“Bad news, veterinarian,” the strange voice said. “You gave yourself away with that shot.”
And you gave yourself away with your big mouth, Teri thought. She shifted her aim subtly to the right, into the branches that obscured her view, but which she now also knew concealed her target. Open your mouth one more time, she thought, and I’ll be able to get a final fix.
She closed her eyes and listened. Silence at first, then a rustling. Footsteps. Were they moving? She squeezed her eyes and strained to decipher the sounds. Multiple footsteps, then the sounds of muffled voices. A conversation but there were too many voices. Not just Bozarth and the other man. Reinforcements.
“Veterinarian,” Bozarth called out.
She shifted her aim in his direction, working on a blind bead.
“Veterinarian,” the other man called. He hadn’t moved.
“Veterinarian,” a third voice called. This one came from up ahead, but still below. The speaker was working his way up the slope to the ridgeline.
“Veterinarian,” a fourth man called. This voice came from her left as the speaker tried to flank her position.
She waited. No more voices. It was four against one. Time to lessen the odds.
She shifted her aim back toward the second man. She thought she had him in her sights before, but couldn’t be positive. She needed to hear him one more time, to insure he hadn’t moved.
“Veterinarian,” Bozarth said.
“Veterinarian,” the second man said.
She squeezed the trigger. She heard the sound of impact over the echo of the gunshot, followed by a male scream. “Goddamn!”
Then the thump of a body falling.
Followed by more thumps as three men dove for cover all around her.
She worked the bolt and chambered another round, then fired a shot in the direction of Bozarth’s voice. She worked the bolt again, squeezed the trigger one more time for good measure, but nothing happened. She hoped the men below hadn’t heard the clicking sound. If they knew she was out of ammunition, they might take this moment to attack.
She turned back to Chad, who was still breathing raggedly, but a bit more strongly than before. Rolling him on his back had opened his airwaves. She felt his pockets and found six bullets. A full box would have been nice, but she was grateful for small favors. Six shots, four assailants—maybe three, now—with two or three bullets left over.
She almost laughed at the thought. If there had ever been any place where she felt full confidence, it had been shooting a gun. Medals and trophies from years of competition had done that for her, much as two Oscars had boosted her confidence as an actress. But while shooting at targets was one thing, shooting at men was another. That was a lesson she had learned the hard way. The thought sobered her. But now, just like then, necessity demanded a human target, even if the ultimate result was another grieving mother standing over her son’s grave.
She put the first bullet in the rifle and listened for movement below.
Chad groaned. She glanced at him. His eyelids fluttered for a beat then he opened his eyes. He blinked them a few times, as if clearing his vision. Then he looked squarely at her.
She loaded a second bullet into the rifle.
Chad smiled. He opened his lips to speak. The words came out in a hoarse whisper, but she heard them clearly enough. “Howdy, Annie Oakley.”
She leaned down and kissed him on the forehead.
She loaded three more bullets and, with the magazine full, she laid the barrel of the rifle over the trunk of the tree and listened for her targets.
Dolan sprawled on a bed of leaves, his eyes glassy. Blood trickled from the side of his mouth, pink and frothy. He gasped for breath, but all that escaped was a hollow sucking sound from the wound in his chest. Doug Bozarth stood next to him, staring down. There was no compassion on his face, but merely curiosity. How long until Dolan was dead? He picked up Dolan’s gun; he didn’t need it anymore.
Dolan opened his mouth and mumbled something. Bozarth bent over, not wanting to dirty his suit pants by kneeling on the ground, and certainly not wanting to get blood on them. Dolan mumbled again, the words more distinguishable this time.
“It hurts.”
Of course it does, you fool, Bozarth thought.
You’ve been shot. It’s supposed to hurt.
He stood and held his gun at his side. “I’ll make it stop,” he said. He
aimed between Dolan’s eyes and fired.
“What the hell?” The voice belonged to the bearded man, who
emerged from the bushes to the right of Dolan’s body.
“I told you to get up that hill in front,” Bozarth said.
“There’s no cover.”
“Ain’t it the truth,” the clean-shaven man said, rejoining them as
well.
“It’s one guy with a rifle,” Dolan said. “And he’s hurt.”
“Tell that to Dolan,” the clean-shaven man said. He glanced at the
body. “Holy shit! Right between the eyes.”
“It’s an easy shot at close range,” the bearded man said. “And when
your prey ain’t moving.”
“You did this?” the clean-shaven man asked Bozarth.
“He was already dead; he just hadn’t quit breathing. Now, let’s get
on both sides of that bastard and shut him down before this gets out of
hand.”
“You going with us?” the bearded man asked. He cast a glance at his
clean-shaven compadre, which was not missed by Bozarth, who rarely
missed anything.
“You’re being paid well to do a job.”
“Not well enough.”
“You didn’t complain before.”
“That was two dead guys ago.”
Bozarth stood silently and fumed.
Goddamn Texans!
Unfortunately he needed them. At least for now. “All right,” he said.
“Double for the vet, triple for the actress.”
The men exchanged glances again. The bearded man nodded. “Okay,” Bozarth said. “Now move out.”
CHAPTER 50
Teri knew she had hit someone. She also knew that the second shot had not come from her weapon, nor had it been aimed at her. It was a close shot, a handgun. That meant that someone had been put out of his misery. She didn’t feel sorry for him, or for the dead man back in the meadow. And even with another one gone, that still meant three were left. If they flanked her, there was no way she could cover three directions all at once. She needed to find a better spot. The real question, though, was Chad. He was in no shape to walk, but she couldn’t carry him, or stay here once they reached the ridge and surrounded her.
She looked down the other side to the valley that sloped away from the ridge. If ever there was a time when she needed Chad awake and coherent, it was now. She needed his input on the lay of the land, the nooks, crannies, escape routes, and ambush spots. While she knew the land to some degree, that knowledge was decades old. She refused to entrust his life, and hers, to a faded memory.
She heard movement on opposite sides as her assailants made their way up the hill to the ridge. Once they reached the top, they would have her in a pincer movement. She could slow them down with gunshots, but each would eliminate precious ammunition. By her reckoning, she had three shots to waste, but only if she were dead bang perfect with the remaining three.
Her mind kicked into overdrive. If she were playing an action hero in a thriller on the big screen, what possible escape would the screenwriters write for her? She thought of the story, apocryphal though it might be, of the old Saturday morning serial in which one episode ended with the hero trapped in a locked room with no possible exit, only to open the following Saturday with the hero free and clear, and a narrator who intoned, “After our hero escaped from the locked room...” If only she could narrate herself and Chad off of this ridgeline, far, far away from Doug Bozarth and his armed sidekicks.
She had, at best, minutes if not seconds before the final showdown began. If she were the screenwriter, how would she write the escape? She knew the rules: (1) you had to be fair to your audience, no cheating; (2) no deus ex machina—no miracle of God to make your escape; (3) no timely arrival of the cavalry; the hero had to make her own escape; and (4) you had to make extraordinary use of the ordinary.
And in that last rule lay the answer. The rootball of the downed tree had been ripped from the ground, creating a hole, now filled with leaves. To the west, the edge of the ridge sloped downward to a shallow valley with a dry creekbed that meandered through it. In the spring, during the April rains, it ran with water, but in the drought of summer, it was merely a dusty path—a roadway, in effect, that led away from her current spot. It was by that path that she could make her escape; it was by the rootball’s depression that she could save Chad.
She knelt beside Chad, who was struggling to retain consciousness. She slapped him lightly. His eyelids fluttered and then opened. His eyes rolled back in his head. She slapped him again and his eyes focused on her.
“Are you awake?” she asked in a hoarse whisper.
“Barely.”
“I’m going to bury you in the leaves, and you can’t move. Not a
muscle. Understand?”
He nodded.
“They don’t know I’m here, so if they hear someone trampling down
the other side of this ridge, they’ll assume it’s you. When they follow, you get out of there and go the other way. There are three of them. Wait for all three to get by first.”
“What if they don’t all follow?” he asked.
“They will.” She left unspoken her real thoughts: They have to. She heard voices from below. A murmur or two, then silence. Then
rustling as footsteps began their flanking movement before ascending the slope.
“Now,” she whispered.
She grabbed Chad by his good arm as he struggled to his knees, then
she helped him crawl to the end of the tree. He slid into the depression, as if sliding into a pool of water. Teri took the small folding saw from her belt and gave it to him. She opened the blade and put the handle in his right hand.
“Just in case,” she said. Moving quietly, she scooped leaves over Chad until he was completely hidden from sight. She felt as if she were burying him and hoped to God that this was not the last time she would see him alive.
She knew her assailants had ascended the hill to the ridgeline, and two of them now stood on either side of her, to her north and to her south. How far away, she didn’t know, as they were blocked from sight by trees and shadows.
And where was Bozarth? It would be just like the coward to stay below, to leave the dirty work to others. How would Chad get down if he was still there?
“Veterinarian!” a voice called from the north.
“Veterinarian!” another voice echoed from the south.
They were here.
She popped to her feet, leveled the rifle and fired north, in the
direction of the first voice, then spun and fired to the south. As the shots reverberated, she heard both men scramble for cover. It sounded as if each of them had made the same move, sliding down the slope in the direction from which they had come.
She turned and ran down the other side, deliberately making as much noise as she could, kicking up leaves, snapping branches, starting a small landslide. She lost her footing, hit on her butt, and slid for about fifteen feet, before popping back up at the bottom. She made it to the dry creekbed, turned south and sprinted.
From behind and above her, she heard a voice call out, “He’s gone down the other side.”
She smiled and inserted the last bullet.
Chad lay as still as he could, but pain ravaged his left side. He yearned to move about, to twist and flop, as if the release of energy would lessen his pain. But he remembered the command from Teri. He lay still.
A gunshot rang out beside him, followed by a second, then he heard sounds of Teri scrabbling down the slope. After a brief moment, he heard footsteps trample the ground nearby, then follow her downhill. He held his breath and forced himself to concentrate. He had heard two sets of footsteps. How many had Peggy said there were? Three? That didn’t make sense. There had been three at the start, but he was pretty sure one of them was dead in the meadow. And he was pretty sure Peggy had shot one down below. His head hurt, his shoulder hurt, his whole body hurt, but he could still do basic arithmetic: three minus one equals two, minus one equals one.
But he had distinctly heard two sets of footsteps, one to the south and one to the north, go by. That meant that the one Peggy shot down below wasn’t hurt bad, or was at least not disabled. But with both of his pursuers accounted for, that meant he was safe.
He cupped his right hand to brush away leaves, but something stopped him. A rustling sound, very slight, down below. Another deer, perhaps? A fawn looking for its dead mother? A dead mother that he had killed? Or just the injured animal thrashing around in the leaves. He suddenly felt overwhelmed by remorse. He was a veterinarian, for God’s sake. He took care of animals. He healed animals. Medical doctors may have their Hippocratic Oath, and their adage primum non nocere, Latin for “first, do no harm,” but veterinarians had their own oath, dedicating themselves to the “protection of animal health, the relief of animal suffering...”
If the deer was merely injured, if it was in pain, he had a duty to tend to it, to relieve its suffering. Shame pulsed through his body like a blast of thermal heat. He pushed aside a handful of leaves from his face, then stilled. Even that small movement sent pain to every nerve.
Then he heard something else down below again. The distinct beeps and boops of keys being pressed on a cell phone. Then a muttered “damn.” That meant two things. One, no cell service. But two, there was a third man.
He extended his hand, cupped a batch of leaves, and pulled them back over his face. The man below began to move, ascending the incline, heading his way. After a few seconds, the man reached the top of the ridge and stood not more than ten feet away. Feet shuffled through leaves, drawing closer as the man walked around the deadfall to Chad’s side, then wood creaked as weight was placed on the fallen tree. The man had sat down right next to the rootball.
Time to play the waiting game. Chad closed his eyes and tried to will unconsciousness to settle in. He thought it was the only way to guarantee that his pain-wracked body would remain deathly still. His very life depended on it.
Although Teri regularly worked out, running three miles a day in the hills around her house and pumping iron two or three times a week, artificial workouts in gyms and neighborhoods didn’t really prepare you for sprinting through trees, running for your life. Similarly, staged shootouts on movie sets were no practice for real gunfights with real bullets with people who wanted you dead. She was running on adrenaline now, and she knew that exhaustion would soon kick in. She didn’t how much of a lead she had nor was she inclined to check. As legendary Negro Leagues pitcher Satchel Paige once said, “Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.”
She thought she was far enough away now for Chad to unearth himself and go for help. Sooner or later, she needed to find a spot to take a stand. Short of a chair at a bar table in a corner, with her back to the wall, facing the swinging doors, she needed a bluff or rise where she could obtain a height and visual advantage, and where the men chasing her couldn’t circle around behind.
She heard the zzzzp of a bullet whiz by her ear. It disappeared into the deepening shadows in the trees ahead of her. She hadn’t heard the shot. She didn’t know if that meant silencers or if it meant she simply hadn’t been paying attention. It did mean, though, that her pursuers were close enough to see her darting through the trees, even in the deepening gloom. She hoped she was still far enough ahead that they couldn’t distinguish her female form. It was important that they think she was Chad, because that would give Chad the advanta
ge he needed to seek help before one or more of them returned to hunt for him. In his weakened condition, he needed as big a lead as she could give him.
Up ahead, the creekbed seemed to elevate. She couldn’t tell how high it sloped, but it appeared to be a fairly steep rise, a perfect vantage point to target her pursuers. As soon as they felt the upswing in the topography, they would assume Chad had gone that way, and would likely slow and regroup at the foot of the slope, assess their options, and scout out a plan of attack. They would be standing in the perfect place for an ambush—particularly if she chose not to go uphill.
She dropped to her knees, hopefully removing herself from any glimpse the pursuers might have of her. Then she crawled off to the side, into the thickest stand of trees, a cluster of oaks nearly choked by cedars. It was barely passable, even that low to the ground. She had to lie on her stomach at one point and pull herself beneath the lowest cedar branches. Once she felt she was safely out of sight, she turned back the way she had come, circling back to the creekbed, but downstream. And hopefully behind her pursuers.
Staying in a crouch, she duck-walked to an oblong boulder in the midst of two bushes that bordered the creekbed, angled away from it. It was about the height of a bedroom nightstand and the length of a coffee table, an excellent spot to hide behind and rest the barrel of her rifle. The only question was whether the bad guys had passed by this spot yet.
She got her answer soon enough, ducking just in time to avoid being seen. From the sounds of it, there was more than one man, but not enough noise to account for all three. She raised her head and saw two men jogging away from her.
And neither one of them was Doug Bozarth!
Where the hell was he? Had he stayed behind because he was a coward, or had he already found Chad? She was betting on the former— he seemed like the type to hire his dirty work done instead of doing it himself. But if it was the latter, she might already be too late.
She laid the rifle across the boulder and sighted down the barrel. One man lagged behind the other, who was already around a small bend and out of sight. She drew a bead right between his shoulder blades. She had learned long ago that some people simply needed killing. That was an old Texas tradition that had allowed many a killer to walk free. It hadn’t worked for her before, and it might not work for her now. But when men with guns were searching for you, with murder on their minds, they need killing, even if it meant shooting them in the back. No time for remorse.
The Bequest Page 25