Hot Pursuit

37

Stone was getting out of the shower when Pat walked into the room, her arms full of coats and rubber boots. She dumped them onto the bed. “I think the gum boots are the right size. I compared them to your shoes.”

“I’m sorry,” Stone said, “but you’re way ahead of me. What’s going on?”

“We’re going for a walk on Dartmoor — that’s the moor where we are.”

“I know that. I didn’t know you did.”

“I’ve been reading about it in the brochure. There are walking trails marked on their map, and we’re going to take a walk.”

“Okay, I’m up for a walk. Are we going to do it underwater?”

“I don’t know if you’ve heard about this,” she said, “but it sometimes rains in this country.”

Stone went to the windows and swept back the curtains, letting in a gray light. It was drizzling outside. “I believe you may be right,” he said.

“Get dressed, then.”

He looked at his watch. “Half past ten. What about lunch?”

“They’re packing one for us as we speak.”

They left the hotel, their lunch in a waterproof backpack worn by Stone, crossed a bridge over a fast-running river, and headed, according to their map, toward the heart of Dartmoor. Shortly, they had left behind the trees in the vicinity of Gidleigh Park and were on a rocky, green, treeless expanse of moor, a place where trees could not thrive because there was too little depth of soil to support them. Gorse grew, though: a hardy shrub sporting yellow flowers, and there was plenty of that about.

The ceiling was low — Stone reckoned a couple of hundred feet — and the mist cut the visibility down to half a mile or so. He was glad he wasn’t landing an airplane in the circumstances.

They walked until they began to get hungry, and they looked around for a place where their food would stay dry while they consumed it. They came upon a shed with a bench, which might have been placed there for hungry hikers on a damp day, and took possession of it.

There were smoked salmon sandwiches and potato salad in their pack, and a slightly chilled bottle of white wine, which had had the cork pulled far enough to remove by hand. Pat dug out two plastic glasses and some utensils, and they ate everything and drank most of the wine. There were a couple of slices of moist cake, too, and those went down well.

Then, when they had packed their trash and started to walk again, the moisture in the air turned from mist to drizzle to steady rain in a matter of about two minutes, and they reversed course. Stone found a tweed hat in the pocket of his Barbour jacket, and that kept most of the rain off his head. Pat found a plastic scarf that did much the same for her.

They were proceeding back up the path that had brought them there, which now sported a great many puddles, when one of the puddles exploded a few feet ahead of them. Stone stopped for a count of about one, then grabbed Pat’s arm and hustled her behind a large boulder.

“What are you doing?” she asked. “I’m sitting in a puddle.”

“Something just happened,” Stone said.

“I saw that puddle ahead. Is somebody throwing rocks at us?”

“I hate to put the worst possible slant on events,” Stone said, “but I think somebody is shooting at us.”

“Shooting what?”

“Bullets. Or, so far, a bullet.”

“I didn’t hear a gunshot.”

“Neither did I, and that especially worries me.” Stone got to one knee, took off his tweed hat, put it on a stick, and handed it to her. “I want you to slowly raise this hat on your side of the boulder to a point where it will look as if it’s on my head.”

Pat took the stick and slowly hoisted the hat, while Stone moved to the other side of the boulder. Something ricocheted off her side of the boulder and Stone stuck his head up on the other side and had a good look around. Then, at the extremity of his vision in the rain, perhaps a hundred yards away, he saw a dark figure running with something in his hands. “Man with rifle,” he muttered to himself.

“What did you say?”

“I said ‘man with rifle.’ I should have said ‘silenced rifle.’” He stood up.

“Are you crazy? Get down!”

“He’s not trying to kill us,” Stone said, “he’s trying to scare us. We were a good target on the trail the first time he fired, but he aimed three or four feet ahead of us, and he didn’t even shoot the hat off the stick. Anyway, the visibility is no more than a hundred yards or so, and if I can’t see him, he can’t see me. Let’s go.” He took his hat off the stick, wrung it out, put it on his head, and started walking.

“I’m staying behind you,” she said, following him.

“Good idea.”

They were a couple of hundred yards up the trail when he heard a vehicle start, maybe a Land Rover, then drive away until the engine noise faded into the downpour.

After another hour of walking the hotel hove into view, and they shed their coats and boots in the mudroom. Twenty minutes after that they were sharing a soak in a hot tub that was just large enough for two friendly people. Two brandy snifters floated near at hand.

“In a minute, we, the brandy, and the water will all be the same temperature,” Stone said, “and the brandy will go down easily.”

“And then we’ll drown,” she said.

“I’m not getting what’s going on here,” he said.

“Drowning?”

“No, getting shot at, being pursued but not caught. What do they want?”

“They?”

“I’m assuming that Reeves and Keyes are in this together. Is this just an elaborate practical joke, or do they want something? And if so, what? Do you have any idea at all?”

There was a long pause before she said, “No.”