Mortal Pursuit

58

“Where are they going” Ally peered in the direction of the fading engine noise.

“Circling around,” Trish said, the words coining with curious slowness. “I think only the pilot is a threat. The other one looked … hurt.”

“One’s enough. What did he mean, you should’ve let him drown”

“I-uh-I kind of saved his life.”

“Saved his life”

“CPR. Mouth-to-mouth.”

“Are you crazy” Ally bit her lip. “Sorry.”

“I’m sorry too. I didn’t think it would work out … like this.” Trish cleared her throat. “Can you loosen the tourniquet for me”

“So soon”

“I … I can’t feel my leg anymore.”

“Oh, God.”

She fumbled at the knot, finally got it undone.

“Am I bleeding” Trish asked.

Ally gently explored the area around the wound. “Not much. A lot less than before.”

“Good.”

“I didn’t think it would stop this fast.”

“It was venous blood, not arterial. That sort of wound can heal pretty quickly if you …” Trish paused as if losing her concentration, then shook her head. “If you keep the pressure on,” she finished.

Ally frowned. “What’s the matter”

“Little dizzy. Nothing to worry about.”

For the first time Ally heard the flutter in her voice. “You’ve lost a lot of blood, Trish.”

“I’m okay.”

Ally hoped so. Because if Trish passed out now, they were both dead.

No further conversation for a moment. In the new quiet between them. Ally became aware of a larger stillness.

“Hear it” she whispered.

“What”

“Boat motor-it’s gone silent.”

Trish blinked, listening, then slowly nodded. “He’s here.”

The island was small and flat and treeless, overgrown with rushes, knee-high, chest-high, head-high, rippling in random patterns, swaying like the tresses of hula dancers in the chance rhythms of the wind.

Frogs croaked in a dismal chorus. A bird’s titter mocked the night.

On hands and knees, Blair Sharkey crawled.

The leaves of rushes stroked his face like loose sheets of paper. His forearms and calves squished in deep pockets of ooze. Filth encrusted him, a second skin.

He estimated the island’s size at no more than an acre. Maybe two hundred feet at its widest point. He could quarter it inch by inch, yard by yard, in no time at all.

He would find his prey.

Heart pounding.

Vision blurred.

Hands numb.

Trish had felt this way once before-after running two miles uphill at the academy on an unseasonably warm day. Her drill instructor made her lie supine until the faintness passed.

Dehydration and fatigue brought on the symptoms that day. Tonight she could add gunshot trauma and blood loss to the mix.

Lying prone, she’d been all right. But when she crawled into the pit, that lightheaded feeling had started, subtly at first, but growing worse.

She needed to lie down again, or at least put her head between her knees. But she couldn’t, not as long as she was huddled in this hole.

Okay, then. No medals for quitters. She would just have to tough it out. No medals for quitters. Stay strong, stay alert. No medals for quitters.

Her mantra helped a little. Fear helped more. The fear that kept her body supercharged with jolts of adrenaline.

Her enemy was near. She could sense it.

But she didn’t know where.

Blair had already covered much of the island’s eastern perimeter.

If Robinson and the Kent girl had come ashore at the north end, and if Robinson’s injury had limited her movement, then they would be close by.

Insects piped and trilled. The rushes whispered in a breath of breeze, cool and damp. Or perhaps it was Gage’s ghost that moved among the reedy stems.

Blair had never thought much about such matters. He supposed anything was possible.

Stay with me, bro, he told the ghost. You don’t want to miss what’s coming up.

The low clicking, like distant castanets, was the chatter of Trish’s teeth.

Ally studied her from inches away. Her face was pale. Sweat trickled out of her hair and beaded on her eyebrows, her lips. The gun in her hands wavered like a kite on a gusty day.

In the closeness of the pit, Trish’s trembling transmitted itself to Ally’s own body. Abruptly she recalled her silly fear that Trish wanted her to dig a grave. It didn’t seem silly anymore.

A grave was what it was, a grave for them both. In the morning they would be found here dead-like Marta-dead and buzzing with fat blowflies.

“Hold on, Trish,” Ally whispered, the words so soft she was sure they went unheard. “Please hold on.”

Things were very simple sometimes. She was fifteen. She didn’t want to die.

Blair’s imagined contact with his brother strengthened him. He crawled faster.

He could taste it now. Could almost see Trish Robinson sprawled facedown in the dirt, her brains red and strewn. Could almost see—

Explosive noise, rapid-fire beats, the nearby rushes rustling madly.

What the hell

For a wild moment he was sure he’d been discovered, sure Robinson was shooting at him, peppering the brush with bullets.

Then he understood.

Not bullets. Only a bird, nesting in the rushes, startled by his approach, bursting out of cover into the open air.

He caught a breath, then heard a new sound.

Gunshots.

Real gunshots this time.

And close.

Sudden commotion due east, and without thinking Trish swung sideways, impelled by panic and a desperate need to lash out, and she fired blindly into the night, four shots, five, then nothing, the magazine empty, her ears ringing, and overhead, brushing past the stars-a flutter of wings.

“Did you get him” Ally asked eagerly.

Shake of her head. “Bird.” Her own voice was barely audible over the violent clangor in her skull. “Just a bird.”

In the dark, among the rushes, Blair smiled.

The bird had drawn Robinson’s fire. Purple muzzle flashes had erupted like fireworks thirty yards to the west.

He’d pinpointed her position.

He had her now.