She’d no doubt done as he’d said; she’d gotten the others to safe ground across the water, but she’d come back. Damn her, Marcus thought. Damn her for a fool. But at the same time, he fired blindly and repeatedly into the underworld below the deck where the satanic Cantu must be howling now.
Marcus’s rounds tore the wood paneling to splinters, the sound of his gunfire like a 4th of July fireworks.
Even as he fired to cover Kat’s tracks and to hopefully kill the predator after her, Marcus remained angry with her for placing herself in jeopardy this way. He tried to imagine her plan as it’d taken fruition in her mind’s eye even before leaving with the others. She’d hidden the bow and arrows beneath the deck, had gotten the others to safety, had returned and had gone back up under the deck, searching for the weaponry when Cantu had burst into the house. If Cantu proved patient, Kat proved even more so. She’d been below the deck for some time and until Cantu discovered the crawl space.
Marcus was still recuperating from having almost killed her.
She was young, strong, and hopefully as good with a bow as she’d claimed. But he hadn’t cranked down the pressure on that thing as she’d asked. As it was, the weapon most assuredly was useless until she could find time and energy to set it to her size and weight. Why hadn’t she instead taken the Remington?
Marcus retreated, inching back into the darkness, attempting to locate Kat, but he had lost track of her. Still, he heard the yelping dog as it followed Kat, seemingly far more taken with her than with his master at this point. But the dog acted as a beacon directing Marcus straight to her, and if he could find her in this inky blackness thanks to Paco, so could Cantu.
Marcus kept one eye on the house. Cantu had not at any time come out from below the deck on this side. Perhaps his rain of bullets into the underside of the deck had killed the snake; then again, perhaps not. Cantu may well have kicked out the other side of the deck to find safety.
’No doubt Cantu, if still alive, might be bleeding, hurt, and feeling foolish—as if he’d been tricked, drawn into a trap. Marcus prayed the bastard had died in the “rabbit hole” beneath the deck.
But he knew better than to assume anything with regards the demon Cantu; he knew that of all the creatures that’d ever crawled out of Hell, this one was the hardest to kill.
That was the problem with this prey, Marcus thought. As much as he despised the man, Cantu was well trained and cunning, a deadly combination. In fact, he made the fictional Rambo seem a mere boy scout by comparison. Marcus knew that however well-meaning she might be, Kat was no match for this son of Satan. Certainly not with a bow and arrow she could hardly pull beyond her elbow.
T W E N T Y S E V E N
At the same time that Marcus was repositioning himself and in search of her, Katrina Mallory panted with fear and fatigue so loud she feared she was making more noise than Paco, who—despite her throwing stones at him—kept pace with her and marked her every move. Cantu would surely find her if Marcus’s barrage of fire had not crippled or killed him—fire that, to her way of thinking—had been far too damn close to her.
She wanted to shout to Marcus, let him know precisely where she was at this moment, but a vocal signal could also send Cantu to her position. She was in no way ready for him. She hadn’t had time to reset the bow to her height, size, and weight. At the moment, save for her German Luger, she was defenseless.
When she reached around for the Luger, she found it gone. She’d dropped it somewhere back there at the deck. “Damn it,” she muttered and heard a twig snap at the same time. Was it Marcus or Cantu?
Earlier from the boat, she and the others had seen the red flare rise and fall, and they’d seen the eruption of fire that’d ended Carl’s screams, all this from mid-lake. Afterward, Kat’d gotten Nora and the kids to a house on the opposite shore, leaving Nora with instructions to call the authorities and tell them that it was none other than the four-year fugitive from justice Iden Cantu. At this point, she’d given up all hope of capturing the animal and overseeing its slaughter. Once, the Mierskys were safe, Kat had rowed back across the lake alone.
She’d taken the bow and arrow and hidden it below the deck for her return, taking only her Luger into the boat with her. She now made her way along the water’s edge.
Paco had settled down but he continued to keep pace with Kat. Soon, she found a place of refuge behind a clump of trees.
Here she held a tug of war with the bow, working its tension slowly down, down, down in what felt like forever to a more manageable torque for her arms. It took time and preparation, practice shots, and she must do it without drawing attention. Finally done, she tried out the bow and arrow, firing into a tree some hundred yards off. The arrow traveled straight, true to her aim, and it dug deeply into the tree, but it appeared lower than she’d intended. Distance to the target could make all the difference, she realized. She must get as close to Cantu as fifty and not a hundred yards, to be sure—closer still, if possible. She had to penetrate any body armor he might be wearing. She ratcheted the bow down further.
If Kat could take him by surprise, using the only weapon left her, she dared hold out a hope of incapacitating him and still getting a chance to look him in the eye with her scalpel poised over him. She’d brought the scalpel, on the off chance.
After escaping the underside of the deck, she’d gone right by the boat. She could’ve climbed in, pushed off, and gotten how far before Cantu drew a bead on her?
She continued to race along the edge of the lake, seeking better cover. Hearing him coming after, she abandoned the water’s edge for the deeper wood. She could hear him out there thrashing about, and he’d begun to chant, “Come out, kitty Kat…come out-come out, and we’ll play.”
When this feeble attempt failed, he attempted to mimic Marcus’s voice, doing a piss poor job of it, saying, “Kat, it’s me, Marc, sweetie. Come this way. I’m here.”
She then looked from behind a tree and found the arrow she’d earlier fired right here with her. Marcus had warned her how easy it was to go around in circles out here, and this was proof enough. She realized that while her shot had been accurate and strong, the result, had this arrow gone into a man, would have been to pierce the solar plexus—a fine and accurate shot indeed, but useless with Cantu’s protective ware. She might pierce it only if she were within say seventy or a hundred feet of the killer.
Even so, when she attempted to retrieve the arrow, tugging at it, making too much noise, her effort started Paco to barking. The arrow could not be removed by hand…not by her, she decided. She must let it go. But should Cantu see it, it could lead him to her, which could be a good thing. She could use it as her staging point—her target.
Then she looked about for good cover. Aside from thin pine trunks, there was little here. It wouldn’t make a good stand after all, she decided.
She wanted to shout for Marcus. Thought better of it. She knew he was out there wanting to shout her name too, but his silence told her that so far as Marcus was concerned, the monster still lurked here.”
She raced deeper into the brush in a direction she’d not taken before, Paco following. She said to the dog, “That’s right, Paco, send out a honing signal to the bastard. Bring him in close.”
She hoped he could hear her; hoped he would find her tone smug-sure and a challenge to his manly ego. Hoped that he’d come straight for her. She hoped that she and Marcus could get him into a cross fire, both of them opening up on their human prey at once.
*
Cantu’s face, arms, hands, and legs were bleeding from the tornado-like effect of splintering wood via rapid-fire from Rydell’s position. The force that’d ripped into the deck with each blast of the high-powered rifle had left huge splinters on all exposed portions of his body. His face and head were black and red from dirt and blood, and the multiple spikes of wood protruding from his face made him the more sinister and monstrous in appearance.
Score a big one for the detective. Marcus had
made him feel like a rat in a maze, and a foolish one at that. Why’d he venture into such a trap in the first place? Of course, it was seeing the gold ring just out of reach—the woman. The sight of her after the disappointment of losing the others to Rydell’s move. Here was Dr. Mallory being used as bait. Rydell did possess cunning and guile after all. He had Iden Cantu playing the fool, turning the tables. How foolish had it been to lose one’s head and rush headlong for the bait. He’d gone straight for her, and he would’ve had her in his grasp in the next second had the deck—the end of the maze—not exploded.
He’d found the trap door beneath the child’s bed in the basement and had torn it open, flashing a light when he heard the ruckus down there. He thought for a moment that he’d found the stowed away children and women that Rydell had thought he could protect. He became eager, rushed down, his weapon in hand. He carried a high-powerd carbine that fired a .223 caliber bullet, the same as Rydell was using.
With the fifty caliber, there’d be nothing left to torment and torture; with the .223 he could choose to kill or to maim. Choice was always a good thing,
He found the passage narrow and difficult and suffocating, and it brought back memories of the closet. The one his mother used against him, the one that had been his prison whenever he did a bad thing. The fear and claustrophobia threatened to overwhelm him and keep him from getting hold of Kat Mallory, but the going down below the deck for someone his size in full gear also slowed him. But soon he had found himself within grasp of her there beneath the rear deck of the house—spacious by comparison to the crawl space.
Cantu saw the last second of Kat’s heel escape ahead of him. He’d truly like to take her alive, hold her over Rydell’s head, see how loud she could scream.
He got off on making people scream. This not only gave him a mental high, it allowed him a physical high and an eventual release—ejaculation.
In fact, only through the pain and suffering of others under his total dominion could he feel anything at all in that regard.
He’d started for the same exit Kat Mallory had taken when some instinct said no. He’d seen her race off with the dog at her heels, but he stopped at the last, deciding that Rydell had put her up to it, using a woman as bait, to lure him out at exactly this spot so the next bullet would kill him and end the fun.
As a result, he’d quickly moved to the opposite extreme end of the underside of the deck and that’s when the explosions all round him began. Had he remained still, he’d surely have been killed. Instead, he’d kicked out the thin lattice wall, scrambled out, gotten to his feet, and scoured the woods about the lake area for any sign of movement.
Nothing. The exploding deck that Rydell had lured him into had gone silent.
Breathing deeply, somewhat shaken at his near death, Cantu went closer to the water’s edge, his weapon at the ready, listening for the dog. Big, as he called him, would lead him to the woman. Perfect. He knew which way she’d gone. In order to avoid another shot coming from Rydell out of the blackness, Cantu eased into the shallows to gain the other side of the wharf and to follow on the dog’s and Mallory’s trail.
He stepped into the mushy uneven shallows, the bottom giving way only slightly as the mud sucked at his boots. He held onto the dock to guide him, seeing the boat in the near distance twirling about unmanned. The pain he felt in his hands and face he quelled through sheer will power, but one larger splintered piece of wood in his right calf, he could not quell. The pain and poor footing here made for a stumbling gait until he hit a rock beneath the water. Cantu fell and was on all fours face to face with what remained Tim Grimes accusingly looking back from empty eye sockets in his watery grave—staring at him, his face not a foot from the dead man’s kiss.
The shock and surprise sent Cantu stumbling to his feet, panicked and stomping to get clear of the body. It’d been so eerie beneath the water like that of a spirit, reaching out to pull him under. It’s one thing to kill people,” he thought in an instant, “quite another to face ’em afterwards.
The noise of his stumbling and subsequent gasps at the sight of the “ghost” in the water could have cost him dearly, but no shot came. Marcus must think him Mallory, afraid to fire on a noise for fear of hitting her. Else Marcus had already shifted his position in order to rendezvous with the woman out there ahead of Cantu, somewhere out of earshot.
He thought of torching the house but that would bring down firemen and cops.
He instead took a deep breath of the lake night air, filled his lungs, shook off the thing that’d frightened him, telling himself how foolish he’d been, and checking his weapon, he continued the hunt.
Not five minutes later, he found a steel-tipped, aluminum arrow embedded in a tree two inches deep. “The fun’s heating up,” he said to the night. “These two think they’re smarter than me.”
He checked his watch.
Time was indeed running out. They’d obviously gotten the Mierskys across the river. The authorities would soon be crawling all over the countryside.
But Cantu didn’t want to leave without Katrina Mallory in his control.
*
Marcus had abandoned any hope of seeing Iden Cantu show himself this side of the deck, and so he now rushed to locate Kat, who was out here wandering about with a yipping dog at her heels. She may as well be wearing a bull’s eye on her back. He must get to her before Cantu.
He knew he’d take a bullet for her without hesitation. He remained shaken at almost having killed her and the dog.
The night had only grown darker. The brush grew thicker the nearer one got to the lake. Part of him wanted to shed the bulky gear, even the vest, but another part of him cried out no. He wanted to move faster, but he also knew that patience was called for and that rushing in could get him and Kat killed.
He felt a flaring anger rising in him that Kat had not done as told. She ought be with Nora and the kids in a safe place, but no. Here she was. She’d stubbornly leapt back into battle and harm’s way.
He also could hear her response: “I did precisely as you instructed, and when I got Nora and kids safely away, I was free to make my own rules.” Or something to that effect.
She was a spitfire. She had backbone. The woman proved far more than a pretty face.
He rested amid the bush now, lying on his stomach at the moment, sizing up the situation. He’d been glad when Cantu had taken up position in the house; he’d even thought of setting the place afire with Cantu trapped inside. Serve the hellion right and be pure justice to listen to him burn alive in there.
Most assuredly, Cantu, the psychotic Rambo, was far more dangerous out here than hold up in the house. The killer held sway here the way any animal of the forests might; here he had the power and a distinct advantage. Marcus could only pray that the creature stalking them would slip up. If so and when so, would Marcus be in place to take advantage?
The entire cat and mouse of the hunt excited Marcus just as it did Cantu, but the stakes here meant human life. Still, the hunt itself acted as a kind of aphrodisiac for him as well as Cantu. It represented what the fictional Sherlock Holmes referred to whenever he said, “The game’s afoot.” It represented the first killer in human history and the man who killed him in return. It represented blood vengeance. And God knew that if any man deserved blood vengeance on another it was Marcus.
Most certainly, the hunt for human game excited Cantu in his every sick nerve ending—to stalk, isolate, corner, and finally capture his prey, his soon-to-be victim. But there was a huge difference between them as Cantu also became excited by binding, torturing, and eventually killing his human prey.
For a millisecond, Marcus imagined being in the fiend’s grasp, at the fiend’s mercy, but he knew he could not long contemplate such a circumstance. In a flash, he refused the notion. Then in a subsequent flashing second of worry, he imagined Kat being at Cantu’s mercy, and this spurred him onward.
He got up and began to move faster toward the area he suspected his wom
an and his dog lay in wait for Cantu with that damned bow and arrow. The thought of Cantu getting his filthy hands on Kat sent a murderous rage flushing through his veins and arteries now.
Sure, Kat could get lucky and drive home one of those arrows, but with Cantu in Kevlar, it might bounce off, graze him. Even if she got penetration, would it be enough? She’d need a great deal more pressure on the bow than she likely had, and to make up for the pressure, she’d have to be within relatively close range, and he didn’t want her that near the murderous bastard.
Cantu would respond with his own weapon, likely intentionally wounding her so as to drag her back to his lair where he’d prep her for the dance at the end of the rope and the fire, all for Marcus’s eyes—just as promised.
Marcus pulled himself along, trying to locate any sign of Cantu before committing to anything at this point. Then with the night vision, he caught sight of him at water’s edge, aimed and was about to fire when the shadow man, his silhouette showing multiple spiky pieces of wood protruding from him, again disappeared. “Damn it,” he cursed. “God, just give me one clean shot to the brain.”
Then he saw movement, brush being pushed aside. Cantu was definitely on the prowl. He’d like nothing better than to get hold of a trump card by the name of Katrina Mallory, and if so, Marcus feared they were doomed, because Marcus knew that he’d be unable to face Cantu on even footing if he had hold of Kat. He cared too much for her.
She’d become so important to him. A thing he’d not anticipated.
She’d also become his weakness, his Achilles heel.
Kat and the dog had gone silent. He imagined she must have a hand clamped over Paco’s snout if not an improvised muzzle like the one she’d put on him before. Suppose the dog turned on her again? Not likely since he’d removed the shock wire.
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