Once over the deadfall, he paused on the trail and looked left. Nothing. To his right he spied a wet smear of dulled red on a rock and a footprint beyond that.
Too easy.
The huntsman drew his knife and followed Nelle’s trail of blood crumbs into the woods.
57
Nelle felt rooted to the ground. Her knees begged to bend and relieve themselves of the burden of standing. It would feel so nice to sit down—no—lie down and close her eyes for a while. To just lie down and drift away seemed best. It would be good to feel the soft dirt underneath her body and for the moss to cover her over like a green blanket and to sleep forever. Let the forest floor be her new home and dirt her only clothes. The world blurred a little, and she thought whether she lay down on her own or not, she’d fall eventually. She was bleeding, maybe not to death—not that fast—but badly enough that she felt increasingly light-headed. She looked down and saw that the dressing Evan had used to cover her wound—her underwear—had come free from the tape and was gone. Lost on the trail somewhere behind her.
For him to find.
She tore the last dangling strip of duct tape away from her ankle and threw it into the trees. The too-familiar pain of it peeling away from her skin woke her a little, and the feeling of putting down roots lessened. Pain reminded her that she could move—that she needed to move. She had to find help and couldn’t quit the world until she stopped Malcolm Roarke . . . or at least set someone in his way to do that. And when she had pointed men capable of answering violence with greater violence at him, then she would lie down and let go.
She took a step. One became two. Two turned to four and then eight. And before she knew it, she was running again. Her heart thudded heavily, and her lungs took in deep, gasping breaths of air, and it felt good. Her ankle and heel still hurt, along with her hip and shoulder and head, but that all felt like being alive. So she ran despite the pain. To spite it.
The trail sloped downward, and she recognized the bend ahead that led to the road entrance to the reservation and the parking lot on the other side. She ran the last hundred yards without thinking of anything but moving ahead. That, and who she left behind—another foot, a yard, an unreachable distance away with each step she took. Around the bend, she caught sight of the totem pole rising out of the flower garden that stood sentry behind the sign that read CABOT STATE PARK SCOUT RESERVATION. Emerging from the dense trees into the sunlight felt like being exposed for everyone to see. An easy target. But there was no one around. No one to see and either take aim or run to her aid. She was still alone.
Up the lane to the left, not far after, stood the welcome center, where she knew there’d be a phone. She ran as fast as she could along the driveway toward the parking lot and the welcome center lodge. Casting a glance back to look behind her, she felt alarmed to see that although her blood had mixed into the muddy path almost invisibly, it stood out like a beacon in the light-colored gravel. Turning back, she felt her stomach drop and almost fell trying to stop. Rocks jabbed into her wound as she dug in with her heels to reverse direction. There was a car parked in the lot ahead of her. Off to the side, in the shadows, backed into place.
His car.
She remembered him. But she remembered it better.
It had been parked at the end of her driveway when he came in the security company disguise. She remembered thinking what an odd car it was for a door-to-door salesman to drive. A cherry red Dodge Challenger, it looked like the sort of thing a middle-aged lawyer would drive on the weekends—a status symbol. A “muscle car” to fight back at the indignities of an expanding waist and thinning hair. The sort of thing a man like that thought he was entitled to own.
At the sight of it, she let out a small squeak and clapped her hands to her mouth. Nothing moved. Not in the parking lot or the woods or up at the lodge beyond the chain stretched between two posts at the far end of the lot. Her heart beat furiously with panic as she waited for the door to open and Mack to step out like a nightmare, gun in hand. He didn’t. The only movement came from the shadows of branches overhead swaying in the gentle breeze.
She took a cautious step forward and craned her neck to see, ready to run at even a hint of movement from inside the car. He parked here so we wouldn’t see it. It’s easy for a guy to hide, but not a bright red sports car. Not one like that. She wondered how long it had been parked there. How long had he been hiding in their house? The answer didn’t matter. Whether it was an hour, a day, or a week was irrelevant. She’d escaped, and if he behaved in any rational way at all, he’d be coming back to get away in his car before the police showed up.
That he wasn’t rational sat in her head like a stone, weighing her down.
Nelle hobbled forward, trusting that she was still ahead of Roarke. The fear that she hadn’t eluded her captor but run right back to him made her heart pound harder. He hadn’t gotten ahead of her, she reasoned. But he was coming. She could creep by, head to the back of the lodge and break the window. He’d never know she was there. But her growing anger at seeing his car right there—that fucking car!—made her pause. It made her want to pick up a big rock and smash it down on the hood, on the windshield, against the doors. She wanted to destroy it because it was his and he cared for it. Even if it was only a car, it was a thing he loved, and for that, it deserved to be hurt and defiled.
She grabbed a stone from the border of the lot, one that felt nice in her hand, about the size of her fist, round and smooth but heavy. Gripping it tightly, she crossed the lot and swung once at the driver’s side window. The impact made a dull thunk, and a small point of white appeared where the stone met the glass. She swung again, harder. This time the window smashed with a loud crack and a soft tinkle of safety glass spilling into the black leather seats. It felt good. She unlocked the door and yanked it open, not sure what she wanted from inside, but needing to see anyway. She sat in the driver’s seat, pebbles of safety glass prickling under her ass, and pulled down the sun visor. Of course, no keys fell conveniently into her lap. She flipped it back up and popped open the glove box, hoping to find a pistol, maybe. His registration and insurance were there under a deck of vodka-branded playing cards and a tire gauge, but she found nothing she could use to fight or flee. She closed the glove box and searched the rest of the car, foot wells, back seat, looking for anything, and came up empty. She turned to get out, and her eyes alighted on a small button to the left of the steering column with an icon on it of a car with an open trunk lid. She pushed the button. A soft click sounded behind her. She looked through the back window. The trunk swung up and blocked her view. She jumped out of the driver’s seat, quietly shutting the door behind her and hobbled around to the rear of the car. There had to be one of those things in there that loosened the lug nuts on the wheels when someone needed to change a flat—and didn’t guys who drove cars like this pride themselves on changing their own tires, spark plugs, oil? There was a weapon to be had here. She just needed to reach in and grab it.
Her scream was uncontrollable and loud.
At first, the woman in the trunk seemed to be dressed in a red leotard, but as Nelle’s mind resolved into clarity, she realized that what she’d mistaken for skin tight fabric was blood. Blood that had escaped from wounds, the number of which she couldn’t count at a glance and didn’t want to inventory. She tried to catch her breath, but it had left her, carried away on the breeze by her scream. She gasped and her eyes blurred with panicked tears and she thought she might’ve felt a small trickle of urine running down the inside of her leg.
She’d seen so many dead bodies in her life, some savaged, yes, but they were all in their right context: on a metal table, clean, ready to be embalmed and dressed and cared for by her. The dead came to her for her care, and she gave it so they could possess one last hour of dignity in front of their loved ones before she helped take them to the fire or the grave. That was the context of the dead she could accept. This body, though. This body was shocking and wrong. Under the d
ried maroon blood, she was mottled peach and purple and blue—Nelle thought, she’s in hypostasis, past rigor mortis. Her face was puffy and her tongue stuck out slightly from between her lips. The woman’s eyes stared blindly straight ahead, discolored black with tache noir. And the smell that assaulted her . . . It was familiar, but so much more intense than she’d ever smelled before. Of course. This body had been in a hot car trunk for how long? It didn’t matter. Any duration, no matter how brief, was longer than anyone should have to lie in this state.
The sight and smell of the woman stunned her, leaving her reeling for a moment like nothing ever had. She took a breath through her mouth and tried to collect herself. You don’t have time to be shocked!
She needed a weapon.
She tried repeating to herself, I can do this. I’ve touched women like this before. But she hadn’t, really. She’d worked on women who’d been hit by cars and city buses. She’d embalmed more than a couple suicides and only ever one murder victim who had been strangled to death. But she had never been near someone like this. Someone who . . .
She retched, but had nothing in her stomach to throw up. If I don’t get it together, this could be me. Will be me. The image of her on the embalming table came rushing back to mind. She fought to banish it, but it persisted, haunting her as relentlessly as a beating heart.
With trembling hands, she reached in under the woman, searching for the tire iron. She pushed against the woman’s belly to try to move her. It yielded in a terribly intimate way. Someone else’s belly was something that only lovers touched. It was a place of insecurity and self-judgment. If you were allowed to caress a soft tummy, you were trusted. Nelle was not trusted; she was a stranger to this woman. This woman’s stomach was violated with terrible gashes and cuts. And when Nelle pushed against it, a horrible reek emerged that made her stomach heave again.
Is this Samantha? It couldn’t be. Roarke had been adamant that she call his ex-wife and convince her to come over.
So, who is this?
It didn’t matter. Whether a stranger or a lover, the woman couldn’t help her.
Her body was cool and soft and her skin tacky with blood that was getting on Nelle’s hands and forearms. Nelle tried to hold her breath as she felt under the dead woman’s sticky skin with bare hands, searching for something, anything she could use. Nelle’s fingers closed on something long and rigid. It was slick and tacky at once. She tugged, but it wouldn’t come free. She shoved at the woman, growing angry that she was keeping Nelle from what she wanted.
Help me out here, damn it! We’re on the same side.
She shoved hard and pulled with her other hand until she had what she wanted. A tire iron. It was shorter than she’d hoped. Lighter too. But it was a solid piece of steel, with a hard angle and a bulb at one end for tightening and loosening lug nuts. At the other end, it was flat like the end of a screwdriver. She could stab with it, she imagined, but it felt better as a club. This would break a window. Or a skull.
She looked one last time at the dead woman in the trunk, unknown to her. “I am so sorry,” Nelle whispered. She closed the trunk lid and started away toward the welcome center lodge.
In the distance, she thought she might’ve heard footsteps.
58
The scream thrilled him. It was distant, but close enough to hear, and it meant that though he’d lost time in the bathroom, lost her trail in the mud, he was headed in the right direction and wasn’t far behind his quarry. Mack wondered what had caused her to cry out. Whatever it was, he smiled at the idea of her being so surprised by something that she betrayed herself. He quietly thanked the woodland creature or whatever it was that had startled her and doubled his pace on the path, careful not to make too much noise, but too anxious to creep.
He stopped at the edge of the woods before it gave way to the main entrance road and looked for a sign of her passage. The trail she’d left behind had become clearer for a time after she lost her makeshift bandage—and how he thrilled at the form that “bandage” took, stuffing it in his front pocket—and then waned again as, he assumed, earth caked in her wound and helped staunch the bleeding. Still, he found hints along the way that rewarded the choices he’d made at trail junctions. He’d assumed she was headed for the entrance to the reservation. He knew what she was after; it would be the same thing Sam would make a run for if he had been chasing her instead—someone else to solve her problems. All alike. But it wouldn’t do her any good. Even if she did get inside of the camp office and call the police, she’d be dead long before they showed up.
He felt the comforting heft of his knife in his hand. Its weight and balance. He reminisced about plunging it deep into Siobhan. Pulling it out and opening her anew in another way. He was excited to do it again. Though, he’d have to be cautious about getting caught up in the moment. Taking too much time. Knock her out. Take her home first. That’s what I’ll do. I have all the time I want at home.
Seeing no one out in the open, he emerged from the trees and hustled across the grass in the direction he thought her scream had come from, hoping to pick up her trail again. Halfway across the lawn, he glanced at his car parked in the far corner of the overnight lot. His step faltered as something felt not right about it. It was where he’d left it, but something was odd. He changed course.
Up close, he could see that his window wasn’t down as it had appeared from a distance, but smashed. A tight ball of anger swelled in his throbbing head. His mouth went tight, and he tasted fresh blood and a jolt of agony from his shattered teeth. He ignored the pain and looked inside the car. Glass covered the driver’s seat. He leaned in further and saw mud and blood staining the foot well upholstery. And a rock.
The bitch was in my car.
He imagined her trying to think of a way to steal it and drive away. If he hadn’t been so furious about the window, he might’ve laughed at the idea of her trying to start his car without the RFID chip in his key fob. He gripped the knife tighter in his hand. I’m going to skin her, he promised himself. I’m going to fucking peel her like an orange.
59
Nelle wondered if Roarke would’ve just gotten in his car and driven away if she hadn’t broken his window. She’d kicked herself for being so stupid, but seeing him drawn to the car just a moment ago revealed to her how close on her tail he was. It was a mixed blessing. Yes, he was here and he knew she was too. But, because of his focus on the car, she’d seen him and he hadn’t seen her. That small advantage was hers, and she took it.
She slipped out of sight around the welcome center building and crept for the back door. She looked at the tool in her hands, knowing Roarke was too close for her to smash a window and not be heard. She wondered whether it would work as a pry bar. She figured she could jam it in between the door and frame with some effort, but even if she did, she wasn’t sure she had the strength to bust the deadbolt. It was worth a try. No other ideas were coming to her.
She wedged the end of the tool into the jamb between the knob and the deadbolt above it and began to try to force the door open. Her tool wasn’t a crowbar and once stuck in the gap, the bend in the metal pointed straight down, not out, and it was hard to get her fingers around the bar to try to pull. Her fingers were slippery with blood, Evan’s, her own, and the woman’s, all mixed in a darkening intimacy, and it was difficult to keep hold. She did her best, struggling to be quiet, but the sounds of cracking wood were as loud in her still-ringing ears as the gunshots that’d deadened her hearing to begin with. Nelle worked at the door, wanting desperately to get to the telephone inside. It wouldn’t budge. She pulled the tool out from the frame and jammed the flat edge behind the round plate at the base of the knob. It bent and deformed easily enough, but had no effect at all on how the knob turned—or didn’t. Of course, it wouldn’t. Locks were designed to hold, and if she could just pop off a cover and get one open, there might as well not even be a lock on the door. And there was still the deadbolt to contend with. She accepted that she wasn’t
getting in by breaking the door frame or the locks. The only way was to smash a window. And unlike the soft cracks of the wood, however deafening they’d seemed in the quiet of the abandoned woods, glass would be much louder.
It would bring him.
It was too big a risk. If she broke in that way, she’d end up dead while the police dispatcher listened to the last seconds of her life at the other end of the line, if she even got as far as a phone.
Her hands were sweating, and the tire iron slipped in her grasp. She couldn’t help gasping in fear as she tried to catch it before it clattered to the flat slab of concrete under her feet. She caught the tool and clutched it tight to her chest, holding her breath. In the distance, she thought she heard Roarke shout. She had to move.
Nelle crept to the far side of the building and peered around the corner at the parking lot. He was standing beside his car. Though his torn face allowed him only a single expression, she could see he was enraged. It was in his body—the way his shoulders hunched and his neck jutted forward. You didn’t have to know a man at all to know when he was standing at the frontier of frenzied violence. She’d defiled something that was his, and he felt the violation. More importantly, she could see that she couldn’t get out of the parking lot to the road without being spotted.
If she could sneak past, the animal hospital was just a bit farther up the highway. She could make that run along the highway, and then she’d be safe. Wouldn’t she? The far-too-common image of a stoic news reporter standing outside the scene of the latest mass shooting or rental truck attack intruded upon her fantasy of sprinting for safety. The throbbing pain in her foot told her that there was no way she’d make it a hundred feet down the blacktop with him chasing her. And there was no possibility of sneaking past him out in the open. She had to lose him in the woods and try to circle around.
Closing Costs Page 25