Mortal Pursuit

56

It took Cain longer than he expected to locate the van in the woods. He hadn’t realized the clearing was so far from the road, and he kept stopping to see if he had blundered off the trail.

Finally he saw the familiar outline of the GMC Safari, its dark green finish melding with forest shadows. “There it is.”

“Really got you rattled, hasn’t she”

That was Lilith. Cain turned to her. “Rattled”

“Never seen you like this.”

“You think I’m scared of her” He laced the question with incredulity. “The Girl Scout The Mouseketeer”

Lilith simply studied him, eyes narrowed, and abruptly he saw himself from her perspective-dripping sweat, panting raggedly, fists clenched.

“I’m not scared,” Cain said.

But he wondered.

Still digging. Ally watched Trish warily.

When her laughter stopped, her breathing became more regular. Frighteningly regular, a prelude to sleep. If she slipped into unconsciousness, she might never wake.

“You found the body,” Ally said, pawing sand, “didn’t you”

Trish blinked, groggy. “What”

“Marta’s body. You’re the one who found it.”

“How …” She swallowed. “How could you possibly guess that”

“You said the killer left her in the weeds. It sounded like you’d seen her there.”

“You’re pretty perceptive, you know.”

Ally smiled. “Growing up in a dysfunctional family kind of keeps you on your toes.”

She shoveled out another heap of sand, then climbed in, squatting, and began making space for two.

The sand was dark and wet. Handling it was like kneading clay in pottery class. She sank her fingers in deep and scooped out great handfuls of ooze and flung them away.

Trish had fallen quiet once more.

“So how’d you find her” Ally asked, disregarding courtesy.

A low groan as Trish shifted her weight. “After she disappeared, I wasn’t supposed to go off by myself anywhere. But I did. I went to the farmhouse I told you about.”

Ally paused in her work. “He killed her there”

“On the porch. Keep digging.”

“Right. Sorry.” She resumed scooping out sand. “But you found her in the weeds.”

“He dumped her out back where she wouldn’t be discovered too soon.”

“Were you looking for her”

“No, I only wanted to be alone. She’d been missing for three days, and I was worried, scared, and the farm was a quiet place where I could think. I went wandering through the field … and then I heard this buzzing, very loud. Blowflies, big bluebottles, a whole cloud of them spinning over a spot where the weeds had been trampled.”

She said nothing for a moment. Ally widened the hole and waited.

“I told myself it was a dead rabbit,” Trish whispered finally. “But maybe … maybe I knew what it really was. Anyway, something made me look closer. The flies-I can still see them, like … glitter, confetti. She was lying face up, jump rope around her neck. It’s a joke, 1 thought; she’s sticking out her tongue at me. But she never moved, and her eyes-there was a roach-it was crawling on her eye …”

“I’m sorry, Trish.”

There was no answer, and this time Ally expected none.

Grimacing at a sudden, salty burn of tears, Blair guided the FireStar alongside the Sea Rayder. Pistol in hand, he climbed over the gunwale into the smaller boat.

Blood streaked the stern’s fiberglass cover.

Robinson had lain prone in the stem as she fired aft. He’d gotten her-but there was no way of telling how badly she was hurt.

Now she and her little friend were gone. Must have dived overboard after rounding the island. It was doubtful they could swim to the far shore. Presumably they’d taken refuge on the island itself.

He boarded the FireStar, climbed behind the wheel again.

Gage was silent and still, and for a moment Blair thought his brother had drifted off to sleep.

Then he saw that it was much more than that, and much less.

“Gage.” The word uninflected, a mere sound, not a name. “Hey, Gage, man.”

There was no response, just as Blair had known there would be none.

He sat down heavily on the helm seat. Touched the luster of blood on his brother’s neck.

The stain, though wet, was a trickle no longer. The flow of blood had stopped.

“Gage …”

Abruptly Blair hated the gloves he wore, the layer of black leather between his fingertips and his brother’s face.

With savage impatience he stripped off the Isotoners, flung them overboard. They floated away like lily pads, shiny in the dark.

With his naked hands he caressed the familiar contours of Gage’s cheek. Peeling back an eyelid, he saw a brown iris, round as a marble.

He and Gage used to flick marbles, laying bets on their skill. Blair always won, because he was the older brother, and older brothers could do anything. Older brothers were like God.

“But I’m not,” he whispered. “If I was God, I’d bring you back. Give you some sense, so you wouldn’t get mixed up in this shit.”

He lowered his head, overcome by self-hatred and the first guilt he had ever known.

“Christ, Gage, why’d you listen to me Why’d you want to be like me”

Then his perspective shifted, guilt receding, as he saw that he was wrong.

It wasn’t his fault. The rookie cop-she’d fired the fatal shot. She was the one responsible. Not him.

“Not me,” Blair whispered, head lifting.

His throat hurt, a memory of the handcuff chain gouging his larynx. She’d ambushed him in the water, outmaneuvered him on shore. She’d trussed him like a broiled chicken and swiped his gear and left him with his ski mask wadded in his mouth. She might have cost him his share of five million dollars if tonight’s operation didn’t come off.

And she’d killed Gage.

Blair raised his head, and the noise he made, the awful noise forcing its way out of his throat, past pain, past weakness, was an animal’s roar.

He slammed the throttle home, spun the wheel, and the FireStar swung south.

Toward the island … and vengeance.

Ally wondered if she should have pressed Trish so hard. Probably not. Still, she did seem more alert now. And—

Something sharp bit her clutching hand, wrist-deep in mire.

A shell Not many mollusks in a freshwater lake.

Retrieving the item, she lifted it into the starlight.

“Hey, look what I found.” An inch-long wedge of obsidian, opaque at the center, nearly transparent at the flaked edges. “It’s a Chumash Indian arrowhead, the smallest kind, what they call a small-game point.”

Trish turned her head, focused her stare, and showed a weak but genuine smile. “Pretty cool.”

Ally fingered the slender teardrop-shaped artifact, barely three-eighths of an inch at its widest point, rounded at its base, tapering to a cruel point at the other end. A work of craftsmanship, delicate yet deadly.

“The Chumash used to live around here,” she said. “Then they sort of disappeared. Nobody knows what happened to them.”

She didn’t know her face was shining with excitement until she saw its glow reflected in Trish’s eyes.

“You know something, kiddo” Trish widened her smile. “You’ll be a great anthropologist someday.”

Ally felt herself flush with pleasure. She clutched the arrowhead tight.

“It’s a really rare find,” she whispered. “Maybe our luck’s starting to change.”

From across the lake rose the burr of a boat engine.