Mark estimated he had a hundred-and-fifty-yard lead. Not much of an advantage over a bullet. He redoubled his efforts. Everything depended on how far down the other side of the ridge he could get before the gunman reached the peak and drew a bead on him.
His breathing grew more ragged, and his boots kept slipping, sapping energy from his legs until his calves burned. But at least he wasn’t cold. The exertion made him warm, so much so that as sweat began to cling to his shirt, he hardly noticed his wet pants. Now and then he scooped a handful of slush into his mouth and gulped it down between gasps of breath. The coolness actually felt good. But as soon as he stopped to rest, his damp clothes would accelerate heat loss and quicken the onset of hypothermia.
But as much as the trees blocked the wind down here, high overhead it roared through the branches, obliterating any noises the man below made. That better work both ways, he thought. Whenever one of the low limbs he grabbed as a handhold snapped off with a crack, he imagined it could be heard for a mile. He tried not to think of the man stopping, unshouldering his rifle, and aiming at the sound. He took yet another furtive look. Mark could no longer see him, not even the thin beam of light. But he could see his own trail, leading to him like a tracer bullet.
Up he went, his legs and arms aching from the effort. He could only hope the man behind him had as much trouble.
As the slope became steeper, more slippery, he had to reach directly in front of him to grab rocks and roots buried in the ground so as to propel himself upward. He mustn’t slip now, or he’d slide a lot more than a few steps, possibly all the way to the feet of his pursuer. He tested each handhold before actually gripping it, his exposed fingers aching with wet and cold, and kicked at every toehold to secure an extra half inch of footing.
He must be near the top, he told himself. The wind sounded louder. And some of what he crawled over became bare rock. In spots it became even too steep to hold an accumulation of snow, and he crawled over bare rock, part of a granite spine that ran the length of the crest. That meant no tracks. Mark felt a sudden burst of elation. If the top was just as bare, he could not only get ahead of the son of a bitch, but run along the ridge before starting down, then lose him altogether.
He hoisted himself over a ledge and stood on a shelf of stone in a full blast of icy cold. He’d made it. He also instantly started to freeze. His damp clothes flattened against his skin, and the chill cut through him as if he had nothing on. The worst were his fingers, which immediately cramped and curled into claws. But the stony ground beneath his feet, though coated with ice, had been blown clean of snow just as he’d hoped.
He quickly looked around, making sure his would-be assassin hadn’t somehow beaten him by taking a different route. To the right and left he saw only naked rock disappearing into the gloom. On the horizon in front of him, the wind was rolling back the cloud, exposing a dazzling strip of stars and a full moon low in the sky. He must get to the safety of the woods before it got any higher. Once it lit up the snowscape below, he’d be like a mouse running from a hawk in the clearings.
Huddled low and keeping his feet wide apart so as not to slip, he thrust his hands under his arms and scurried along the top of the ridge. After about a hundred yards he jumped down onto a bushy shallow ledge on the far side. He saw a gradual, snow-covered slope fifteen feet beneath him. Once there he would be a dozen strides from the trees. He’d need to smooth over any prints he left, then count on the wind to do the rest. With a bit of luck, the man behind him might have already lost the trail and not be able to spot it again.
He moved to ease himself over the rocky edge and lower himself to the ground when a movement in the darkness below, another fifty yards farther to his left, caught his eye.
He stood absolutely still.
Staring down into the shadows, he saw nothing more and thought he must have imagined it.
Until a shape darker than the woods crept toward him and quickly became a human form.
But it couldn’t be.
He had such a head start on the man. How could he be here already?
Choices raced through his mind. Should he scramble back down the other side? Stay crouched on the ledge? Maybe he hadn’t been seen yet. Or any second there’d be a bullet. He drew his breath, determined not to scream and beg.
The figure crossed about ten yards below him. Mark could easily see the dark outline of a rifle barrel held upward toward the sky. But the man’s head seemed turned toward the forest, cocked to one side as if he listened for something down there. Not once did he glance up where Mark lay crouched.
Was it the same person who’d first shot at him? Had he found a less steep way up after all? Or was it someone else? His build looked slimmer, though in the dark Mark couldn’t be sure. An accomplice of the man who’d pursued him, perhaps, lying in wait, knowing his partner would chase the prey up to him?
Whoever it was remained focused on the forest below, looking down the hill, away from the ridge.
Some accomplice.
Mark breathed as softly as he could. The cold continued to rip through him, and he started to shiver. He clamped his jaws closed to keep his teeth from chattering.
The man beneath him continued to listen and stare into the woods, the white vapor of his breath whipping into the night.
If he turned, they’d be looking right at each other. Mark quietly curled into a ball and crept back against the bushes, burying his head in his arms to mask the white traces of his own breath in the frost. With his good eye he squinted along the ridge to see if the man he’d thought was on his heels had arrived.
No one.
Was the man not thirty feet from him the gunman?
No, Mark finally decided. From all the years he’d hiked and played around these hills he knew for certain there was no shortcut.
So who was this guy?
Just another hunter out poaching who had nothing to do with his pursuer?
Or is it me he’s listening for?
His shivering grew worse. His fingers ached. His eye throbbed.
He glanced once more along the ridge.
It was fully bathed in moonlight now.
There, against the sky, appeared the shape of a man climbing into view, a rifle on his back. An instant later he knelt and probed the ground around his feet with a penlight.
Chapter 9
That same evening, Monday, November 19, 6:00 P.M.
New York City Hospital
Earl huddled against the wind at the Thirty-third Street entrance, cupping the mouthpiece of his cellular with his hand. Horizontal needles of rain stung against his skin. Everyone else rushing by seemed to have an umbrella. He eyed a kid who had been selling them out of a garbage bag and signaled him to bring one over, all the while continuing his conversation with Janet. “I came up empty. The only significant thing is that Cam Roper, Mark’s father, might have looked at those same charts just after Kelly went missing. Except he probably didn’t find anything either, or he would have done something about it. I can’t reach Mark to tell him. His phone doesn’t seem to be working.”
“It’s still pretty bizarre, those records attracting his interest,” Janet said.
“If I’m right about Kelly trying to find evidence of malpractice to use as leverage against Chaz, then maybe Cam Roper had followed up on those suspicions, or at least started to before he passed away.” He fished five bucks out of his pocket, and gave it to the pint-sized merchant, who cut the gloom with a grin as bright as polished ivory. Popping open what looked as flimsy as a bat wing and was undoubtedly stolen goods, Earl instantly felt better, but had to speak up as the rain drummed on the black material, creating the din of a thousand impatient fingers. “Cam could have thought she’d confronted Chaz with some grievous error he’d made that would ruin his career, and he’d killed her for it. Except Roper Senior likely came to the same conclusion as the M and M reports. ‘Unexpected but unavoidable digoxin toxicity with no obvious cause.’ ”