I had to stop on my heels to pull the door open. Then I charged out of the cabin into the night.
And there was the second gunman. He was just coming around the side of the cabin. I leveled my Glock at him as I ran and fired blindly. He pulled back behind the wall. Set himself there. Took aim with his rifle, ready to mow me down.
I fired once more, forcing him back. Kept running all the while, barreling toward the cliff’s edge.
The rifleman at the wall pulled the trigger. I caught the flashes from the corner of my eye. I looked back and saw the gunman from inside the cabin come out. He took aim.
I reached the cliff. I threw myself over.
A long, tumbling fall through empty air. I remembered the moment—it flashed through my mind—when Stark had stuck his gun barrel in my eye, ready to pull the trigger. I had known I was going to die in that second and it had felt like falling—helpless, raging. Now I went turning through space and it felt like the helpless rage of dying and it seemed like a long, long time before I came crashing down.
I crashed into branches, smashed through them, smashed into the solid earth and slid and tumbled. The underbrush was soft but I heard the drier limbs crackle as they broke. I felt them scratching and tearing at my face and hands. The impact of the earth jolted the breath out of me and all I could think was
Hold on to your gun
and I did hold on as I rolled, still helpless, down the slope.
I somersaulted over one shoulder as I picked up speed. I cracked through more branches. Dropped through nothingness for another heart-stopping moment, then hit the earth again; rolled again. I tried to get my feet under me, tried to get control of the fall. I felt something sharp whip by me and take a chunk out of my cheek. I shouted a curse. I fell.
Then the gunfire started.
The rattle of those automatic rifles sent a fresh, wild wind of fear through me. Half-blinded by darkness and speed and brush, falling and tumbling, I expected the bullets to tatter my flesh at any minute. But no, I just kept sliding and tumbling over the sheer slope.
Out of nowhere, the trunk of a sapling slugged the bicep of my gun arm. The blow made my hand spring open, knocked the weapon out of my grip. I managed to crook my elbow around the sapling and hold on. It stopped my fall.
I hung there on the plummeting cliff, breathless, wide-eyed with fear. The gunfire continued in coughing bursts above me. I lifted my eyes to the sound. Saw the muzzle flashes up there. Saw the silhouettes of the killers on the ridge above me. I could tell they were firing blindly into the night below them, but all the same I heard bullets zipping through the brush on either side of me, not far away—not far enough.
It seemed forever before the firing stopped. I hung where I was, breathless, dazed. Craning my neck, I watched the killers’ silhouettes on the ridge. They were peering down the cliff. Searching for me in the dark.
I tried to think. What now? I looked around for my gun. There it was, below me, black on the brown and moonlit ground. It had slid down the slope a ways, then caught in the brush. Untwining my arm from the sapling, holding on to it with my hand, I might be able to stretch down and retrieve the gun. I moved cautiously. I didn’t want the branches around me to snap. I didn’t want to alert the gunmen, to draw their fire. I stretched. I reached down. My fingers brushed the butt of the Glock where it lay in the dirt. I stretched a little farther. I snagged the weapon. Pulled it toward me, grabbed hold of it. With a grunt, I brought the gun back to me and slipped it into my holster. I pulled myself back up to get a better grip on the sapling.
Just then, a beam of light shot through the darkness. It played over the slope a few yards away from me, then steadied. My breath caught. I looked up. The killers had a flashlight now. They were panning it slowly across the slope, trying to find me. I looked down quickly so the light wouldn’t catch my eyes. I lay still, as still as I could with my heart pounding, my lungs heaving. My cheek stung and I felt the warm, sticky mess of blood on it. I didn’t dare move to wipe it away.
The flashlight’s beam had started to my left. It moved slowly across the steep slope, coming toward me. It picked out a line of branches and brush and tree trunks. Then another line, closer. I stared at it as it covered the ground, sweeping in my direction.
Now it fell across me, lighting the line of dirt and bracken on which I lay. I clung to the sapling. I kept my head down, my face buried in my shoulder. I didn’t move. I breathed hot and hard. I felt the white light on me like a beam of fire. I waited for the gunmen to see me. I waited for them to open fire again. I wondered if I’d even hear the shot.
But once more the shadows folded over me. The light moved slowly on. The killers couldn’t see me down here in the brush, in the dark.
Still, I waited. The beam kept moving. Another few feet. Another yard. Only when I was sure the light wouldn’t gleam in my eyes did I lift my gaze to the cliff again.
There were the two gunmen. There was Stark now with them also, the three of them conferring. After a moment, Stark moved away from the edge of the cliff, out of sight. The gunmen remained. They shone the flashlight on the slope again but they were searching another section of the cliff, several yards away.
I seized the moment. I started to move, to descend. I went down foot by foot, grabbing at roots and branches to keep from falling, clawing at the earth and outcroppings of rock. I reached an open stretch of ground. With no plants to hold them, the rocks and dirt were loose there. They gave way under my shoes and fell in a pattering whisper over the slope, into the air. I froze, sending a stare at that flashlight beam as it panned across the brush above me.
But I was too far away for them to spot me now—out of reach of the light.
I continued to climb down, slowly making my way toward the river below.
Just as the ground seemed to curl out under me, just as I reached the base of the cliff and found my footing, my phone rang. A shocking noise. After the gunfire had stopped, the night had seemed still and quiet around me. The sounds of the woods had seemed like a kind of silence: The wind, the water moving down below, even the distant wash of traffic over the highway on the far shore—they’d sort of blended in with the scene so I didn’t really hear them. There was nothing—nothing but the sound of my movement and grunts and breathing as I made the slow descent.
Then, suddenly, the Army song—my ringtone—was singing out in the silver night, startlingly loud and bizarrely electronic.
Then it’s hi-hi-hey—the Army’s on its way
. . .
I glanced up quickly to see if the gunmen had heard the noise. But I was too far below them, out of earshot. Even if they did hear it, even if they saw me, they’d never be able to take me out at this distance, at this steep angle, through the branches, through the dark.
Panting, sitting against the base of the slope, I fished the phone out of my pocket. I checked the readout but the caller’s number was blocked. I felt my insides turning sour as I lifted the phone to my ear. I knew what was coming.
I didn’t say a word. I just listened. There was a beat of quiet, a beat of harsh breathing. Out ahead of me, a short stretch of shaggy grass ran through the moonlight to the riverbank. The lights of the town and the lights of the moving traffic gleamed peacefully on the far side. I braced myself for what I was about to hear, but it didn’t help much. Stark’s gravelly rasp released a nauseating vapor of fear inside me all the same.
“Champion.”
“You were one step away from a bullet in the brain,” I told him.
“You’re only putting off the day,” he rasped back.
“One step away, Stark. Next time you won’t be so lucky.”
For once, he didn’t have an answer. I could feel his rage and frustration boiling over the wire. I hoped it twisted his guts like my rage twisted mine. I lifted my shoulder and swiped the blood off my burning cheek. Every part of me seemed bruised and scratched and hurting. I stared blankly out at the gleaming line of moonlight on the river water. Waiting.
“I’m going to kill everyone you love,” Stark said finally.
My throat went dry. Maybe it was already dry—I don’t know. But I tried to swallow and couldn’t. “I don’t love anyone, Stark,” I managed to say.
“Oh, now. There’s always someone, isn’t there? There’s that sweet little girl in Gilead, isn’t there? What’s her name? Bethany?”
I forced out a laugh. “I bang a bargirl and you figure it’s love. You’re sweet, Stark. Really.”
“Then there’s your cop friend. Monahan.”
“Yeah, go after Monahan,” I said. “I want you to go after Monahan. It’ll save me the bullet it takes to kill you.”
“And then, of course, there’s Samantha, isn’t there? Samantha Pryor.”
I tried to answer again but I choked on it. I didn’t even know who Samantha was—not really—but the thought that he might hurt her clutched me, wrung me.
It was Stark’s turn to laugh: that sound he made like a viper slithering through the grass. “That’ll be fun,” he whispered.
Fury and fear pushed the words out of my throat, out of my mouth. “Yeah. Go ahead, Stark,” I said into the phone, my lips hard against the phone. “Go ahead. Do it. Because I’ll be waiting for you. Whoever you go after, wherever it is, that’s where I’ll be. And I won’t miss this time. I’ll kill you this time. I’ll kill you like I killed your brother. I’ll send you to hell like I sent him.”
The silence that followed went on so long, I actually moved away from the base of the cliff and looked up toward where the cabin was, as if I’d be able to see what Stark was up to. There had been no cell phone signal up there so I figured he was in the cabin itself, using the landline on the study desk. But in fact, of course, I couldn’t see the cabin at all. All I could make out was the steep slope in the moonlight, the ridge above.
The silence went on.
“You hear me, you bastard?” I said finally, nearly crushing the phone in my fist.
Still, no answer. Then, as I stood there, as I clutched the phone, peering up the cliff, I caught sight of something. A weird, red flicker. A flickering red glow. Swiftly—with awesome swiftness—the glow spread. It brightened. It took shape. Flames. Bright whickering flames rising over the top of the ridge. Rising and spreading. Spilling a red stain across the hem of the moon-gray sky. Stark had torched the cabin.
I stood and stared. And as I stared, Stark laughed again, soft in my ear. What a sound, what a sound. Like a snake slithering, like a snake coiling, a snake smiling its fanged smile, its dead eyes gleaming. It really did make me sick with dread. And where was he? Where the hell was he? Not in the cabin where the landline was; the cabin was in flames. And there was no cell signal on the ridge. Yet there it was. That laugh. There he was, with me, laughing, as if he were just a presence somehow, just present somehow in the texture of the night, in the air itself, in the silver darkness.
“Stark,” I said. I didn’t recognize my own voice.
He answered me—out of nowhere. “See you soon, Champion.”
Then he was gone.
I stood another long moment staring up at the flames rising on the cliff. Then I turned away, breathing hard. My hand, the hand with the phone in it, fell slowly from my ear, lowered to my side. I stood staring out over the river, across the gleaming water at the lights shining peacefully on the far shore.
I could still hear him laughing.
Furious, I lifted the phone and threw it. I hurled it as far as I could into the darkness. I saw it turning in the moonlight. I saw it fall. There was a soft splash as it dropped into the river.
But I could still hear him.
10
A Joke from God
N
OW
I
WAS
hunkered in the dead of night, rapping my knuckles on the bedroom window at the back of the house. Suddenly her face was against the pane, terrified. Bethany.
“Champ!” she said. Her voice was muffled through the glass. “Oh, my God!”
I slumped against the wall. I didn’t think I could stay on my feet much longer. I tried to think of her coming through the house to help me. Pulling her bathrobe on as she hurried across the living room to the front door. I
hoped
she was hurrying, anyway.
There she was: I heard the front door open. I heard her footsteps whisper on the grass. I heard her whisper: “Champ?”
Then she had her arms around me and I felt the softness of her cheek, her hair. Smelled that fresh, natural scent of her, that somehow innocent scent.
“You’re hurt. Oh, look at you. God! Your face,” she said. One of her hands gripped my shoulder, the other gripped my arm. She was shepherding me back over her little lawn, back to the yellow light of the open door.
“I’m okay, I’m okay,” I kept saying. “Have to get you out of here. He’s coming.”
But I stumbled, my legs wobbly. And she said, “Just get inside. Just let me have a look at you. You need a doctor.”
“I’m okay, I’m okay.”
I tried to tell her that we had to run, that Stark would come for her. But the words came out of my mouth in an inaudible mutter. Even I couldn’t understand them.