A familiar laugh broke the silence, slicing Scott’s innards like a hot knife. He ducked back behind his tree. “Why, Scott O’Toole, is that you?” a familiar voice yelled. It wasn’t nearly far enough away. “Glad to see you made it.” He laughed again.
Think! Scott screamed at himself.
“You might as well show yourself now,” Isaac said, his voice the very essence of reasonableness. “Save your mommy a lot of additional pain.”
Scott dared another peek around the tree. They were screwed.
BRANDON FOUND A SPOT at the crest of a hill where the snow at the base of a fir tree was all churned. Scott had obviously spent some time here, and over there to the left, Brandon saw the boy’s tracks leading off toward a gulley that appeared to run the length of the slope.
“Why, Scott O’Toole, is that you?” a voice boomed from out of the woods. Brandon ducked for cover, then peered out to see what was happening.
“…Glad to see you made it.”
For an instant, Brandon thought that the voice was talking to him, but then he realized the truth. Down there on the slope, he saw the smear of red snow, and in the middle of it, he could make out a splash of neon green—the color of Sherry’s favorite ski jacket. That’s when he understood everything.
“…Save your mommy a lot of additional pain.”
“Holy God,” Brandon breathed. Something moved in the gulley to his left, and Brandon brought James Alexander’s rifle to his shoulder. If that was DeHaven, he was dead.
“You want me to count to three, Scott?” the voice yelled. “I can do that if you’d like.”
Brandon jumped as if jolted by electricity and instantly broke his aim. Jesus, he’d nearly shot his son. The voice was coming from a different place entirely. He shifted his eyes to the opposite slope, to the woods. Of course, that’s where a sniper would stake his claim for the best shot.
“One…”
Brandon pressed the rifle against his shoulder and scanned the area of the voice with both eyes open. He had to be there somewhere….
“Two…”
There! A flash of light. Too bright to be a muzzle flash; more like a camera strobe. Light reflected off a sniperscope. That had to be it. He still couldn’t see the shooter, but he knew just from the syntax of the count that they were coming up on—
“Three!”
Brandon pulled the trigger.
SCOTT JUMPED AT THE SOUND of the shot. It came from the wrong direction! Had Isaac moved his position? How could he have done it so fast? He jerked his head from behind his tree for another quick look at his mom, and nothing seemed to have changed. What—
Then another report boomed, this one from Isaac’s hill, and it was answered a second later by another from behind.
Holy Christ, it was the Good Guys!
Scott moved totally by instinct, driven by fear and the distant knowledge that whoever had come to his rescue had bought him his only chance. He dashed out of his hiding place, into the open, his stride made awkward and lumbering by the stiff ski boots. He could see his mom right there, bleeding in the snow, just ten feet away. Another shot boomed from behind, answered right away by one from Isaac, which in turn was answered by another from his rescuer.
His foot slipped as he pulled to a stop in his mother’s blood and he went down hard. A second later, he was on his knees, looking down at her. Sherry’s eyes were open and alert, but her color was all wrong, her skin just a few shades darker than the snow. There was slack in her chain; might be enough to pull her to the base of that deadfall. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
“I got you, Mom,” he said, and she smiled.
He pulled her by her good arm, but she started yelling anyway.
BRANDON COULDN’T BELIEVE IT. What was Scott doing? Was he out of his mind?
He saw his son leave the safety of the gulley, and in the same instant, he saw Isaac DeHaven, dressed in white and black camouflage, stand and step out of his hiding place. Brandon aimed and he fired. DeHaven ducked back down. He worked the lever, ejected a casing and fired again. Brandon knew his bullets had to be coming close. For the time being, all he needed was to keep the man’s head down; keep him from taking the easy shot at Scott.
Isaac’s scope glinted again, and in an instant, a bullet passed close enough to Brandon’s ear that the concussion rattled his brain. Brandon dropped to his knee and tucked the left side of his body behind the fir and took aim again.
Those seconds were all that Isaac needed. Brandon watched in horror as the gunman, listing awkwardly to his left, hoisted his own rifle with one hand and fired into Scott.
THEY’D MADE IT! The deadfall was a big one, maybe two feet in diameter. If they crouched down low enough, pressed themselves flat against the snow, maybe—
Isaac appeared from nowhere, charging out of the woods, his face spattered with blood, his gait a bizarre, halting thing. In that instant, Scott knew that his plan had been terribly flawed. The killer had the high ground. All the advantage. This whole charade of heroism meant nothing.
Scott saw the muzzle of Isaac’s gun raise, even as the man kept running forward.
The pain registered in the boy’s mind as a molten railroad spike through his chest.
BRANDON SHRIEKED AS HE SAW THE BULLET blast through his son. “No! Goddammit, no!”
As Isaac struggled to a halt to take another shot, Brandon brought the .30-30 to his shoulder one more time. This time, his shot found its mark for sure. DeHaven’s rifle flew from his hands and the murderer backpedaled a few steps before landing heavily on his butt.
The bastard just sat there on the hillside, as if surveying the damage he’d wrought. He presented a perfect target. Blind with rage and sick with panic, Brandon jacked the empty casing into the snow and pulled the trigger one last time.
The hammer fell on an empty chamber.
COLD.
Noise.
Unspeakable pain.
Scott lay facedown in the snow, dimly aware that he was supposed to be dead now. And as he tried to move, he remembered why.
Isaac’s bullet had entered just below his collar bone, shattering it, and blasted out through the middle of his shoulder blade. For all that, and for all the blood, the pain was different from what he’d always imagined a bullet wound would be. There was a certain numbness to it. A dull heaviness on his left side that grew sharp and bright only when he moved.
His mother lay on the ground near him, smeared with blood, but he couldn’t tell which was hers and which was his own. She looked terrified. She looked as if she were dying.
Scott worried about his breathing. It was all wrong; it sounded noisier than usual. He was in trouble. Serious, serious trouble.
But he wasn’t dead. Not yet, anyway. Why? he wondered.
He had to move. He had to get away, to confront Isaac, to end this, once and for all. As he dragged himself to his knees, he saw Isaac over there on the hill, not seventy-five feet away. He looked as bad as Scott felt, moving awkwardly in the deep snow, leaving a crimson trail behind him. What was he doing? He wasn’t walking toward Scott, but rather toward a spot between them—toward the rifle that lay up against a deadfall, its stock in the snow, barrel pointed straight toward the sky.
Scott didn’t understand, but he assumed that Isaac had somehow tossed it there. Maybe when he was hit.
Now, it was up for grabs, anybody’s ball. And the one who got there first got to walk away.
Or maybe just got to die last.
Scott howled like a speared wolf as the mosaic of bone that was once his left side shifted and the fragments rubbed against each other. He tried to stand, but his legs wobbled. Like a newborn fawn, he tentatively raised himself to his feet, gathering his balance, trying not to notice the heavy drops of blood on the snow, the spreading stain on his coat. He nearly toppled over, but sheer will kept him upright—a harsh resolve fueled by the horror of falling on his ruined side.
The snow was so light here. A mere whisper of powder,
despite its depth. As he stumbled forward, the flakes seemed to flee from his shins. He moved closer and closer to the rifle, and finally it was in his hands. He had the sense, though, that he’d won a one-man race; that Isaac was no longer playing.
This was a different weapon than the one he’d hefted in the escape tunnel. This one had weight and length. It looked like a killer’s weapon. The weight of it in his right hand seemed to be pulling his left side apart, and as he braced the butt against his thigh, he wasn’t at all sure that he’d stay conscious for much longer.
Isaac stood ten feet away, swaying like a drunk, seemingly mesmerized by the blood leaking out of his own body. When he noticed Scott watching him, he gave a wan smile. “I don’t even know where the hole is,” he said.
Scott’s vision blurred and he shook his head to clear it. He could see the hole just fine. It looked to be low in his abdomen, on the right side.
“You’re about to do a terrible thing, kid,” Isaac said. “Killing a man is a terrible thing to live with.”
“You do it,” Scott croaked. It seemed as if he heard his own voice a few beats late, like watching a bad foreign film, where the lips and the audio don’t match up. “You live with it just fine.”
Isaac smiled. “You call this living? What do you say we declare this one a draw?”
Scott blinked heavily. His vision was fading, and he found himself locked on DeHaven’s gaze, on the kindness that seemed to glimmer somewhere behind his eyes. Suddenly, the rifle in his hand weighed fifty pounds. No, seventy-five. It was slipping from his grasp.
“Go ahead and let it drop, kid. It doesn’t have to be like this.”
Over to his left—to his broken side—Scott saw movement that startled him. A man bounded toward them through the snow, wildly waving his arms and shouting. The man looked familiar, but for the life of him, Scott couldn’t make out the words.
“Gun.”
That’s what it was. He was saying, Gun. But what about it? I’ve got a gun, Scott thought.
Then he understood. “Dad,” he whispered. His dad had shot Isaac. Way to go. What was he doing here? And what about the gun?
“Watch out!” Brandon yelled.
For what? Gun.
Isaac produced the pistol from nowhere—a pocket maybe—and Jesus, did he move fast. Scott saw it as a blur, a swift movement of the hand and a telltale shift in posture.
Scott pulled the trigger on his rifle. He heard the shot, but he also heard himself howling again. The recoil reverberated through his body, rattling the shattered bones in his shoulder. When he saw the sky, he knew that he was falling.
But he never felt the impact.
August
40
SCOTT HATED THE SCARS MORE THAN ANYTHING. According to the doctors, they never would tan correctly. In time, the withered look of the arm, the result of four months of immobilization, would bulk up and improve, but the damn scars would always be there, a road map of torn flesh to remind him of one terrible week in February.
He wasn’t going to let it get to him, though. He’d spent his sophomore summer enjoying the swimming pool just as he always had. If a little scar tissue grossed people out, then that was their problem, not his. Piss on ’em all.
Today, though, had been too hot even for the pool. With three weeks left before the start of his junior year, he’d slept till noon this morning, then spent an hour watching the Cartoon Network—his one major holdout from childhood. Like it or not, he was hooked on Dragonball Z.
Scott’s music was the real long-term casualty from his ordeal. At first it was because of the immobilized arm and the weakness that followed, but now he was past all of that. In fact, his physical therapist encouraged guitar riffs as a means to speed recovery—anything to get the fingers of his left hand moving.
Sitting now in the family room, Scott went through the motions of “Enter Sandman” from memory, with the amp turned way down. If it had been anyone else playing, it would have sounded okay, but Scott was used to being better than okay. Much better. He knew that it would all come back, but he didn’t know if he wanted to work that hard. The heavy metal that used to rock his soul seemed somehow trivial nowadays. The music in his head had turned sad.
The doorbell rang straight up at three o’clock. He considered ignoring it, but given the number of visitors they typically got during an average day—say, zero—curiosity got the best of him and he peeled himself away from the television.
The man in the suit startled him. It was one of those faces he knew he knew, but couldn’t quite place. It reminded him of bad times, though.
“Hi,” Scott said. He didn’t bother to open the screen.
The man in the suit nodded his greeting. “You’ve got new hair,” he said.
Scott shifted self-consciously and touched his hair. It wasn’t the wild mop that it used to be. And it was dark blond.
“I don’t know if you remember me or not,” the visitor continued. “Special Agent Sanders, Secret Service.”
“I remember you,” Scott said. He wanted the man to leave.
“Can I come in?”
“No. What do you want?”
It wasn’t the answer Sanders had been expecting. “Well, actually, I came to show you a picture.”
“Of what?”
Sanders gave an exasperated sigh. “Please, Scott? It’ll only take a minute.” After a second or two of indecision, he added, “I promise.”
Hesitantly, Scott opened the screen and stepped aside.
“Your dad home?” Sanders asked.
“He took my mom to physical therapy.”
“How’s she doing?”
“They say she’ll be a hundred percent by Christmas. What do you want?”
Clearly, the agent had wanted this to go more smoothly. Sighing again, he reached into the inside pocket of his suit coat, and pulled out a single snapshot. He handed it to Scott. The picture showed a man and his wife and three children. It was a goofy picture, obviously posed at a summer place in the mountains somewhere, with the kids in funny poses, and the mother and father wearing Groucho Marx noses and mustaches.
“Who are they?” Scott asked.
“A friend of mine works for the marshal’s service,” Sanders explained, “and I called in a favor from him.”
Scott’s eyebrows knitted together and he shook his head. “I don’t get it.”
“The marshals run the witness protection program. You know what that is, right?”
Scott shot a look that said, “Give me a break.”
“Of course you do. Well, this is the family you saved by killing Isaac DeHaven.”
Scott felt his face flush. “What?”
Sanders smiled, and for the first time, Scott saw that there might actually be a nice man somewhere under that suit. “It’s a long story, most of it classified, but the man in that picture testified against some bad men a few years ago.”
“The Agostini family,” Scott prompted. He hated the patronizing “bad men.” What was he, eight?
“Exactly. Well, the story that DeHaven told you was actually this guy’s story. Only difference was, DeHaven was the man gunning for him.”
“For five hundred thousand dollars, right?”
Sanders’s face lit up and then he laughed. “Five hundred thousand? Is that what he told you? Try two million. This was the contract of a lifetime. Kill the family and retire to wherever you want to go.”
The very thought of it made Scott’s head spin. “Holy cow.”
“Indeed.” He reached for the picture. “Sorry, I need this.”
Scott pulled it away. “I never heard from anyone who those guys were. The ones we dumped in the well.”
Sanders shook his head dismissively. “They’re no one you need to worry about.” He beckoned for the photo again.
“So, they weren’t FBI?”
“They definitely were not FBI.”
“So, who—”
“I need you to give me back the photo.”
/> And with that, Scott realized that there would be no answer. He looked at the faces one more time before handing over the picture. “How do I show my dad?”
“Tell him about it. If he wants to see it, have him give me a call. Your mom, too, if she’s interested.” Sanders pulled a business card from his coat pocket and handed it over.
Scott studied the card, unsure what to say. “Isn’t it kind of weird, you doing this?” Scott asked.
“Weird? How?”
“You’re Secret Service. I thought you protected presidents and stuff. Why are you showing me witness protection pictures?”
Sanders smirked, obviously a little surprised that the kid had caught on. “Well, the marshals are grateful and they wanted you to know. They also figured that maybe you’d feel better dealing with a familiar face.”
Scott nodded. That made sense, he supposed. “Thanks,” he said, and Sanders let himself out. He watched the agent clear the front porch, then stepped out after him. “I’m fine, by the way,” Scott said.
Sanders looked confused. “Excuse me?”
“I said I’m fine. You asked about my mom, but didn’t ask about me. I’m fine.”
The agent nodded. “Good. That’s good to hear. I’m glad.”
“But you knew that already, didn’t you?” Scott pressed, and Sanders grew uncomfortable. “You guys have been watching us.”
Sanders smiled. “I only watch presidents and stuff,” he said. “The marshals protect other people. Take it up with them.”
“You mean, if I see them?”
“Yeah, Scott,” Sanders said, walking away. “Take it up with them if you see them.”
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