Heartbreaker

by Karen Robards

  “It’s okay,” Lynn said in her ear. “We’re going to make it.”

  Debris swirled by them, sticks and leaves and larger branches. The banks on both sides of the river were tall, sloping rock walls topped by pines that crowded right to the rocky edge. Sparrows by the thousands had built nests high on the riverbank; an osprey dived from its perch high atop a ponderosa pine to swoop over the river, searching for fish. Roots rose above the water surface near the left bank; the osprey swept its talons through the surface of the water there, emerging with a trout so big it had trouble flying.

  “Look!” Rory nudged Lynn, pointing, and at the same time seemed to shrink in her seat. Lynn looked as instructed and immediately wished she hadn’t. Almost directly opposite them, standing beside a willow thicket on the bank from which they had shoved off, was a man with a rifle.

  He lifted it to his shoulder.

  Jess said a word so vulgar that under other circumstances Lynn would have been tempted to cover Rory’s ears.

  “Keep paddling,” he bit out next, as though Lynn needed the reminder. She paddled like a woman possessed as the kayak sought out and rode the swift current at the center of the river.

  There was a sharp popping noise, followed by three more in quick succession.

  “Duck!” Jess yelled. Rory did, scooting down inside the craft as far as she could. Lynn huddled over Rory’s head, protecting it, shielding her own with her arms as best she could. At any moment she expected to feel a bullet ripping into her flesh. The prospect sent an anticipatory shiver racing along her spine. How would it feel to be shot? Would it be an immediate burst of agony, or would the shock numb any pain?

  “Mommy!” Rory moaned.

  “It’s okay, baby.” In calming her daughter, Lynn calmed herself. Panic would do neither of them any good.

  Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop!

  There had to be more than just the one gunman, Lynn thought. Glancing back, she saw that she was right. The lone rifleman had been joined by two others, one the evil Santa Claus. Both newcomers were armed with rifles. Lynn assumed Santa hadn’t found his pistol.

  A staccato burst of gunfire caused her to duck again. Tiny white spurts in the water all around them marked where bullets hit. A sharp crack signaled that one sharpshooter had gotten the kayak. With Rory hyperventilating in her arms, Lynn battled panic anew.

  Thank God for hardened plastic, Lynn thought. At least the thing wouldn’t sink.

  “Are you all right?” she screamed back at Jess.

  “Shut up and stay down,” was his reassuring answer.

  Obviously he was not killed. Lynn took what comfort she could from that.

  Gunshots sounded again, but the absence of white spurts in the water indicated that the bullets were missing their mark. Lynn stayed low, paddled for all she was worth, and prayed that the current would soon sweep them out of range.

  They shot around a bend in the river. The kayak heeled dangerously, threatening to roll.

  “Lean left!” Jess cried. Lynn and Rory complied.

  “You can sit up now. We’re safe,” Jess said moments later.

  He sounded breathless. Lynn sat up, cautiously, and glanced back. Nothing more threatening than pristine forest met her gaze. Sparrows fluttered in great shifting clouds on both sides of the riverbank; a bright-colored butterfly floated up from a clump of daisylike flowers to meander deeper into the woods. A pair of mallards, identifiable by their iridescent-green heads, floated past along with branches and other debris.

  Santa and his murderous minions were nowhere to be seen. Lynn let out a great sigh of relief.

  Closer at hand, Jess rested his paddle across the top of the kayak and let the river do the work of propelling them to safety. Lynn glanced back to find him breathing heavily, and new lines bracketing his mouth spoke of pain. The frantic paddling could not have helped his shoulder. Lynn wondered if his wound was bleeding again. Probably, she decided.

  Like herself, he looked much the worse for wear. His hair was a wild, wet tangle blowing in the wind. River water had left muddy streaks on his face. He was pale, sweating, and he badly needed a shave.

  But his eyes were bright baby blue again, with a definite gleam.

  He met her gaze and grinned. He was, she judged with some surprise, on an adrenaline high. And if she hadn’t known better she would have sworn he was enjoying the excitement.

  But of course she knew better. She hoped. Who could possibly enjoy this murderous game of cat and mouse?

  “We’re safe for now,” he said. “With them on foot and us on the river, there’s no way they can catch up to us.”

  “Thank God,” Lynn said. “Rory, baby, are you okay?”

  “He came just before you got there,” Rory’s voice was high-pitched and shaking. “I had to go to the bathroom, so I crawled out of the bushes. He just grabbed me! I didn’t even know he was there! At first he called me Theresa. Then he asked if I knew where she was. Then he was going to kill me. If you hadn’t come, Mom, he would have killed me!”

  “It’s over,” Lynn said to her comfortingly as Rory slumped against her. “It’s all right. We’re okay for now.”

  “Oh, God, I thought he was going to kill you too. Both of us. Right there.”

  “We got away. Now we’ve left them far behind.”

  “I was so scared!”

  “I know, baby, I was scared too.” Lynn hugged her daughter, a gesture rendered clumsy because of the paddle she held.

  “You were awesome, Mom. What you did back there—that was totally awesome.” Rory twisted in Lynn’s hold to glance back at Jess. “Did you see what she did? She kicked his gun away!”

  “Just like Chuck Norris,” Jess agreed. “It was awesome. What do you do, take karate?”

  “Aerobics,” Lynn said.

  “Aerobics?”

  “It helps me stay in shape. Three times a week after work I do the exact same kick.”

  “You saved our lives,” Rory said.

  From the rear seat Jess started to sing something under his breath. It took a minute before Lynn was able to make sense of the words.

  “Five foot two, eyes of blue, but oh what those five two can do …”

  “Oh, shut up,” she said, feeling better already.

  27

  DEATH IS COMING. Theresa heard the words in her mind as plainly as if someone had spoken them aloud.

  They roused her from the steady level of fear she’d existed in for so long to a state of acute terror. She had been about to crawl from the hole that was the rear entrance to the mine. Shrinking back against the cold rock wall, she peered out into the world instead with the near-blind gaze of a mole.

  The day was dazzling in its brightness. She had spent so many hours in the dark, the light hurt her eyes. At first it was hard for her to see.

  She had to rely on senses other than sight, like the inner voice warning her to beware.

  The gravel road that led to the outside world was not more than four yards distant. She knew because she had taken this path to it before.

  Death was almost as near.

  Shivering, Theresa huddled in the darkness as her eyes became accustomed to the brilliance beyond the hole, waiting for the sunlit road to come into focus through the screen of branches. The hole was hidden behind a bank of forsythia bushes. The yellow flowers were long gone. The branches with their slender green leaves swayed in the wind. A tiny stream, a mere trickle of water really, wet her gown at the knees as it ran past her down into the bowels of the earth, where it no doubt fed the subterranean river that had taken over the mine’s lowest level. Fortunately she had recognized the flooding in time to turn back and find a higher passage. From the sound of it the water that had once been no more than ankle-deep was high and fast-moving, swollen with the recent rains.

  Elijah slept against her breast, worn out with crying, in a sling she had fashioned for him from cloth torn from her flannel nightgown. Since leaving the root cellar she had had nothing to feed him, tho
ugh she had let him suck water from a twisted piece of cloth. Still, in the end that had not satisfied him. He had screamed with hunger for what seemed like the last several hours, until he had fallen asleep.

  She had not dared to approach the light until he was quiet.

  Death had not been in the labyrinthian underground passages with her. He was out here, seeking her in the bright sun.

  Theresa felt his presence as strongly as she had felt it outside the cabin door.

  Perhaps, she thought, she should stay hidden forever in the dark.

  Though if what Death had prophesied came true it would make no difference anyway.

  Three people came into view, wading through the knee-high undergrowth, heading toward the road she could now see. Two women, both with bright blond hair, clung together, moving slower than the man, who was tall and whose right arm hung stiffly down at his side, as if it were injured in some way.

  Theresa was positive she had never seen the people before in her life.

  She had been praying for a miracle, praying nonstop since Death had found her family.

  Had He sent the three to act as His instrument in snatching her from the jaws of Death?

  Or had Death sent them to lure her out?

  28

  SOME FOUR HOURS AFTER LEAVING their pursuers behind on the riverbank, Jess, Rory, and Lynn reached their destination: a pitted gravel road that meandered like a twisty thread through this part of the Uintas. After a long and tortuous journey through mountains, streams, and mud bogs, it connected to State Route 150, which in turn led into the town of Kamas.

  Once there they would go straight to the authorities.

  Lynn thought she wouldn’t feel completely safe until she was sitting in police headquarters surrounded by cops, watching through the windows as a squadron of state boys headed out, blue lights flashing, to bring the killers to justice.

  The sight of the red Jeep waiting a little distance down the gravel road sure made her feel a whole heck of a lot safer than she had for almost twenty-four hours, however.

  “There’s the Jeep,” she said, squeezing Rory’s hand, smiling at Jess because she was just so giddy with relief.

  They were going to live!

  “Let’s go.” Jess didn’t smile back.

  Lynn assumed his shoulder was paining him. Since leaving the kayak behind some two hours before, he had seemed to keep going on pure grit. Though he was not as visibly wilted as Rory, who had required Lynn’s arm around her for support nearly every step of the way, he was silent and sweating despite the briskness of the morning.

  Silence, coming from Jess, said a great deal.

  He and Rory would soon have the medical attention they needed. All they had to do was reach the Jeep and be borne to safety by that wonder of modern technology, the automobile.

  After making it so far under her own steam, the thought of riding the rest of the way in comfort was pure bliss to Lynn. To add to her litany of woes, her feet hurt. They were not only blistered but sore from being rubbed every which way but loose by Jess’s too-large boots. After they had left the kayak and he had realized that she had only her thin trouser socks to protect her feet, he had pulled off his boots and insisted she put them on. His feet, he said, were tougher than hers.

  They had argued briefly. He had won. For his pains he had ended up traipsing through the wilderness in his socks.

  At least, Lynn told herself in an attempt to assuage her guilt, they were the thick, white athletic kind.

  Or at least they had been white. And thick. A glance told her that they were now grubby gray and full of holes.

  But none of that mattered now. They were about to sit down, in a motorized vehicle, and be driven to safety.

  Thank God.

  It was a beautiful day, Lynn realized, as they walked down the gravel road toward the Jeep, which was pulled partially into the weeds with its back to them. A beautiful, glorious, sunshiny day straight out of the beginning of the world.

  In the face of such splendor it was hard to believe that the experience they had just lived through was real. Lynn felt kind of like Alice when she had fallen down the rabbit hole and found herself in Wonderland. What had happened since she and Rory had tumbled off that cliff just kept getting curiouser and curiouser, and now seemed as unreal as the Mad Hatter and the Queen of Hearts.

  Maybe it was, she thought, struck by an inspiration. Maybe she had hit her head in the fall and was even now lying in a hospital bed in a coma. Maybe awful dreams—awfully real dreams—were where people in comas went.

  Unlikely as that sounded, it was no more unlikely than what they had been through.

  Maybe she would climb into the Jeep, be conveyed to safety, and wake up.

  Maybe that was how it was with people in comas. Maybe they came back from whatever wild journey their subconscious took them on and just woke up. Or not, if they didn’t make it back alive.

  One way or another it looked as if she and Rory and Jess were going to make it back alive.

  The man behind the wheel had his back to them. His head with its ubiquitous cowboy hat rested against the top of the seat. Possibly he was listening to music, or sleeping. Whoever he was, he was not Owen. The shoulders weren’t broad enough, and he didn’t seem to be as tall.

  One of the others, then: Bob or Ernst, or Tim.

  With no more than a few dozen anxious glances around to make sure their pursuers were nowhere near, they reached the Jeep.

  “Yo, Tim!” Jess said, pounding on the roof with his fist. The man in the front seat started, sat up, and glanced around.

  “Jess, man, you made it!” Tim got out of the Jeep and turned to face them. He was grinning broadly, and it was clear from his demeanor that he had no inkling of what they had just been through. “Good to see you, Lynn, Rory! Wow, that’s a nasty bump on your head! Owen said you wouldn’t have any trouble, buddy. He said you were a mountain man from way back.”

  “We need to get out of here real fast,” Jess said, opening the left rear door as he spoke and indicating with a jerk of his head that Lynn and Rory should get in.

  Lynn settled Rory in the seat, pulling her seat belt around her and fastening it, then walked quickly around the Jeep to get in the other side. Jess, she noted, was already heading for the front passenger seat even as he spoke to Tim, who looked confused.

  “What? Why?” Tim frowned as Jess used his left hand to open the door. It appeared to occur to him then that Jess was moving oddly, that something was amiss. “Did you hurt your arm, man?”

  “I’ll tell you all about it on the way. Get in, and let’s get the hell out of here, okay?”

  “Anything you say, boss.” Tim got in and shut the door. Turning on the ignition, he reversed the vehicle in a semicircle until the Jeep was facing the way they had come.

  “Hit it,” Jess said.

  With a quick glance at Jess, Tim nodded and shifted again. They jolted forward, headed toward safety at last, Lynn thought with a relieved sigh.

  Though not fast enough to suit her or, she thought, Jess, who drummed the fingertips of his good hand on the dashboard as he stared out the windshield.

  Beside his hand, wedged tight in the angle between plastic and glass, was a pack of cigarettes. Pall Mall low-tar, to be precise. Not Lynn’s brand, but …

  “Could you pass me a cigarette?” she asked, lightheaded with sudden desire.

  Jess glanced back, then followed her avid gaze to the pack beside his hand. With a disapproving quirk of his mouth he picked up the pack and tossed it to her.

  “You ought to quit,” he said.

  “I will, one of these days, when my life is stress-free and I don’t care if I gain weight and I get an X ray showing I have lung cancer. Until then I am addicted.” Reverently, Lynn turned the pack over in her hand, savoring the feel of the cellophane. The faint smell of tobacco teased her nostrils.

  There were only two cigarettes left. But one would be one more than she had had in twenty-four hours.
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  Oh, bliss.

  There was a disposable lighter tucked under the cellophane. She freed it and tapped a cigarette out.

  “You’re not going to smoke in here, are you?” Rory grimaced with repugnance. “What about the dangers of secondhand smoke?”

  Lynn looked from her daughter to the cigarette in her hand.

  She wanted to smoke that cigarette more than she had wanted almost anything in her life.

  “So tell me—” Tim began, oblivious to the drama in the back seat. He broke off, then spoke again in a very different tone. “Who the hell is that?”

  Lynn stiffened and looked up at the road ahead. A young woman emerged from the forest, running toward them, waving her hand for them to stop. Barefoot, clad in a torn, stained, cream-colored flannel nightgown with lace at the neck and wrists, she was tall and bean-pole-thin, with a wild mass of curly brown hair.

  The arm that was not waving was clamped around a baby carried in a makeshift sling.

  “What’s a woman with a baby doing out here?” Tim asked, sounding stupefied.

  “Keep going!” Rory cried, “It might be a trick!”

  With a single regretful glance Lynn thrust the cigarettes and lighter into her pocket, reached over, and took her daughter’s hand. At the same time her brain kicked into gear. The woman had to be in some way connected to the massacre—a survivor, perhaps?

  Or a decoy meant to stop them? But whoever heard of a decoy with a baby?

  Under the circumstances Lynn could not bring herself to scream “Run her down,” though all her instincts urged that they not stop.

  “Hell, Tim, stop.” At the last minute, as the woman pelted toward them down the road, Jess gave the instruction and Tim stood on the brakes. The Jeep shuddered to a halt. The woman ran around its passenger side.

  “Let me in!” she cried, keeping one hand on the Jeep as if she feared it might take off again without her. “Oh, please! Let me in!”

  “Do you think we should do this, Mom?” Rory asked fearfully even as Lynn swung open the back door and scooted into the middle, closer to her daughter.