Five canisters were lined up. Oh, when did the night crew arrive? No telling. I squeezed along the wall and tried to figure out which one to duck into. The one farthest from Jack, of course. It was poised right at the large double doors, and it was half full of food scraps and garbage. Beyond the front canister was darkness made silvery by moonlight. I clumsily climbed up the sides, jumped into the canister, and slithered down into the trash. It was all I could do to keep from gagging.
I heard a shot. Jack was firing into the canisters. One shot, two, three. This was going to be it, I thought, and prayed for Arch and Tom. With taped hands, I used my body to burrow as deep as I could into the trash. I thought I was going to vomit again.
Then, without warning, there was a loud kee-chunk, and the canister quivered violently. I could hear male voices in the distance. The night workers? Were they coming? I was surrounded by rotting lettuce and meat fat. Would the workers hear me if I squirmed to the top of the garbage? Could I risk calling to them, with Jack—armed—so close to the canisters? No. Clink. Ke-chunk, clink. It was the clank of metal doors being closed on trash canisters, followed by the whir of the descending gondola.
Behind me, a loud pop was followed by a zing. Another shot. Jack was shooting at my canister. Pop-zing.
I could hear Jack howl. Then my stinking, packed canister swung out into the darkness.
The night air was stingingly cold. But I’d escaped Jack. I knew the gondola operators at the top could stop the cars, but they could not reverse their motion. That could only be done by the operator at the bottom. So even if Jack knew I was in this canister—and he didn’t—he wouldn’t be able to bring me back. With a startling suddenness the canister dropped and I was swaying, out of range of Jack’s lethal little .22. Would he hurt the canister workers? I doubted it. He had only one target tonight: me.
I wriggled between two bags of mind-numbingly smelly garbage. My head hurt, my cheeks hurt, everything hurt. The stink was inconceivable. I’d never get the smell out of my hair, I thought, and giggled insanely. The canister had holes in its walls and top. Through the holes overhead, a distant light was shining. The canister shook; an almost full moon came into view.
Down, down the canister rolled. In my mind’s eye, I saw the gleaming container, suspended twenty feet above the ground, streaming noisily through the night.
I had to get the tape off my hands. My only choice was to feel with my tongue around the duct tape till I came to an edge. Then I began, slowly, laboriously, with my teeth, to tug off the tape. The blood running down my face didn’t make the task any easier. But at least biting and wrenching the tape off, centimeter by centimeter, took my mind off the cold, the smell, the canister swaying and creaking in the frigid wind, high above the mountain.
When I finally had the tape off, the canister clanked onto the track, then began to move laboriously toward the warehouse. I was on the ground, but where? How long had I been on the gondola? Ten minutes? Twenty? What had Jack been doing? I knew he kept ski equipment at the bistro. Would he try to ski down in the moonlight? How long would it take for him to get his equipment on—five, six minutes? How long to schuss down from the top? The fastest I’d ever made it was six minutes, and I was nowhere near the expert skier Jack was.
Suddenly the canister shuddered and stopped. I clambered up through the trash to the metal door. My heart sank. Through the holes of my cage, the moonlight on the slope showed the canister was only halfway down the track to the Killdeer base. I wasn’t even in sight of the warehouse. Jack must have stopped the lift engine from the peak. Dammit.
I peered down through the holes in the metal. The moonlight illuminated much of the mountain, including nearby woods and what looked like a catwalk or cleared path of snow. With blood pounding in my ears, I pushed on the container door. It swung open.
I leaped out and looked all around. Had Rorry missed me and called Tom? Would he call someone to go looking for me?
I tried to get my bearings. The cleared path was not a catwalk, I realized. It had a plastic orange fence going up one side … The construction road! If I followed it, I would get down to the Rover where I had a spare key in the wheel-well.
I hobbled over to the road and started to run. Within seconds, my chest burned with the exertion and the cold. Did I hear something? I stopped, panting, looked up the moonlit slope, and saw the shadow of a lone skier. I turned and again ran. Could I possibly make it to the Rover before Jack caught up with me? My brain cursed my agonized legs. How far to the parking lot? Maybe fifteen minutes, if I could keep up this brutal pace. I ran and ran, and after an eternity, reached the fork that led back to the parking lot and trailhead to Elk Ridge. Wheezing, I stopped and tried to catch my breath.
Scritch, scratch. Scritch-scratch. Very regularly, the sound came from behind me. Scritch-scratch. I glanced back. Jack, on skis, was poling swiftly along the snow-covered road, cross-country-style. He was perhaps fifty feet behind me. Damn. I moved my legs as fast as they were able to go. But I knew in my heart I’d never make it to the Rover before he closed the gap.
And he had at least two more shots left.
With sudden decision, I ran up the snowpacked road of the left fork, toward the construction site. On skis, Jack could go swiftly downhill; as fit and muscular as he was, he could traverse flat terrain quickly as well. But he could not go uphill on skis, unless he was Superman. I had to get to the guard’s cabin first.
Low clouds, silvered by the moonlight, rolled across the sky. How far was the cabin, if the dirt road ran right across the valley? A half-mile? A mile? Jack would have to stop; he would have to remove his skis and boots. No one could run in that clunky footwear. You can beat him, I told myself. All you have to do is run.
I looked over my shoulder. Scritch-scratch, scritch-scratch. Jack was gaining on me. I even thought I saw him smiling at me.
“Goldy!” he called placatingly. “Stop! Let’s talk!”
Yeah, sure. I ran up the track. A sudden pool of darkness swallowed me and I slowed. Tall pines loomed on the right side of the construction fence, casting black, swaying shadows on the road. Run, I ordered myself. But whatever you do, don’t fall. If you do, you’ll die.
Behind me, the sounds of Jack removing his ski equipment were barely audible. Damn it. I couldn’t believe he would still follow me. He couldn’t be tried again for Fiona’s murder. Why not run away, rather than risk exposure? Because he’d told me he had killed Doug Portman. Because he desperately wanted Eileen’s money. The tape would show Eileen and the world that Jack had murdered his first wife to get her fortune. Eileen would dump him; he would go to prison for murdering Portman and the truck driver he’d killed on Interstate 70, when he’d been trying to nail me.
I came to the spot in the road where it veered upward and became the old hiking trail. I did not know how far the trail went before it diverged—a high side leading to Elk Ridge, the low, level side heading through the valley. As I ran, I peered into the darkness. Was the faint light I saw the guard’s cabin far, far up the hill? Or were my eyes playing tricks?
The wind whispered in the pines. In the moonlight, I could make out lodgepole pine branches littering the slick, snow-hard road. The branches had been blown down by the wind. I would have to be careful; stepping on them would alert Jack to my location. Had he found the road yet? How fast could he go in stocking feet? He was almost ten years younger than I was, and an athlete. Grimly, I quickened my pace.