He only knew he had to move, and move fast.
He rushed back into the banquet hall, grabbed his jacket, and was about to speak, when Bill Bragg spoke up first.
“I don’t know if it’s important, Keith,” the coach said. “But I asked Ken today if he’d been called about this meeting. And he said no.”
Keith frowned and held up a hand. “Everyone please stay out here. Why don’t you go to the lounge, relax and have a drink. Run a tab on me, David.”
Everyone thought that was a good idea, but Keith was already gone.
Krista clambered over into and across the rider’s seat and, using her left hand, opened the door. She climbed out, got her feet under her, and looked back toward the road. Down the drop-off came a figure, vague under the cloudy sky. Then the clouds moved and moonlight lit him momentarily, like a strobe light, just long enough to reveal Ken Stock, in a brown leather jacket over the tie and khakis he’d no doubt worn when he stood before his students at GHS today, telling them what poetry to like.
But in class the teacher wouldn’t have been holding in his fist a butcher knife, which under another strobe of moon gleamed and reflected and winked at her. The blade wasn’t long, maybe six inches, but it lacked the curve of most such knives, its point sharp.
He continued down the incline, not moving fast, because it was too steep to risk that, with clusters of snow here and there. She couldn’t use her right hand, the sprain making it useless, the fingers uncooperative, and when she reached over with her left to her holstered Glock, she fumbled with the self-locking strap, couldn’t work it, and then he was almost down the incline, knife in his fist held shoulder high, his eyes unblinking and zeroing in on her.
The trees were close. They didn’t offer much brush for shelter, only occasional pines among the mostly naked oaks, but if she could get in deep enough, she might tuck behind a trunk with the heft for hiding. Her feet crushed frozen remainders of snow, her boots snapping twigs and crinkling long-dead leaves.
She could hear him behind her.
He wasn’t moving as quickly as she was. The moon had found its way around the cloud cover, painting the world a blue-gray ivory now. She needed the clouds to win long enough for her to stop running and take cover and be able to get at her damn gun.
Into the woods she went.
Like Cinderella before her.
And she had been Red Riding Hood, hasn’t she?
Keith, at the wheel of the Impala, had no idea what to expect. He only knew that Stock had lured Krista out this way, that Stock had not been home when she called but somewhere presumably close, since the bastard knew about the gathering of suspects.
And he hadn’t been able to raise Krista on her cell. More damn voice mail.
He didn’t have a weapon. He’d maintained his conceal-and-carry permit, but without a gun on his hip, he might as well not have renewed the damn thing. He should have gone back to his old habit of carrying even when he was off duty, only retirement had seemed the end of that — when Krista brought him on to this case, though, with a crazy goddamn killer loose, he should have been smart enough to use his gun for something other than self-pitying thoughts of suicide.
The hell of it was, he didn’t know whether to drive fast or slow. His daughter was in danger and all he could do was swiftly scan the road and the left and right, and try to think through the pounding of his heart in his ears.
Then there it was.
Up ahead, at right, on the wrong side of the road, parked at a half-ass angle, a white Ford Edge. Keith pulled over, the two cars nose to nose, and got out and came around.
Banged-up some at the bottom of the ditch was the Toyota — had it rolled and landed upright? Nobody was on the steep downward slope, then perhaps a hundred yards leading to, and into, the trees, a thickness of forest made thin by winter. The ground was mottled with snowy remnants, but until the moon took hold of the cloud-streaked sky, and lighted the earth up for him, Keith hadn’t seen the footprints — two sets of them.
Wide-spaced — running.
Closer-together — striding.
The tracks took him to the brink of the trees, where he stopped to call it in.
“Officer in trouble,” he told the sheriff’s department dispatcher.
Tucked behind a tree now, her back to it, she used her left hand, her good hand, to pat her pockets for the cell phone; but it wasn’t there — she’d lost it in the rollover.
Never mind, she told herself. The gun. The gun is the thing.
She worked her left hand over and released the locking hood on the holster, which took pushing down on the gun butt and rotating the weapon to release — not easy with the left hand for a Glock holstered on the right hip.
But she managed it.
Breathing hard, yet in control, she turned to face the tree trunk. She peeked around. She listened.
She heard nothing.
Was he gone? Had he given up? Was he the fleeing one now? Surely Stock knew killing the cop looking for him would serve no rational purpose.
Or was rationality even a factor now?
Was he, as her father had put it, devolving and accelerating? Was madness all he had now? Or did he think by stopping her that he might buy himself a few hours to make a better escape?
She listened.
Could she risk moving out of these woods?
She thought of another poem, about deep, dark woods, and promises to be kept before sleep could come...
Now that was a poem Mr. Stock would have approved.
She listened for footsteps, heard nothing, nothing, nothing... then a crunch of snow and snapped twigs and she spun and there he was, his expression as blank as the blade he raised at her, unchanging as it came down.
She moved to her right, protecting her chest but sacrificing her left arm, somewhat, the blade catching mostly her thermal jacket, though she felt the wetness of the wound. The shock of it, though, had sent her arm reflexively to the right and the Glock flew somewhere, thunking in the night.
She ran, barely keeping her balance.
She could hear her pursuer behind her now, crunching along in the stocking feet she’d glimpsed. He’d taken his shoes off to creep up on her.
The better to see you with, my dear.
She ran now, back the way they’d come, some logical part of her mind saying rescue might be on the way by now, her car in the ditch, the parked Ford on the wrong side of the road... maybe help would come from that direction... but help might not come, so her route included where she’d unintentionally tossed the Glock...
Keith could hear the movement.
Feet on frozen clumps of snow, branches snapping, leaves crinkling, and he was so close now he could hear the heavy breathing, like an obscene phone call, two people participating, his daughter and the man after her.
He thought he’d misjudged but then finally saw Krista and the teacher, and found he was coming at them at an angle. His daughter seemed to be leading her attacker back toward the ditch and the road. Stock didn’t discern the difference between the footsteps of stalked and stalker until Keith was almost on him.
Stock’s blank expression distorted into rage and the knife was raised very high when Keith tackled him, taking him down between two trees onto brittle snow that cracked like little bones. Bigger bones within Keith, that busted rib and its bruised brothers, proved they could push their demands through even the best painkillers and he was screaming when the son of bitch squirmed out of his grasp.
Then Stock was on his feet, Keith on the ground, a few yards separating them. The killer, butcher knife high, began to close the distance.