He fell to his knees and checked the man he’d shot. The bullet had gone straight through his heart. He pulled out his wallet, stuck it in with the other one in his pocket. He picked up the fallen walkie-talkie and clicked the speak button. He lowered his voice, crumpled leaves in his left hand to create the impression of static, and prayed. “Hey, it’s not going good here. What do you want me to do?”
“Clay, that you?”
He wasn’t expecting a woman’s voice. “Yeah, it’s me.”
He crumpled more leaves. “Hard to hear you.”
“What about Donley? You said he went in the back and you heard a shot. What happened?”
“He ... got ... clocked.”
“All right, all right, dammit, we’ll have to wait until dark to go in. They’re hillbillies, of course they’ve got weapons, probably coon rifles, so a frontal assault is out. Do you think you can get in the back?”
He rubbed his palm over the receiver. “It’s tough, I ...”
“Clay? Hey, wait, you’re not Clay—”
He heard her cursing, then the walkie-talkie went fuzzy.
Jack quickly began making his way around to the front, in a wide circle, hoping to come in behind the shooters, but truth be told, he wasn’t holding out much hope.
He heard a few more rounds of gunfire, then silence. He pictured the woman and her partner—they were pros, they wouldn’t panic, but they were facing a full-blown screwed-up fiasco. They’d know enough to get out of there fast. Somehow they’d been spotted, and their prey were armed and shooting back. They’d probably believed it would be easy, even though the shooter they’d sent to Par-low was presently residing in Franklin County Hospital. Did they know that? Probably. But what they couldn’t know was that an FBI agent was here with the hillbillies. And one of the hillbillies was a marine, the other a crack shot. What a nice surprise.
If they had a contingency plan, it was shot to hell now. He ran, hunkered down, ignoring the leaves whipping his face, ignoring the pain in his thigh, the blood seeping from the cut in his left arm, and tried to move as quickly and quietly as possible.
He heard something, and stopped on a dime. It sounded like a footstep, a single footstep.
Sunlight speared through the leaves overhead. Silence. Nothing. Then he heard an animal, probably a possum, running away, running horn him, he knew.
No footfalls, no one was near. How much farther?
He heard some fresh gunshots coming from Gillette and Rachael, but no return fire.
They were gone.
He ran straight out toward the edge of the forest until he saw the front of the house. He had to be close to their last position. They could still be nearby, see what he was going to do, kill him if he showed himself. Jack didn’t want to get shot. He nearly ran over their former position—saw the flattened leaves, the shells.
They were gone.
He ran all the way back to the road. When he burst out of the woods, he saw two figures in a late-model black Ford Expedition burning rubber down the road.
They’d had to leave their companions. Not a good idea—but they didn’t have a choice.
He ran back as fast as he could, yelled before he broke through the woods in front of Gillette’s house, “It’s Jack! They’re gone. Don’t shoot! I’m coming out!”
Rachael flew out the splintered front door. “Jack! Are you all right? They ran?”
“I’m fine. You?”
“Some glass in my arm and neck, nothing bad. Gillette’s okay, too. He went to check out back.”
“One of the guys is alive. I left him on the kitchen floor. Let’s get in the house,” he said, and grabbed her arm and pulled her inside.
Gillette came running out of the kitchen. “There’s blood on the floor, Jack, but the guy’s gone.”
He was a moron. He should have shot the goon in the leg. “He won’t get far,” Jack said. “There were two of them, actually. One’s dead at the back of the yard, right at the tree line. I took both their wallets. I’ll bet you these guys are in the system.”
Rachael said, “I’ll call Sheriff Hollyfield, tell him what happened and get him out here.”
“I’m going to look outside.”
When Jack walked into the kitchen five minutes later, he said, “The body’s gone. Our wounded guy carried him out. They must have another vehicle.”
“The sheriff will be here in thirty minutes, tops,” Rachael said.
“I forgot, I’ve got some critical information for him,” Jack said, and dialed him up, managed to catch him on the point of leaving his office. Jack gave Sheriff Hollyfield the license plate of the Ford Expedition.
Rachael ignored the objections of the men and went with Jack to track the shooters through the woods, the rifle pointed down at her side. Jack wasn’t happy, even though he knew she was a good shot. “There’s got to be blood,” he whispered. “Keep as quiet as you can.”
They found the blood trail quickly enough. “Look,” Jack said, going down on his knees. “He’s carrying his dead buddy. They can’t be too far ahead.”
The blood trail led back to the road, some thirty feet farther beyond where the Ford Expedition had peeled out.
Jack said, “They were careful enough to have two vehicles. The guy I shot in the shoulder, he needs major help fast.”
When they returned to the house, Jack called the nearest hospital. They’d already been alerted, he was told, by Sheriff Hollyfield.
“Gillette, are there any physicians close by that our wounded guy could find easily?”
Gillette shook his head. “No, unless he knows of one personally. Or has a phone book. Parlow’s the closest town. Everything’s so spread out around here, someone not familiar with the area couldn’t find his elbow.”
Jack phoned Dr. Post at the clinic, just in case. Nurse Harmon agreed to alert all the hospitals in the area. Then he called Savich.
Rachael listened to him with half an ear as she swept up the glass from the shattered front windows.
“We’re beyond lucky,” Jack was saying to Savich. “Without that perimeter alarm the shooters tripped when they came in, we’d have been in bad trouble since Rachael and I were out in the open.
“They didn’t know I was here, probably didn’t know Gillette was a marine, or that Rachael can shoot a quarter out of the air. Sheriff Hollyfield should be here soon, so everything seems covered.” He listened, then said, “I got wallets out of both guys I shot, but it’s like the shooter at Roy Bob’s garage—they removed all ID, credit cards, likely left everything in their vehicles. I can get some blood from the kitchen floor and from some leaves in the forest, get us some DNA. Yeah, all right.” Jack hung up. “Savich says enough is enough, said he never liked the idea of third time’s a charm. He wants Rachael back in Washington. And he wants you, Gillette, to take a vacation.”
“Yeah, like that’ll happen,” Gillette said. He sighed and looked around. He bent down, picked up a large hunk of glass. “I guess I’m not through with my house.”
“They’re going to put me in the same hospital room as Dr. MacLean, are they?” Rachael wondered aloud. “Well, forget that. I’ve got to call my mom. If they didn’t do a pretty good search to find out about Slipper Hollow, then they could have gotten to her.”
Gillette said, “I called while you and Jack were tracking blood in the woods. Everyone’s fine. I didn’t tell your mother about any of your trouble.”
Rachael said, “But shouldn’t we warn them? Shouldn’t they take a vacation?”
Jack shook his head. “Whoever ordered this hit doesn’t want more collateral damage than absolutely necessary. Parlow must have scared them but good. Limit the risks, limit the exposure. They knew it’d be beyond stupid to go after your mom and her family. And so they did something else.”