He began moving toward the origin of the sound. Or where he thought it had come from.
Let me be right. Come on, God, just this once. Have I ever asked you for anything? Besides letting me kill those girls, I mean?
He might have laughed then.
Or cackled.
Or maybe just let out another haggard wheeze.
The truck.
All he had to do was reach it before he bled to death in this godforsaken stretch of abandoned woods. Well, not abandoned, exactly. There was that cabin, and those two hunters clearly knew the area, so maybe they lived around here. Maybe he could find their house or cabin or hideout and rest for a while. Wouldn’t that be ideal?
Now that was worthy of an LOL.
And he would have laughed out loud too, if not for the fresh jolt of pain that made his entire body quiver for a few seconds. Who knew getting shot, then having your nose smashed in, and then getting mauled by a dog could hurt so much?
He did, now.
He pushed on anyway, because there was no other choice.
Keep moving, chum. That’s right, keep moving.
One foot at a time.
One foot at a time…
Whenever he thought he might have gone in the wrong direction, he heard what sounded like vehicles moving in front of him. Not right in front of him, of course — that would have been way too easy — but further away.
Cars.
Or, at least, he thought he was hearing cars. Which didn’t really make a lot of sense. This was a lonely stretch of road that cut through the middle of nowhere. The last piece of civilization was almost twenty miles back up the road, and there wasn’t anything on the other side until twenty-five miles later. That was why he had chosen this area, after all.
Not completely true. The cabin, remember?
Right. The cabin. He hadn’t known it was there until tonight. This wasn’t prime hunting ground, so most people stayed away, which meant those hunters had to have stumbled across the vehicles while they were driving on the highway, but for some reason decided to stop and investigate.
Good Samaritans with rifles. And a dog. Just what he needed.
Pfft.
They had ruined things, not just with the college kids, but with Allie, too.
He still remembered the taste of her sister, Carmen. Everything about her had been perfect. The blonde hair, the blue eyes, and the slender figure. Carmen had been twenty or twenty-one (Which one was it? Can’t remember) when he took her…how long ago now? Too long ago, back when he was still young and new at this. He had been sloppy back then. Was that how the sister tracked him down? Using those early days, finding mistakes he didn’t know he had made?
She was smart, that one.
And feisty. Just my type.
Too bad he’d have to kill her. He would have liked nothing better than to keep her around a little longer, but that wasn’t going to happen. At least, not if he wanted to get out of this with his head still attached to his shoulders.
Now that she’d failed to kill him, he had no doubts she would settle for exposing him. He would have to go on the run. Start all over again somewhere. Maybe Mexico. He was fond of Mexican beer. It tasted like piss, sure, but you could fix that with a little Tabasco sauce…
He found it.
The truck.
It was parked in the woods with the highway in the background exactly where he had left it. The white Ford was also there, with its shattered driver-side window. In the moonlight, he fancied he could actually see his own blood spatter along the hood of the vehicle where he had done his Dukes of Hazzard slide to keep from being perforated by her shotgun blast.
He expected to see all those things, but not the two state troopers.
One uniformed figure was shining a flashlight into the front seat of his truck through the window, while the second one was inside the Ford going through the glove compartment.
He thought about turning and fleeing back into the woods, but then what? He was weak, half-dead, and he wouldn’t have gotten far. At least this way he could beat Allie to the punch. He had been pretty damn convincing with the kids, and he didn’t even know them. These guys, on the other hand, they were his brothers.
Hey, it worked once before…
Beckard stumbled out of the woods, crunching grass under his shoes and making as much noise as possible. The last thing he needed was to get shot again.
The trooper peering into the truck saw him first and shined his flashlight into Beckard’s face while at the same time drawing his sidearm. “Hold it right there, mister!”
Beckard stopped and threw up both hands, even though doing so caused a tremendous tidal wave of pain to wash over him. He gritted his teeth through it and shouted back, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”
The other trooper back-crawled out of the Ford and rounded the hood, his hand resting on the butt of his sidearm. He also shined his flashlight in Beckard’s face before lowering it to Beckard’s right arm, then finally down to his exposed gauze-wrapped side.
“Stay right there until I reach you,” the first trooper said. He stepped closer before a spark of recognition spread across his face. “Holy shit. Is that you, Beckard? Where’s your shirt?”
Beckard lowered his arms and sighed with relief. “Yeah, it’s me, Pratt. Can you guys get me to a hospital? I think I’m about to bleed to death here.”
He sat down on the ground and leaned back against a tree. Gnarled bark pricked at his bare back, but it was nothing compared to the pain coming from the rest of his body, so he easily ignored it.
He was tired. So, so tired.
Pratt and the other state trooper, whom Beckard recognized as Barnes, moved toward him. Barnes was talking into his radio while Pratt crouched next to him and shined his flashlight in Beckard’s face again before lowering the beam to his bare chest, then to the shirt wrapped around his bloody arm.
“Jesus Christ, what the hell happened to you?” Pratt asked.
Yeah, I can definitely make this work…
“There was a woman,” Beckard said. “She’s dangerous, and she has a shotgun…”
Chapter 15
The girl was shaking as Allie removed the duct tape from her mouth, then used the knife she had gotten from the kitchen to cut her free.
“Stay here,” she told Rachel. “The both of you.”
Rachel nodded and scooted over to Wade as Allie did the same to his binds.
He sucked in a large grateful breath, then asked, “Where are you going?”
“After him,” Allie said.
“You’re crazy. That guy’s a maniac.”
“That’s why I’m going after him.”
Rachel was glued to the dog across the room, still sitting next to its owner. If it was aware of their existence inside the cabin, it didn’t show it. She wondered if it knew its master was dead. Or did it think he was just sleeping? How smart was a dog, anyway?
“Should we…” Rachel started to say.
“Leave it alone,” Allie said.
“You saw the way it clamped down on his arm?” Wade said. “I can’t believe he’s still walking around out there after that.”
Allie turned to the window and peered out at the darkness again. Wade was right. Beckard was out there, somewhere. The way he had been bleeding all night, it was a miracle the man was even still alive. If she was lucky, he had fallen unconscious somewhere in the woods not far from here and all she’d have to do was track him down and put him out of his misery.