Brynn looked at Amy, her terrified face ruddy with tears and streaked with dirt.
What can we possibly do?
It was Michelle, leaning against the spear, gasping, who supplied the answer. “No more running. It’s time to fight.”
Brynn held her eye. “We’re way outgunned here.”
“I don’t care.”
“It’s a long shot, you know.”
“My life’s been nothing but sure things. Treadmills and lunch at the Ritz and nail salons. I’m sick of it.”
They shared a smile. Then Brynn looked around and saw that they could turn to the right and climb up a steep incline to the top of the cliff, which was above the ledge the men were on now. “Up there. Come on.”
Brynn led the way, then Amy, then Michelle. They looked down to see the men moving cautiously along the trail, a third of the way into it. Hart was in the lead.
They assessed their pathetic weapons: the spear and the knife. But Brynn wanted to keep those for the last minute. She pointed to the rocks littering the area: some were too big to budge, but others could, with some difficulty, be rolled or lifted. Also, there were plenty of logs and thick branches.
Brynn growled, “Let’s send ’em into the thorns.”
Michelle nodded.
Then Brynn had an idea. She took the compass bottle from her pocket. With the knife she cut off a long strip of cloth from her ski parka and tied it around the bottle. She gripped the candle lighter.
Michelle pointed out, “It’s just water.”
“They don’t know that. As far as they know it’s full of alcohol. It’ll stop ’em long enough for us to get some rocks down on them.”
Brynn peered down. The men were almost directly below them. She whispered, “You ready?”
“You bet I am,” Michelle said. She lit the strip—the nylon burned bright and sizzling.
Brynn leaned over the edge, judged the distance and let the bottle fall from her hand. It landed on the ledge about five feet in front of Hart and bounced but stayed put.
“What—?” Hart gasped.
“Shit, it’s alcohol! It’s going to blow, get back.”
“Where are they?”
“Up there. Someplace.”
The shotgun fired and a few pellets struck the rock face near the women. Amy, huddled nearby, began to scream. But Brynn didn’t care. Somehow screaming and howling seemed just right at the moment. They weren’t a deputy and a dilettante actress. They were warriors. Queens of the Jungle. She wanted to give one of her wolf cries at the moment herself.
Together they rolled the biggest rock they could—it must’ve weighed forty or fifty pounds—toward the edge of the cliff. They muscled it up and Brynn rolled it into space. Then looked down.
The aim was perfect but fate intervened. The rock wall wasn’t completely vertical; the missile hit a small outcropping and bounced outward, missing Hart’s head by inches. The rock did, however, crack apart the formation it struck and showered the men with fragments. They backed up ten feet along the ledge. The partner fired again but the pellets hissed past the women and upward.
“We can’t stop,” Brynn called, gasping in a whisper. “Hit them with everything we can pick up.”
They pitched a log, two boulders and a dozen smaller rocks.
They heard a cry. “Hart, my hand. Broke my fucking hand.”
Brynn risked a peek. The partner had dropped his shotgun into the brambles.
Yes!
Hart was gazing upward. He saw Brynn and fired two shots from his Glock. One spattered the cliff nearby but she dodged before the shrapnel hit her.
She heard Hart call, “Comp, the fuse’s out. Look. Get that rubble off the path. Kick it off.”
“Hell, Hart, they’re going to break our skulls.”
“Go ahead. I’ll cover you.”
Brynn was nodding at a log, about five feet long and a foot in diameter, with several sharp spiky limbs a few inches long. “That.”
“Yes!” Michelle smiled. Together the women got onto their knees and pushed the trunk parallel to the cliff’s edge. Gasping from the effort, they collapsed against it.
Brynn held up a finger. “When I tell you to, throw a rock behind them.”
Michelle nodded.
Brynn grabbed the spear.
She thought of Joey. She thought of Graham.
For some reason her first husband’s image made an appearance.
Then she nodded. Michelle pitched a rock down the ledge.
Brynn stood. She saw Hart looking behind him, toward the clatter of the rock and, giving an otherworldly howl, she flung the spear at the partner’s back as he bent down to muscle some debris off the ledge.
“Comp!” Hart cried, looking up at just that moment.
The man spun around and danced back from the spear, which missed him by inches, digging into the stone at his feet with a burst of sparks. He slipped and rolled off the ledge. All that kept him from falling was his left-handed grip on a crack in the rock. His feet dangled above the vicious thorns.
Hurrying to him, Hart glanced up and fired. But Brynn was out of his line of sight and helping Michelle push the deadly log closer to the edge.
Brynn took another fast look—Hart was bent over, his back to her, gripping his partner by the jacket and struggling to pull him up. They were thirty feet below, in a direct line, and the rock face here was smooth. The impact of the log would shatter bones if not kill outright. One of them at least would be knocked into the sea of thorns.
No hesitation now.
Brynn got a good grip on her side of the log and Michelle on hers. “Go!” Brynn whispered.
The log was twelve inches from the edge of the cliff.
“More!”
Six inches.
Which was when a sharp crack sounded on the cliff face only feet below Brynn and Michelle, and a shower of dust and stone chips blew into the night. A moment later the distant boom of a rifle shot filled the air.
The women dropped to their stomachs. Brynn crawled to Amy and pulled the hysterical girl to the ground, cradling her.
Another shot. More rock exploded.
“Who?” Michelle gasped. “That wasn’t from them. There’s somebody else out there! Shooting at us.”
Brynn stared into the distant woods.
A muzzle flash from a long way off. “Get down!” She ducked and another high-velocity rifle round slammed into the log they’d been pushing forward.
Brynn risked a fast look downward. Hart had pulled his partner back onto the ledge but they too were crouching, not sure of what was going on. It seemed the shooter was focusing on the women but the men were probably wondering if they themselves were the targets. The two men, completely exposed, apparently decided to retreat back down the ledge.
Brynn said, “They’re leaving. Let’s get out of here.”
“Who the hell is it?” Michelle muttered. “We almost had them!”
“Come on. Hurry.”
They couldn’t return to the clearing, where they’d be easy targets for whoever was shooting, so they crawled closer to the gorge, away from the sniper. They were soon safe on the other side of the hill, though nearby was a sheer drop into the gorge; Brynn eyed it warily and kept as far away as she could. She asked Amy, “Honey, did Rudy and your mommy have other friends who stayed with you? Somebody who wasn’t at the camper tonight?”
“Sometimes.”
That was probably it; a partner of Gandy and Rudy who’d seen the carnage at the meth lab and had somehow trailed them here.
The silence was interrupted by the beckoning sound of a big tractor-trailer downshifting as it came to the bridge. Brynn looked along the edge of the gorge. They could walk that way to the interstate under pretty good cover.
The sky was now growing lighter—dawn couldn’t be too far off—and they could easily pick their way through the paths toward the highway. Brynn hugged Michelle. “We almost had ’em.”
Not smiling, Michelle said,
“Next time.”
Brynn hesitated. “Well, let’s hope there isn’t one.”
Though it seemed from her fierce expression that the young woman wasn’t hoping for that at all.
“ANOTHER COP?” LEWIS
asked, referring to the shooter. He was flexing his hand. It wasn’t broken but the rock had jammed his thumb. The man was mostly upset he’d lost his shotgun in the bramble patch. And his anger at the women had grown exponentially.
As they hunkered down behind a boulder at the foot of the ledge, Hart listened to the dead deputy’s radio. Routine transmissions about search parties. Nobody had even heard the shots. Nothing about any other cops in the area.
“More meth people, I’ll bet. On the way to the camper.” Hart turned on his GPS. He had to tame his anger. They were so close to their prey. But they couldn’t go after them; the ledge was the only way and they’d be sitting ducks.
“We’ll go around to the left, through the woods. It’s longer but we’ll have good cover right to the highway.”
“What time is it?” Lewis asked.
“What does it matter?”
“I just want to know how long we’ve been doing this shit.”
“Way too long,” Hart said.
HOLDING THE BUSHMASTER
.223 rifle, James Jasons looked at the rock face he’d just been firing at. He’d done the best he could, considering there was virtually no light and he was more than two hundred yards away from the target. He waited, scanning the area with his night-vision binoculars, but saw no signs of the men or the women. There would have been quite a story about how the cave-man confrontation—the two men dodging rocks and logs—had come about.
For ten minutes he scanned the field and forest around him.
Where were they?
The men had fled back down the rocky ledge. Since they had apparently lost their car they’d be making for the interstate—to flag down a ride. But there were a lot of different routes they could take to get to the highway from the ledge. The odds were that they’d be coming in this general direction. It was wildly overgrown but possibly Jasons could find them. On the other hand, they might have gone around to the far side of the hill, after the women. It seemed like a much steeper climb and would have to be made without cover, but who knew? Maybe the men were pissed off about the attack and hell-bent on getting their prey.
Still, Jasons didn’t want to do anything too quickly. He looked over the brush, scanning with the night-vision binoculars. Much of the vegetation moved but that seemed due to the breeze, not escaping humans.
He saw movement not far away. He blinked and gave a gasp as he focused his binoculars. He was looking at a wild animal of some kind, a coyote or wolf. The night-vision system gave it a ghostly green-gray color. Its face was lean and the teeth white and perfect, visible through the slightly bared lips and jowls. He was glad the creature was some distance away. It was magnificent but fierce.
The animal lifted its head, sniffed, and in an instant was gone.
I’m a long, long way from home, James Jasons thought. He’d tell Robert an edited version of the story, in which the animal, though not the gunfire, would figure.
He continued to scan the nearby field and forest but saw no sign of Emma Feldman’s killers. They could easily have been here but it was impossible to tell with the dense vegetation.
And what about Graham and the deputy?
The gunshot he’d heard before the killers arrived at the rock ledge hinted at their fate. It was a shame—but you can’t get in over your head. Just can’t do it.
Jasons waited another ten minutes and decided it was time to get back to the interstate. He slung the canvas bag over his shoulder and without disassembling the rifle melted into the forest.
THEY CONTINUED ALONG
the ridge of the gorge and toward the highway, the Snake River pounding over rocks far below. Brynn didn’t dare look to her right, where ten feet away the world ended, a sheer cliff. She held Amy’s hand, and stared directly ahead at the path in front of them.
She paused once, looking back. Michelle was hobbling along well enough, though clearly exhausted. The little girl appeared almost catatonic.
The time was still very early and, from what they could hear, there wasn’t much traffic on the road yet. But an occasional semi or sedan would cruise by. And all they needed was one.
The bridge suddenly loomed ahead and to the right. They plunged into a band of trees and emerged into a strip of grass about thirty feet wide. Beyond that were the shoulder of the interstate and the beautiful strips of graying asphalt.
But Brynn held up her hand for them to stop; there were no cars or trucks in sight just yet and they’d come too far to make mistakes now.
They remained in the tall grass, like timid hitchhikers. Brynn found herself weaving a bit; this was about the first smooth, level ground she’d been on in close to nine or so hours and her inner ear’s gyroscope was having trouble navigating.
Then she laughed, looking down the highway.
A car was heading around a curve toward them, on the shoulder. It was a Kennesha County Sheriff’s Department car, its lights flashing, moving slow. A driver had heard the shots and called 911 or the State Police’s #77.
Brynn raised a hand to the car, thinking: she’d have to call in immediately about the shooter at the ledge.
The car slowed and swerved onto the shoulder and then eased to a stop between her and the highway.
The doors opened.
Hart climbed out of the driver’s side, his partner from the other.
“NO!” MICHELLE GASPED.
Brynn exhaled a disgusted sigh. She glanced at the car. It was Eric Munce’s. Her eyes went wide.
“Yeah, he didn’t make it,” said the partner, the man she’d come close to shooting back in the Feldman’s dining room. “Fell for the oldest trick in the book.”
She briefly closed her eyes in horror. Eric Munce…the cowboy had come out to save her. And charged to his own death, outmatched.
Hart said nothing. He held his black pistol and gazed at the captives.
The partner continued. “And how are you, Michelle?” Emphasizing the name. He pulled a woman’s purse out of his pocket. Stuffed it back. “Nice to make your acquaintance.”
The woman said nothing, just put her arms around the little girl protectively, pulled her close.
“You ladies have a nice stroll through the woods tonight? Good conversation? You stop for a tea party?”
Hart focused on Brynn. He nodded. She easily held his eye. He lowered the gun as a sedan on the far side of the divider cruised past. It didn’t even slow. In the pale dawn light it might have been hard to see the drama unfolding in the grass on the other side of the road. Soon the car was gone and the highway was empty.
“Comp?” Hart asked, his eye on Brynn.
The skinny man glanced over, kneading his earlobe. “Yeah?”
“Stay right in front of them.”
“Here?”
“Yeah.”
“You bet,” the partner, “Comp” apparently, said. “You want me to cover ’em?” He started to reach for the silver automatic pistol in his jacket.
“No, that’s okay.” Hart stepped directly in front of the man, facing him.
Comp gave an uncertain smile. “What is it, Hart?”
Only a moment’s hesitation. Then Hart lifted the gun to his face.
Smiling uncertainly, Comp touched the blue-and-red tattoo of a cross on his neck, then his earlobe. He shook his head. “Hey, what’re you—?”
Hart shot him twice in the head. The man collapsed on his back, left knee up.
Amy screamed. Brynn could only stare as Hart turned and, keeping his gun on the women and girl, stepped backward to his partner’s body.
Michelle’s eyes went cold.
Hart bent down and pulled Comp’s SIG-Sauer 9mm from his waistband and wrapped the dead man’s limp fingers around it.
So this was to be the s
cenario, Brynn understood. With the man’s hand around the Sig, he’d shoot the women, leaving telltale gunshot residue on the partner’s skin. He’d then stand over Brynn’s body to do the same, putting a second gun in her hand—Munce’s Glock, probably—and fire a couple of rounds into the trees.
The police would reason that the partner had killed the three of them and Brynn got off two final shots to take him out before she died.
And Hart would disappear forever.
A curious feeling, having only minutes to live. Her life wasn’t replaying itself. But she was thinking of regrets. She gazed at the woods, the smooth edge of trees and brush severed by the shoulder and highway, tamed. She nearly expected their wolf friend to stick its head out and look their way before vanishing into the woods again.
Then Hart was twisting the dead partner’s arm up and to the left, aiming at Brynn first with the SIG-Sauer.
Michelle pulled Amy even closer in front of her, and was reaching into her leather jacket, perhaps for their last Chicago Cutlery knife. She was going to fling it at Hart, it seemed.
A final, desperate gesture. And futile, of course.
Joey, Brynn thought, I—
Then came the shout, startling them all.
“Don’t move! Drop it!”
Breathless and limping, Graham Boyd pushed from the woods behind Hart, holding a small revolver.
“Graham,” Brynn cried in astonishment. “My God.”
“Drop it. Now! Put it down.” Her husband’s clothes were streaked with mud—and blood too, she could now see—and torn in several places. His face was bruised and filthy too and through the mask his eyes shone with pure anger. She’d never seen him like this.
Hart hesitated. Graham fired a round into the dirt at his feet. The killer flinched, sighed. He set the gun on the ground.
Brynn recognized the pistol; it was Eric Munce’s backup, which he kept strapped to his ankle. She remembered mentioning to Graham that he kept a second gun there. There were mysteries here but at the moment Brynn wasn’t speculating about how her husband and Munce had come to be at the Snake River Gorge. She stepped forward, took the pistol from her husband, verified that it was loaded still and motioned Hart out of the grass and onto the shoulder, where he’d be more visible. And a better target.
The Bodies Left Behind: A Novel Page 28