Allie blocked everything out and focused on the gun.
There!
She practically dived the last few feet, sliding to the floor on her knees in front of the dead man, who sat against the door like he had simply taken a nap. She grabbed the handgun with both hands — not like she had a choice, since her wrists were still bound — and jerked it free from the holster. It came out smoothly, the smell of well-oiled metal against leather filling her nostrils. She inhaled it, thankful to be able to smell anything at all after coughing up so much blood earlier.
Still on her knees, she turned, the finger of one hand fumbling with the side of the weapon for the safety switch. She wasted a precious second staring at Beckard as he staggered toward the window, having somehow dislodged himself from the dog when she wasn’t looking. He was cradling his mauled right arm with his left and looked like a drunk stumbling home after a long night of drinking. Thick patches of blood splattered the floor, leaving a bloody red trail as he backpedaled. The shotgun was on the floor, beyond his reach, and she wondered if he even remembered it through the obvious pain.
Wait. The dog. Where was the dog?
It was on the floor, all the way across the cabin where Beckard had tossed it after somehow having managed to dislodge it. The dog was attempting to right itself, scrambling furiously to find its footing, and would no doubt be hurling itself right back at Beckard to finish the job at any second.
Not if I finish him off first, dog!
Beckard turned and their eyes locked.
For a moment, just a brief moment, she thought he might grin or wink at her, but there was just pain — overwhelming and miserable pain — on his face. His eyes shifted from hers and to the gun in her hand.
She lifted the gun and took aim, squeezing the trigger.
The first bullet must have missed him by only a few inches because Beckard snapped his head around as if he had been shot. She blamed it on her bound hands throwing off her aim.
She started to squeeze the trigger again when Beckard spun around, as if he were doing some kind of absurd pirouette, and dived through the window. Her second shot hit the wall where he had been standing just half a second ago.
No!
Allie stumbled to her feet and ran across the room. She had forgotten about the pain in her gut and the broken ribs. Right now, the only thing that mattered was getting to the window and catching Beckard before he could escape.
She aimed the gun out the window and swept from left to right, looking into the yard, with only the minivan to break the monotony of darkness.
But there was no Beckard.
Through the hard breathing and the dizzying adrenaline surging through her, she managed to spot the thick red drops of blood covering the windowsill, running in a jagged line along the ground outside. The red and black trail curved around the minivan and kept going.
No!
She didn’t dare lower the gun yet, even though she knew without actually knowing that he was gone.
She’d had him, and she had lost him. Again.
She wasn’t sure how long it took — maybe a few seconds, or a few minutes — for her to finally gather herself. Slowly, her breathing stopped coming out in spurts and she became aware of everything around her again.
Allie turned around and almost stepped on the dog. It was jogging briskly toward its master — her, Beckard, and everything else apparently forgotten. She watched it attempt to nudge the hunter awake with its nose, and when that didn’t work, the animal lay down on its stomach and licked the dead man’s hand before it let out what sounded like a soft, sorrowful cry.
Even a dog, she thought, possessed more humanity than Beckard ever would.
Chapter 14
This was it.
The straw that broke the camel’s back.
The end of the road.
The light at the end of the tunnel.
The…
Jesus, he couldn’t even come up with four clichés? If he didn’t know he was in deep shit before, then this pretty much confirmed it. Not being able to come up with four clichés about how up a creek without a paddle he was—
Number four!
He laughed. LOL? Maybe. Or perhaps just a light chuckle at the least. Then again, he might have just opened his mouth and wheezed out some labored breath that had nothing to do with laughing or anything beyond breathing. It was hard to tell at the moment.
He wasn’t even convinced he was actually still alive. All of this could have been a figment of his imagination, something his fevered mind had conjured up just to occupy him as he lay in the front yard of the cabin, dying from his wounds.
Buckshot in the side.
Broken nose.
Right hand…
Did he even have a right hand anymore?
He peeked at it now, not sure he wanted to actually see what was down there, if anything. His hand seemed to still be attached under the khaki shirt he was using as a tourniquet. It looked more like a giant loaf of bread, albeit one that was drip-drip-dripping blood as he trudged through the woods without any real direction. Or a shirt on, for that matter. For some reason, though, he barely felt the cold. He blamed (thanked) his body’s general numbness for that.
Apparently this was his life now — staggering through unknown woods while trying not to bleed to death.
What a life.
At least it was still night out, if the suffocating darkness around him was any indication. And he was far, far from the nearest highway, so all those gunshots probably went unnoticed. It was why he had chosen this area — or, well, the general vicinity, anyway — to do his work in the first place. It was even more desolate two miles down the road where everything would have worked out fine if he had taken her as planned. Of course, he’d had no idea she had come prepared.
Goddamn, she had come prepared!
And yet, things were working out anyway despite all his bungling. He had convinced those college kids (Kids these days are dumber than bags of rocks, amirite?), somehow managed to get the upper hand on Allie (Who’s in charge now, bitch?), and was about to have a little fun with not one, but two people who perfectly fit his ideal type when…
The two hunters.
What was that one of them had said back at the cabin?
“We found your vehicles near the highway! Wanted to see if anyone was hurt and needed assistance!”
The truck.
My truck.
He stopped for a moment and looked around him. Really, really looked around him instead of just stumbling along like a blind fool. He focused on his surroundings for the first time since he had crashed into the woods back at the cabin.
Every tree looked like the other hundred trees he had walked past, and every stretch of ground looked identical to—
I’m lost. I’m so lost.
Christ on a stick.
If he could only find his truck again. His, or the hunters’. Or maybe even Allie’s car. It didn’t matter as long as it worked. All he had to do was get to one of them. That, unfortunately, was easier said than done. Especially out here, at night, with no signs of—
There!
It was the sound of a car moving somewhere in the distance. It came out of the blue, like a sliver of hope, and then it was gone again. But it had been there just long enough — maybe half a second — for him to turn in its direction.
The highway. It was a car driving down the highway.