Deadfall (29 page)

T
he man who called himself Gill ate a leisurely breakfast after he made sure that Jessie and Tank were no threat.

“Who are you? Who are you after? Will you just tell me what you want?”

He refused to answer any more of her questions, focused instead on his own plans.

Tearing off a long piece of duct tape from a roll he had found in a storage cabinet, he made Jessie use it to muzzle Tank.

“Here. Tape his legs, too.” He handed her more of the sticky silver tape, and reluctantly she did as she was told, afraid he would kill the dog he disliked if she refused to comply.

He made her sit in a chair at the table.

“You can eat, then I’ll make sure you can’t get away again.”

“I’m not hungry,” she told him angrily.

He merely shrugged. “You’ll be sorry later, but it’s up to you. Here, put on your outdoor clothes. When I’m through eating, we’ll get out of here.”

Taping her wrists and elbows securely, he then sat down to the food she had cooked and now wished she had poisoned.

“Bastard,” she hissed, and he got up and slapped a strip of tape over her mouth before returning to his meal.

“Ah, Jessie,” he said between sips of coffee when he had eaten his fill. “You just don’t get it, do you?”

She glared at him in silence and shook her head.

“You’re the motivation. Because of what’s happening to you, he’ll finally get what’s coming to him. It’s nothing personal. I admire you—haven’t particularly enjoyed harassing you. But it’s the only way to make him pay for what he did. Understand?”

Oh, God, Jessie thought, it’s Alex. He’s after Alex—not me. When Alex can’t reach me, he’ll come looking for me, and this monster will be waiting for him, but he won’t know.

Her stomach lurched and she thought she was going to be sick, but she took a deep breath through her nose, and willed her nausea to subside.

“Don’t look so worried, Jessie. It’ll all be over soon. I promise.”

When he had finished eating, he left the plate on the table and stood up.

“I’m not going to carry you,” he told her. “Get up and walk to the door.”

Tank struggled in his bonds at her feet. She didn’t move, but stood beside him, looking first at her captor, then down at the husky.

He considered.

“All right—but you’ll have to carry him.”

Tank growled as the fake Gill picked him up and laid him across Jessie’s taped arms. It wasn’t easy to balance him without the free use of her arms, but she clutched him to her chest and managed, terrified he would be shot if she couldn’t.

Carrying the roll of duct tape, her handgun, and his own rifle, the stalker opened the door and waved her through it. They went down the steep flight of steps in silence.

When he directed her around the shop and across a flat meadow to the east, she knew they were headed for the goat shed. A small structure half hidden behind two trees, it was made of rough planks that had aged to a natural silvery gray and was almost invisible from the rest of the buildings. Tall grass and a tangle of berry bushes had grown up around it, further concealing its presence.

By the time they reached it, Tank had slipped in Jessie’s arms until only her grip around his chest kept her from dropping him. It couldn’t be comfortable, but, seeming to realize it was necessary, he had remained quiet and didn’t struggle or whine. She was relieved, however, when Gill opened the door, gestured her in and she could lay Tank on the ground.

With no windows, the shed was dark. In the light from the doorway, she could see an open duffel that seemed full of odds and ends of equipment. At a glance, she identified some rope, the handle of what might be a hammer, and another steel trap. As her eyes grew more accustomed to the gloom, she turned her head to the other end of the shed and was shocked to see a bound figure of a man lying on a moldering heap of old straw. He was taped and gagged like herself, wearing the jeans and black sweatshirt she had first seen on the stalker in Millie’s beach house. He didn’t move, but gave her a look of sympathy.

“Brought you some company, Gill,” her captor told him. “Leave the dog and sit over there, Jessie.”

She did as she was told, went to sit by the man she had already figured out must be the real pararescue person, and noticed he wore no shoes and that the white sock on his right foot was covered with blood. The trap.
This
was the man she had heard spring the trap by the bridge. No wonder he hadn’t avoided it—he hadn’t known it was there, hadn’t set it.

Now what? Tensely she waited for what Gill’s impersonator would do next.

Laying down the guns, he taped Jessie’s knees and ankles together, and though she tried to stiffen her legs to keep a little
flexibility, he cinched them tight. It hurt and she hated feeling so completely helpless.

“Now,” he said, standing over them, “just stay put. Don’t give me any trouble and you’ll both be okay. I’m not going to hurt you.”

The hell you’re not, Jessie thought angrily, knowing he would never leave them alive to identify him. She knew she had to get loose somehow, get away to warn Alex before he walked, unknowing, into another of this madman’s ambushes.

Tossing aside the tape, he turned to rummage through the duffel and took out a box of ammunition for his rifle. He went through Jessie’s pocket and found ammunition for her .44.

As he went to the door, Tank growled and shifted his position. The impostor paused, looking down at the dog thoughtfully, and scowled. He raised the rifle slightly, and Jessie could tell he was considering the satisfaction of killing the dog he hated.

All she could do was fall forward and make an angry sound past the tape on her mouth, but it was enough to draw his attention in her direction. He gave her a contemptuous look.

“Okay, Jessie. I’ll leave him—for now.”

Going out, he slammed the door behind him, leaving the three of them in what seemed total darkness. For a few seconds, heart in her throat, she could hear him going away. Then there was silence, as the breath of the wind replaced the sounds of his passing with its own rustle in the tall grass.

“L
et’s check outside before we race off to the other cove,” Caswell suggested to Jensen. “There might be something to tell us what went down here, or which direction she went.”

“Good idea, but let’s make it quick.”

They examined the area around the beach house thoroughly, then went to the beach, where the tide was low, the storm abating quickly, and the waters of the cove recovering
their usual calm colors. Caswell found what was left of the footprints Jessie and her stalker had made, high up in the sandy part of the beach. Most of them had been at least partially erased by the rain and blowing spray, but he pointed out what remained of the revealing depressions to Jensen.

“Some of these are pretty widely spaced. Looks like someone—more than one someone—went along here in a hurry.”

They followed the marks around the curve of the beach, found where one set of them led to a space between the logs, where another set approached and abandoned the stairs, and where the depressions faded out past the tide line toward the rocks that led to the cliffs. With growing alarm, Alex recognized the splintered marks of bullets on the stairs and stones.

“He was shooting at her,” he exclaimed.

“It could be the other way ’round,” Cas suggested hopefully.

“Let’s get over there.”

They went up the stairs and were soon half running along the trail at the top of the cliffs. The rain had stopped and in the treetops the wind had exhausted itself from gales to sighs. Looking up, Caswell noticed a small patch of blue sky to the west and was relieved that the storm had blown itself out.

Reaching the top of the cut Jessie had climbed earlier, Jensen paused to take a look at the marks at the edge of the precipice.

“Someone came up here,” he said. “And there’re the marks of a line. See where it scored the edge? Here…and here. Some of Tank’s paw prints, too, so either Jessie came up the face of that, or she helped someone else do it. Probably Jessie. Why would she help Wynne?”

Caswell decided that it was time to confess.

“It may not have been Wynne,” he told Alex.

“Who else could it have been?”

“Well…you remember I told you I knew a guy in the Air National Guard Pararescue?”

“Yes. And?”

“I probably should have told you—but Jessie was so adamant about not having someone watch over her that I didn’t want you tangled in it. I asked Terry Gill to come out and make sure she was okay. He’s been here since Friday morning, before we flew in. He could have helped her up the cliff.”

For a minute, Jensen said nothing, staring at Caswell, absorbing what he’d just been told.

“You mean…? Oh, boy. Is she going to be mad at me.”

“No. It’s my doing. Let me take the heat.”

“That may seem reasonable to you—and me. But do you really think Jessie’s going to see it that way? Would Linda?”

Cas shrugged. “Does it matter? She’ll get over it. If he’s made sure she’s safe, isn’t that the important thing?”

“Well…” The frown on Alex’s face deepened. “We don’t know that, do we? Where the hell is she—is he? And what’s going on with Wynne?”

He started on along the trail, running now, leaping over roots and obstacles, shoving back overhanging branches and brush that Cas had to watch or they snapped back to hit him in the face. Coming around a sharp curve, Jensen slowed for a log that had fallen across the trail in front of him. There was just enough room to duck under, and he had started to do so when Cas called out from behind him.

“Hey, wait up. You’ve got longer legs than I do.”

Already leaning over and on his way under the log, Jensen decided to finish the motion and pause on the other side. He took two long strides, one under the log, one far enough away to turn around. His first stride tripped the wire release for the deadfall, left in place by Gill’s impersonator. His second stride carried him barely beyond its trajectory as it crashed into the ground, just missing his head, grazing his left shoulder and arm with its rough bark.

“Jesus!”

He staggered away from the trap, half expecting more destruction in its wake, but nothing else came down around him.

“What the hell was that? Alex? Alex!”

Unable to see, Caswell was shouting from the other side of the log that now made that section of trail impassable. It was not as large as the other, but completely filled the opening Jensen had gone through.

“Alex? Are you okay? Did that thing get you? Dammit
—answer me
.”

“I’m okay. I’m okay. It just missed. Scraped up my arm a little, but I’m not hurt.”

Panting, light-headed with adrenaline, he moved back to take a look at the trap he had so closely, and luckily, avoided.

“You better go around this thing. Easier than trying to climb over.”

As he spoke, the crack of a shot rang through the quiet woods and a bullet thudded into the log beside him. Throwing himself down, near the logs and behind some brush, he shouted to Caswell, who had started uphill to go around the trap.

“Get down. Someone’s got a rifle up there. Down—down.”

Cas dove for cover back the way he had come, rolling to a position next to the fallen log.

“Can you see him?”

“No,” Jensen answered, more quietly, from the other side of the barrier that now effectively separated the two. “But he could see me, all right—and see that his trick didn’t work like he planned.”

“Can we flank him? You go east, I’ll go west, and we’ll get him between us?”

“The brush is too thick. It’d be a bitch getting through, and he’d hear us coming—know exactly where we were.”

“Go back? Go down?”

“Maybe…”

Another shot from above gave them the answer to that. The shooter had moved enough to see both sides of the log. The bullet buried itself just over Caswell’s head. He scrambled back into a patch of devil’s club, swearing as its thorns abused his hands and face.

“Ross Wynne?” Jensen shouted. “We’re State Troopers Sergeant Jensen and Caswell. We know who you are and why you’re here. Give it up before somebody gets hurt.”

His answer was another well-placed bullet.

“Goddammit. He’s got us pinned,” Caswell observed. “What do you suggest?”

“Don’t give him a target,” Jensen answered. “We’ll think of something.”

Again he shouted up the hill to where the shooter was hidden.

“Wynne, I know it’s not Jessie Arnold you really want. If you’ve hurt her, I’ll make you wish you’d never had anything to do with her, but I don’t think you have…have you?”

His angry voice broke just a little on the last question.

There was a silent hesitation from above before Wynne called an answer.

“No,” he said. “I haven’t hurt her.”

Alex took a deep breath, realized the hands that had been gripping his Colt .45 semiautomatic were trembling as he eased off on his hold, and admitted to himself the idea that had terrified him most. His greatest fear had been that Wynne would decide he needed to frame Moule for
murder
to be sure he would be sentenced to a severe punishment—and that Jessie would be the victim of his irrational plot. Could he believe what the man said? Was Jessie really unharmed?

“Wynne, we have Moule in custody. You’ve won—he’s going back to jail. Put down the rifle and we’ll talk about all this. If you haven’t hurt anyone, we can work it out.”

Another silence, then, “No. It’s not enough. I want him dead.”

“We
can
work it out, Ross. He won’t get away with it this time. We’ll work the case till we find enough to get him for what he did to Michael. Let the law take care of it.”

“The law always screws it up,” Wynne shouted, in a furious tone. “You focus on protecting his rights. What about ours—mine and Michael’s? He’s got to die.”

“Look, we know that you’ve been harassing Jessie Arnold to frame Moule. We can understand why, and can work with you on it. You’ve had a pretty good reason for what you’ve done. But I can’t promise you he’ll get a death sentence.”