by Ilsa J. Bick
Turning away, she again wondered what to do with him. Mark was a problem that wasn’t going away. Maybe gag him again? Shoot him up with more sedative? He had to have stuff in his own medic’s bag. If she rolled him under the bed, that would get him out of the line of fire, which she most sincerely hoped didn’t happen. At the very least, a cursory glance through a window would show only an empty room.
She was still thinking about this as she shook out the IPC, laying the straps on the floor. This was going to be the really tricky part. If she were going to carry both Tien and Daisy, she didn’t have room for a lot of other gear. She could take the guns and ammo, a fanny pack with the bare minimum just in case she got stuck out in the woods—which she really, really hoped wouldn’t happen—and water, but that was about it. She didn’t kid herself about how far she might really get loaded down with the girl and her dog, but if what she hoped happened did, she might not be lonely for too much longer.
The time, the voice urged. You’re cutting this close.
A peek at her watch confirmed that. T-minus fifty-five minutes, the seconds draining away like sand through an hourglass.
Mark was still snoring, the sound like a buzz saw. She would leave him to the very last. Should she just jab him now, get the drug in him while he slept? It was a tempting thought. Yes, right after she dressed Tien. She’d take out the girl’s IV last of all. Oooh, what about laying Mark out on the cot? That would work, too, wouldn’t it? That might work even better. Except…her mind bounced like a Mexican jumping bean between possibilities, she levered Tien into a sit...except anyone peeking in any one of the two windows on this side of the room could parse the deception. Mark was a big guy. Maybe if I cover him up just so, she thought as she let Tien sag against her, the girl’s head resting on Sarah’s left shoulder, if I tuck up his legs—
Tien moaned.
Sarah’s breath hung in her throat. “Honey?” She pulled back, brushing Tien’s long black hair from her face. “Tien, are you awake?”
In response to the sound of her voice, the girl’s head lolled as if trying to locate where Sarah was. Cupping the girl’s jaw, she held Tien’s face steady. “Tien? Can you hear me?”
The girl’s throat moved in a swallow. Her lids parted; her eyes roamed then fixed on Sarah’s face. A look of fear shivered through her features.
“Hey.” Sarah put on a reassuring smile. “It’s okay. I’m a friend. You’re—” She broke off at Daisy’s insistent braying at the door and winced. Crap, sound traveled in the mountains. Why hadn’t she remembered that? If those guys were as close as she thought they were, they’d know. Was that a bad thing?
At Daisy’s braying, Tien gave a little mewling cry of alarm. “It’s fine. It’s just my dog. Hang on, sweetie,” she said as she eased Tien back onto her pillow. The girl’s eyes were wide and glistened with fear. “Relax, I’m going to let them in and then we got to move you.”
The girl mewled again, but Sarah was already up, crossing to the front door. “Hold on, Daisy.” She pulled open the door, pushed the screen, which bawled as high and loudly as a coyote’s cry. Why had she never taken care of this before? Why are you even thinking about this now? So much left to do—get Tien situated, get Mark into position, get herself into—
Because you’re tired, the voice said as Daisy drunk-staggered through the door. Time’s running out, and you think you won’t make it.
True. “Poor little honey,” she crooned, squatting down to ruffle the dog’s ears. Off-balance, Daisy slumped to the floor and gave an enormous yawn. She should put the dog into her bed; Daisy would probably fall asleep faster that way.
Behind her, the girl mewled again.
“Coming, Tien, hang on.” Still on her knees, she spotted a black blob prancing over snow. “Soldier!” she said in a stage whisper. She didn’t want to yell, if there was even an outside chance the bad guys were ahead of schedule. “Soldier, come!”
The big dog’s head came up and then he stiffened. Despite the gloom, she saw that quite clearly. Oh crap. The guys were already coming up the bluff? “Soldier!” she called again. “Come! Come—”
The dog took off, eating up distance, running full-out, his legs churning so fast clouds of snow flew as if the animal were a huge plow carving a path. Except he wasn’t charging for the bluff.
He was streaking toward her.
“Soldier?” Puzzled, she half rose from her crouch. “What—?”
Tien mewled again at the same moment there was the slightest scrape of metal against metal and then the creak of a floorboard, and Sarah finally registered that a certain sound, so monotonous and regular she’d relegated it to the background as so much white noise, was gone.
Oh. A stone of dread in her stomach. Shit.
Still on the balls of her feet, she pivoted, already certain of what she would see. She wouldn’t have been disappointed to be proven wrong.
Only she wasn’t.
Chapter 10
Mark towered. He hadn’t bothered wiping snot from his shirt. Yellow crusts clung to his moustache. Limp curls of tape still fluttered at the nape of his neck, but there was none around his hands where she’d lashed his wrists, bound with a zip tie, to a bed leg. No zip ties, either.
But he did have her cast-iron poker clutched in a fist.
In the two seconds she had, everything clicked into place. She’d been right; the bed had moved; that’s why she had to keep stepping around his legs. While she’d left him alone, Mark, a strong man, must have worked the bed up and down, up and down, until the tape binding his wrists to the bed leg gave. As he worked, he kept an eye on her, too, because he could see the tower and her headlamp through a window. She’d cut tape from his mouth so he could breathe; that may or may not have been an act, not that it mattered.
And I left the scissors on the crate by the bed. Once he was free, either he wormed over and then used the scissors on the zip tie around his wrist, or made like an acrobat, tucked his legs so he could swing his arms to the front, and then done the same thing. She’d only glanced in as he snored—another fake-out—and hadn’t bothered to check.
Time sped up. Soldier was at the foot of the porch, but he wouldn’t make it into the cabin in time to save her.
“Fucking bitch.” His eyes, as engorged as a bull’s maddened by a picador’s lance, brimmed with rage. “You fucking—”
The poker axed down, fast. Crying out, she got one arm up just in time. The iron hit with a solid thwack! Pain exploded in her right forearm. Fiery needles raced for her hand and streaked to her shoulder. She couldn’t tell if the arm was broken. There was no time. She tumbled left as Mark took a giant stride and slammed the door just as Soldier leapt for the screen. There was a thud as the dog crashed into solid wood. The door shivered but didn’t give.
There was a sharp yap and then Mark howled as Daisy battened onto an ankle. “Damned dog!” Grabbing Daisy by the scruff of the neck, Mark jerked, hard. Already punch-drunk, the little dog lost her grip. Cursing, Mark hurled the tiny animal across the room. Daisy smashed against a wall then slithered to the floor in a loose-limbed heap.
Daisy! As much as she wanted to go to her dog, Daisy had given her the gift of a few seconds. Scrambling to her feet, Sarah lunged for the table. Her parka was there, the Glock in a pocket, and so was Mark’s rifle, his knife. But she was slow, off-balance, her right arm hanging uselessly by her side, the nerves on fire.
“Oh no you don’t!” Mark’s hand closed in her hair just as her left hand latched onto the table’s edge. The can opener, cans, Hank’s book clattered to the floor. Slinging her around, he sent her spinning away like a bolo. Her back slammed against a wall and sent her breath gushing from her lungs in a sickening rush. Her knees wobbled as her vision blinkered white. There was a watery smash as an old-fashioned metal hurricane lamp jumped from a sill, jarred from its metal peg, the squat vanilla-scented candle she often lit because the light was so cheery and the scent so homey rolled a few feet across the floor.
Lunging, she hooked Soldier’s food bowl with her left hand and spun it in a backhanded Frisbee throw. Boots crunching over broken glass, Mark batted it away with a hand, almost like shooing a fly. Snatching up another food bowl, she threw it and then followed with the metal frame of the hurricane lamp. This, he swatted with the poker, almost seeming to square up. There was a whirr as the poker cleaved air and then a sharp ting that reminded her, insanely, of a ball connecting with an aluminum bat for a home run. Her head wouldn’t sound that way. Her right arm was starting to wake up, and she tried crawling, her body slithering over glass that nipped her arms, bit at her knees. Cut her palms. When the poker crushed her skull, there would be a crack as bone fractured, sure, but that would turn sodden fast, and then it would be like someone taking a hammer to an overripe cantaloupe.
“I’m going to really enjoy this.” Mark’s fist closed in her hair again. Hauling her upright, he slammed her up against the wall and thrust his face into hers. “I’d love to play a little while.” His breath stank of old snot and rancid food. “But I’m afraid you and I don’t—”
And then he was screeching, screaming in a high-pitched wail like an animal. He staggered. The poker clattered to the floor as his hands flew to his face—and the dagger of glass protruding from his left eye.
“Guh!” Reeling, panting, and blowing in articulate splutters, Mark swayed back. His hands were at his face, the fingers curled to claws as they went for his eyes but then only hovered, fingers twitching like the spastic legs of dying spiders. Blood coursed and pulsed down his left cheek, mingling with a sludge of eye-jelly that dribbled from his jaw. “Arurgh!”
She watched, sick, pulse roaring, her left hand singing from where the lamp’s glassy shard had sliced her flesh. Go for the eyes, her self-defense instructor said. Works every time.
Yes, but now what? In novels, stab someone in the eye with a pen or pencil or knife, and they died. She wasn’t a doctor, but vet schools had a forensics curriculum, too. That stuff about dying if you made eyeball shish-kabob? There’s a reason it’s called fiction.
“Awwwrr!” Mark was blowing again, shaking his head like a dog that’s gotten ahold of something nasty. Fat red drops of blood flew. She heard the sizzle as several hit the woodstove.
By the time she remembered the Glock in her pocket, it was too late.
He came at her. He seemed to have forgotten he could just turn around, grab the rifle, and blast her to kingdom come. But he could be forgiven for not thinking straight—and even half-blind, he was faster than he had any right to be.
Bumbling backward, she saw the woodstove out of the corner of an eye, felt its heat, glimpsed the pot of water she always kept at a near boil.
She screamed as she grabbed the cast-iron handle which, like the pot, was blisteringly hot, and then she flung both because she couldn’t hold on. The water gushed forth in a huge wave and then Mark was gurgling, bellowing, falling to his knees. She looked down as he writhed, curled on his side like a grub. The glass dagger in his eye winked in the woodstove’s weak light.
There was a mewling sound behind her. The blanket was puddled on the floor, with the thin nylon rope she and Mark had strung over the cabin’s open joints to hang the blanket coiled alongside like a dead worm. On the cot, Tien had her back pressed against the wall. Her eyes swam with terror.
Mark bellowed again, a hideous sound that would carry because the woods are usually so damned quiet.
You have to do something. Her voice, Pete’s, the two of them as one. Look at the time.
00:50:15.
Yes, she had to do something. It was way too late, too soon. The cabin’s floor was strewn with glass, bowls, Mark’s knife, utensils she didn’t remember being swept from the table. Hank’s book lay with its covers open, like the wings of a broken bird. The sound of harsh, hard, near-hysterical barks faded in. Soldier, at the door. He’d probably been going crazy the whole time and she hadn’t noticed. Across the room, Daisy was still. She couldn’t tell if the little dog was breathing. God, was she dead? She should go to her dog, but it was as if her boots were concrete or the floor had turned to quicksand.
Mark was whimpering now; the exposed skin of his forearms and face, his neck, was an angry, ugly, lobster-red and already beginning to swell and blister. Blood still flowed from his ruined left eye. From the way his right eyelid seemed glued together, she wondered if she’d poached that eye and blinded him for good.
Mark would not stop. Even now, he might find a way, something she couldn’t risk. And she had to remember—he’d killed Hank.
For some reason, her eyes clicked to the Sandford novel, a book about a woman killer on the run. She hadn’t thought the story was preposterous. She’d actually gotten into it because the idea was so foreign to who she was. Well, had been. Was becoming?
Because that old saying was right. Truth was stranger than fiction.
She went to the table. Selected what she needed to end this. End Mark.
And then she did.
Chapter 11
Sarah was wrong on two counts.
First, the bad guys were late by a good hour. Something she also noticed—they all wore winter camo. Mark hadn’t, but these guys were ready for operating in snow and in a manner which ensured they couldn’t be easily spotted.
The other thing she got wrong: there were three, not four. A lone figure, backpack snugged into place and armed with a rifle, was working his way up the normal approach trail. The other two, both packing the same skeletal-looking sniper rifles as Mark, were just at the edge of the bluff where she wouldn’t be looking and couldn’t see them from where she was supposed to be even if she tried. So, the plan of attack she’d imagined was correct, just minus a guy.
She keyed Mark’s radio, set to Channel 21.8. “H-hello?” She kept her voice to a tremulous whisper. She banked on at least one of them monitoring the same channel through which she’d made contact before. “Hello, is...is th-that you?”
The guy on the trail stopped dead. Through the scope on Mark’s rifle, she watched him mutter something into his set. Talking to the other guys? Moving the scope, but carefully because she didn’t want to cause a movement they might see or have the scope catch a wink of sun, she did a quick peek. Yes, one of the men was talking back. Damn, she was tempted to punch up Channel 8 and listen in, but she couldn’t afford to mess this up.
She decided to press the issue. Make them move on her schedule. I’m in charge. “Hello?” She injected a note of mounting fear. Not that hard, actually. She had to be right on the money with this. “Are you there? Hello?”
“I’m here. It’s okay, Dr. Grant.” The guy on the trail—she would bet good money it was Lambert—looked toward the house. “Where are you? We heard that dog. That sounded like trouble. What happened?”
Soldier had been outside more than an hour ago. So they had been on time, but doing recon before making a move. She wondered how much they’d heard. Lambert hadn’t mentioned hearing any guy screaming as his eye got popped and his face parboiled.
“Mark’s in the house,” she said, knowing she wasn’t answering the question, but two could play at this game. “I couldn’t stay there. He’s crazy! He has a gun! He tried to kill me!” Okay, now she’d given him valuable information. If she were Lambert, he’d keep her talking.
“Where in the house?” Ducking his head, Lambert dropped to a knee, took a quick look right and left. Scoping out cover in case anyone started shooting. From long experience, she knew what his view was. The trail was steep there. Only four days ago, she’d seen Hank coming, first the bob of his hat then his head and shoulders, and finally the rest of him, like a scene from a movie where the hero comes home at long last to his lady love. Lambert would
have only a partial view of the east slope of the cabin’s roof and the southeast corner of the main room. She’d made sure to put plenty of splits in the woodstove’s firebox, figuring the chug of gray smoke couldn’t hurt. “Where is he in relationship to the front door?” Lambert asked.
“Uhm…on the floor next to the door.”
“On the floor? Why? Which side?”
“Which side? I don’t know.” An exasperated note. “Let me think.” She waited a beat. She was rattled after all. She wasn’t supposed to remember everything. “Uhm...to the right.”
“You’re sure.”
“Yes, yes, I am. Like I said, he’s low, on the floor. Oh, and he’s got that gun, too. It’s not normal, either. It’s all stripped-down.”
“Why does he have the rifle? Does he know about us?”
“Maybe? I…I think he must’ve overheard.” They didn’t know where she’d been when she first contacted them. “He went berserk. He trashed the cabin. There’s glass all over the floor. I’m surprised he didn’t kill me and my dog right then, but—”
Lambert interrupted. “What about the girl? Is she all right?”
Thanks, asshole, I’m fine, too. “I think so? I don’t know. I had to get out!”
Lambert craned. From his vantage point, he couldn’t see the plateau or the woodpile, the shed, the outhouse. Only the tower’s cab would be visible, but the angle was wrong and he wouldn’t be able to see inside. “Where are you?”
This was it. She pulled in a steadying breath. “No. I’m in the tower. I took my dog and we’re in the tower.”
“The tower? You took your dog?”
At the sudden, hard note of suspicion, she realized her mistake. Soldier had been the one barking, not Daisy. Big dogs sounded like, well, big dogs. “One of them. I have two. A beagle and a shepherd. I took Daisy. I couldn’t take Soldier. He’s too big and the steps are so steep and icy and...” She let herself blubber a little. “I turned him loose.”
