Silence fell, and they all turned to look at him.
“The other unit hasn’t moved. At all.”
FIFTY-FIVE
The rain let up. Donovan slept. I felt too claustrophobic to stay inside the tent. I also didn’t like being unable to see who might be approaching. So I rolled up the long legs of the pants I had borrowed from Donovan, tucked the.22 back in my jacket pocket, then quietly opened the tent and stepped out.
The ground was muddy and footing treacherous, but I had my hands free to help keep my balance.
Although the air was cold and damp, it wasn’t so cold that it had snowed or hailed or given us sleet. In the aftermath of the storm, the forest was beautiful. The clouds had cleared almost as quickly as they had arrived. The wind was dying down now. I could hear a thousand droplets falling off leaves and branches onto other leaves and branches, onto stones, onto the rain fly. The pants I had put outside the tent were soaked but somewhat cleaner.
There was still light left. I didn’t have a watch, but it looked as if it was late afternoon. With the helicopter nearby-Frank nearby-it wasn’t hard to imagine that we might survive. I felt my mood lighten, until I caught sight of Parrish’s corpse.
He had been the monster in my life for so long, I wondered if even his death would be enough to allow me to be free from him. I kept telling myself I should feel something. Triumph. Revulsion. Something.
I moved closer, forcing myself to look at what I had done. Even with his swollen face and bruises and ligature marks and gaping chest wounds, I could not pity him.
Someone else would. I’ve worked in the news business long enough to know that, no matter how despicable and depraved an individual may be, there will always be someone out there who is able to feel genuine pity for him. And probably someone who wants to start an online fan club and propose marriage to him, too.
He’s all yours, ladies.
I felt a kind of hysterical giggle bubbling up in me, put my hand over my mouth, and tried to settle down. I recognized it for the need to have some relief from stress and fear and anger that it was, and clamped down hard on it. Plenty of time for inappropriate laughter when all this was over.
I took some calming breaths and realized that I should search his pockets. There might be useful items besides the ammo I had found before the storm. I had seen him use a cell phone back at the desert warehouse. Cell phone signals were often nonexistent in the mountains, but there were towers in unexpected places.
I bent over him and forced myself to think only of his parka, not the corpse inside it. I found the key to the Forester in one pocket. I found the strange knife and took that. He had a canteen, but I couldn’t bear the thought of drinking out of it. Maybe Donovan would want it. I shuddered.
Okay, maybe the cell was in an inside pocket. I tried not to be squeamish, but I know I was making a face when I took hold of the parka’s zipper.
My own hood blocked my view of my surroundings, and I was intent on the unpleasant task before me, so I did not know that Kai Loudon had approached from behind me until, at the very last moment, I saw his shadow.
I was in the worst possible position to defend myself, bent over, hands down, feet on a slippery surface. I half turned and saw that he had a short, thick piece of branch in his hand, and he swung it hard toward my head. I raised my arms in a reflexive protective movement and heard my right forearm break even as he continued to follow through. The arm and the parka provided a small amount of protection or he might have killed me with that one blow.
I fell on top of Parrish and rolled, head aching, stunned from the wallop to my skull, arm on fire. There was no coordination to my movements-the world was spinning. He dropped the club, knelt down on my back, and quickly searched my pockets until he found the gun, the knife, and the garrote, and threw them into the woods. I heard him grunt with pain as he took hold of my parka with both hands and pulled it down over my shoulders, trapping my arms.
I screamed.
He cuffed me hard on the side of the head, yelled, “Shut up!” then stood. He pulled his gun from his own parka and ordered me to stand up. He pushed me forward, almost at a run, into the trees.
I heard Donovan frantically call my name, stumbled, fell, and felt Kai land hard on top of me. Hitting tree roots with my face probably hurt, but the pain of his landing on my arm hurt so much it blinded me to any other source of agony. He cried out as well but brought me to my feet again, holding hard to the parka, which still pinned my arms. He held the gun in his injured hand-however much his arm hurt, he still had a grip-and pressed it into the small of my back. We slipped and slid but made progress.
We came to a small clearing and stumbled again. This time he let go, letting me fall hard to the ground, and yelled something I couldn’t begin to understand through the haze of pain in my head and arm. He winced and switched the gun to his good arm.
He told me to strip, and when I didn’t obey, he moved closer. I fought with kicks and my good hand. I hurt his left knee and even managed to scratch one of his eyes and bloody his nose, but every time he wanted to subdue me, he just pushed on the broken arm. He was strong and filled with rage. He hit me with the gun, nearly causing me to pass out, then pocketed it and started pulling off my clothes.
Think!
But it was damned hard. He had my parka off-the removal was excruciating-and in seconds had torn off my shirt, pausing now and again to strike me with his fist, as my muzzy-headed efforts at defense did little to slow him. My strikes became fewer and even less accurate. I grabbed at anything I could-his hair, his bootlaces-and did little more than untie his shoes. He hit me on the face again and again, slaps and punches, and pulled at my arm if I put up too much of a fight. He yanked off my pants-Donovan’s too-loose-on me pants-and pressed me into the ground as he reached down between us-unzipping his own pants.
Think!
“I killed Nick because he killed your mother,” I said.
He froze. His eyes narrowed.
In that one instant of letting up his assault, he heard exactly what I heard-the baying of a bloodhound.
Not Bool, I thought. Bool was trained not to bay. But a dog. Other people. Voices. More than one. At a distance, but if I could hear them-
“Help!” I shouted, earning myself another fist in the face before Kai stood and then grabbed my parka and my pants-Donovan’s pants-and pulled up his fly.
He sat on a log, hurrying to retie his boots-a task he grimaced through as he used his injured arm. The sadistic asshole I should have drowned yesterday, while I had the chance, was getting away.
I felt a surge of rage so pure it masked the pain. I staggered to my feet.
He was bent over his bootlaces, but he noticed me. I kept staggering as I moved closer to him-it wasn’t all pretense.
He smiled at me. “Don’t worry, I’ll find you and give you everything I wanted to give you today, you cunt.”
I really hate the c word.
I leaned forward, as if I was about to fall. Instead, I grabbed his hair in a death grip with my left hand and yanked like hell on it, swinging his head down as I brought my right knee up fast and hard into his face, then extended my right leg and kicked full force into his balls. When he doubled over screaming, I gave it to him again in the teeth with that same knee, let go of his hair, and let him fall to the ground. When he curled up there, I started kicking his kidneys. I circled him, kicking his head and his face and his arms and his ass. Hard. He curled tighter, I kicked harder.
In my mind, I was screaming at him, calling him every filthy name I had ever heard, which was an extensive catalog, but I must not have been doing anything except breathing hard, because I heard-eventually-someone trying to get my attention.