Knock Out

49

TITUS HITCH WILDERNESS

TITUSVILLE, VIRGINIA

Autumn sat straight up. “Mama? You can tell me, is Blessed here?”

Joanna palmed her gun into Ethan’s hand and moved quickly to kneel down beside her daughter. She touched her hair. “Blessed isn’t here; everything’s okay, sweetheart. You’re safe.”

Autumn looked from one to the other of them, her eyes too adult, too filled with an understanding she shouldn’t have. “You’re going with Ethan to go after them, aren’t you, Mama?”

Joanna looked into her daughter’s beautiful blue eyes. Her eyes? Ethan thought so. She stroked out some of the tangles in her hair. She needed a brush. “Ethan wants to go alone, but you and I both know that’s too dangerous. One look and he’d be under. I want to be at his back, to keep him safe.”

“Your mother is staying here with you, Autumn.”

Autumn looked up at Ethan, again with too much awareness in her eyes. She said slowly, “Mama’s right, Ethan. I’ll be okay here. You take Mama and sneak up on them. I won’t be afraid, I promise.”

“It would be too dangerous for her,” he said. “Joanna, you have to stay here and protect Autumn.”

Autumn gave him a look that clearly said, What a stupid thing to come out of your mouth, and here you are, an adult.

Ethan said, “I don’t like it.”

“You can’t keep me from following you, so we might as well go together,” Joanna said, voice honey-smooth because she knew she’d won. How could she possibly consider taking a risk of dying as winning? He watched her hug Autumn hard against her, heard her say against her hair, “You stay here and wait for us, all right? We’ll be back, I promise you.”

“Be careful,” Autumn said, and looked toward where her sneakers were lined up next to her silver sleeping bag.

Once outside the cave, Ethan and Joanna made sure the bushs covered the entrance without any trace they’d been there. Ethan said, “Even if Blessed accidentally comes along, even if he tracks her near here, he won’t know where she is, precisely, because he can’t see the cave entrance in the dark.”

Joanna prayed that was true. She knew he’d said that to convince both of them. She said, “It’s too dark for you to track them. How are we going to find them?”

He said, “Tell me how experienced you are in the woods, Joanna At night.”

“At night it’s pretty much been limited to leaving my tent to go to the bathroom. But I’m very good. I don’t clomp around and trip over plants and bushes. I’m a shadow, a ghost.”

He grinned.

“Seriously, I can keep up with you, Ethan. Where are we headed?”

“I told you I know this wilderness. I know they’re after her, but even if they can somehow track her to this area, I don’t think they’ll even try to come for her tonight. It’s too dark, they don’t know the terrain, and any light they used would give them away. If all that’s true, and they’re not all that far away, I have a good idea where they would have stopped for the night.” Without another word, Ethan started toward a cliff they’d skirted to reach the cave entrance.

“Be careful, Joanna. Now that it’s dark, it’s far more dangerous going down than coming up. From now on, don’t talk.” He picked up a dry branch as they made their way down the narrow winding path. When Ethan came upon a loose mess of rocks, he poked the branch at it, alerting Joanna. Neither of them stumbled. Ethan had excellent night vision, and Joanna kept close, copying his steps.

At the bottom of the cliff was a narrow creek that flowed into the Sweet Onion River, nearly dry now in the deep of summer. He decided they’d cross it right there, to get out of the clearing and away from the faint reflection of the water.

They made their way easily over smooth stones in the creek bed, stones laid down by someone who’d traveled the wilderness before Ethan was born. The creek wasn’t more than three feet wide at this point. When they reached the other side, Ethan turned and held out his hand to help her up a steep incline on the opposite side. She smiled at him and shook her head. He whispered, “It’s a little rough here, be careful.”

Joanna slipped once after all. His hand was there to grip her wrist and pull her up. He nodded to her when they reached the top.

He took them through a patch of underbrush so thick she didn’t see how they’d get through, but Ethan managed to push forward steadily, not making much noise at all. He stopped and pulled her very close, whispered against her ear, “The land flattens out up ahead and opens up for a while. We’ll walk where the trees are thick, so watch for branches.”

Ethan knew the terrain so well he recognized individual trees as they moved in the intense darkness. It brightened only a bit when at last the trees thinned out and the few stars overhead came into sight He leaned close again. “There aren’t any trails within a quarter mile of us, then there’s a nine-mile stretch of the Appalachian Trail through the wilderness. It’s well marked. I’ll wager Blessed and Grace are close to it. If they were following Autumn, this is the only way they’d come. I suppose they could have tried to get through that thick under-growth, but not for long. They’ll stay in the open, maybe at or near one of the campsites up ahead. You see movement, a shadow, tell me. I’m counting on them using a nice big flashlight sooner or later, long enough to give them away.”

Ethan took them around the edge of several deserted clearings. They reached a mess of outcropping rocks blocking their way. Ethan said nothing, merely took her hand and somehow led her through them. If he told her he could see in the dark, Joanna would have believed him. She stayed very close, nearly matching his footsteps. He stopped suddenly and she bumped into his back. He nodded, pointed ahead.

She leaned around him to see—what? She kept looking. There, she saw it, a light, only a flash of light, but it was there, off to their right, maybe forty feet away, not more. Then the light winked out.

Gotcha, Ethan thought, and put his finger against his lips.

He led her in a wide circle. Ethan stopped every few steps to listen. Joanna couldn’t hear or see anything. She said nothing. She felt her heart pounding, her breath catch in her throat. Truth be told, she’d rather have to fight a couple of black bears than Blessed and Grace. She knew they were close; she could feel them. She also knew what they could do to both her and Ethan with a single look. The flash of light they’d seen, it had to mean they weren’t asleep. Did they sense Ethan was close? Did they sense her? Were they waiting? Was the flash of light bait?

Ethan whispered, “Stay here. Don’t move. Don’t even breathe.”

She watched him slither between two scraggly pine trees, then he was swallowed up by the darkness. The night seemed to have turned blacker than the bottom of a witch’s kettle.

She waited until she couldn’t stand it. She took one step, felt his hand on her back, and nearly screamed. He said against her temple, “They’re asleep, Joanna. We’ve got a chance now.”

“But what about the flash of light?”

“One of them probably got up to relieve himself. We’ll wait another ten, fifteen minutes, just to make sure.”

He sank down to lean against an oak tree, Joanna next to him, and they waited. After a minute, she began to hear the night sounds re-turn, a cricket, an owl hooting, small creatures moving in the underbrush.

They waited. Joanna was stiff with cold, but she didn’t say anything. When she believed her teeth would begin chattering, Ethan rose, pulled her up beside him. They both stretched to get their muscles working again.

She followed him, her hand on his back, trying to move as quietly as he did through the underbrush, under the tree branches, trying not to trip on the rocks and the rotted vegetation. She could see only his outline in front of her. She heard a sound beside her foot and stopped suddenly. Ethan stopped too. It was a small animal, a possum or a weasel. Ethan smelled a whiff of smoke, the light taint of a burned-out campfire in the night air.

Close, they were very close. When they reached the edge of a small open space, not more than six feet across, Ethan saw the small fire they’d built was nearly out. There was no movement that he could see. On either side lay a sleeping bag. Everything was quiet, a postcard kind of night.

Another owl hooted. An answering hoot came quickly, then another.

The air was soft against their faces, soft and cold. Joanna shivered. She pressed against Ethan’s back. He whispered, “They must have stolen the sleeping bags, if it’s them. We’ll have to shine a light. I’ll take the sleeping bag closest to the fire, all right? You take the other. Remember, don’t hesitate. If ever our lives will be on the line, it’s now.” He stared down at her for a long moment. He knew she couldn’t see him clearly, but he could see her. He touched his palm to her cheek. She looked scared, and determined. It would be enough. “Let’s do this and get back to Autumn.”

She nodded, her throat suddenly dry as desert sand. She’d never really understood wanting to kill another person, but she understood now. She felt a wild need to kill Blessed, watch the life flow out of his mad eyes. Then at last Autumn would be safe. And Ethan, a man she’d known only for a week or so. That was amazing.

She stared at the unmoving sleeping bag not ten feet away from her. She thought she saw the shape of a head, but she couldn’t make out who it was. It didn’t matter.

They approached silently, their weapons raised, Ethan breaking away from her toward the closer sleeping bag.

Ethan felt something flutter behind him and froze. He knew without looking. He whipped the Remington up and whirled around, his eyes down, and fired.

He heard a little girl’s scream of pain. He jerked his head up and looked at Autumn, standing not six feet from him at the edge of the trees, and she was bleeding, a gaping tear in her small chest, a river of blood flowing from her small body.

Joanna screamed her daughter’s name but swung her gun around and fired down at the sleeping bag, again and again until the clip was empty. There was no sound, no movement. Autumn—oh, God, no, no.

“Ethan. Mama. Why did you shoot me?”

She was dead. Joanna had seen the huge bloody hole through her chest.

She was hearing her dead child’s voice.