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Knife ready, he entered the trees. From the rain, the dead leaves were so soggy that they made no sound under his shoes. In his youth, this section of trees had been almost fifty yards wide and long, but now it was barely ten yards wide and thirty yards long. As wisps of fog drifted past, he crouched with his back against a trunk and turned his head slowly one way and then the other, using his peripheral vision to scan the indistinct branches and bushes.
One minute.
Two minutes.
Three minutes.
This is what you pla
So here I am. Ready when you are. Wherever you're hiding, come out. This is what you wanted, so let's do it. But take your time. I don't want to rush you. I've got all night.
Eight minutes.
Nine minutes.
Ten minutes.
Cavanaugh couldn't risk staying in one position much longer. The chill creeping into his muscles might cramp them if he remained immobile. The same liability applied to Carl. He, too, would need to shift his body. Inching forward, Cavanaugh expected that at any moment a figure would rocket from under leaves, a knife plunging toward him. Despite the cold, he felt nervous sweat trickling down his face.
At once, a noise made him flinch. On his right. Something crashing through the bushes. Low. Breathing hard, a huge dog bounded toward him. Black, it suddenly noticed him and veered through the trees. With equal sudde
At distant houses, dogs howled in response. Gradually, the night returned to the quiet of moisture dripping off leaves, the wind scraping branches, and water trickling along the creek. Cavanaugh eased toward the dog--a Labrador retriever, he estimated--and found the stake that had catapulted into its chest when paws tripped a wire.
A booby trap, Carl? After dark, you crawled from your hiding place and arranged a surprise for me? I'm disappointed. Since when are traps in the game?
Rage heating him, Cavanaugh yanked the stake from the dog. He felt along the wire. It was the sort of item routinely discarded on a construction site. He coiled it, put it in a pocket, and inched forward, holding the stake.
Chapter 33.
At the open door to his room, wearing hastily put-on clothes, Rutherford squinted at his watch, his eyes puffy from having been wakened. "Maybe he just went for a walk."
"At one in the morning?" Jamie asked skeptically.
"It was a tough night and day. He must have a lot on his mind, a lot to rethink."
"He's gone to the park."
"You don't know that for a fact."
"I know him. There isn't anywhere else he'd go."
"What do you expect me to do, tell those thousand men to go back to the park? Even if I wanted to, I couldn't get them organized before dawn. Did you watch the evening news? Did you see how foolish we looked? For sure, Mosely would demand my resignation if I repeated today's farce."
"No," Jamie said, "I don't expect you to tell those thousand men to go back to the park."
"Thank heaven."
"I expect that you and I will go to the park."
"Shit," the Southern Baptist said.
Chapter 34.
Sweat blended with moisture from the fog and trickled down Cavanaugh's face. He lay on his chest on wet grass, assessing the gloom of the next stand of trees. He was sure that a booby trap waited for him in there, also. He tried to imagine Carl's reaction to hearing the dog's agonized howl.
Carl needs to assume I realize what killed the animal. He also needs to assume that I'll now avoid the trees and any other areas where traps can be easily set. He'll decide that I'll shift to the open spaces. He'll focus his hunt in those areas.
That meant Cavanaugh needed to do the opposite of what Carl expected and go farther into the trees. But first he rolled toward a nearby picnic bench. He crawled under. It was a space that would appeal to someone who wanted to hide his silhouette while looking for his prey. Cavanaugh used the wire to bind the stake to a metal leg, the point projecting outward at head level.
Then, ready with his knife, he squirmed from beneath the table and studied the closer gloom of the trees. Probing with the knife, moving it up and down, then right and left, he crawled past a bush. He waited. He listened. With his peripheral vision, he stared at the fog and the shadows. In the distance, the muffled drone of a car proceeded along West Benton Street. His nerves tightened until the sound was gone and he could again concentrate on the faint noises around him.
He shifted deeper into the trees. Immediately, he froze when his knife met resistance. Something thin and taut. A wire. Moving to the side, he discovered a low branch bent sideways and down. Feeling in the darkness, he found that the wire was attached to a rock that weighed down the branch. A stake was tied to the branch. If Cavanaugh had disturbed the wire, the rock would have shifted, the branch would have sprung, and . . .
He held his breath--one, two, three. Silently exhaled through his lips--one, two, three. Quietly inhaled through his nose--one, two, three. The technique calmed his heartbeat and steadied his lungs. Then he pushed the rock off the branch. With a whoosh, the branch vaulted noisily past him. Simultaneously, he grunted as if he'd been hit, then crashed against a bush. His groan became faint as he remembered the groans of wounded comrades becoming faint when death claimed them.
Holding his breath again (one-two-three), exhaling (one-two-three), he crawled silently to the edge of the trees, doing his best to make his crouched silhouette indistinguishable from a stump.
One minute.
Two minutes.
Three minutes.
Ten minutes.
A whisper on his right made his heart lurch. "Getting tired of waiting, Aaron?"
The words came from a cautious distance, perhaps as much as thirty feet away, muffled by the fog.
"I'd have joined you sooner," Carl's voice continued, "but I had to check the rest of the park and make sure you didn't bring company like you did this morning."
Cavanaugh's pulse was so rapid that his veins felt swollen.
Something crashed among the trees. Instantly, Cavanaugh squirmed in that direction. He knew that was the one place Carl wouldn't be. The noise was intended as a distraction. Right now, Carl would be hurrying around the stand of trees, intending to enter them from behind while Cavanaugh theoretically remained in place, his attention directed toward the noise.