“You’ve got to help me!” he hollered one more time, knowing the gutless creep had probably run off, saving his own skin rather than facing up to his brainless act. He didn’t need his help anyway, he thought, reaching in his shirt pocket for his cell phone.
It was gone.
Oh God, he thought, looking down where he stood. By the reflected glow of the headlight, he saw the end of it sticking a half inch out of the water. It had fallen out when he fell.
He snatched it up and flipped it open.
Dead.
He heard a soft whump behind him, and a sudden orange glow came from beneath the Jeep.
Ignoring the pain in his eye, he started to run along the streambed. If it blew, he’d get a backful of steel.
He cut right, and started scrambling up rocks coated in snow. He reached the road and, crouched low, made a beeline for the far side, slipping as he ran.
The Jeep exploded just as he reached the far ditch. He threw himself facedown on the snow-covered dirt and heard bits of metal fly over his head. Peeking through his fingers with his good eye, he saw the entire forest light up in the glow, the trees and glittering ground between cast in flickering gold.
That’s when he saw him.
In a growth of young birch a man stood watching, as casually as if at a bonfire, his eyes fixed on the burning car, gun held at the ready across his chest. The peak of a camouflaged hunting cap hid his face.
Mark’s insides crawled toward his throat.
What kind of creep would deliberately shoot someone off the road, then hang around watching?
A very dangerous one.
The initial burst of light subsided, throwing the interior of the woods into darkness.
Mark riveted his gaze in the direction where he’d seen the man. Could the guy be waiting to take another shot, the initial one intended to hit him after all? He’d obviously ignored the shouts for help.
No, don’t go overboard here. The man’s hanging around didn’t necessarily mean he intended to fire again or meant to seriously injure him in the first place. The guy could be watching to make sure he got out okay. Probably he hadn’t even expected the car would blow up, and was now shitting bricks, not knowing whether his “prank” had ended up killing someone.
Not that he, Mark Roper, was about to put the asshole’s mind to rest by standing up to show he’d gotten safely away.
Metal groaned as it twisted in the heat, lightbulbs blew apart with loud popping noises, and a sickening perfume of burning paint, melting plastic, and rubber filled the air.
But try as he might, Mark couldn’t ignore the darker possibilities running through his head. Icy rivulets of melted snow dripped down his back, and his eye throbbed more fiercely. The man could be a certified crazy. Having taken a potshot and done this much damage, he might decide to finish off his prey.
Or an even worse scenario: This was no random act, and Mark had been deliberately ambushed.
After all, in Chaz Braden he had an enemy with reason to want him out of the way. But how could that asshole or anyone else have known to lie in wait for him on this road at this time? No one followed him on the way out to Nell’s. There hadn’t been another car on the road.
He continued to stare into the forest. Had the man with the gun seen him run to this hiding spot?
Maybe not. He’d bent low and dashed to the shadows of the ditch before the blast illuminated the place he’d crossed.
But the guy would only have to check around the remains of his Jeep to find boot prints in the snow. What if the idiot took a notion to follow him?
Time to get farther away.
He ran along the ditch. After a hundred yards, repeated spills into a creek that meandered under the snow had him soaking wet. As he put more distance between him and where the man had been in the woods, the wind cut through his clothing, making him shiver. He’d soon be in big trouble with hypothermia if he stayed out in this for very long.
Yet the nearest house was Nell’s, ten miles back, and the first houses at the outskirts of town lay ten miles ahead.
Normally an easy run, he might not make either because of the cold.
His own home was less than three miles away, on the other side of a range of hills to his right. The distance wasn’t any big deal – a forty-minute walk in the city, plus he was in good shape – and the forest would provide cover, both from a pursuer and the wind. But it was across rough country, a trek difficult enough during the day, let alone at night.
He peered up over the edge of the highway.
Not a headlight in either direction. He could easily freeze to death waiting for someone to come along.
He looked over toward the fiery wreckage again. The glowing orb of light encasing it created the impression of a macabre Christmas ornament suspended in the darkness. At the edge of the sphere he saw movement, and the silhouette of the hunter strode across the road.
The man stood a few moments facing the fire, his back to Mark. He was as tall as Chaz Braden, but bulkier. Yet winter clothing under the camouflage clothing could produce that effect. Still cradling the gun, he reached into his outfit, pulled out a hip flask, and took a long drink.
Enough trying to second-guess a creep, especially one who was all boozed up.
Mark turned and, staying low, ran to the woods. A few yards into the trees he found it considerably darker, but could still see the pale surface of the snow on the ground and the trunks of the trees ahead of him. Holding his hands out to ward off any low branches, he pushed deeper, balancing speed with stealth. His only hope would be to get as much of a lead as possible before his attacker found his trail.
Glancing back over his shoulder and through the trees, Mark saw the man’s silhouetted form circle the car, then kneel where tracks would have been. The figure reached into his pocket, and, seconds later, a tiny beam of light shot out from his hand toward the ground.
Mark pressed ahead all the faster.
The floor of the forest sloped steeply upward, and his breathing quickly became labored. The trees overhead were old, big enough to have blocked the sun for the last hundred years, so there was little new undergrowth to ensnare him. But the rocks and wet leaves beneath the snow made traction difficult, and with each step forward he seemed to slide halfway back. Every now and then a branch caught him across the face, and the pain in his injured eye seared as hot as if a live coal were stuck in it.
But up he went, able to use the left eye by squinting the injured one closed. Having adapted to the dark, he could see enough to grab low-hanging branches and pull himself along whenever his feet started to skid.
Taking another glance backward, he saw the man with the rifle following his thin cone of light across the highway toward Mark’s first hiding place.
He kept going up, figuring he was now a hundred and twenty yards from the road and had probably climbed a hundred feet of elevation.
Two ridges lay ahead, each about five hundred feet high with a shallow valley between them, some of it open ground. But if he could reach the first ridge well ahead of the hunter, he could widen his lead going down the far slope, possibly even get out of rifle range. That might discourage his pursuer from following him.
His right eye, tearing profusely, clamped itself so tightly shut in reflex to the pain that he could barely keep his left one open. He had to use the fingers of his left hand to pry the lids apart. Even then he couldn’t manage more than a squint and found his field of vision cut in half.
He tried again to glance behind him. The man, little more than a dark shape in the open snow at the highway’s edge, stood directly below him now and looked right up to where he climbed.
He can’t see me, Mark thought, keeping his panic in check.
His tracker shouldered the rifle and started after him, once more following the thin beam of light, presumably playing it over his footprints.