Hide. If you get away with it, you can backtrack to the car. Maybe he left the keys.
Fat chance.
Maybe he did.
If the keys are gone, disable the car. Stay on the dirt road; you’ll get to a real road. Flag down a car ...
I’m naked.
Big fucking deal.
Maybe I can find something in bis car to put on.
Gillian heard him racing through the woods. A long way off. She looked back and couldn’t see him.
Do it! she thought. Hide!
Still running as fast as she could, she swung her head from side to side. The tree trunks looked too skinny to hide behind. There were no clumps of bushes in sight. The few rocks jutting out of the forest floor seemed too small.
Climb?
He’ll see me.
People don’t look up. That’d been a big point in some novel she’d read years ago. The thought had intrigued her at the time, and she’d never forgotten it. People look down and around, but they rarely look up.
Get above Holden, maybe he’ll run right by.
Off to the right, not far ahead, stood a pine that was much bigger than most of the others. Its lower branches drooped to within a yard of the ground. Its upper trunk was completely hidden by the surrounding green of its bushy limbs.
Gillian raced toward it. As she ran, she shoved the belt between her teeth. She balled up the rope and pitched it to her right. It uncoiled in midair, sailed down, and dropped over a sapling about twenty feet away. She wished it had gone farther, but that was good enough. It might throw Holden off her trail.
If he sees it.
She dashed the rest of the way to the tree, dropped to her knees and scurried beneath the umbrella of its foliage. She crawled to the trunk. She stood up. The lowest branch was as high as her shoulders. She wrapped herself around the trunk and began to shin up it. The belt was in her way. A few times, it got caught between her chest and the trunk, and tugged at her jaw. But she kept her grip on the belt, freed it when it snagged, and kept on climbing.
She heard the distant crunch of Holden’s footfalls.
They were coming closer and closer.
She got a knee onto the lowest branch. Reaching up, she clutched a limb. She carefully straightened herself. She raised her left leg, squirmed against the trunk, found a foothold on the other side of the trunk, and thrust herself higher.
Holden sounded very close now. His shoes were thudding on the forest floor. She heard him gasping for breath.
Peering around the trunk, she saw patches of light through the tree’s curtain of foliage. But she couldn’t see Holden.
If I can’t see him, be can’t see me.
She wanted to climb higher.
The branches above her feet looked thick, but not as thick as those she had stepped onto before. If she put her weight on one and it bent even a little bit, a whole section of green on the outside of the tree might shake and give her away.
So she stood motionless, left foot braced on the branch, arms and legs hugging the trunk. Hearing Holden’s approach, she pressed herself more tightly against the trunk. She wished she could sink into it and disappear.
The sounds of the rushing footsteps stopped.
Near the place where the rope had landed?
He knows he’s lost me, Gillian thought. He doesn’t see me anywhere ahead, doesn’t hear me running. He’s starting to suspect I’ve tried to hide on him. He’s trying to figure out where.
Her heart thudded wildly. Calm down, she told herself. Pretend we’re playing hide and seek.
Pretend, hell!
Strange. She’d spoken so fondly of playing hide-and-seek to Jerry. Just yesterday.
And here I am now, playing it for keeps.
She wondered if she had ever tried hiding in trees. And then she remembered that she had—many times. She remembered standing on branches high up, clinging as the tree swayed in the wind, staring down as the kid who was “it” searched the yard and never looked up. The thrill had been like a giggle trapped in her throat.
Had she ever been found when she was hiding in a tree? She didn’t think so. They found her when she hid in bushes, under stairs, in window wells, but not when she climbed trees.
Maybe that’s the real reason she had decided to climb this one.
The forgotten trick of a kid game.
It worked then, she told herself. It’ll work now.
It better.
What’s he doing?
For the past minute—maybe longer—Gittian hadn’t heard a single footstep. He’d been panting for air when he arrived, but that had stopped very quickly.
If he left, she thought, I would’ve heard him. He must just be standing there, looking around, listening, waiting. Maybe he thinks I’ll decide the coast is clear and come out of hiding.
Maybe he did leave.
That’s what he wants me to think.
I’ll stay here all day. All night. Whatever it takes.
Footsteps rushed toward her tree.
Gillian’s heart lurched. She jerked her face back from the trunk and looked down.
Holden scurried under the hanging limbs, stood and gazed up at her.
Her breath blasted out as if she’d been punched in the stomach.
Holden’s knife was lashed to the end of a stick—tied there with the rope she had thrown to lead him astray.
The stick was six feet long.
Before Gillian could move, he jabbed upward with the makeshift spear. Its point sank into her right buttock. Yelping, she reached down for the knife. It pulled out of her and slashed at her hand, but missed.
She tugged the belt from her teeth and twisted herself away from the trunk. She pivoted, her right leg swinging backward through the air, foot kicking at the shaft of Holden’s knife-spear, then finding its way onto the same branch as her left foot.
The maneuver had turned Gillian around. She no longer had her back to Holden. She hugged the trunk with her left arm. Her right arm swung, whipping at the knife with the buckle-end of the belt.
The knife circled on the end of its stick. The lashing belt did little to keep it away. It slashed and thrust. Sometimes it got her. It poked the side of a calf. It nicked a hip. It sliced a thigh. It cut a half-inch slit across the top of her pubic mound.
Gillian knew he was toying with her. If he wanted, he could hack her to pieces or bury the blade in her. Instead, he tortured her with shallow stabs and slices.
He stared up at her with wide, eager eyes. His lips were a straight line. His tongue slid out between them as he made a hard sweeping slash at Gillian’s belly. The blade missed her by no more than an inch. As it passed, she struck it with her belt. The end of the belt wrapped the wooden shaft and she tugged. Holden tugged at the same instant. The belt jerked from her hand. Holden’s lips curled into a smile. He shook his spear. The belt slid down its shaft and dropped to the ground.
Gillian unhooked her arm from the tree trunk. As she sidestepped carefully, Holden jabbed the blade at her face. She flinched and nearly lost her balance. Her right arm waved. Her left hand grabbed an overhead branch. The knife point stung her left armpit, then scraped along the underside of her breast. The blade moved up between her breasts and turned, its edge pressing into her right breast.
She darted her right arm in, grabbed the shaft just below the knife handle, thrust it away from her body and leaped.
Leaped forward, diving, clutching the spear with her other hand as she flew.
Flew over Holden’s head.
Insane, she thought. Like diving into an empty pool.
She kept her grip on the spear as she crashed headfirst through a tangle of limbs that beat against her falling body. A branch pounded her hip, throwing her over. Then her back struck the ground.