As noiselessly as I could, with my hair pulled forward to cover my pale face, I slipped out from behind the bookmobile.
Behind me, Denise was still talking to the 911 dispatcher. For the first time, I was glad her voice was so loud. Her talking would focus the shooter’s attention. I could quietly make my way along the trail and carefully sneak up to see who was doing the shooting. All I needed was an identification. All I needed was to see if it was Allison or Shannon or someone I’d never considered.
Because maybe I didn’t know who was shooting at us. Maybe I’d never met this person. Maybe I’d never once checked out his books or answered his questions about how to set up an e-mail account. Maybe this wouldn’t be as bad as I’d thought.
Slightly cheered, I walked slowly across the road and started up the hill. Eyes detected movement like nothing else, so I made no sudden moves and tried not to think about how stupid I was being. On a scale of one to ten, this was probably way on the high end. Eddie would have an opinion on that, but he’d skittered under the bookmobile when I’d opened the carrier door, and I hoped he’d stay there until this was all over, one way or another.
The leaves under my feet were saturated with water, and I was suddenly grateful for all the rain we’d had. Wet leaves were quiet; dry leaves were noisy. Then again, if we hadn’t had so much rain, the road would never have washed out and we wouldn’t be in this mess, so I stopped the efforts of appreciation.
Every few steps I took, I stopped and listened. Denise was still talking, rain was still dripping down, and, unless spontaneous combustion was a dark and soundless reality, whoever had shot at my cat was still on this hillside.
I pressed on, moving ever closer to the shooter, treading quietly up the path, feeling my silent way in the gloom through trees and brush and rocks.
She had to be up here somewhere. Had to be—
Bang!
The rifle fired, and I saw a flash of light. From the end of the gun’s barrel, I realized. By shooting, the shooter had revealed her—or maybe his—location: off to my left and slightly down the hill.
Excellent.
I edged closer. But not too close. All I wanted was a positive identification. I wasn’t hero material. All I wanted was to see who this person was.
I was practically tiptoeing through the forest, which was silly, but I couldn’t stop myself. With my gaze fastened on the spot where I’d seen the flash, I took slow steps closer and closer. I heard the rustle of fabric—the shooter was moving!
Not breathing, I froze solid until there was another rustle and some metallic noises that I couldn’t identify. Something gun oriented, no doubt, and I suddenly wished my self-defense classes from last summer had included working with rifles in the dark.
Then my brain clicked.
Reloading the magazine. The shooter was filling up the rifle’s magazine with new bullets. Which was bad, but there was a good side. Her—or his—attention would be on the work at hand, not on what might be approaching from the rear.
I edged forward, oh, so quietly, breathing slowly and evenly, my skin tingling with tension. Every cubic inch of me was wide awake and alert.
Closer . . .
Just a little closer . . .
There was a plastic-sounding click, and a tiny circle of light appeared. The beam from a tiny flashlight danced around, illuminating the ground, a small pile of bullets, the magazine, the rifle, and a hand gloved in black.
Show me your face, I thought fiercely. Show your face!
The flashlight dropped to the ground and the shooter muttered a low curse. Another black glove reached to pick up the flashlight, and, as it picked it up, the beam skidded across the shooter’s face.
I gasped, loudly enough to be heard.
The shooter picked up the rifle and pointed it in my direction. “Who’s there? Come out right now, or I’ll shoot!”
There was nowhere to run. Nowhere to go. No possible place to hide, and there was a gun pointing straight at me. How could I have been so stupid?
Possibilities flashed through my mind. It was dark. If I ran, there was a good chance the bullets would completely miss me. And there was a good chance there weren’t any bullets in the rifle anyway, with that magazine on the ground. Maybe there was one in the chamber, or maybe there were two magazines. I didn’t know enough about guns to know what was most likely, but I did know I wasn’t going to stand here and get ordered around by the person who killed Roger Slade.
“It’s Minnie, isn’t it?” Allison Korthase said.
I heard a sound behind me, from down low. Not a swish, exactly, but not a rustle, either. Something in between, or maybe a combination. A swistle? Could there be such a thing? And if not, why? More to the point, why was I having such inane thoughts when a gun was pointed at me?
“I know it’s you,” Allison said, her voice growing louder. “Where are you?”
Right. Like I was going to tell her. Do that, and I might as well mark my location with a flare while screaming “Shoot me!”
Allison’s small flashlight beamed into life. “I know you’re there, Minnie. It can only be you. I can still hear Denise down there, yapping away to nine-one-one. I’m so cold,” Allison whined in a Denise-like voice. “I’m so scared. I’m so worried about being killed.” Allison dropped the mimickry. “Like anyone cares.”
The flashlight danced closer to my feet. I edged backward. If I could get a little farther away, I’d make a run for it, bullets or no. In my opinion, which wasn’t exactly expert but was all I had, Allison was ready to kill again, and I needed to get clear of her murderous intentions.
“Come on,” she said impatiently. “I know you’re just a librarian, but there’s no reason for you to be such a scaredy-cat.”
Just a librarian? I opened my mouth to argue the point, but before I could say a word, my retreating heel found a rock and I fell to the ground hard, arms windmilling, the air rushing out of me in a painful “Oof!”
“There you are.” Allison chuckled, and her voice turned snide and sarcastic. “What were you trying to do, run backward? How stupid are you? You’d have thought that someone with a job like yours would be at least a little smart, but here you are, in the woods alone, up against someone like me, who is smart and has a gun. Stupid.” She practically spat the word. “Stupid!”
I’d been pushing myself back, trying to get out of her reach, moving away from where I’d fallen, doing my best not to be stupid, when the swistle noise ran past me and toward Allison, a low, rumbling growl moving along with it.
“Eddie!” I shouted, scrambling to my feet. “No! Get back!”
Allison screamed. “Get it off! Get it off!” The rifle clattered to the ground.
In the last vestiges of the day’s dim light, I could see her waving her arms, flailing at Eddie, who was growling, hissing, and climbing up her back, all at the same time.
I ran forward and scooped up the rifle, momentarily unsure whether to hang on to it or to fling it into the woods, where neither one of us would be able to find it until daylight.
“It’s a bobcat,” she yelled. “It’s a mountain lion. It’s going to kill me! Minnie, get it off!”
She was in a full-blown panic. Allison, I suddenly realized, was afraid of cats. She wasn’t allergic, as she’d claimed to Denise. She was scared.
I turned and placed the rifle behind a tree.
“Minnie!” Her shrieks were becoming tinged with desperation. “You have to do something!”
Oh, I’d do something all right.
“You’re a good boy,” I told Eddie. He was on the back of Allison’s neck, clutching onto the collar of her coat for all he was worth and howling into her ear. “If you can hang on a little bit longer, we’ll be good.”