was beginning, hesitantly. Parker and Formutesca got into the Falcon and Parker started the engine. The car seemed none the worse for wear, except for the starred hole in the windshield and a new dent in the left rear fender. Parker switched on the lights and they drove on up to the Mustang. Parker stopped the Falcon.
He said, “You bring this car down. Get rid of Marten first. Put him in the woods where he can’t be seen from the road.”
“Right.”
They got out of the car and walked up to the Mustang. Parker got behind the wheel, and Formutesca opened the passenger door and dragged Marten out. He shut the door again and Parker started the engine.
The Mustang would still run. Its headlights were smashed and both front tires were flat, its windshield was mostly gone and there were bloodstains on the black leatherette of the bucket seats, but it would run. Parker put it in gear and drove it slowly on up the hill.
The car didn’t want to go. The flat front tires made it buck from side to side of the road, and Parker had to hold the wheel by force to keep the Mustang moving forward. But it did move and took him over the top of the hill and down the other side, and now ahead of him he could see the rambling structure of the house and beyond it the lake.
Gray-white mist lay over the lake. The sun hadn’t cleared the mountain ridges to the east yet, but the sky was increasingly gray, and a bleak gray light lay on the world. The trees around the lake looked like dead black skeletons, and the water looked as cold as an underground river.
Parker drove the Mustang off the road and over the shabby lawn to the side of the house. He left it there and went into the house and began to search from room to room.
He found her locked in a bedroom upstairs, lying on her side on the bed tied hand and foot and with a gag in her mouth. He couldn’t see her wrists, but her ankles looked raw and burned from the ropes. Her face looked puffy, the eyes closed, and at first he thought she was dead, but then he saw she was asleep.
He heard Formutesca bring the Falcon to a stop out in front of the house. He walked across the room and put a hand on Claire’s cheek.
THE PARKER SERIES:
Point Blank (1962) aka The Hunter
The Mourner (1963)
The Outfit (1963)
The Steel Hit (1963) aka The Man with the Getaway Face
The Score (1964) aka Killtown
The Black Ice Score (1965)
The Jugger (1965)
The Handle (1966) aka Run Lethal
The Seventh (1966) aka The Split
The Green Eagle Score (1967)
The Rare Coin Score (1967)
The Sour Lemon Score (1969)
Deadly Edge (1971)
Slayground (1971)
Plunder Squad (1972)
Butcher’s Moon (1974)
Comeback (1997)
Backflash (1998)
Payback (1999)
Flashfire (2000)
Firebreak (2001)
Breakout (2002)
Nobody Runs Forever (2004)
Ask the Parrot (2006)
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