He was gone.
Just like that, he was gone.
She ran the flashlight along the Ford to gauge the damage. Thin tendrils of smoke were still rising from the corners of the hood, which had lifted like crumpled paper when she hit a tree a few yards back and spun briefly before finally coming to rest. The engine had shut down, though she couldn’t remember if she had done that.
The sound of the sleeping woods was suffocating, with the only out-of-place noise being the slightly chaotic thrumming in her chest.
Then she saw it, and suddenly everything seemed to get instantly better.
There was blood on the hood of the car. A large trail of it slashing from left to right where he had slid across during his escape — not unscathed, after all.
She trained her flashlight back on the woods and smiled.
“You can run, but you can’t hide!” she shouted, just barely able to contain her rising excitement.
Chapter 2
A part of him wanted to laugh. Out loud, even.
LOL, amirite?
How could he not? All his life had been spent chasing and stalking and taking people, and here he was stumbling through the woods (Where the hell am I, anyway?) while bleeding like a stuck pig. He had seen other people lying, sitting, or running while looking like stuck pigs, but seeing himself (or well, as much of himself as he could see in the semidarkness, anyway) was quite the experience.
Not necessarily a good one, unfortunately.
It would be funny if it weren’t so tragic. The younger him wouldn’t have fallen for this; but then again, that was a smarter, quicker, and hungrier him. This present him — the one trying to keep himself from bleeding to death — was older but not necessarily wiser. Most damning of all, he had become overconfident and too pleased with himself.
He had gotten sloppy.
Lazy and old and stupid and sloppy.
What was that old saying? Pride comes before the fall.
Or maybe it was more like, You get old, you get lazy, and you get ambushed by a girl.
He might have actually laughed that time.
Or, at least, a small chuckle, possibly.
He stopped for a moment and took in his surroundings.
What was he doing? He didn’t even know where he was going and was literally bumbling around in the dark. He just had to get away from there, that’s all.
Where did that shotgun come from?
She must have had it in the trunk the whole time. He remembered seeing her diving into the driver-side door and expecting her to reach for the key and try to drive off. It wouldn’t have worked. He was faster, and he would have grabbed her legs before she could even lunge all the way into the vehicle. He was even looking forward to it when he saw her making the leap.
But instead, she had gone for the lever. The trunk lever!
Now that had thrown him off. Big time.
Then the shotgun…
The whole thing wasn’t even supposed to go down this far up the highway. The spot where he had prepared to take her was two miles back down the road. But she had proven too resourceful. He should have known something was wrong the moment he tried to knock her off the road and she didn’t lose control of her vehicle. That should have been his first tip-off. No one drove that well unless they had some training.
Or a lot of training.
All the signs were there; he just hadn’t seen them.
Suckered by a girl. This would be embarrassing if anyone knew what I did with my free time.
He had dismissed the possibility that she was a cop and that all of this was one elaborate sting to catch him. Cops had to follow proper police procedure, like reading you your Miranda rights before they pumped you full of buckshot.
No. He had a feeling this was personal.
A grudge.
Or a vendetta.
Same difference? Maybe. He was hurting too much to start doing the semantics dance right now.
He could imagine telling the boys about how a girl had tricked him. Lured him right into a trap like the big ol’ dummy he was. Because that’s what he felt like at the moment. A big ol’ lumbering, bleeding dumb—
Where was I going again?
No idea. This wasn’t part of the plan. Far, far from it.
There was no doubt about it. He was lost. All the woods looked the same at night, all the trees identical to the million other trees in the area. There were no signs, no hiking trails, and definitely no roads or buildings to help shed light on his current whereabouts. Unlike the spot he had picked out, everything here was new to him.
He was certain of one thing, though: his truck was behind him, and the highway after that. Of course, there was a woman with a shotgun — and, from all signs, the will and skills to use it — between him and freedom.
Nope. That’s definitely not going to work.
Man, he was getting old. Slowing down. About three years ago, he had almost pulled the trigger and called it quits. But no, he had to come back. Because he couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t temper it, no matter how hard he tried. The girls, the one-night stands, even the widow with the kids had only been temporary buffers.
And then she showed up.
Perfect. So, so perfect.
Suckered by a girl.
Well, goddamn.
He had stopped moving some time ago and hadn’t realized it. The root of a tree had caught the tip of his boot and snagged him in place. That drew another short chuckle out of him. The old him wouldn’t have let something as minor as a root sticking out of the ground impede his progress. Then again, the younger him wasn’t bleeding right now.
The blood…
He looked behind him.
Shit. How had he not noticed that before?
Even under the limited moonlight, he could see still-glistening red drops following him all the way from the highway, a long, jagged trail that just about anyone could follow if they had eyes. The leather fabric of his right glove, pressed against the wound in his side, was sloppily drenched with his own blood.
Snap!
His head whipped around. Too fast; a jolt of pain ripped through his body. He swam through it anyway and stared, barely breathing, waiting for the inevitable. Maybe it was just his imagination, but he swore he heard branches snapping from behind him. Had she found him already? Her and that shotgun?
She had the shotgun in the trunk the whole time. Christ, she knew what she was doing, all right.
There was nothing back there.
At least, nothing (no one) that he could see.
Of course, it was so dark…
He trudged on, forcing his legs to move one at a time. He had to keep going because she would be coming. He knew that for a fact. She hadn’t set all of this up to give up now, especially when she had the upper hand. And as hard as it was to admit, she was in control here.
Her and that shotgun of hers…
He gripped the knife tighter, comforted by its presence. Ten inches of magnificent, sharp stainless steel. Fifteen inches in all, with a rubberized metal handle at the end. It was an extremely efficient weapon and easy to toss and replace later from an online store. This one was exactly twenty-four months old. Of course, the knife could have been thirty feet long, and it still wouldn’t make a difference if she caught him.
Who brings a knife to a shotgun fight? You big dummy.
He flexed his hand over the wound. The blood had seeped through the glove material, and it was warm and sticky against his fingers. For some reason, he always assumed his own blood would feel different against his skin, but it was just the same as all the others he had taken in the past.