Desperate Measures

24

Pittman’s brief time in the room had made him feel warm. As he raced onto the sundeck, the night and the rain seemed much more chilling than they had only a few seconds earlier. He shivered and lunged through puddles, past the dark metal patio furniture and toward the stairs that led down from the deck. At once he was blinded, powerful arc lamps glaring down at him from the eaves of the mansion above the sundeck, reflecting off puddles. The nurse or a guard had switched on the lights. From inside the building behind him, Pittman heard shouts.

He ran harder. He almost lost his balance on the stairs. Gripping the railing, flinching from a sliver that rammed into his palm, he bounded down the wooden steps. At the bottom, he almost scurried in the direction from which he had come, toward the tree-lined driveway and the gate from the estate. But he heard shouts from the front of the house, so he pivoted toward the back, only to recoil from arc lights that suddenly blazed toward the covered swimming pool and the flower gardens. There, too, he heard shouting.

With the front and rear blocked to him, Pittman charged to the side of the house, across concrete at the entrance to the large garage, over spongy lawn, toward looming dark fir trees. Rapid footsteps clattered down the stairs from the sundeck.

“Stop!”

“Shoot him!”

Pittman reached the fir trees. A needled branch pawed his face, stinging him so hard that he didn’t know if the moisture on his cheeks was rain or blood. He ducked, avoiding another branch.

“Where the-?”

“There! I think he’s over-!”

Behind Pittman, a bough snapped. Someone fell.

“My nose! I think I broke my fucking-!”

“I hear-!”

“In those bushes!”

“Shoot the son of a bitch!”

“Get him! If they find out we let somebody-!”

Another branch snapped. Behind him, Pittman’s hunters charged through the trees.

Just in time, Pittman stopped himself. He’d come to a high stone wall, nearly running into it at full force. Breathing deeply, he fiercely studied the darkness to his left and then his right.

What am I going to do? he thought in a frenzy. I can’t assume I’ll find a gate. I can’t keep following the wall. Too obvious. They’ll listen for the sounds I make. They’ll get ahead of me and behind me and corner me.

Turn back?

No! The police will soon arrive. The house has too many outside lights. I’ll be spotted.

Then what are you going to…?

Pittman hurried toward the nearest fir tree and started to climb. The footsteps of his pursuers thudded rapidly closer. He gripped a bough above him, shoved his right shoe against a lower branch, and hoisted himself upward along the trunk. Bark scraped his hands. The fir tree smell of turpentine assaulted his nostrils. He climbed faster.

“I hear him!”

Across from the top of the wall, Pittman reached out along a branch, let his legs fall away from the tree trunk, and inched hand over hand toward the wall. The branch dipped from his weight. Dangling, he kept shifting along. The bark cut deeper into his hands.

“He’s close!”

“Where?”

Moisture dropped from the fir needles onto Pittman. Even greater moisture dropped from the branch to which he clung. Water cascaded onto the ground.

“There!”

“That tree!”

Pittman’s shoes touched the top of the wall. He swung his legs toward it, felt a solid surface, no razor wire or chunks of glass along the top, and released his grip, sprawling on the top of the wall.

The gunshot was deafening, the muzzle flash startlingly bright. A second shot was so dismaying that Pittman acted without thinking, flipping sideways off the top of the wall. Heart pounding, he dangled. The rough wall scraped against his overcoat. He didn’t know what was below him, but he heard one of his pursuers trying to climb the tree.

Another man shouted, “Use the gate!”

Pittman let go. His stomach swooped as he plummeted.