And he was not exactly used to getting shot at.
When he’d crossed the drawbridge, gasping, he discovered that Jase had vanished. There wasn’t so much as a glimpse of him anywhere in the distance. No movement. Nothing but virgin snow-covered meadows and forest. Mitch held his breath, listening. Not a sound.
But he still had Jase’s footprints to go by. All Mitch had to do was follow his trail through the snow. Jase could not get away from him. No, he could not.
So Mitch tracked him—in the direction of Choo-Choo Cholly’s miniature depot, which still lay crunched under that huge fallen sugar maple. As Jase’s footsteps approached the little station, they veered around it and made for a wide, cleared corridor between the trees. The railroad tracks, Mitch realized. Jase was following Cholly’s snow-covered narrow-gauge tracks all the way down the mountain to the front gate, to Route 156, away.
Mitch pursued him, running hard, the sweat beginning to stream down his face. Jase’s footsteps made a clear path before him down the center of the tracks, the cross-ties deep underfoot beneath the snow and ice. Wherever Jase ran, Mitch ran. Around the trees that had come down alongside the tracks. Over the trees that had fallen across them. Mitch ran and ran. Until he could run no farther without his chest exploding. He paused for just a second to catch his breath, his ears straining for a sound, any sound in the frozen winter silence. Crunching. He could hear the definite crunching of footsteps. Not very far away either. He was staying right with Jase. Maybe even gaining on him.
Heartened, Mitch forced himself farther on down the tracks. There was a quaint, hand-painted wooden sign up ahead now—“River Walk Station.” And a big bend around an exposed scenic overlook where there were handrails and benches and wonderful river views that Mitch had no time to look at. As he came charging his way around the bend, Jase’s footsteps before him veered off the tracks and curled into the woods. Crashing his way in among the fallen trees, Mitch followed Jase’s footprints until, suddenly, they stopped entirely right there deep in the woods. No more footprints. Yet, no Jase either. It was as if he’d disappeared into thin air. Either that or Scotty had just beamed him back aboard the Enterprise. Mitch stood there, baffled, seeing no sign of Jase, hearing no sound other than his own heavy breathing. How was this possible? How could Jase’s footsteps simply halt right here, two feet from the base of a beech tree? Where the devil was he?
Mitch suddenly realized where. And felt like a total moron.
Only, by the time he looked up, Jase was already diving out of the tree right on top of him, knocking him hard to the ground and smashing him across the bridge of the nose with his thirty-eight. The SIG went flying out of Mitch’s hand as he found himself flat on his back in the snow, Jase clutching him by the throat with his rough, powerful hands, jabbering at him incoherently, his breath hot and sour in Mitch’s face. His eyes were the crazed eyes of one of those unkempt wild men who prowled the streets of Lower Manhattan at four o’clock in the morning, ranting at unseen enemies in no known language.
Mitch fought back with everything he had. Fought for air. Fought for life. His hands clawed at Jase’s. But he was no match for Jase’s unleashed fury. And he was losing. And Des’s gun was gone—Mitch didn’t know where. And he was going to die here in the snow, right here, right now …
Until Jase suddenly recoiled from him in horror and screamed, “Damn you! Damn you!” And scrambled several feet away from Mitch, scratching angrily at his knit cap, yanking it from his head, hurling it off into the snow. His hair underneath was stringy and long. “Stop following me, will you?! Just let… me … go!”
“I can’t,” Mitch croaked, blood streaming from his smashed nose. “Come back to the castle with me, Jase.”
“You’ve got to let me go!” Jase moaned, staring in apparent disbelief at the thirty-eight he was clutching in his hand. He seemed genuinely repulsed by who and what he’d become. “You go back to the castle. Forget about me, please!”
“It’s no use, Jase.” Mitch yanked his handkerchief from the back pocket of his pants, stanching the flow of blood from his nose. “You have to give yourself up.”
Jase shook his head at him violently. “Never. No way. No. I can’t go back. I just can’t.”
“You have to,” Mitch insisted, wondering whereabouts in the snow Des’s SIG had fallen. If he could reach it. If he could use it…
“I’ll never, ever go back,” Jase vowed, staggering his way back through the trees toward the railroad tracks. “Just forget that!” Now he took off again down the tracks, running hard, away from Mitch, away from the castle, away. Jase didn’t bother to search for Des’s weapon in the snow. Didn’t so much as look back.
He just ran.
Mitch remained there in the snow for a moment, his nose bleeding, his throat feeling as if it had just been stepped on by someone wearing cleats. Slowly, he got to his knees, fighting off a wave of dizziness. Kneeling there, he groped around in the snow until his numb fingers found the SIG. Weapon in hand, he climbed back up onto his feet, handkerchief pressed to his nose. Then Mitch resumed the chase.
He was an old hand at this now. All he had to do was follow Jase’s trail down those tracks. Around a bend. Into a straightaway. Mitch pursued him, step for step, stumbling repeatedly, falling to his knees, but refusing to stay down. As he came around another big bend, Mitch heard a gunshot up ahead in the snowy silence. Now Mitch was streaking his way around that bend, wondering what he would find.
It was Choo-Choo Cholly’s House, the bright red railroad barn where the little train was stored for the winter. A spur of track led off the main line straight for it. So did Jase’s footprints. One of the sliding barn doors was opened wide. Mitch found the shattered remains of a lock in the barn’s doorway. Jase had shot the lock off.
Once inside the doorway, the narrow-gauge railroad tracks emerged from under their snowy blanket and continued their way deep inside the cavernous barn, which smelled moldy and damp. After the bright white glare of the snow, Mitch could barely make out anything inside the unlit barn. Not until his eyes had a chance to adjust to the dim light coming through the open door. Only then could he make out the brave little train, all shiny and clean, waiting there for spring to arrive. In point of fact, Choo-Choo Cholly was a bizarre thing to stumble upon right now. There was something surreal about Cholly’s locomotive “face,” with its bulbous red nose, electric-blue eyes and cheerful crooked smile. To Mitch, the little engine looked eerily like W. C. Fields after Fields had just done something especially stinky to Baby LeRoy. Maybe it was just Mitch’s head trauma, but he suddenly felt as if he’d wandered into a ride at Disney World while under the influence of a major hallucinogen.
Until, that is, another gunshot rang out, splintering the barn door next to his head. Mitch hit the ground immediately.
“Don’t make me do this!” Jase called to him from deep inside the barn.
“You can’t get away, Jase!” Mitch called back, edging his way on hands and knees toward Cholly, keeping low to the tracks. “Give yourself up!”
“No way! I won’t ever give up! Not ever!”
And yet, as Mitch inched his way deeper inside the barn, it occurred to him that Jase had purposely trapped himself in here. Why had he chosen to do this? Why hadn’t he kept on going down the tracks?
As he crept near enough to get a decent look at him, Mitch knew why—Jase was cowering in the corner behind Cholly like a lost, frightened little boy. Melted snow ran from his hair down into his face. He trembled so badly his teeth were chattering.
“She made me do it,” he cried to him mournfully. “I didn’t want to. Honest, I didn’t. Jory made me.”
“How did she make you, Jase?” Mitch asked, kneeling there with Des’s gun in his hand. “You and I both know you’re no fool. You’re a smart guy. How did you let this happen?”
Jase watched him in scared silence for a moment. “You’re the smart guy. You don’t get it?”
“I’m afraid not.”
<
br /> “Because I loved her!” Jase said this as if it were a special secret.
“Well, of course you did,” Mitch responded patiently. “She was your sister.”
“No, I mean I loved her! Jory and me were together”
Mitch experienced an involuntary physical reaction to this revelation. He could actually feel his innards shudder, as if someone had just reached in and given his guts a good hard shake. “Since … when, Jase?”
“Since we were kids. She was older. She showed me how. She showed me everything.”
“She was your sister,” he pointed out gently.
“I couldn’t help that,” Jase moaned, breathing heavily. “She’s the only girl I’ve ever … I’ll ever love. She was so pretty. The prettiest. And now I haven’t got anybody. I know what we … that you’re not supposed to. That they … people … think it’s wrong. But you can’t help how you feel. You can’t. You just can’t. God, you of all people should get that.”
“Me?” Mitch frowned at him. “Why me?”
“You and Des,” Jase said, nodding his wet head convulsively. “Lots of people think that’s unnatural and wrong, too, don’t they?”
“Jase, I think we’re getting off the subject here. You said Jory made you do this. How?”
“Killing Norma was all her idea,” Jase explained. “She planned the whole thing. It wasn’t Les. It was her, all her. One day she told me, ‘I think Les is into me.’ She figured once Norma was gone she could talk him into marrying her and we could take over the whole castle.”
“So she seduced Les.”
“He was easy. That’s what she told me after she … after they … H-He wanted her bad. God, everyone did. She was so beautiful.” Jase let out a sob. “Wasn’t she beautiful?”
“Very beautiful,” Mitch said, although he was having trouble picturing Jory right now without the bullet hole Jase had just put in her left eye. “If you felt about Jory the way you say you did, then you must have hated the whole idea—Jory and Les sleeping together, Jory marrying him. Didn’t that bother you?”
“She swore he meant nothing to her. That she was doing it all for us. So I went along. I didn’t want to, but I did. She made me.”
“Jase, you keep saying that. How did she make you? Why didn’t you just tell her it was a really sick, bad idea?”
Jase ducked his head miserably. “If I didn’t go along, she said she’d find someone else to marry. Move to a new town and leave me behind. Never let me be with her again. It was the only way I could hold on to her. That’s how come I did it—killed the old woman, killed Les. Because I … loved Jory. And now I haven’t got anybody. Nobody at all.”
“That’s not true, Jase. You have me. I’m on your side.” Mitch moved in a bit closer, Des’s gun lowered out of sight. “You can trust me. But you need to turn yourself in. It’s the smart move. You can explain this to them. They’ll understand. People can be surprisingly understanding.”
“No way.” Jase retreated deeper into the corner, shaking his head. “I won’t be locked up. Can’t handle it.”
“Hey, I don’t blame you. And I won’t lie to you, Jase. You’ve got some serious legal problems ahead of you. But I’m your friend, and I promise I’ll speak up for you. I’ll tell them that you could have killed me just now out there, which makes twice you could have killed me and didn’t. That means you’re not a dangerous person. It means that a lot of this is on Jory, and they’ll understand that. You might not even have to go to jail. You’ve got… mitigating factors in your favor.”
“I’m not going to no loony bin!” Jase cried out. “You can forget that. Just let me go, okay? I’ll live in the bush by myself. I won’t bother anyone. Won’t hurt anyone. I’ll just disappear.”
“I can’t let you do that, Jase,” Mitch said, moving in closer. He was no more than four feet away from him now, close enough to smell Jase’s goaty scent even through his bloodied nose. “You have a couple of options, but running isn’t one of them. You can’t get away.”
“I can so,” Jase insisted. “There’s twenty thousand acres of woods here. Caves no one else knows about. They’ll never find me. Soon as I can make it out, I’ll catch me a river barge or freight train. Head south to Mexico, find work, keep my head down. I’ll be okay, I swear it.” Jase ran a hand through his stringy hair, sniffling. “Just let me go. If you’re my friend, let me go. I’m begging you.”
Truly, Mitch felt bad for Jase Hearn. Or as bad as he could feel for someone who had just murdered three human beings. This was an emotionally fragile, vulnerable guy, a trusting guy who had been ill-used by his older, wiser and infinitely more devious sister. Jory had fully understood the sexual power she held over Jase, and she had cruelly exploited him. It was a twisted and very sad situation. And now justice had to be dispensed. Back there in the kitchen, Jory had already paid the price for her own reprehensible behavior. But what price should Jase pay?
As Mitch crouched there in the damp, cold rail barn, thinking it over, he swore he could hear a faint mechanical hum somewhere off in the distance. Had the electrical power come back on? No, that wasn’t it. The sound came from overhead. It was the state police helicopter, SP-One, whirring its way toward them. Des’s old sergeant, Soave, and his partner Yolie. They were still a couple of miles off, but growing steadily closer.
Jase raised his eyes slowly to the roof, hearing it. Then he let out a low moan of panic, his eyes darting wildly around the barn for a way out. It was almost as if he hadn’t realized until this very moment that he’d let Mitch corner him. Now Jase’s eyes fell on the .38 he was clutching in his right hand, half forgotten in the telling of his story. The gun that was his only chance at escape. He knew this. They both did.
Which explained why this happened: When Jase raised his gun at Mitch, he discovered that Mitch already had Des’s SIG aimed right back at him.
“Don’t do it, Jase,” Mitch warned him, swallowing. That .38 was trained directly between his eyes.
“You’d better let me go.” There was a quiet resolve in Jase’s voice now. His mind was made up.
“That’s not going to happen, Jase.”
“Back away from me right now.”
“No.”
Jase let out a groan. “Mitch, I’m getting out of here and you can’t stop me.”
“Yes, I can.” He moved in closer, Des’s SIG pointed right at Jase. The chopper was hovering directly overhead now. “Just give me the gun, and we’ll face this thing together. I’ll stay by your side every step of the way. You have my word.”
“Back off, man. I mean it. I don’t want to kill you, but if I have to, I will. I swear.”
“Then I guess you’ll have to shoot me, Jase, because I’m not backing off. I’m taking you out of here.”
“No, you’re not! Please don’t make me do this to you!”
“Oh, okay, this is starting to make some sense,” Mitch said, nodding his head. “Now it’s me who’s making you behave so badly. First Jory, now Mitch. Not you, never you. Well, guess what, Jase? It is you. It’s your decision. It’s your life. Either put the gun down or shoot me. You decide. But do it fast, because we’re running out of time here.” Mitch was less than three feet from him now. Close enough to stare right down the barrel of the .38. Close enough to see just how tightly clenched Jase’s trigger finger was. So tight his knuckle was white. “What’s it going to be, Jase?” he demanded, sounding very sure of himself even though his heart was pounding and his knees were quivering. Because he wasn’t just staring down a gun barrel, he was staring at the ultimate reality.
It was kill or be killed, and Mitch knew it. And he knew something else. Something that they both knew, which was that Jase had already used his gun and Mitch had not. Jase had proved himself capable of killing. Mitch had not. Jase had crossed over to the dark side of human behavior. Mitch had not.
Jase knew from murder. Mitch knew from Rin Tin Tin.
“What’s it going to be, Jase?” he repeated, his voice raised
over the helicopter, which was whirring louder and louder as it descended on the castle’s parking lot. “For once in your life, make up your own goddamned mind, will you?”
“Don’t come any closer,” warned Jase, his finger squeezing tighter and tighter on that trigger. “Don’t do this! Please, don’t! I’m begging you …!”
CHAPTER 18
THERE WASN’T A HUGE amount of blood. This was a good thing.
Which was not to say that Des’s forearm wasn’t bleeding as she slumped there at the kitchen table, staring at it dumbly. But the entry and exit wounds were seeping, not gushing. That meant the bullet hadn’t blown out an artery and she wouldn’t bleed to death before the chopper got there.
The bone was definitely broken. It wasn’t protruding through the skin or anything, but it was broken. Des knew it because she couldn’t move her hand at all—the nerves just plain wouldn’t respond. She knew it because of the unbelievably gut-wrenching pain, pain so bad that she felt as if she might pass out. But she could not, must not.
Because as bad as her arm hurt, Des was more concerned about Mitch and what was happening to him out there in the snow. She’d heard a couple of gunshots not long after he’d chased out the door after Jase. Then nothing. She feared the worst. And no matter how hard she tried not to, she kept thinking about that damned old movie of his. About how he’d said it all turned out in the end:
“No one gets out alive.”
“Something has happened to Mitch,” she declared, struggling to get up out of her chair. “I have to help him.”
“You have to sit still is what you have to do,” Hannah said firmly, pushing her back down into the chair and holding her there. It was Hannah who had taken charge after they’d all coming rushing in. Hannah who had ordered Aaron, Carly, Spence and Teddy out of the kitchen. Not that they’d seemed any too anxious to stay. “For your information, missy, you have just been shot.”
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