by Cari Hunter
“Who is he, then?” Merrick chewed as he spoke, pieces of trail bar falling onto his jacket. She looked at him in disgust. She didn’t answer until he repeated the question and reinforced it by waving his gun in her direction.
“Nobody,” she said, her voice scratchy with lack of use. “He’s nobody. He was just lost like me.” She swallowed hard, willing him not to sense the lie.
“Likely to fuck off and leave you, is he?”
“Yes,” she said quickly. Her hands were shaking; she was relieved that they were out of Merrick’s sight. “We were just trying to get out of here. He has a family back in Boston.”
“Won’t come running after you, then?” His tone told her he didn’t believe her.
“No, probably not.” She was trying to make her answers convincing, but her voice cracked and she leaned her aching forehead on her knees. Alex would come running, and fighting, and probably wielding a sharpened stick, and she would more than likely get herself killed in the process. Tears began to soak into the fabric of Sarah’s pants. “How did you find us?” she whispered, trying to change the subject before she gave everything away.
“Heard you screaming in the night like a fucking banshee,” Merrick said, screwing up his wrapper and throwing it into the bracken. “First thing you ever did to make my life easier.” When he grinned at her she could see chocolate coating his teeth, but the grin faded within seconds. “Okay, I reckon that’s enough show-and-tell.” He refastened the gag so tightly she almost choked on it. Then he took out a folded knife. Her eyes widened as he flicked the blade straight. “Quieter than a bullet,” he whispered, his lips brushing her ear. He pressed the cold metal against her neck. “Don’t even fucking breathe while I do this.”
Staring straight ahead, Sarah was already holding her breath. She watched water drip lazily from a leaf, sunlight catching the droplets and casting rainbows through them, as she felt him untie her hands. She ran out of air and had to take a breath, the blade nicking her throat as she inhaled. She heard him chuckle. He had left the rope wrapped around her right wrist and now brought it forward to retie her hands in front of her. He kept hold of the rope that remained.
“Might make you less of a clumsy bitch,” he told her. He lowered the blade and wiped it clean on her jacket. She glared at him and he slapped her so hard that he knocked her onto her knees. “Or not,” he said with a shrug and set off walking. The rope pulled taut, grinding into her wrists and dragging her forward. She used the momentum to stand. Then, with no other options open to her, she followed him further into the forest.
*
Leaning on her stick, Alex took a minute to catch her breath. The stick creaked beneath her weight, but it didn’t break, and she patted it in gratitude. Its lower half was gray and battered from her frantic search through the ashes, but she had held on to it like a talisman ever since leaving the clearing.
A flutter of movement and a flash of artificial color in the undergrowth caught her eye. Using her stick, she maneuvered a plastic wrapper from the bracken. She recognized the trail bar brand as one of her own selection, while the condition of the wrapper showed that it had been discarded recently. She tucked it into her pocket, not wanting to leave Merrick’s garbage lying around. The wrapper was the first tangible piece of evidence she had found to confirm that she was on the right trail, but even so, his route had been easy to follow. Too easy. It was making her extremely nervous. Merrick seemed to have made no attempt to cover his tracks; two sets of footprints—a large pair of heavy boots and a smaller pair behind them—had frequently been left in the half-frozen mud. Now, as she paid more attention to where she stood, she could see the flattened areas of grass where he and Sarah had obviously rested. She had no idea where he was leading her or what kind of end game he was planning. She knew she was moving faster than they were; she had been all but jogging along the trail, and as she set off again, she forced herself to slow down. For the next fifty yards or so she could clearly see where Merrick had walked. Hoping against hope that she wasn’t about to fuck everything up, she began to cut a wide arc above that path. She had no intention of playing the role of lamb to the slaughter, and there was no way in hell she was going to make this easy for him.
*
Despite Merrick’s threats, the last time Sarah had fallen it had taken her several minutes to get back up. She couldn’t maintain his pace, no matter how hard he pulled on the rope, and eventually, he seemed to reach the conclusion that keeping his hostage conscious was in his best interests. At the next stream they came to, he stopped and looked pointedly toward the water.
“Don’t make yourself puke,” he said.
He dropped the rope but made no further effort to help her, and she watched him warily as she wrestled the gag from her mouth. Then she knelt beside the fastest part of the stream and for a long moment simply let the water cascade over her hands and wrists. It hurt at first, the cold and friction making the abraded skin beneath the ropes burn and sting, but a pleasant numbness followed shortly afterward, and she closed her eyes in relief. She cupped her hands as best she could and took careful sips of water. When nothing adverse happened, the liquid seeming to settle her stomach, she drank more deeply and then left her hands to dangle in the stream. Two quiet taps at her side made her look down. Merrick had tossed two glucose tablets into the mud for her. She didn’t bother to wipe them clean but just crunched into the first one and then allowed herself to savor the second.
By the time he took up the rope again and forced her to start walking, her thoughts were clearer. He had left the gag hanging around her neck as if to goad her into crying out for help. She was moderately insulted that he would even bother with such a cheap trick. Every so often now, he stopped in his tracks and tilted his head to the side, listening for any sounds that might indicate they were being followed. On one of these occasions, she heard a scuffle as if someone or something had slipped. The sound came from only slightly behind them, and Merrick smiled at the same time Sarah shuddered.
“Don’t think he’s run off back to Boston,” he said and then leered at her. “You fuckin’ him? Is that it?”
Although revolted by his tone, she didn’t shy away from him but held his gaze, and when she spoke her voice was as hard as steel.
“Fuck. Off.”
His look of surprise that she had dared to speak to him in such a way was worth the punch that split her lip and made her nose bleed. She had seen the blow coming and braced herself in time, managing to stay on her feet and raise her hands to ward off most of its force. He reared back, his fist still clenched, her blood staining his knuckles, and she watched him struggle to contain the urge to beat her until she was no longer able to answer him back.
“Not here,” he said, more to himself than to Sarah. His breath on her face was harsh and sour as he gagged her again.
She waited until he turned his back on her before she wiped the blood from her nose. The bleeding slowed but didn’t stop, so she opened her mouth as wide as possible to allow herself to breathe. The trick worked and she smiled, slightly bemused by her own resilience. There was no question that she was scared, but her greatest fear was for Alex, and she knew that when the time came she would fight tooth and nail to try to keep Alex safe. A hard tug on her wrists made her grind her teeth into the cotton of the bandana. She battened down the temptation to pull back on the rope, to try to knock him off balance and just take her chances. She suspected he would shoot her before she was close enough even to try to throw a punch.
The next time she tripped, she made sure it was right beside a sharp-edged stone, and that the stone was already in her jacket pocket by the time Merrick strode over to her. She lowered her eyes as if cowed and he gave no indication he had seen what she had done. Blood from her nose dripped steadily down her jacket, occasional droplets splattering on the path like a gruesome breadcrumb trail. Although she couldn’t stop Alex from following them, she had no intention of letting her take Merrick on alone.
&nbs
p; *
Alex slammed her stick into the shifting dirt and tried to do likewise with the toes of her boots. It was enough to stop her from slipping, but she sighed as she watched stones tumble down the slope. This was the exact type of hike they had been trying to avoid the previous day and with good reason; it was dangerous, hard work, and painfully slowgoing. She was also well aware by now that Merrick had doubled back on several occasions to lead her in a tortuous route. If he was doing so to try to wear her down and tire her out, his tactic was having the desired effect.
She sidestepped cautiously to a lower section where trees and undergrowth gave her something to grab on to and use for traction. From that level, Merrick’s trail was just about visible, snapped branches and parted bracken showing her the way. She briefly contemplated following in his footsteps again, but realized that if he decided to wait for her somewhere along the path, she would walk straight into an ambush. Her boots dislodged more stones as she set off. She shook her head in exasperation. If she continued to make this much noise, she might as well walk on the trail. At the moment, however, sacrificing a silent approach in favor of an unpredictable one seemed to be the lesser of two evils.
*
Sarah wasn’t entirely sure what she had been expecting. In some of her darker moments during the hike, she had imagined a lair rigged with explosives and beset with devices of torture. Certainly at no point had she supposed Merrick would be dragging her toward a small yet civilized camp.
She let him steer her over to the side of a khaki two-person tent and sat when he pushed her down. Now that they had apparently reached their destination, a dreadful sense of anticipation had started to make her legs quake, and her stomach threatened to rebel against the water she had drunk. She waited nervously as he tied the end of the rope around the stump of a stout shrub, but he walked away as soon as he was satisfied that she was securely tethered. She took a deep, relieved breath. There was no sign of his girlfriend at the camp. Somehow she was sure that the gunshot she and Alex had heard had sealed the woman’s fate. The pain in her wrists brought tears to her eyes as she drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, but there was something undeniably comforting about making herself as small a target as possible.
A heavy thud and a metallic clatter startled her. She looked up to find Merrick kneeling at the entrance of the tent. Once he was certain she was watching him, he unzipped a duffel bag identical to the one she had stolen and began to unpack it. She turned her head away from the sight of him lifting out an assortment of weapons, but not before she had seen him slap a clip into another handgun and angle the blade of a vicious-looking Bowie knife so that it flashed silver and then gold as it caught the sun. It took some time and concentration, but she managed to tune out the noises he was making and listen instead to the sounds of the forest around her. Water was rushing over rocks somewhere to her left, something small and energetic scratched through dried leaves at the base of a tree, and a bird of prey gave a shrill cry high overhead. There was nothing to suggest that Alex was nearby, for which Sarah was immeasurably grateful.
She heard Merrick strike a match, the sound quickly followed by a smell of burning. When she looked back, she saw him sitting cross-legged by a small fire. He was paying absolutely no attention to her, so she took the opportunity to move her hands behind her knees, enabling her to reach the stones in her pocket. Blindly, she ran her fingers over and along the various edges and surfaces, trying to find one that might be sharp enough to cut through the ropes at her wrists. She pulled out a likely candidate, manipulating it in her fingers to turn its sharpest edge against the first strand of rope. It took mere seconds for her to concede that her efforts were going to be in vain. It was a great idea in theory, but in practice her fingers were too stiff and too sore for the kind of fine dexterity the task demanded. The stone was nowhere near large enough or sharp enough, either, and the rope itself was so thick it would probably have stood up well to a serrated blade, never mind a little piece of granite.
“Bollocks.”
She would have kicked herself for her own naive stupidity, had Merrick not already spent a large part of the morning kicking her. He stood up and she immediately closed her fist to conceal the rock, certain that her cursing had alerted him. Instead of coming across to her, however, he went into the tent. She heard rustling and banging as he searched for something. Keeping one eye on the tent’s entrance, she brought the rope to her mouth and began to worry at the knot. The gag got in the way, making it difficult for her to breathe, and a musty, blood-tinged scent rushed into her nostrils. She didn’t care. At least she was doing something. Even if it didn’t work, at least she was doing something.
*
For the second time that morning, Alex could smell smoke. She immediately stopped walking and wiped her sweaty palms on her pants. Her heart was beating so forcefully that she had an irrational fear Merrick might hear it. She crouched low, grasses prickling her chin, and tried to gauge her distance from the fire, but the strengthening breeze made it all but impossible. A sharp rip of pain at the base of her thumb prompted her to ease her grip on her stick. Instead, she took her anxiety and frustration out on a splinter that had worked its way beneath her skin, scratching at it roughly until the skin around it became red and heated. When she breathed in, smoke tickled at her throat and she had to keep her mouth shut to stop herself from coughing.
The fact that Merrick had stayed in one place long enough to light a fire suggested that he was finally ready for Alex to catch up with him. She closed her eyes against the implications of that; she didn’t even want to consider what he had planned for Sarah. In the darkness, an all too familiar sense of helplessness threatened to overwhelm her. She couldn’t do this. In spite of her earlier bravado, what could she honestly hope to achieve against an armed man who was holding an injured woman hostage? She would get herself killed, and worse than that, she would get Sarah killed.
The splinter suddenly came free and she stared at the small droplet of blood that formed in its wake. She automatically stuck her thumb into her mouth, a habit from childhood that was surprisingly soothing. She put her other hand into her pocket and her fingers touched the cool metal of the keys that had started this nightmare in the first place. Whatever those keys unlocked had been worth breaking Merrick from jail and sending him into the wilderness. It had made him murder indiscriminately and, after Sarah had unwittingly intervened, had made him chase her down with a single-minded relentlessness. Alex had never really had the time to consider the potential consequences of what might be hidden out here, but given Merrick’s links to white supremacist groups, they became more frightening the more she thought about them.
The keys jangled lightly on their chain as she brought them out and set them on the palm of her hand. Merrick wasn’t interested in a trade, she knew that as surely as she knew she didn’t intend to offer him one. In which case, keeping the keys on her person would only work to his advantage if the likely odds played out and he killed her. She switched the GPS on and studied the coordinates of her current location. There was a memory function in the GPS’s menu, but she didn’t dare use it, and there was no way for her to write the coordinates down. Precious minutes ticked by as she tried to memorize the short sequence of numbers, but she persevered until she was confident that she knew them by heart. She looked around for some kind of landmark and spotted a bizarrely shaped tree just to her left that was bowed by the prevailing wind and stunted by vicious winters but that continued to thrive regardless. She bent down to tuck the keys beneath one of its gnarled roots.
“Good luck finding those, you fuck,” she muttered.
A subtle darkening of the forest around her made her look up at the sky. Gray storm clouds had gathered overhead, blocking out the sun, and she wondered whether it was cold enough for snow to fall instead of rain. Either option might work to her advantage, reducing both the visibility and the likelihood that Merrick would hear her approach. Feeling slightly heartened, she
cautiously set off walking again. A solitary droplet of sleet landed on her nose and she caught it with her tongue as it slid lower. Within seconds, the drizzle became a downpour and fallen leaves began to crackle as the heavy drops landed on them. She walked on with more confidence, heading into the encroaching mist for cover and continuing to plot a course around Merrick’s original path. The smell of smoke became ranker as more sleet fell, the moisture presumably starting to extinguish the fire. She entertained the spiteful little hope that Merrick had been cooking himself a meal that would now be ruined. The thought made her smile grimly as she pulled her hood up and used the smoke to guide her through the storm.
Chapter Twelve
The deterioration of the weather seemed to have messed up Merrick’s game plan somewhat. Huddled with her back to the worst of the sleet, Sarah watched him pace the perimeter of the small clearing, obviously straining to hear Alex’s approach. He was brandishing a handgun and she had seen him tuck a second one into the back of his pants. She used his distraction to continue working on the knot at her wrists. Although it was far from untied, she had managed to slacken it, twisting her right wrist until the rope was slick with blood. The blood made a decent lubricant, while the anesthetizing coldness of the sleet helped her to bear the discomfort. She could see a gap around her wrist now and was on the verge of attempting to wriggle it free completely when she heard Merrick’s heavy tread coming toward her. She dropped her hands, terrified that he might have seen what she was doing, but he barely even looked at her. He stooped to unfasten the rope from the base of the shrub and pulled her up by the collar of her jacket.
