Hunter/Prey

Chapter 20

He always knew it would end one day, and ten years was a hell of a good run. He would have preferred twenty, but you couldn’t really go wrong with a nice solid decade of work.

So he was fully prepared when that time came. Finding the bunker had been a nice stroke of luck, thanks to some city campers that had gone missing two years ago. He had stumbled across the place during the search for those dummies. There were times when he considered using it as part of his hunts, but he had always resisted. He was glad he had.

He couldn’t go back to his apartment. By now, Harper would have talked to those college kids at the cabin and there would be an all-points bulletin out on him. That was a bummer, because it meant his entire life was torched. Everything that was Thomas Beckard would be placed under a microscope, and everything he owned gone through with a fine-tooth comb.

Fortunately, he had other things even the state police wouldn’t be able to get to until later in the day.

It was still dark out when he turned back onto the highway and drove to his destination. It took him half an hour to get there, but the ride was pleasant enough without Jones’s body stinking up the interior of the Crown Vic.

He parked in front of the regional bank and climbed out. He would have liked to go further, put more distance from the shelter, but the risk of being spotted on the highway was too great.

Beckard withdrew as much money as he could from the ATM and didn’t bother to hide his face from the camera. He probably had a full day before his former comrades got a warrant to freeze his assets, including his bank accounts, so what he pocketed now would likely be it. He wished he’d had the foresight to stash away cash back at the hideout, but it wasn’t as if he had a lot of money to put away. The state police didn’t exactly pay a king’s ransom.

Inside the gas station, the pimple-faced kid behind the counter looked up from his smartphone when Beckard entered. The teenager did a double take at the sight of him and Beckard grinned back. He knew he didn’t look his usual handsome self, but that was one hell of a reaction.

“Hey,” Beckard said. “Slow night, huh?”

“Yeah,” the kid said. The nametag over his left breast pocket read: “Ben.”

Beckard could see the kid trying not to stare as he walked up the aisle and picked up the things he needed. By the time he was done, he had grabbed two baskets and Ben was stuffing the items into three large bags.

“You going camping or something?” Ben asked.

“Not quite,” Beckard said. “How much I owe ya?”

Ben rang him up and Beckard paid with one of his credit cards. The plastics, like the bank accounts, were going to be next to useless soon anyway, and there was no harm in letting Harper know he was still around the area at — what time was it? Five in the morning.

Geez. Time flies when you’re killing people.

“You need help with those?” Ben asked, looking at the bags Beckard was grabbing off the counter.

“Nah, I got it,” Beckard said, giving the kid another grin. He got a kick out of Ben trying his best not to stare. “See you around, Ben.”

“Yeah, you too.”

Beckard tossed the bags into the backseat of the squad car, then climbed in and drove off. It would probably be later in the day until Harper or one of the other troopers got around to canvassing the area and showed his picture to the locals. By then, Ben would probably be at home since he clearly worked the graveyard shift.

Not that any of it mattered. Thomas Beckard’s life was over. The faster he accepted that, the quicker he could deal with the fallout. All he had to do was outlast the coming storm.

Yeah, that’s the ticket.

If all else failed, well, he’d already gotten away with it for ten years. Hell, he didn’t think he’d last more than a couple of months when he first started this, so the last ten years was all gravy. When he told himself that, it made his decision to stay and hide much easier to stomach. Of course, he could just be fooling himself, but Beckard was feeling too good to care at the moment.

It’s the pills. I’m not thinking straight. I should be fleeing this place. Right now.

But I’m not.

Why?

He pulled the bottle out of his pocket and opened it with one hand, shook out two more pills, and swallowed them.

Now, where was he?

He couldn’t remember.

Oh well. It’d come back to him later.

They always did, eventually.

The world was a complicated place, with a lot of simultaneously running parts keeping everything in balance. He knew all about that when his mother died and his father dumped him off on his aunt—

What the hell? He hadn’t thought about his childhood in years. Why was he dredging up old things now? None of it mattered. They were in the past, and though some shrinks may say otherwise, Beckard didn’t blame any of this on the people who had given him life. Back in school, one of his professors used to say some people were born with the evil gene. Beckard didn’t think he was evil, per se, but maybe he enjoyed things other people didn’t, and as a result, that made him…different.

Who the hell cares?

He had to deal with the moment. The now.

And right now, he had very immediate troubles on his hands.

It was probably too much to hope that he could make it back to the bunker unscathed. It had to be Harper. The sergeant was moving a lot faster than Beckard had anticipated. A part of him wasn’t entirely surprised. Harper had always been the dedicated cop, the man all the kids fresh out of the academy looked up to. Except for Beckard, of course. Harper reminded him too much of his father—

Concentrate on the now, you idiot!

The swirling lights flashing across the road in front of him were from a makeshift roadblock, essentially one cruiser parked along the shoulder. Beckard saw it too late and even as he stepped on the brake and let the Crown Vic sit idle in the middle of the road, he knew the trooper had already spotted him. It was impossible not to, given the fact he was the only thing traveling on this stretch of road for miles on either side.

A figure stood in the middle of the two lanes waving a flashing wand over his head, trying to get his attention. He was still far enough that the man probably couldn’t see him or make out that Beckard was sitting in a squad car.

He glanced up at the rearview mirror, saw nothing but pitch-black behind him.

Screw you, Harper, Beckard thought just before he put the Crown Vic into gear and stepped on the gas.

He moved slowly, gradually, picking up speed as he went.

The trooper was still standing in the middle of the lanes, one hand holding the emergency wand while the other rested on the butt of his sidearm. He was peering forward, trying to get a good look at Beckard, but unable to see much over the bright beams of the headlights blasting into his face.

He pressed down on the gas a little bit more…

The man began waving the wand frantically in the air. The trooper must have known something was wrong. If he didn’t, then he realized it pretty quickly when Beckard gunned the gas while he was still fifty yards away.

The wand fell to the highway, and less than two seconds later a gunshot rang out. The windshield cracked and Beckard actually heard the bullet zipping past his head.

Christ, that was close!

He shoved his foot down on the gas pedal until it slammed into the floor and the sedan shot forward like a missile.

Bang! Another bullet smashed through the windshield and drilled a neat hole in the upholstery of the front passenger seat.

Bang! A third bullet missed the vehicle entirely, even though at this point Beckard was close—

WHUMP! The front grill hit the moving figure head-on and sent it flying through the air.

Beckard didn’t wait to see where the man landed. He kept going, both hands gripping the steering wheel to keep the Crown Vic from swerving off the road post-impact.

His mind spun, processing the facts before him.

Just the facts, ma’am!

The fact that Harper only had one trooper at this roadblock meant he was short on manpower. Not a surprise, given the time of day. That wasn’t going to last forever, though. By morning, the entire highway would be crawling with state police. And leaving the body behind would signal to them that he was in the area. If he was lucky, Harper would assume he had kept going, which would put him out of the state by sunrise. Only an idiot would remain behind, hiding in a bunker in the woods nearby.

He grinned. Maybe he was an idiot. A brilliant idiot.

Was that the pills talking? It was hard to tell, given the last few hours.

Beckard turned his options over in his head as he drove on. A part of him was surprised he wasn’t more freaked out. Everything he had worked for since the academy days was gone in one night. But for some reason, he wasn’t nearly as angry about that as he thought he would have been when the time finally came.

He reached down and took out the pill bottle and shook out two more of the delightful white stuff.

Oh yeah, that hit the spot…

There was a chance Harper or one of the other troopers might stumble across the same wooded entrance Beckard was taking now, but that possibility was something he had to live with. His only consolation was that this part of the highway was surrounded by absolutely nothing, with the closest hiking trails and hunting grounds many miles away. The way in was also not on any map and there were no signs to indicate a road, such as it was, even existed. Beckard himself had driven right past it for years before that incident with the lost campers.

Even so, as he arrived back at the bunker entrance, he stood outside the squad car for a moment and tried to see if he could hear any noises that didn’t belong, or that weren’t there when he left an hour ago.

Voices, a car’s engine, anything.

But there was just the sound of the creatures around him. The birds chirping, the smaller animals racing along branches, and the much bigger ones darting in and out of brushes on the ground. The sun was starting to peek through the trees and the warmth was already pushing away last night’s chill.

His biggest worry was a hunter getting lost and stumbling across him by accident. Or maybe another pair of clueless campers…

He shook those thoughts away. If it happened, it would happen. Right now, every minute, every hour was a gift that he had to take advantage of. If they found him, then they found him. Until then, he would make it count.

Cool as a cucumber, remember?

Beckard grabbed the bags out of the back seat and headed to the bunker. Pushing the door open was a pain in the ass, and he had to put his left shoulder into it. His entire right side tingled, but he gritted his teeth and sucked it in. Nothing good in this world came without a little pain. He had learned that a long time ago—

Something heavy hit him in the back of the head and Beckard stumbled forward, more stunned than hurt, though he hurt a little bit, too.

What looked like sparks (sparks?) showered the air around him as he fell — falling, he was falling! — down the stairs.