A few yards ahead she saw the tops of some pine trees poking above the guard rail. Knowing there had to be a flat outcropping not far below, she urged her body forward. She heard the willow switch again, but the slug must have missed her. At least she didn’t feel as though she’d been hit.
GARLAND CURSED AT his poor performance. Normally, he was a better marksman than this, but he didn’t usually have to contend with a raging pain in his head. In addition, the steep slope had thrown his balance off, and his headlights were casting weird shadows over the fleeing target. But there was nowhere for her to go, and he had another full magazine in his pocket, so there was no doubt how this would end.
CHRIS REACHED THE rail and looked down into a void that was so dark she couldn’t tell how far the ledge below was. At least the shoulder of the road seemed to angle down to it rather than fall off precipitously. As sanctuaries go, it didn’t have much to recommend it, for the entire stand of trees was no more than twenty feet long and obviously narrow. In addition, if she went down there, she’d be trapped. But then, so would he, which meant he wouldn’t follow her.
A slug ricocheting off the rail beside her right hand made the decision for her. She dropped to the ground and threw her legs onto the sloping granite below. Praying it wasn’t a thirty-foot drop, she shoved herself forward.
The granite wasn’t as smooth as it looked in daylight, and her butt found every ridge and pothole in it. Teeth clenched in fear, she rode the mountain, which lifted her then slammed her down onto the tail end of her spine over and over. Her descent seemed endless, as though the ledge below were racing her, trying to stay out of reach. Suddenly, she felt the cold stone fall away, and she was airborne. Bam. She was slammed once more onto the granite, so hard her clenched jaw popped open. At the same instant, her face was raked by pine boughs. Then, with a jolt, it was over.
As she spit out the pine needles that had somehow found their way into her mouth, she came to realize she was straddling the trunk of a pine tree whose bark was less than a finger’s breadth from her crotch. And with a granite wall against her spine, she couldn’t lie back enough so she could free herself.
Expecting at any second to be shot from above, she rolled to the right until she was nearly upside down, and her shoulder was grinding into the thin soil beneath her. Squirming onto her back, she swung her trapped leg into the air and brought it around the tree. With a flurry of kicking and pushing against whatever purchase she could find, her lower body moved across the granite wall in an arc until she was lying on her side. In the darkness, she scrabbled to her feet.
Before she had time to think, she sensed the arrival of her pursuer. Looking up, she saw him dimly outlined by the light from his car. He raised his gun, pointed it directly at her, and fired.
The slug hit the ground an inch from her foot and ricocheted into a tree behind her.
He can see me, her brain howled.
It seemed impossible. When she’d looked down here herself, she’d been able to see nothing. How could he do it?
But then he moved his gun a little to the left and fired again. Then back to the right.
He can’t see, Chris thought. He was firing blindly, concentrating on the place where she’d disappeared. Another shot hit a granite outcropping to her left and ricocheted past her, so close it whispered in her ear. Another hit the tree beside her, spraying her with sap. With slugs flying in all directions like that, there was simply no place to hide.
Carefully, she began backing up to at least get some tree trunks between her and the gun. But the trees, having struggled to grow at all in such a place, afforded her almost no protection. The willow switch sounds were now coming too close together to be timed, producing a deadly hail that at any moment could end her life.
With no other option, she continued to edge her way deeper into the trees, well aware that she was approaching a precipice. A slug grazed her hand, and she cried out in pain. Hearing the sound, the gunman focused his efforts on the source.
She could go no farther, for she had reached the edge of the granite shelf. Trying to become a smaller target, she dropped to one knee. As she did, her right hand strayed over the edge of the cliff and found that the granite below did not form a sheer drop-off, but slanted away into darkness.
She tried to move forward and get out of that spot, but a tree growing right on the edge of the shelf blocked her. Then she got an idea. She looked over the edge of the shelf. There was no telling how distant the ground was, probably far enough to turn her into a bag of broken bones if she fell.
Her assessment was accurate, for the slope she’d felt with her hand extended for only fourteen feet before it ended in a sheer drop to a rocky jumble two hundred feet below.
With no time to debate the wisdom in what she was about to do, she flattened herself on the ground and wrapped both hands around the trunk of the tree in front of her. Scooting sideways with her legs, she worked her body off the ledge and onto the slope. With a little more scuttling, she lay in a line directly below the tree, all of her body except her hands under the trajectory of any slug fired from above.
But this refuge came at a high price, for the hand that had been shot ached, and the granite was punishing her knees. Moreover, the strength it took to hold on was pushing her physical limits. And now that she was down there, she knew she’d never have the strength to pull herself back up.
BELOW, IN THE park police station, the dispatcher who had taken Chris’s call was so angry at the malfunctioning radio transmitter that had so far not allowed her to contact anybody, she began pounding on it with her fist.
Chapter 33
SLUGS WERE STILL flying above, and there was a chance Chris might be hit again in the hands. If that happened, she’d never be able to hold on. But even if it didn’t, the hand that was already throbbing from her earlier injury was threatening to pack it in. And she was certain that under the strain of her weight, her shoulder joints were slowly separating.
She’d long believed and taken comfort in the evidence that as one dies, the brain releases chemicals that produce a kind of euphoria, so there is no fear at the end, only a quiet pleasure. Now, though she was not mortally wounded, the pain and her flagging strength started tripping those switches, and she began to accept the thought of death.
Just let go, and the pain will be over. It’ll be fine, it really will. Don’t be afraid, it’ll be lovely.
Eyes closed, she felt as though she were floating, and if she released her hold, she would flutter harmlessly to the earth like a piece of confetti.
Just let go . . .
But then, the coarser, knuckle-dragging parts of her brain that were not deceived by soft voices and false promises, the ones that had seen the species through famine and flood and pestilence, joined the fray. And they urged her to hold on. Save yourself. Death is not the answer. Hold on. Hold on.
The willow switch suddenly grew silent. Had he given up? Was he out of ammunition? A voice cut the night.
“Drop your weapon.”
There was someone else up there.
She heard the gunman begin firing again, but obviously not at her. Other, unsilenced shots rang out.
Hold on, she told herself. Help is coming. Somehow, she found a tiny reserve of untapped adrenaline. With it she bought the strength to maintain her grip for a few more seconds.
The shooting stopped, and she heard running footsteps. There was a sliding sound followed by a grunt and a thump nearby. Then the rustle of pine boughs.
“Over here. Hurry.” She was so weak now her voice was hardly above a whisper.
The rustling grew closer. At practically the same instant that she wondered why the park police didn’t have any flashlights, the cop they’d sent to save her reached her on hands and knees and put his hand on her arm.
“Thank God you’re here,” she said.
Then she felt hard cold pressure against her head and she knew . . . It wasn’t a cop, it was him.
The beam of two flashlights from above cut twin swaths through the darkness.
“Good-bye, Red,” the gunman said.
Her resources drained and in no position to stop him even if she weren’t exhausted, there was nothing she could do to prevent him from shooting her in the head, except release her hold and slide into oblivion. That at least would be her choice on how she would die, not his.
But help was so close.
An instant before he fired, she jerked her head to the right. The silencer slid down her skull and off it, so the round hit the granite beside her and caromed off into the darkness.
ON THE ROAD above, both cops saw the gunman crouching by the shelf’s edge. Having already been fired upon, they were both so scared neither bothered to give him another warning before they began blasting away at him.
Although a moment earlier they’d managed to wound the gunman severely enough that he fell onto the shelf with Chris, they were poor marksmen, and seven of the eight rounds they fired this time missed. But one tore through his skull, tunneled through thirty-eight years of experience and memories, and blew a picture window in the other side of his head as it exited.
The gunman toppled, hit the granite slope with a dull thud, then began to slide. Greased by his own blood, he created a new ride for the park and went on its inaugural run.
Too depleted to feel any emotion over her close escape, Chris concentrated on letting the cops know she was there. “Help . . . I can’t . . . I’m down here . . .”
The two cops searched the shelf with their flashlights, then the younger of the two spotted Chris’s hands. Without hesitating, he swung under the rail and slid down to the ledge on his rump.
Because he’d suffered from undiagnosed dyslexia, the cop twice failed the exam for the Atlanta Police Department. But physically, he was more than adequate, so he had little trouble pulling Chris to safety. At the sloping wall that led to the road, he dropped to his knees so Chris could step onto his back and then onto his shoulders as he stood up. This raised her high enough that the other cop could pull her onto the road.
“What took you so long?” Chris croaked.
“Our radio transmitter is on the blink,” the cop said. “Sometimes it works, sometimes not. So we didn’t get the call right away.”
“I need to sit down.”
The cop turned and looked below at his colleague. “I’m gonna take her to my car, then we’ll get you up.”
Sitting in the police cruiser’s front seat while the older cop helped the younger one climb back to the road using a set of jumper cables as a rope, it almost seemed to Chris that what had just happened wasn’t real . . . that a few minutes ago she couldn’t have been about to die. But the throbbing pain in her hand and another across the bridge of her nose reminded her that it had all been horribly real. She reached up and carefully touched the side of her nose. The skin there felt oddly corrugated, making her want to look at it in the rearview mirror. But she didn’t have the strength to fight the steep angle on which the car was parked. So she just lay back and closed her eyes.
After the young cop had successfully climbed the jumper cables, he and his colleague spent a few minutes discussing the situation. Then the older cop drove Chris to the park police station, where she went directly to the rest room and looked in the mirror.
What she saw shocked her, for the wound on her nose had bled incredibly, leaving a veil of dried gore across her right cheek. She carefully cleaned it off with moist paper towels, then did the same with the blood around the small knife cut on her neck. When she reached the wound on the back of her hand, that one began bleeding again. Holding some paper towels against the flow, she went back into the ready room, where the dispatcher, a heavyset woman with a prison guard look about her, sat Chris down and applied gauze and tape to the bleeding wound and put a bandage on her nose.
“I’ve called an ambulance,” she said. “When they get here, I’ll have them look at you.”
“I’m okay,” Chris said. “I don’t need that.” Though she knew it wasn’t a likely possibility, she so desperately wanted to be away from these people and be surrounded by her own things, she said, “Could we just get my car down and let me go home?”
An incredulous expression crossed the woman’s face. “A crime was committed, and a man was shot. There are reports to fill out, questions to be answered. No, of course you can’t go home. Not for a while.”
That while turned out to be three hours, during which she did two performances, one for the park police and another for the county sheriff. The flow of information in those interviews wasn’t entirely one way, for in the process she learned that the man who had attacked her was dead. By the time she’d been told this, the caffeine in two cups of hot coffee had a couple of her generators back on line.
The side of her car was scraped and crushed, but it was still as functional as she was, so when she’d answered the last question and was allowed to leave, she drove away at the wheel of her own car. As desperate as she was to get home, she stopped at Bill Spain’s kiosk and surprised him with a big hug and a kiss on the cheek for giving her the juice bottle she’d used to get out from under her assailant’s knife.
HOME . . . STANDING IN her living room, she thought what a fine word that was . . . to have a place away from the dangers of the world, where you could be safe and warm and your arms weren’t being pulled out of their sockets, and there wasn’t a gun to your head. She walked through her apartment with new eyes, appreciating the old, thrilled by the familiar.
Then she showered.
Hot water piped right into your bathroom.
What an invention.
After she showered, she put on her favorite pair of flannel pajamas and a robe and curled up in one of the big upholstered chairs in the living room. There, her mind began replaying the horrors of the evening, reformatted, of course, for home viewing. In minute detail she relived the attack, felt once more the knife against her throat, heard again the crack of the bottle against her assailant’s skull, and saw the lights of his car coming toward her. She cringed at the sickening sound of her own car ripping out metal posts, and felt the pain in her arms, the cold metal silencer against her head.
And after the last frame slid from view, there was, for a few seconds, only a white screen in her head. She began to wonder why this had happened. Why, after so many years of going up on the mountain in utter safety, a man driving a rental car, for that’s what the sheriff had said he was driving, attacked her. And why was he carrying a silenced automatic as though . . .
For hours there had been a distant voice in her head, trying to get her attention. But there had been too much else going on for her to hear. Now that it was quiet, she finally got the message.
Chapter 34
THE MORNING AFTER the attempt on her life, Chris met with Michael in his office and told him what had happened. When she finished, he pulled her out of her chair and wrapped his arms around her.
“What a horrible night you had. I feel awful that I wasn’t there to help.”
Needing the comfort his arms provided, Chris let herself enjoy the moment. But then, fearing that she was cooperating too much, gently pulled free.
“There’s no reason for you to feel bad,” she said. “You couldn’t have known what was going to happen.”
“What was that guy doing up there anyway?”
“He wasn’t there by accident. Just in from out of town . . . carrying a gun with a silencer. He was a pro.”
“What do you mean a pro—a hit man?” Michael’s skepticism was obvious in his voice.
“And I think Ash hired him.”
“Why would he do such a thing?”
“He must have figured out I was behind the v
isit he got from Lenihan.”
“Nothing came of that. Why risk drawing more attention to himself?”
“If that creep had succeeded, the connection probably would have gone unnoticed.”
“Have you told Lenihan all this?”
“He was very sympathetic about what happened, but was even more skeptical than you are.”
“Chris, that’s not fair. I’m just trying to look at this objectively.”
“Which is exactly what I’m doing.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know you didn’t. But I need some support here. I’m out on this limb all by myself.”
Michael put his arms around her waist. “I’m with you wherever it takes us.”
“You mean that?”
“Yes.”
“Then we better get packed, because we’re going to Newark, New Jersey, and talk to Frieda Sepanski.”
WITH MICHAEL BEHIND the wheel of their rental car and Chris checking house numbers, they slowly cruised Bingham Street looking for the Sepanski house. As they drove, Chris couldn’t help thinking that the area looked like a Stepford community: neat little brick bungalows, varying only subtly from each other, the yards greening up from winter in synchrony, not a speck of litter anywhere, all the sidewalks in perfect repair.
They’d moved fast after Chris had voiced her intent to make the trip, and three hours later, they were airborne, having paid a surprisingly modest amount for their tickets, considering the lack of advance planning.
“There are some people I’ll bet the neighbors talk about,” Michael said, pointing a few doors ahead on the right, where the yard showed some bald patches, and a half dozen different species of weeds had a good head start on the grass. The wooden trim on the house was faded, and the paint was flaking off in long strips. From the way the roofing shingles were curled up, Chris suspected that the next cold front blowing through would take a bunch of them with it.
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