In her relief, Beck actually giggled. “I was pulling up the well pump.”
“Fixing it?”
“Looking for something.”
He frowned. “Did you find what you were looking for?”
“Not yet.”
He considered this, then shrugged. “Whatever you say, honey.”
“What happened?” she asked as they moved toward the lawn.
“I think Mr. Ainsley had the garage booby-trapped.” He held out a restraining hand, and Beck drew back. “I saw somebody go in there. He must have heard the rumors in town about something being delivered.”
Her expression was grim. If the garage was booby-trapped, the electric eyes must have been connected to the explosive. Had Jericho not given her the code, she might have set off the bomb when she went in. Maybe he had known she was curious, and would find a way in sooner or later; maybe the booby trap was not armed at the time, and he had wanted her to see it and stay away. Whatever the reason, the code had worked. Beck had made it through the garage tonight without setting off the explosives; somebody else had not.
She remembered, shuddering, not only Jericho’s paranoia; but the life he had lived before they met. Maxine, too, had navigated the garage successfully, most likely through some combination of training and prudence. A wounded soul with a steady hand.
“I think the rumors were planted on purpose,” she said faintly. “I think he wanted someone to try to open his crates.”
“The man who went in was one of the strangers.”
“He could be the one who shot Pamela. I hope she’s still alive. She’s upstairs.”
Pete seemed to be sniffing the air, much as Dak had done a million years ago on Monday afternoon. “He wasn’t the only one out here. Somebody’s moving around.”
“An animal—”
“Too big for that.” He put a hand on her arm, propelling her forward.
He held his gun ready but angled away from her. “We have to get help.”
“Pete, wait.”
“What’s the matter?” He was out of the woods, beckoning.
“There’s somebody else in the house. Trapped in the basement.”
“Who?”
“Miss Kelly.”
He closed the distance between them, face bewildered. “I’m sorry, Beck. Did you say the town librarian is locked in the basement?”
“It’s a long story. Look. The phones are out, the power’s out—you have a radio in your cruiser, right?”
“I have my pickup down the hill. There’s a radio in there, sure.”
“Then let’s hurry. Pamela and Jericho both need to get to the hospital.”
“Okay.” Again he was on the move. Beck realized that she was holding his hand. He looked at the garage. “I’m pretty sure they’ll see that fire from town, though. Not like the other one.”
Rebecca took her hand back. “What did you say?”
He was a few paces ahead of her, gun at the ready, eyes searching lawn and woods. “I said they’ll see the fire from town. They’ll send help.”
She shook her head. “No. You said
not like the other one
. What other one, Pete?”
“The van. It’s out front. Hard to miss.”
“How do you know if they saw it from town or not?” A terrible suspicion was starting to dawn. “How do you even know when it burned?”
“Anybody can see it burned.”
“Not in this darkness. Not without the floodlights.”
“I examined it with my flashlight, Beck. Come on. It’s the first thing a cop would see.”
“And did you see Audrey’s body?”
He dropped his eyes. “I wasn’t going to mention that. She’s kind of a mess.”
She relaxed. “Pete, I’m sorry.”
“For what? It’s been quite a night. I still want to hear why Miss Kelly is in the basement.”
“Let me just warn you. Before we let her out, you’d better put the cuffs on. She’s some kind of hired gun.”
“Always knew there was something odd about her.” Laconic and unperturbed, as always. “You know, Beck, maybe we shouldn’t use my radio. The sheriff hears all the radio calls, and, well, I don’t know which side he’s on.”
“Not ours,” said Beck, rubbing her arms. The cold was seeping in. The wind was spreading the fire toward the trees. Sooner or later, left unchecked, it would reach the house. She said, “Let’s carry them, then. Jericho and Pamela. We’ll put them in your truck.”
The deputy thought this over. “The house is the first place anybody will be looking.”
“Still—”
“One man died in the explosion. Another man is dead over by the van. But there’s somebody else. I saw him, and I kept my distance. He had a sniper rifle. He’s in the woods to the west. Or he was. But if we go around that way”—he pointed—“and stay in the east woods all the way to the front of the house, he won’t see us. If we try to get to the house across this lawn, with the sight lines he has? We’re sitting ducks.”
Rebecca saw his point. Jericho’s mad insistence on cutting back the brush and trees turned out to have disadvantages. But she could not bear the thought of abandoning Pamela and Jericho. “Please, Pete. We can’t just leave them.”
“We can send help—”
“Whoever’s out there will have come and gone. They’ll swoop down and take him. Maxine told me.”
“Who?”
“Miss Kelly—it’s her real name—she’s a killer—oh, shit—”
The tension of the endless night had become too much. The pain, the fear, the flight—Pamela’s wounded body. Beck nearly broke down.
Pete held her, stroked her back, murmured all the things we murmur to comfort the sobbing. But she had already decided not to cry after all, and her eyes were dry as she said, firmly, “I’m not leaving without them, Pete.”
“I guess we can try,” he said at last. “But you do exactly what I say.”
CHAPTER 37
The Escape
(i)
They tramped through the woods to the east, keeping the bulk of Stone Heights itself between their position and the spot where Pete had seen the sniper. Frozen leaves crinkled under their feet. At first, Rebecca kept talking, explaining what had happened over the last frightening hours, but Pete kept telling her to keep her voice down and finally ordered her, roughly, to hush.
“Keep very still,” he commanded, and, except for a continued trembling, half fear and half chill, she did.
They were still in the east woods. The house was fifty yards away. They were looking at the living room, and, up above, the windows of the master suite, and, at the rear, the study. There were no lights, of course. Beck thought she detected movement upstairs, but it might have been her imagination. The lawn before them was where Pesky had taken his fall.
“This is the plan,” Pete murmured after a moment. “It works if there’s only one sniper. If there’s two, we’re cooked.”
She forced the words through gritted teeth. “I understand.”
“Good. Now we have to split up. You stay right here, Beck. I’m going to circle around to the front, then dash across the driveway. He’ll see me, and he’ll shoot at me, but I think he’ll be a minute adjusting, because he’s watching the house, and the south woods. His rifle is on a
tripod. He’ll have to move it. That gives me an edge. As soon as you hear the gunshots, you run across this lawn, straight for the house. It’s only fifty yards. You’ll be exposed for maybe ten seconds. When you get to the house, you hug that wall and head around to the back. You go in that door. Got it?”
“What about you?”
“I’ll join you as soon as I can.”
“The sniper—”
“I have a gun, too, Beck. In the truck, I have a rifle and a shotgun. I can take care of myself.” He paused, letting this sink in. “Are you sure you won’t come with me? We can send help and sit tight—”
She shook her head. “The helicopter’s coming.”
“And so you’re going to risk your life saving a woman who hates you and a man who’s blackmailing the federal government?” But his tone was gentle. He put a hand on her face. “You’re a very strange person, Beck. Did anybody ever tell you that?”
“Pretty much everybody.”
“Your skin is cold.”
“You noticed.”
He kissed her, taking his time, leaned away, grinned. “Oh, man, when this is all over—”
They heard two quick gunshots.
Beck was on her feet, but Pete pulled her back down to the icy forest floor. “That wasn’t a rifle. That was a handgun. There’s somebody else out there. And unless I miss my guess—”
The flat snap of the sniper’s rifle, twice.
An answering gunshot.
“I think we’ve kind of got our distraction in place. We should go for the truck while they kill each other.”
“We stick to the plan,” said Beck.
(ii)
Rebecca was alone in the woods, hugging the ground as Pete had instructed. Exhaustion and fear bore down on her, and now loneliness besides. She did not understand what was happening. Dak had assured her that nobody could touch Jericho. Sure, lots of people were watching, including what Dak called a few “unofficial nations”—which Beck took to mean terrorist organizations, although, having had her confrontation with Jack Notting, she supposed that unofficial nations came in other forms, too. Dak had described a standoff: nobody dared kill Jericho, for fear of what he had hidden, and nobody dared kidnap him to make him talk, for fear that, given his age and illness, the interrogation itself would kill him. But now somebody had decided to act, notwithstanding the risk—and once the uneasy truce was broken, it was every unofficial nation for itself.
But why act now? she asked herself, breath curling whitely in the frigid air. Why suddenly swoop in tonight, when Jericho had spent weeks bedridden, there for the picking? The answer was so obvious it made her cringe.
They acted now because Beck was leaving tomorrow.
So simple. Jericho’s lover of so many years ago had come late to his bedside, stayed a few days, and was off again. What unofficial nation could resist the conclusion that Jericho had summoned Rebecca for a purpose, and was sending her off to do whatever it was he had threatened to do? Because human nature is as constant for the heads of giant corporations and the most secret of secret spies as it is for adolescents and wronged spouses everywhere, all of whom believe, deep down, that whatever happens, happens for a reason; and that the reason has to do with them. And so, if Beck flew in, stayed a few days, and flew out again, she had to be carrying the secrets with her.
Meaning they could not afford to let her go. Whatever fate was in store for Jericho was likely in store for Rebecca, too.
Sitting there in the bushes, fifty yards from the house, listening to
what sounded like a small battle around front, Beck saw the rest of the story, and shuddered. Jericho had known. Of course he had. That clever, twisted mind that saw six conspiracies in as many minutes would have realized at once that Rebecca’s presence would shatter the informal truce: Jericho might even have wanted her there for that reason. His plan, whatever it was, was ready, and he needed only to smoke his enemies out. To Jericho, the Rebecca who had once loved him and now had her own life was simply another piece to be moved about the board. That Beck had telephoned Stone Heights when she heard the news of his condition just made his job easier; but, had Rebecca not called, she was willing to bet that a compliant Audrey would have contacted her, told her that Jericho needed her—
The shooting had stopped.
Immediately Rebecca’s attention snapped to the present. Pete was out there, risking his life. She crept forward, peered toward the front of the house.
She saw him.
He had emerged from the woods and was crouching behind the burned van, near the man Maxine had killed. He did not even glance behind him, but instead sprang to his feet and raced across the gravel.
Immediately, the snap of the sniper’s rifle.
He went down hard, and Beck covered her mouth to stifle her scream.
Another snap, and then an answering shot. Pete was rolling toward the woods again, out of sight, but firing.
The distraction.
She had forgotten her role. She leaped to her feet and pelted for the house. The grass was slick from frost, and twice she almost stumbled, before thwacking against the siding. She hugged the wood and headed toward the back. Out front, the firing continued and then, ominously, stopped. Beck had reached the corner, just below the windows of the kitchen. Had Pete been killed? Had the sniper? She wondered whether the man up there with the rifle had turned his attention back to the rear lawn. Even if he had, she decided, he would not be able to see her inching
along. She could make it to the kitchen door. The door opened inward, so the sniper should not even notice. But there was a storm door, which opened outward, and was bound to attract his attention.
On the other hand, standing here would not do her much good. So it was either get back into the woods or get into the house.
“Go, girl,” she whispered, and, still flat against the siding, turned the corner.
No shots.
A moment later she was up on the deck, and then she was at the kitchen door. Moment of truth.
She opened the storm door.
Snap, snap, snap
.
The fusillade blew the storm door out of her hand, shattering the glass, and one bullet whizzed right by her head, but she had presented an unexpected target, and the sniper hadn’t had time to take true aim. Now panic saved her. She dived toward the house, the door opened to her weight, and she was inside.
Two more shots hit the deck, then silence.
(iii)
Beck sat on the kitchen floor, the door shut behind her. Her breathing had developed a hitch, and, evidently, so had her thinking, because she had pretty much decided that she would just sit here the rest of her life. Which might not be so long. Well, maybe her mother would raise Nina right. After all, she had not done too badly with Rebecca. She wished she could see her mom and apologize for being so hard on her all these years. She wished she could see Nina and tell her one last time that she loved her, and she should do whatever Grandma said. She wished she could stop her hand from trembling. She noticed blood on her jacket, a lot of it, and realized that one of the bullets must not have whizzed past. Well, that would explain why she was so sleepy. She shut her eyes. Her fingers traced the blood up to her neck, then to her face. She felt
her cheek, found a piece of glass. Not a bullet at all, but not a tiny sliver either. A piece, a pretty big one, just hanging from her cheek. Well, she was not going to face her Maker with glass in her face. She wanted to look her best. She yanked it out, and the searing pain woke her.