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They were doing well until, halfway down, Bry
They ended up in a shallow ravine.
The knife in Bry
Gasping for breath, Bry
Michelle’s hand found the knife inside her jacket. It hadn’t apparently done any damage. A nod.
Bry
“Look,” Michelle whispered and pointed.
Bry
Bry
“Okay. I fell on my other leg.”
Sca
Bry
“What are you going to do?” Michelle asked, her eyes wide.
“See it?” Bry
“You’re going to go after him, aren’t you?”
Times to run, times to fight…
Bry
“I want to come with you. I can help.”
“It’ll be a bigger help to me if you just stay hid.”
Michelle looked somber for a moment. Then smiled. “I won’t worry about breaking a nail, if that’s what you mean.”
Bry
“Rallying point. What’s that?”
“Where soldiers meet when they get split up. It’s not a cop thing. I got it from Saving Private Ryan.”
Drawing another smile from Michelle.
CHARLES GANDY, a lean, bearded man in his early thirties, wearing a North Face insulated windbreaker, stood beside a Wi
“You hear anything else, honey?” asked Susan, a round woman with straight, light brown hair. A few years older than Gandy. She wore a necklace in the shape of an Egyptian ankh, two braided friendship bracelets and a wedding ring.
“Nope.”
“What was it?”
“Voices, I’m pretty sure. Well, sounded like a shout almost.”
“The park’s closed. And this time of night?”
“I know. When’s Rudy due back?”
“Any time.”
Her husband squinted into the night.
“Daddy?”
He turned to see his nine-year-old stepdaughter standing in the doorway, T-shirt, denim skirt and old ru
“I’m helping Mommy. She wanted me to.”
Gandy was distracted. “All right. Whatever your mom says. But go on inside. It’s freezing out here.”
The girl disappeared with a swirl of long blond hair.
The camper had two doors, front and back. Gandy walked to the back one, stepped inside and found a battered deer rifle. He loaded the clip.
“What’re you doing, honey?”
“I’ve got to go see.”
“But the rangers-”
“Not around here and not now. You lock up tight, pull the curtains and don’t open the door for anybody ’cept me or Rudy.”
“Sure, honey. Be careful.”
Susan climbed the steps inside and closed and locked the door. Shutters closed and the camper went dark. The faint sound of the generator was pretty much covered up by the wind. Good.
Zipping up his jacket and pulling on a gray knitted hat that Susan had bought him for his birthday, Gandy started down the small path that led eventually to the Joliet Trail, the rifle held in the crook of his arm.
He made his way south and east. They’d been here for four days and he’d spent much of that time hiking nearby. He knew the place well, had found impromptu paths and trails, made by deer-trampled leaves, broken branches and pellets-and people (ditto, minus the shit).
He moved slowly, cautiously. Not afraid of getting lost, afraid of whom he might run into out here.
Had that sound been a scream or not? he wondered.
If so, human or animal?
Gandy now walked two or three hundred yards in the direction he thought he’d heard the sounds, and then knelt down, surveying the moonlit forest. He heard snaps and a crack or too, not far away, maybe branches falling, maybe deer, maybe bear.
“Or maybe my damn imagination.”
But then he tensed.
There, yes…No doubt about it. He was looking at a person-a woman, he was sure-moving from tree to tree, keeping low. She was carrying something in her hand. It seemed thin. A rifle? He gripped his own, a Savage.308, tightly.
What was this all about? Shouting and howling in a deserted, and officially closed, state park so late at night? His heart was slamming. His instinct was to get back to the camper and get the hell out of here. But the rattling diesel engine could attract unwanted attention.
As he hunkered low, spying on her, he wondered why she was acting like a soldier. Cautious, creeping from cover to cover. She was clearly no ranger. She didn’t have on a distinctive Smokey the Bear hat or a typical ranger uniform jacket. It seemed she was in a ski parka.
His instincts told him she was a threat.
The woman disappeared behind a large clump of blackberry and he didn’t see her emerge. Gandy rose and, holding the gun muzzle up, moved in her direction.
Just get the hell out of here, part of his mind shouted.
But then: No. You’ve got too much at stake. Keep going.
He stopped at a steep decline that led down to the forest floor, steadying himself with his left hand on thin birch and oak saplings and then, when the ground flattened, he moved toward the bush where the woman had disappeared.
He studied the area. No sign of her.
Then there she was, thirty or so feet away. She was in shadow but he could just make her out, lying half hidden beside the bush, her head down, like a lioness waiting for an antelope.
Very quietly he worked the bolt on the Savage, chambering a round, and started forward, picking his steps around branches and leaves, as if he were treading through a minefield.
Playing at being a soldier himself. A role he wasn’t very comfortable with at all.
KRISTEN BRYNN MCKENZIE crouched behind a gnarled but stately black oak, gripping the pool cue spear hard and taking deep breaths, her mouth open wide for silence. She’d climbed back up the hill toward the spot where the man had disappeared.
Her palms sweated, though she was cold again, having slipped out of her parka and one set of sweatpants. The clothes, stuffed with leaves, now sat like a fallen scarecrow under a blackberry bush, bait to attract Hart’s partner.