Stillhouse Lake

by Rachel Caine

  We keep driving. I see Graham's house off to the right. It's genuinely country, a sprawling ranch house with no pretentions to elegance like the Johansens' modern, sharp-cornered glass monstrosity down the way. It's something generations have built onto, and you can see the differences in brick colors.

  There's another SUV parked up front and a couple of trail bikes and one ATV. A medium-size boat on a tow, ready to be taken down to the lake. All the necessary trappings for a man living the lakefront dream.

  We keep going past his house. Now the trail gets rough, the suspension bouncing and sloughing in mud as the gravel begins to run out. I've missed my shot. Somehow, I really thought he'd stop at his house, and my plans were to bail out, lose myself in the dark, and fire a shot or two into the Johansens' plate-glass windows. That would damn sure get them to call 911, even if they wouldn't let me in.

  But he isn't stopping, and I turn the gun case again. Faster. Another blank side to my searching fingers.

  "I dropped Sam off top of this ridge," he tells me. Liar. "The road goes that far, but then it's just game trails from there on. You wanted to catch up to them, right? This is the only way to do it. Sorry about the rough ride."

  I'm well aware that this man is playing a game with me. His voice is warm and quiet and ever-so-slightly pleased. I can't tell in the ghostly glow of the dashboard light, but I think he's a bit flushed from his success. Enjoying himself, but trying not to show it. This is the part he likes, the part where he has control, where he's in charge and his prey doesn't even know how badly things have gone yet.

  But I know.

  I'm turning the gun case the last bit when suddenly we hit a huge bump, and the backpack jumps and I lose my grip entirely. God. Oh God no. This is going wrong. Very wrong.

  Lancel Graham reaches down for the backpack, which has become wedged between us. He heaves it up and tosses it in the back seat without any comment at all. I can tell the game's starting to wear thin. I'm out of time. I'm out of time, and I don't have a gun, and my God, he's going to kill me and my children, and he's going to get away with it.

  I need to act. Now.

  "Does the search team have radios?" I ask him, reaching for his police band, which is tucked into the space between us. "We should probably find out exactly where--"

  He grabs my hand, and for a second I think, This is it, and I start finding options. I calculate things in fractions of a second: he has one hand on the wheel, one holding my left hand. If I lean across, I can punch him as hard as I possibly can in the balls; his legs are relaxed and open, and it'll give me at least a minute or two. But then what? He's big, and I suspect he's fast. I don't know his pain tolerance, but I know mine. If he wants to stop me, he's going to be in the fight of his life. I need to disable him long enough to get my gun out of the backpack, put it together, and shoot until he tells me where my kids are. Then shoot him again until he is gone from the face of this earth.

  There's a shotgun in the rack behind me. I see it from the corner of my eye, like a long metal exclamation point. I can also see the padlock shivering as the truck bounces. The shotgun is firmly locked in place. No help.

  I'm ready to move, to let loose with everything I have, when Graham lets go of my hand and says, "Sorry, Gwen. It's just that the thing is police property. Can't let you use it on your own like that." It's just enough to stop me. He enters some code with his thumb and switches the radio on; the screen glows an unearthly blue, and he changes to a channel I don't see. "NPD search party two, do you read me? NPD search party two, looking for a location. Relay your coordinates."

  It startles me that he's actually playing this out, and the fear inside me doesn't go away, but it's crowded by doubt. I don't know what the hell he's doing. I blink and draw back, adrenaline bubbling uselessly in my veins, shaking in my muscles. He lets the button go, and listens. Static like rain. The SUV hits a deep muddy patch, and he gives me an apologetic grin as he has to drop the radio to straighten the steering out. "Weather sometimes plays hell with these things. Plus, the mountains aren't great for signals. You want to try? Go ahead."

  I keep my eyes on him as I take the radio, press the switch, and repeat the words. "NPD search party two, do you read me? Relay coordinates of your location." I know what he's doing. He's playing with me, the way Mel played with his victims in that workshop. Testing me. Little cuts, to see me bleed. It's exciting to him.

  There's no reply, of course. Only static. I glance at the glowing screen, then out the front window. The rain is obscuring everything, but I can tell that we're approaching the end of the road. Once we reach the ridge, we'll be far, far from anyone. Out here in the rain and the mud, nobody's going to come looking.

  Just as he's planned.

  I can't diagnose what's wrong with the radio. Could be that it's on the wrong channel, or that he's done something to the antenna. It's probably useless to me, useless to even try to--

  My thought is derailed by a changing frequency of static, and a weak voice says, "NPD search party two, roger. Our coordinates are . . ." It fades out in a renewed wash of noise before I can catch more than two of the numbers. I forget my plans. I press the button.

  "Say again, NPD search party two. Say again!" Is it possible, somehow, that I've misread all of this? That somehow, Graham is really telling the truth? It seems impossible, but I've been wrong, so wrong, so often these days.

  Another burst of static. No discernible voice this time. I try again, and again, and when I look up the tilt of the vehicle is changing, and we are on the ridge at the end of the road.

  Graham brings the truck to a stop under the overhanging branches of a giant tree; the drops that fall from the branches are thicker and more emphatic than the rain beyond, like sharp taps of a hammer. I hear them clearly as he shuts off the engine, pulls the parking brake, and turns toward me. I press the radio button again, but he takes the radio from my hand and turns it off. He puts it in the well between us. "No use," he says. "Like I said. Hard to get a signal."

  He sounds amused, and I wasn't wrong, I was never wrong at all. Not about the blood. Not about his actions.

  Not wrong about Lancel Graham.

  I was never talking to a Norton Police Department search team.

  "We're on our own here, Gina," he says. It sounds obscenely like a come-on. I want to scream. I want to punch him in the balls, but he's ready, I can tell he's ready, and I'm not.

  "My name isn't Gina. It's Gwen," I say. "Which way did Sam go? I saw the map from Prester, was he taking the northeast route?" I try my door. As I feared, it won't open. Useless. Something dies inside me, that last hope of retreat. I have no choice now. I fight. And I'm scared out of my mind, alone, unarmed, against a much larger man.

  I can't lose. Not for an instant.

  "You don't want to do that," he tells me. "You'll just get lost out there, probably break your neck falling down a hill. Hey, I know. I'll call Sam direct. Maybe we can get through." He's still playing the game.

  I'm not.

  I pick up the radio and smash it into his temple with as much force as I can manage in the small space, and I can hear the scream that rips out of me. It's shatteringly loud in the cabin. My first hit rips a gash in his skin, and blood gushes out, and Lancel Graham screams and flails at the radio as I bash him again, and again, no control now, nothing but pure, glorious rage that makes me want to destroy him. The plastic casing splinters. I leave a thick fragment of it embedded in his cheek. He's dazed. I lunge past him to the door control on his side, the one I've been staring straight at, and I hear the heavy thunk as the locks disengage. As I draw back, I slam my fist straight down into his balls, and I see him go still as the pain rockets through him. His eyes fix on mine for the second I'm there, and then I'm moving on before I hear his howl.

  I grab my backpack from the back seat.

  I throw my door open and roll out, backpack and coat held tight.

  His hand closes over the trailing end of the coat and yanks, and the cold mud
under my feet gives, and I slide, off-balance, and panic bolts through me in painful sparks. I can't let him get his hands on me. I let go of the coat, catch myself on the door frame, and I run.

  Because this time, I really will feel the monster's breath against my neck.

  13

  Once I'm in the open, the rain hits me like a cold knife, cutting straight through me, but I don't slow down. I'm panting, nearly blind with terror, but I push that back. I have to think.

  I've hurt Graham, but I haven't stopped him. I don't know what weapons he has with him--a shotgun, probably a handgun, no doubt knives. I have my Sig Sauer and the scant remains of the ammunition I bought from the gun range. The loss of the coat, I realize, is deadly. The cold front that's pushing through has pulled the temperature down into the fifties, maybe the forties, and with the damp I can already feel the chill biting, though my fear and rage are coating me in their own special warmth. The mud leaves the ground slippery and uncertain, and I don't know these woods. I'm not native. I'm not military trained, like Sam, like Javier. I don't have a prayer.

  I don't damn well care. I will not lose.

  I make it to the thick line of undergrowth and thrash through it as fast as I can. I'm collecting cuts and bruises, and I know that running in the dark is a terribly stupid idea. I slow down, feel my way, and avoid impaling myself on a sharply broken branch. I touch it, and then I crouch down and open the backpack. I pull out my gun case and open it. I assemble my gun blind and check the mag. It's empty. I look for the extra rounds in the backpack and realize that the bastards at the NPD must have test-fired nearly everything I had.

  I load everything into the clip. Seven bullets left. Just seven.

  It only takes one, I tell myself. It's a lie, of course. I know it is. Adrenaline keeps people moving, keeps them dangerous, even when they ought to fall down.

  But that works on my side, too. I am not going to lie down. I am not going to quit.

  My fear is making me strong now. Alert. Weirdly steady.

  A startling flash of white light blares, and I feel an electric hiss across the hair on my body, and then I hear the ear-shattering boom of the lightning strike. It's on the next hill, and instantly, a pine tree is aflame. Half of it topples away, trailing fire.

  In the light of the flash, I see the dark shape of Graham coming through the undergrowth. He's only about ten feet away.

  I have to move. He'll have seen me, too.

  It's a nightmare lit by the distant, flaming tree: underbrush, tree trunks, rain, thick mud sliding underfoot and clinging hard to my boots and the legs of my jeans. I'm freezing, but I hardly feel it; my entire focus is on moving fast, as safely as possible. I don't know where Graham is. I can't risk a shot until I have a clear, unbroken line of sight. Panic shooting is stupid shooting.

  And I can't kill him by accident. I need him alive. I need to know where my children are.

  My job is harder than his, and weirdly, in this moment, I imagine Mel whispering to me, You can do this. I made you stronger.

  I hate it, but he's right.

  I'm halfway up a sloping, slippery trail when I feel the sting of buckshot. It's a hot spray across my left arm, like being hit by boiling water from a fire hose. The shock clamps down quick and sends me dodging, slipping, grabbing for tree trunks to hold myself upright. The sharp, bright smell of burned gunpowder cuts through the rain, and I think, in a kind of genuine surprise, He hit me. The logical part of my mind tells me it isn't bad; it was a glancing blow, not the full power of the shotgun. That would have torn my arm to ribbons. This is . . . inconvenience. I can still move my arm, still grip things. Everything else has to wait. The terror inside me threatens to make me swerve off the path, find a hiding spot and curl up and die, and I can't let it get control.

  I hear something through the roar of the rain and the distant rumble of thunder.

  Graham's laughing.

  I slip behind a thick tree trunk and catch my breath, and as I look back I catch a lucky bolt of lightning that lights up the trail. He's not far behind me, and he throws up a hand to shield his eyes from the bright flash--and I realize he's wearing night vision.

  He can see me running through the darkness.

  I feel a wave of despair. I have seven bullets to his shotgun, no way to accurately sight my shots in this dark, soaking hell, and he has night vision. I feel it all slipping away from me. I'll never find my children. I'll die out here and rot on this mountain, and no one will ever know who killed me.

  What steadies me again is a vision of what the Sicko Patrol will make of that fate. Served her right, the bitch. Justice at last.

  I will never be their victory.

  I wait while Graham closes the distance. If I'm going to shoot, I'm going to make it good. I can do this. Wait for the lightning flash to blind him again, step out, open up. He's a paper target on the range, and I can do this.

  It all happens perfectly. The hot, blue-white flash of the lightning lights Graham perfectly, and I aim, smooth and calm now, and just before I squeeze the trigger, I feel the barrel of a shotgun press hard against my neck and hear Kyle Graham, the older son, yell, "I got her, Dad!" Surprise dulls the flush of panic, but I don't think. I just act.

  I spin to my left, graceful and fast in the mud--finally, it's working for me--and sweep the barrel away with the edge of my hand, reversing as I go to take a good grip on the metal and twist. While that's in motion, I kick hard into Kyle's groin. I pull it at the last moment, remembering that I'm not fighting a man. He's a boy, just a boy about my daughter's age, and it's not his fault his father's a world-class psychopath any more than it's Lanny's fault she is Mel's child.

  All this is still enough to shock Kyle. He chokes and staggers back, letting go of the shotgun. The weight of it drags at my wounded left arm. I jam the pistol into my jeans pocket, hoping to hell I don't shoot myself, and shove Kyle hard in the flat of his back. "Run or I'll kill you!" I scream at him, and the next flash shows him flailing through the underbrush, heading up the hill, not down. I wonder why, but I don't have time to think. I bring the shotgun up and spin toward where his father must be, and I pull the trigger.

  The weapon's kick nearly knocks me on my ass in the slippery footing, but I manage to catch myself against the thick, moist bark of a pine. The photo-flash of the gun igniting showed me that I'd missed him. Not by much, though. Maybe I'd given him a couple of pellet kisses to remember me by.

  "Bitch!" Graham yells. "Kyle! Kyle!"

  "I let him go!" I shout back. "Where are my kids? What did you do to them?" I duck behind a tree in the darkness.

  "You'll be with them soon, you fucking--" Though thunder mutes the sound of the gunshot, I feel the tree shiver slightly as it absorbs the pellets. I wonder how well armed he is. If I can get him to run out of ammunition . . . but no. Lancel Graham would have planned this as meticulously as everything else. I can't count on something so simple.

  I realize in the flash of another lightning strike that I'm standing not far from another trail, one that branches off to the west. It seems to wander that way, and I think it slopes down. The lightning has picked up now, and I think it might be enough to lessen the effectiveness of Graham's night vision equipment. He'll have trouble picking me out in all the flashes.

  I go low, hoping that even if he spots me he'll think I'm a deer, and I make it to the point where the trail begins to curve down. If I can make it to the ridge, it's possible that Graham's one of those hide-a-key fools, and I can find a magnetic box in the wheel well that will let me steal the thing and get out of here, find help, find my children. He must have GPS. Maybe a record of where he's been.

  I fall halfway down the trail, slide, and my head slams hard into a jutting boulder. Sparks and stars, and a wave of icy, tingling pain that makes everything strangely soft. I lie for a moment in the cold rain, gasping, spitting out water like a drowning victim. I'm cold. I'm so cold, and I wonder, suddenly, if I'm going to be able to get up. My head feels strange, wro
ng, and I know it's bleeding badly. I can feel the warmth running out of me.

  No. I'm not dying here. I'm not. I don't know if Graham is still tracking me; I don't know anything except that I have to get up, cold or not, hurt or not. I have to get to the ridge and find a way to get help. Somehow. I will fucking shoot one of the Johansens' prize paintings if I need to, to make my point.

  I slip and slide my way to my hands and knees, and I remember that I had a shotgun, but I can't find it now. It's gone, pitched into the darkness by my fall, and there's no way for me to find it now. I still have the pistol, which miraculously hasn't blown a big, devastating hole in my thigh. I take it out of my pocket and hold it tight as I get up and rest against the boulder. Blood is sheeting down the side of my face in a warm torrent that the rain dilutes almost instantly.

  I slither down the trail, grabbing for handholds.

  It's a nightmare that I can't escape, this descent, and I form the idea that Graham is right behind me, grinning and taunting me. Then Graham morphs into Mel, the Mel behind the Plexiglas at the prison, grinning at me with bloody teeth. It feels eerily true, but when I finally, breathlessly twist around, I find that the next flash of lightning shows me there's no one on the trail at all.

  I'm alone.

  And I'm nearly to the ridge.

  As I get to the thick undergrowth that marks the place where the forest clears, something makes me stop and crouch down as I stare through the leaves. I'm aware of my heart beating fast, but it also feels sluggish, weary, as if it might take a nap at any moment. I must have lost more blood than I thought, and the cold is making my body work harder and harder. I'm shaking convulsively. It is, I know, the last step before false warmth sets in, and the urge to sleep. I don't have much time left. I need to get to the truck and get Kyle's coat. It'll help me for the next part: the run down the hill. Like it or not, I am going to have to depend on the Johansens for help.

  A little flicker of movement by the truck freezes me in place. The rain is lessening a little, though the thick mutter of thunder overhead rolls almost continuously. The easing downpour lets me see a fraction of a curve that shouldn't be there, braced on the far side of the truck and protected by the solid wall of the engine block. It's a head, and it's too big to be Kyle's. Kyle ran up the hill, not down.