Knock Out

44

ROCKINGHAM COUNTY HOSPITAL

NEAR TITUSVILLE, VIRGINIA

Late Wednesday afternoon

The nurse, skinny as a windowpane, with salt-and-pepper hair and a no-nonsense stride, was pushing against Blessed’s hospital room door before Ox could roar to his feet and shout at her, “Hold on there I haven’t seen you before.” He grabbed her skinny arm. “Who are you? What do you want?”

She stared up at him with a face scrubbed clean of makeup. He swore for an instant that he saw a five-o’clock shadow on her jaw-no, couldn’t be. He shook his head as she said patiently, “I’m Nurse Eleanor Lapley. I work here. I just came on duty. Who are you?”

“I’m with the sheriff’s department, here to guard the maniac strapped down to the bed inside. Do you know about him?”

“Of course. First thing when I came in, they showed me that film about him. Kind of hard to believe. Seems to me it might have been faked, don’t you think?”

“Nothing was faked.”

“If not, then he’s quite something, isn’t he?” There was admiration in her deep voice. Not good.

Ox said, “I’ll go in with you. What do you need to do?”

“Check his vitals, see that he’s not in pain, the usual.”

Ox nodded and pushed the door open.

It was the last thing he remembered.

WHEN OX WOKE UP he was lying on his back, strapped down to Blessed Backman’s hospital bed, his eyes covered, his wrists strapped to the bed railings. He opened his mouth and yelled.

An orderly burst through the door, stood stock-still, and stared down at him.

“Whoever you are, get this blindfold off me and the straps.”

“I can’t, sir. I saw that film; I saw what you do to a person. I’m not even coming close.”

Ox managed to still his panic. He forced calm and reason into his voice. “Listen to me. Blessed Backman is in his mid-fifties, a skinny little guy. I’m not. Somehow he got me. That nurse—”

“What nurse?”

“Nurse Eleanor Lapley, she said her name was.”

“Okay, there isn’t a nurse Eleanor Lapley, not unless she started thirty minutes ago and nobody told me.”

“For God’s sake, look at me. Do I look like Blessed Backman?”

“Well, no, sir, but—”

“Get me loose, now! Blessed Backman’s escaped. We’ve got to get him back.”

“But—”

“You idiot! I’m thirty-three years old and I weigh two hundred pounds! Look at me!”

The orderly freed him.

Ox looked up at Savich’s video camera. Where was Dr. Hicks? He pushed past the orderly and looked into the next room. Dr. Hicks was unconscious but alive, the video equipment mangled.

He knew the only official security in the small hospital was at the front entrance, so he didn’t bother alerting hospital staff. He got hold of Ethan three seconds later.

“... This nurse, Ethan, I swear to you she had a five-o’clock shadow, I know Agent Savich told you Grace was probably here. I know it sounds weird, but do you think Nurse Lapley was somehow Grace?”

Ethan thought his brains were going to scramble. “I suppose it had to be Grace. He got in through hospital security disguised as a nurse only I guess he couldn’t quite make it realistic enough ... A bad disguise? I sure hope so, because if it wasn’t a disguise ... no I don’t want to think about that. Another couple of minutes and you would have suspected, but Grace was fast, got into the room and pulled off Blessed’s blindfold, and that’s why you don’t remember what hap-pened. . . . Get all our people out to my place. That’s where Joanna and Autumn are. He’ll head there, you know it. I’m on my way right now.” A moment later, Ethan was back on his cell phone, and Joanna’s phone was ringing.

“Hello?”

“Joanna, this is Ethan. Blessed’s escaped, with the help of his brother Grace. Get Autumn out of there right now. Drive back toward town. I’ll meet you halfway.”

She didn’t say a word, punched off.

Five minutes later when he saw her rental car barreling toward him he honked and pulled his Rubicon over on the shoulder.

Joanna’s first words were “I should have killed him. Dammit, I should have killed him.”

Autumn was white-faced and silent, plastered to her mother’s side. “Get in.” He threw the passenger door open and Joanna lifted Autunm inside, jumped in beside her. “I don’t have a gun. We just ran.”

“I do; don’t worry.” That was about the stupidest thing he’d ever said. “There’s a rifle in the box under the front seat. I’ll take that; you can have my Beretta.”

He patted Autumn’s shoulder. “It’ll be all right, kiddo.”

If Autumn didn’t believe him, he didn’t blame her. He pulled his Beretta off his waist clip, handed it butt-first to Joanna.

“Where are we going?”

He saw an ancient Ford Escort in his rearview mirror, closing fast. He didn’t have to see for sure who was in the car. It was Blessed and Grace. Had to be.

“Hang on,” he said, and pressed down hard on the accelerator.

The Rubicon pulled away smoothly on the windy two-lane highway, and soon they were far enough ahead so Blessed couldn’t see them around the turns. Ethan pulled off fast onto a potholed fire road that led straight into Titus Hitch Wilderness, not the front entrance with the ranger kiosk but a narrow dirty path barely wide enough for the Rubicon. It came to an abrupt stop at the Sweet Onion River. If they were lucky, it would take Blessed and Grace a good long time to find out where they’d gone. But they would find them, Ethan knew it.

“Let’s go.”

Joanna said, “You know where we are; that’s good. Where to?”

“We’re going to head on foot into the Titus Hitch Wilderness. We can’t go back where we came from, and going forward is better than staying here. I know these woods well, know a good spot to stop.”

“Ethan, what are we going to do in the wilderness?” Autumn asked him.

He looked at the mother, then at the daughter, and said, “We’re going hiking.”

He pulled his bolt-action Remington 700 out of his gun box. It was a gift from his father when he was twelve years old—to make a hunter out of him, his father had said. Ethan had learned to shoot the bolt action, loved the rifle as a matter of fact, but he hadn’t stayed with hunting. He preferred to paint animals and take their picture rather than shoot them.

He grabbed two boxes of boattail bullets. He had only forty rounds. He had to be careful. He said, more to himself than to Joanna, “The clip is already loaded—ten rounds, so that gives us fifty rounds.” He looked up at her. “This baby is slow, but it’s really accurate at distance. Here’s two magazines, Joanna, fifteen rounds each, for the Beretta.”

He thought about setting up a blind, shooting Blessed from a good hundred yards away, far enough away to be safe. But what about Grace? Was he good at disguises, or was he something else entirely? Ethan was very afraid he knew the answer to that.

He walked to the back of his truck, opened a metal storage trunk, and hoisted on a heavy backpack. He passed a smaller one to Joanna, “Okay, guys, let’s get out of here.”

Ethan led them along the edge of the Sweet Onion River, through lush water reeds, to a narrow slice of water only ten feet wide, with black stepping stones that he himself had laid fifteen years before, for a dry crossing. “Okay, Joanna, you go first, then Autumn. I’ll come across last.”

“Why don’t we pick up the black rocks so they won’t know where we’ve crossed?”

He said simply, “I want them to know.”

Joanna looked at his rifle, then back up at his face.

When they reached the other side of the river, Ethan pulled out his cell and dialed Savich. “We won’t have service for much longer.”

Two rings, then, “Savich.”

“Ethan here. Grace sprang Blessed. If you want the full story, call Ox. Joanna, Autumn, and I are heading into Titus Hitch Wilderness, a place I know better than you know Washington.”

“We just left the Backmans’ place. No bodies to be found, so they moved them. Do you want us back there?”

“You can’t get to us out here any more easily than they can,” Ethan said. “It has to end, Savich. I hope to end it here.”

“He can’t stymie me, Ethan.”

“There’s no time.”

“Can you get a distance shot?”

Ethan grinned into his cell. “Exactly what I’m hoping for. We’re going to keep moving and then camp for the night. If we don’t run across them, I’m planning to lead Joanna and Autumn out across the north boundary in the morning.”

“Have you called your deputies in after you?”

“No. I thought about that, but I want the only one trailing us to be Blessed. I don’t want to take the chance he’d stymie my deputies. Call Ox and let him know, will you? We’ve got to move.”

There was a pause, then, “Good luck, Ethan.”

Ethan pocketed his cell phone, then turned to Joanna and Autumn. “Either of you need to rest, you just holler, okay? We’re going to be going through some pretty rough terrain. I’m the only one without good footwear.” He kicked a stone with the toe of his low-heeled boots. “Your sneakers will be fine. Stay close. We’ve got a ways to go before we get to Locksley Manor.”

One of Joanna’s eyebrows went up. “Robin Hood’s house?”

“You’ll see,” Ethan said, and took the lead.

He pictured Mr. Spalding hanging in that tree, the bear ripping him down. He had no intention of ending up like him. He prayed they wouldn’t run into hikers. He prayed harder that any hikers didn’t get close to Blessed and Grace.

They walked a few hundred yards on narrow trails until Ethan hooked off-trail to the right, and they walked, always upward, through thick brush dotted with brilliant daisies and jasmine.