No One Else to Kill (Jim West Series) (29 page)

He went across the front of the house and positioned
himself.
 
I approached the front door,
and as I did, I thought I heard the sound of a door closing. I
peaked
back through the window and saw nothing.
 
I rang the doorbell.

I jumped back to my corner and waited.
 
Again, nothing happened. I began to dislike
my plan. If someone was in there waiting for us, and particularly if that
someone was Vic, then we were really asking to be shot dead as soon as we
entered.

I leaned back against the wall to consider the
options.
 
That far house was looking
better and better.
 
We might not be
anywhere near Vic and Geri, or they might just be inside. Sean motioned at me,
but I didn’t understand what he was trying to indicate.
 
I looked behind me as a precaution but didn’t
see anything.

I waved Sean over and he came.

“What’s up? I asked.

“I heard something.”

“So did
I
.
 
The sound of a door being shut,” I said.

“Me, too, and then I think I heard voices, or at least a
voice.”

“Obviously someone is inside,” I said.

“Do we still want to go in?” he asked.

Good question, I thought, as my feet were getting colder,
too.
 
Then I heard the voice.

“That’s coming from out back,” I said.

We moved in unison to the back corner of the cabin.
 
There, maybe thirty to forty yards away, we
saw a man carrying something heavy over his shoulder.
 
That something appeared to be
a somebody
.

“Quit wiggling or I’ll put you down and shoot you right
here,” the man snarled.
 
The voice
belonged to Vic.

“What do we do?” Sean whispered so lightly I almost
couldn’t hear him.

“He doesn’t know you’re out here.
 
Let me distract him and see if I can get him
away from Geri.
 
She must still be
alive.”

“Okay.”

“If it works, once he’s away from her be quick. Grab her
and run, and be quiet.”

“I will.”

“Stay here until it’s time.”

“Okay.”

Leaving him there, I went around the house to the other
side.
 
Vic had not noticed us.
 
He must have left the house seconds before I
rang the
door bell
.
 
In the dark, it had become harder to see him, but I could still just
make him out.
 
I wondered where he was
taking Geri.
 
There didn’t seem to be
anything ahead of him for some distance.

I took off on a run again paralleling him, but moving
slightly away from him as I came alongside.
 
He didn’t hear me, not because I’m a silent runner, but rather he was
struggling and mumbling to himself or Geri as he walked.
 
I couldn’t understand him, but I could hear
him as I got closer.
 
I stopped about
forty yards to his left.
 
As I did, I saw
a small lake appear out of the darkness about another twenty yards in front of
us.

“Vic!”
 
I
shouted.
 
“Give it up.
 
I’ve called the cops.
 
They know what’s up.
 
There’s no reason for any more killing.”

He stopped and dropped Geri.
 
She hit the ground with a thump.

I had picked the distance because in the dark hitting a
stationary target with a hand gun at forty plus yards is a challenge, and I
planned to be a moving target. I saw his arm come up, so I moved a few more
paces away from him.

He flicked on the flashlight. The faint beam barely lit me
up, but I moved to my left toward the lake. I didn’t want to make this too easy
on him.
 
I thought he would talk to me,
say something about his predicament, but he didn’t. The flashlight started
bobbing up and down and I knew he was coming at me.
 
I turned and ran as fast as I could toward
the woods.
 
With a forty yard head start,
I thought my odds of beating him there were very good.
 
He didn’t look in any better shape than me,
and he wasn’t being chased by some idiot with a gun.

I wanted to turn and look back, but I knew I couldn’t look
away from the ground.
 
In the darkness it
was already too easy to trip over something.
 
I estimated the tree line to be around a hundred yards away.
 
I sprinted and waited for the sound of
gunfire behind me.

or some reason, Vic didn’t fire
until I reached the tree line.
 
I guess
he had hoped I would fall or that he could outrun me, but either way I’m not
complaining.
 
His first shot slammed into
a tree at least three feet to my right as I passed it.
 
He fired a second shot.
 
It also missed.
 
I had to slow down once I entered the forest,
but I still moved as quickly as I dared for a few seconds before turning ninety
degrees to my right toward the lake. I moved as quietly as I could another ten
to fifteen yards and hid behind the base of a large tree.
 
A thick patch of smaller bushes had grown up
along the trunk.

I saw the broken beams of light emanating from the
flashlight and being shredded by the underbrush.
 
I couldn’t see Vic.
 
I don’t think he entered the tree line by
more than a yard or so and was now searching the area with his light.

“What?
 
Damn!” or
words to that effect roared out of Vic’s mouth and then the light disappeared.

I remained motionless. I couldn’t see anything beyond a
few yards away.
 
The forest swallowed
what little light made it this far.
 
For
ten to fifteen seconds, everything seemed eerily quiet.

“I’m going to kill you!” Vic yelled at someone.
 
It sounded like he had returned to the spot
where he had dropped Geri, but he shouted loud enough that I heard him.
 
I hoped Sean and Geri were long gone.

I moved toward the voice, and stopped at the edge of the
trees.
 
I saw movement in the distance.

“Give it up Vic!” I shouted.
 
“It’s over.”

He didn’t respond to me, but he must have heard me.
 
I saw the beam of the flashlight swing back
around and point in my direction.
 
The weak
beam of light would be ineffective at this distance.
 
The light moved toward the lake, and I saw
that it came to rest on a small canoe on the bank.
 
It flicked off, and for a moment, I saw
nothing.
 
Then something, I assumed Vic,
moved in the distant darkness toward the cabin we had all just come from.
 
Surely Sean wouldn’t have stopped there, but
either way, he was on his own now.
 
Our
element of surprise was over.
 
A head on
assault on Vic now would be suicide. Even Sean had to realize that.

Besides, Sean knew that Vic didn’t know he was out
here.
 
Vic would assume that Geri got to
her feet and hobbled off on her own.
 
The
way he had carried her, I was sure he had bound both her hands and feet. He
would conclude that she couldn’t have gone far.

The ground fell off slightly by the lake, so I stayed
close to the bank to prevent his seeing my silhouette in the darkness.
 
I knew the lake blocked one of my avenues of
escape, but I wanted to check out the canoe.
 
Actually, I wanted to do more than check it out.
 
Vic planned to do something with it, of that
I was certain. He had been heading right to it when I surprised him.
 
Whether he intended to dump Geri out in the
middle of the lake or use it to escape, I thought messing with his plans one
more time couldn’t hurt.

The canoe looked to be in good shape, and a new paddle
rested against one of its benches. I looked around, and not seeing anyone
coming, I slid the canoe onto the lake. I climbed in as soon as my shoes made
contact with the water and started paddling. The canoe moved smoothly through
the dark water.
 
I had to fight the urge
to look back despite the hairs on my neck trying their best to urge me to hurry
up.

The lake didn’t look that large.
 
Of course, at any far point, a small part of
it could feed into another expanse.
 
I
aimed at a point on the shore about one hundred and fifty yards away. It took
me on a diagonal to my right and to a spot about ten yards inside the
forest.
 
During daylight this small lake
had to be picturesque framed against the trees.
 
In the darkness, however, everything appeared ominous.

The canoe cut through the water without a sound. When I
neared the shore, I let the canoe drift in.
 
The small boat ground against the small rocks and dirt. I stood up and
walked to the front of the bow.
 
As I
stepped over the front bench, I saw something that I hadn’t noticed before. I
must have seen it, because it wasn’t small, but in the darkness it hadn’t
registered.

I leaned down to inspect it: a round, flat object about an
inch thick with a hole in the middle.
 
Even in the darkness I thought I could read the number 25 written on
it.
 
I felt the raised number with my
fingers. Twenty five pounds of weight normally found on one end or the other of
a weightlifter’s bar.
 
In this case, the
thin wire attached to it would have been wrapped around Geri, and the weight
would have taken Geri down to the bottom of the lake. The thought sent shivers
through me.

I pulled the boat onto shore and into the trees. I heard a
noise to my right and immediately crouched behind some bushes.
 
He couldn’t have followed me without the use
of his flashlight, and I would’ve noticed that. Nothing moved nearby, and the
silence finally gave me the nerve to move.
 
My coming onto shore must have spooked a deer or other wild animal.

Still, I spent close to a minute moving the short distance
from the canoe to the edge of the trees.
 
Once there, I studied the open space as far as I could see.
 
The third cabin, the one we hadn’t checked
out, appeared all lit up. Other than that, the rest of the world looked dark
and lifeless. I hoped the lights on at the cabin meant that Sean and Geri made
it there. The people in the cabin would have called the Sheriff, and I doubted
that Vic would attack them there.

Where would he be?
 
I hated staying in the trees. For the first time that night, the cold
had successfully fought its way through my jacket and my adrenalin.
 
I started shivering and felt miserable. I
leaned against a nearby tree and waited.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait that long.
 
After about ten minutes, a vehicle with
flashing lights pulled up to the far cabin. I fought the urge to start running
at it.
 
About five minutes later an
ambulance, followed almost immediately by two more sheriff’s vehicles, pulled
in next to the cabin.
 
A spotlight
scanned the area around the cabin.
 
Then
the vehicle with the spotlight on it moved slowly in my direction.

It seemed to take an eternity for the cruiser to get close
enough to me for the spotlight to do any good.
 
I walked out of my hiding spot and held my hands up to indicate I posed
no threat. I didn’t know how jittery the deputies might be.
 
It took a lot longer than I expected for the
spotlight to finally hit me.
 
When it
did, the vehicle stopped, and so did I.

“Approach the light and keep your hands in the air,” a
deputy spoke through the car’s loudspeaker system.

Silhouetted by the spotlight, I felt a little naked.
 
If Vic was still around and wanted to take a
potshot at me, there was nothing like a lit up target in the darkness. Granted,
if he had any sense, he’d be long gone by now, but after what he had already
done, I couldn’t give him too much credit in the common sense department.