Four Blind Mice

Chapter Ninety-Five

It was awfully quiet all of a sudden. Almost as if nothing had happened, as if we were alone in the woods. I could hear the distant roar of the Jacks River, and birds twittering in the trees. A squirrel scampered up the trunk of a hemlock.

Otherwise, nothing moved. Nothing that I could see, anyway.

Eerie as hell.

I was getting a really bad feeling we were in a trap. They knew we would come here after them, didn't they? This was their turf, not ours. And Sampson was right, this was war. We were in a combat zone, behind enemy lines. A fire fight was coming our way. Thomas Starkey was in charge of the opposition and he was good at this. All three of them were pros.

“I think one woman is moving a little,” he said. “I'm going to check on her, Alex.”

“We both go,” I said, but Sampson was already slipping away from the cover of the trees.

“John?”I called, but he didn't look back.

I watched him run forward in a low crouch. He was down close to the ground, moving fast. He was good at this combat. He'd been there, too.

He was about halfway to where the women lay when gunfire erupted from the woods to his right.

I still couldn't see anybody, just whispers of gun smoke wafting up into tree branches.

Sampson was hit and he went down hard. I could see his legs and lower torso just over a bramble. One leg twitched. Then nothing.

Sampson didn't move anymore.

I had to get to him somehow. But how? I crawled on my stomach to another tree. I felt weightless and unreal. Completely unreal. There was more gunsmoke. Pinging off rocks, thudding into nearby trees. I didn't think I was hit, but they'd come damn close. The fire was heavy.

I could see sheets of smoke from the rifles rising to my right. I could also smell the gunsmoke in the air.

It struck me that we weren't getting out of this one. I could see Sampson where he lay. He wasn't moving. Not even a twitch. I couldn't get to him. They had me pinned down. My last case. I had said that right from the start.

“John,” I called. “John! Can you hear me?”

I waited a few seconds, then I called out again. “John! Move something. John?”

Please say something. Please move.

Nothing came back to me.

Except another round of heavy fire from the woods.