by Dana Cameron
“I can’t take the chance that Harry will find her first!”
I’d sent Detective Kobrinski after the wrong person. That thought repeated itself as I raced down the road. Oh God, don’t let me be too late! I thought about what she might be running into, and moved even faster. What she’d said before didn’t count; I couldn’t stay put and do nothing. I headed into the woods, even though in every movie I’ve ever seen, the person who is told to stay put and then does not gets blown up or falls in the tiger trap or is eaten by the army of mummies. I got as far as a small clearing, fifty yards off the road, when I had to stop and catch my breath. I had to warn her, to make her look for—
I heard rustling in the dry leaves. Someone was coming toward the clearing, from the opposite direction of the path I’d followed.
Instinct insisted I not assume it was Pam Kobrinski. I dove behind a thorny bush and watched Harry Saunders enter the clearing. In one hand, he held a pistol. He was wearing the dark gray overcoat I’d seen him in when he got the Chandler letters for me. To my horror, I saw that there was blood smeared all over his hands. Oh no—Pam! But…but…surely I would have heard the gunshots…Though I now knew that Harry knew more than one way to kill, not all of them as loud as a pistol…
As Harry looked around, I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. He looked tired, but no worse than that. Did he know I knew he was the murderer? I didn’t realize it myself until just a moment ago, and there was no way I could bluff my way past him. But he didn’t look like someone who was being hunted; he looked like he was searching for someone himself.
There’s a special thrill, even in the most innocent of situations, when you are watching someone who might be looking for you. The tension mounts as you wonder how long you can remain unseen. That sensation was nothing compared to this, blood pounding, every nerve twanging taut, adrenaline telling me to do something, anything, but quick. I thought I would black out from panic when his searching eyes seemed to stare right at me, and then felt the disorienting giddiness of rebirth when his gaze swept past me.
Anticipation mingled with desperation and sickness. I looked quickly around me, but no convenient stout branch or fist-sized rock offered itself to me as a weapon. I’d have to run for it, try to make a break for the road. With the possibility of Pam hurt or worse, I needed help.
Harry looked around the clearing again before he sat down on a stump and put his head into his hands, his back to me.
I gathered up my breath to make the dash. I had to run, I had to be as fast as I knew how. I had nothing I could use to stop him…
…Nothing but surprise.
I wasn’t even aware that I’d decided to tackle Harry until I’d launched myself toward him. Probably better that way, but my decision startled me. I couldn’t even make use of the microseconds of flight to form any solid plan or decide how best to land. I had time for only one thought:
Awww shit.
I knocked Harry from the stump, but things stopped going my way right after that. He was sprawled face-first into the leaves with his arm and the pistol underneath him. But my foot caught on the stump as I took him over, and so instead of landing right on top of Harry, I went skidding through the leaf duff next to him. At least I’d anticipated landing hard. By the time Harry had struggled up, I had a chance to roll up back onto one hip and launch a roundhouse kick at his hand, with every bit of rage I had in me.
It was a good kick—I landed it just above his wrist—and I knocked the gun away. The weapon bounced off a tree and fired as it deflected back into the clearing about ten feet from where we were tangled.
The explosion of the discharge, echoing through the forest, startled us both, and we each automatically covered our heads. Not for long. We lowered our arms and stared at each other, astonished. Harry looked so surprised, so much like the gentle, quiet man that I thought I knew, that instead of punching him square in the face, I hesitated after I scrambled to my knees. That was the worst kind of mistake.
He recovered one second faster than I did and lunged forward, slamming his fist into me. I twisted away as he approached and blocked with my left arm, so that instead of catching the blow in my stomach as he’d intended, it glanced off my arm and hit the back of my ribs. That hurt like hell, but not as badly as it could have. His next punch came quickly too, smashing into my shoulder and knocking me back over onto the carpet of dead leaves. My left arm went numb and my eyes filled on the jarring double impact; I couldn’t see until I’d shaken my head clear. Only by good luck did my flailing foot trip him up, but that didn’t slow him much. Harry began to scrabble toward the pistol, breathing hard with hitching breaths.
With an animal’s noise, I flung myself on his legs as he tried to crawl away, and climbed up his back to slow him before he could get to the gun. Harry grunted and tried to roll over to get me off him. My breath was coming in gasps, tears streaming down my face as I tried to hang onto him, slow him down; he finally threw me aside, part of his coat tearing away in my hand. As he raised himself to his knees, I grabbed Harry’s hair and yanked back as hard as I could. Harry screeched as my right fist crashed into his face; I felt the skin on my knuckles tear as they hit his glasses. He immediately swung his left arm up in a brutal uppercut that caught me square on the chin.
I saw stars as his punch slammed my jaw up into my skull, and I hit the ground again, stunned. Hot blood gushed like a searing river across loosened teeth, and I shook my head again and again, unable to clear my vision. Disoriented, I couldn’t figure out where I was, where Harry was, or what was happening until I blurrily recognized his foot arcing toward my face.
I rolled to one side, trying to grab his foot, but wasn’t entirely fast enough: Harry’s toe connected with my left shoulder instead of my head. My arm, already throbbing, went dead to all sensation but blinding pain, so that instead of pulling him over as I’d hoped, he only stumbled. Then he surprised me. Instead of kicking me again, Harry staggered over and picked up the pistol.
I tried to get up and stumbled, a tearing sensation in my left shoulder sending electric sparks through my brain. That shoulder had already taken more than its fair share of abuse in my life and the sheer intensity of the pain now scared me. I backed up and got up very slowly as Harry lurched over, holding the pistol unsteadily before him.
“Don’t…don’t make me,” he panted. Blood was streaming down the side of his face, and he kept shaking his head gently, as if I’d knocked something loose. I’d torn his overcoat nearly off his back, and dirt, pine needles, and the spines of leaves clung to what was left. “I don’t want to, don’t make—”
“Don’t want to?” I said, my words like a moan. “What about Faith, Harry? And poor”—I struggled to catch my breath—“stupid Jack? What about Pam?”
“She didn’t give me any choice!” Harry was adamant. “They didn’t give me any choice, it was up to them, it was their decision…”
He drew closer, but still looked unsteady. I tried to muster the resources to get the gun away from him again, but I didn’t think that I could move fast enough to surprise him. Giving myself the chance to catch my breath and catch him off guard, I tried words instead. Anything to keep him away.
“Why?” I asked as evenly as I could. My breath was still coming in gasps, and I could feel my jaw beginning to swell. I could feel one or two of my teeth wiggling, loose in the back of my mouth, and the shocking, body-warm taste of blood sliding across my tongue. “Harry, what could ever make you—”
“Shut up! You don’t understand, nobody understands!” he shouted. But instead of being overcome by what he’d done, as I’d hoped, he seemed to get angrier with me for reminding him. Harry stepped in quickly, grabbed the collar of my sweater, and practically lifted me to my feet. As I reached out to steady myself against him, he rapped my fingers away with the pistol. Reflex made me stick my bruised knuckle in my battered mouth—that did neither any good.
“Faith didn’t give me any choice.” Harry took a breath. “And J
ack was always his own worst enemy,” he continued more calmly. The blood and sweat were drying on his face like a gruesome mask, and one lens in his fancy tortoise shell glasses was cracked. He seemed to be recovering a lot faster than I was, though: He had a mission. “And now you’ve complicated things again, I need to consider my—”
I was bracing myself to drive my elbow into his stomach, when Harry suddenly whipped me around, slipping an arm across my neck. I saw why in a second: Detective Sergeant Kobrinski had crept up on us at the far edge of the clearing and had her pistol aimed at us. To my surprise, she looked unharmed.
I wasn’t comforted, however. Harry tightened his grip on me and raised his gun to my head. “Options. I need options, Emma,” he said. “And right now, you’re all the options I have.”
Chapter 20
“PUT THE GUN DOWN, HARRY,” PAM ORDERED calmly. “Let Emma go.”
“No, put your gun down, throw it away from you,” Harry countered. “We’re going to walk away and you’re not going to do a damned thing about it. Not if you’re smart.”
“You okay, Emma?” Pam never broke eye contact with Harry.
“Uh…yeah,” I said. But I could feel my jaw swelling and my neck was aching from the way that Harry was holding me. My feet hurt from spending so much time on tiptoe but that was nothing compared to the way my shoulder felt. I wished my arm would just fall off and be done with it. I could feel Harry’s heart pounding, could smell the blood and fear from him. I wished that I could figure out what to do, but the last thing I wanted was to screw up any advantage that the detective might have.
“Harry, let go of Emma,” she said. “You don’t want to make this any worse than it is.”
“And if you don’t back off, you’re going to have corpses here!”
As if “here” were the cue, a tremendous crashing was heard alongside of us. Several things happened, all too quickly. Harry tightened his grip across my neck. I clung to his arm, as much to steady myself as to try to keep him from accidentally strangling me, and tucked my chin to prevent that. I thought that I might have been able to get out of his grasp, but then there was the gun, and I had no idea what the detective might have in mind, and heavens knew, she was the expert here. Detective Kobrinski, not knowing what to expect, rapidly swung her pistol from us to the source of the disturbance, then back again. And Michael Glasscock skidded into the clearing, tripped over a log, and landed face-first in the leaves before us all.
“Goddamn trees,” he muttered, picking himself up. Then noticing the tableau onto which he’d stumbled, Michael paused.
“Holy shit,” he whispered in awe. He scrambled backward until he was alongside the detective, staring at Harry incredulously the whole time. “It is you!”
I could feel Harry relax slightly; Michael was no threat to him. “I don’t think things have changed materially, Detective. Now there are just more innocent people to die. Lose your gun!”
She hesitated, with a scowl for Michael.
“Throw it away!” Harry screamed, jamming the muzzle of the pistol to my temple.
I felt the gun press into my head and squeezed my eyes shut. “Oh God!” I flinched, sending another spasm of pain through my jaw.
“Okay, Harry? Harry?” Pam’s voice was urgent, attention-grabbing. “Harry. You’re in charge.” Detective Kobrinski tossed her weapon carefully on the ground behind her. “You’re the one who can decide to end this right now.”
Harry’s gun pulled back, maybe a millimeter. I thought I felt the pressure ease up, or maybe it was just what I was hoping.
My heart sank as she said, “We can work this out.”
As much as I didn’t like being caught between two gun barrels, this was even more alarming: I knew things were going to start happening now. Every fiber of my being was straining to be ready for whatever was going to come. I could only wait for the right moment—and when that moment came? Well, the only advice I could find to give myself was Don’t screw up.
“How about a trade, Harry?” Pam offered. Her voice was so calm, so reasonable, I would have done it in a heartbeat. “Me for Emma.”
“Not a chance.” Harry swallowed, licked his lips. “Now here’s what we’re going to do—”
I don’t think Harry realized he was shouting, another assault on my ears. I don’t think he realized how tightly he was holding onto me, close to choking me.
“—We’re going to leave here, and you’re going to stay. If I see you near us, I’ll shoot her.”
Pam tried again. “Harry, you don’t have to—”
He yanked me, ignoring her. “Move!” he bellowed in my ear.
I couldn’t make my knees bend. I didn’t want to leave. “Can’t breathe,” I gasped.
“You don’t need to breathe, you need to move, now!” he screamed. A little fleck of foam flew out of his mouth past me.
I saw a tremor in the gun near my head and thought, Em, you’ve got to be better than this. You can’t give him any reason to pull the trigger. Do what Pam is always saying, just start at the beginning, move from the known to the unknown. Just do what he says, just for a minute, and then we’ll see. Break the problem into steps, deal with each one, and then we’ll see.
The first step was the hardest to take, but I did it. After that it was easier; with that little bit of forward motion Harry began to practically drag me, and all I had to worry about was keeping my balance. Once I’d made the decision to move, it began to be easier to think beyond myself. To consider how I might survive this mess. Break it into steps, just like research, just take each big problem and break it into smaller ones. Stay focused and deal with every opportunity as it comes. Just don’t screw up.
We lumbered awkwardly down the path toward the road that ran behind the library, off Shrewsbury land. The fence was chainlink here, and a large section of it was cut and bent back, creating an exit for us. An old dark Volvo station wagon was parked there. Harry opened the front passenger door and shoved me in.
“Get in,” he ordered, shoving me over to the driver’s seat. “You drive.” He followed me and slammed the door shut behind him.
There was no way that I was going to make this easy for him. “I can’t…my arm is…dislocated,” I protested. My left arm felt horrible, but I didn’t really know what was wrong with it. This was just the beginning of my plan, Step One: Don’t be any more help than necessary.
“You’ll manage. I have great faith in you.” Harry got in the passenger’s side, shut the door, and handed me the keys. “Don’t try anything. I’m not a great shot—”
I thought back to the day at the historical center. Had it been him?
“—but even I can’t miss from a foot away.”
Don’t try anything? That thought almost made me giggle. But giggling would have turned quickly to sobbing, and I couldn’t afford that now. Don’t try anything? That made Step Two clear: Don’t inspire confidence in your abilities. I didn’t even have to think about that one. Out of habit, I turned to fasten my seat belt, but then I reconsidered: I might want to make a hasty exit. Instead I probed at my shoulder, and didn’t need to fake flinching; it hurt like hell. Step Three: Be patient and wait for your moment. But don’t wait too long. And don’t screw up, don’t screw up, don’t screw up…
Harry wiped at his face, seeming tired. “Now drive. Not too fast, not too slow. Nothing funny.”
I pulled away, heading down the road that encircled the Shrewsbury compound until we were out on the road in front of the guard house, heading toward Monroe.
Harry was starting to shake a little now, a delayed reaction to the confrontation. He pushed the cigarette lighter in, and was talking breathlessly, almost animatedly. “Okay, now, you’re the one who’s going to decide how long you live, and the sooner you realize that, the better for both of us. So you try anything, there is absolutely nothing to keep me from getting rid of a little dead weight, right?”
I nodded, concentrated on driving and thinking hard. My arm and jaw both
ached, throbbing out of synch.
“You sit there, you keep quiet, you don’t get hurt.”
I thought, “Too bad you can’t say that in the library.” I was surprised that I still had a sense of humor, and I clung to it. I needed anything that would help me think beyond my fear and pain right now.
We pulled down the road and I accelerated to about forty-five miles an hour.
When we were past the gate, I tried a question, testing the waters. “Where are we going?”
“The airport,” he said after a second. “Head toward town. You may have a longer ride than I thought.”
I didn’t like the sound of that: too many variables. But the road to Monroe was very familiar to me and that led to a modicum of resolve. I eased up on the accelerator ever so slightly. “What about the books, Harry? Can you just leave them like this?”
Oddly, that question didn’t bother him as I thought it might; I wondered what else might be going on here.
“The books are safe,” he said confidently, rubbing at the still-bleeding cut on his hand. “They’re where no one can hurt them. I can get them later.” The cigarette lighter popped out, and he lit a cigarette from a crumpled package on the dash. It seemed to relax him. I wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing.
I thought furiously. “It was all for the books, wasn’t it, Harry?”
He shook his head in disbelief. “People don’t realize how carelessly they destroy the past. You ought to be able to appreciate that.”
I looked in the rearview and saw Pam Kobrinski’s car following us, not too far back, but not too closely either. It might have been the sight of it that inspired me, having driven down this road twice before, expressly to see the detective. Suddenly, a plan sprang full-blown into my mind, but just the thought of it made my stomach turn.
Harry turned and saw the other car too. “Shit. Slow down.” His moment of respite was over. “Let her see I’ve still got the gun pointed at you.”
I slowed down even more, and the car fell back and matched our speed.