She looks like a cornered animal. “Okay, okay . . . shit.”
Jet jams the truck into reverse, looks down at the rearview camera, then starts backing around the curve that leads up to the clearing. As we roll uphill, I notice that her blouse is badly torn. She’s shoved it up under her bra strap to stay covered.
“Max tore your top?” I ask.
She nods but says nothing. Five seconds later she kicks the brake pedal and stops. “What now?”
“You’d better come with me,” I tell her, suddenly worried that she’ll bolt while I’m checking on Max.
“Do you have your gun?” she asks.
“Yeah. Does Max still have his?”
“No.” She reaches into the console and brings up the .380 I saw in Max’s ankle holster yesterday afternoon.
“Bring that,” I tell her.
She opens her door and climbs down to the ground. Using the LED light on my iPhone, I lead her along the footpath toward the pool, gun in hand.
“What are we going to do if he’s alive?” she asks.
“I don’t know.”
“You’re not taking him to a hospital or anything? He’ll lie, Marshall. He’ll say I tried to kill him.”
Would he be lying? “Let’s just see what shape he’s in.”
We’ve come to the band of grass that separates the trees from the water on this side of the spring. I see the deep ruts Max left behind when he drove his truck up to the water’s edge. Emerging from under the trees, I make out the wooden pier in the moonlight.
What I don’t see is Max.
“He’s gone,” Jet gasps beside me. “Holy fuck, he’s not here.”
The raw fear I felt when confronting Paul in my office returns, jacked to double intensity. The urge to run blindly is almost irresistible, but instead I focus on the ground. From the marks in the mud, it looks like Max belly-crawled into the underbrush beneath the trees, like a wounded alligator.
“We have to find him,” Jet whispers.
After checking the tree line to make sure Max isn’t sneaking up on us, I kneel in the mud and shine my LED down on the spot where I think he fell. Blood loss is hard to judge, but there’s a lot of bright red on the ground. It looks like somebody kicked over a tester can of paint. That came from Max’s head, I realize. I can’t believe he could move after a blow like that.
“Where’d you hit him?” I ask. “Front of the skull? Or the side?”
Jet looks almost too rattled to function. “Um . . . right side, I think. My right. His left. He was facing me, and I swung right-handed.”
“Did you hit him with the ball of the hammer? Or the flat side?”
“Does it make a difference?”
“Ball would probably be worse. He’d have a depressed skull fracture. I know a little about those. He could definitely die.”
“I think it was the ball.” Her voice has a frantic edge. “When he fell, it sounded like Paul dropping a bag of pool salt on our patio.”
“He could have a subdural hemorrhage . . . a cerebral contusion. He could die five minutes from now or tomorrow.”
“He can’t have gone far,” she whispers, her eyes on the trees. “Let’s find him.”
“No,” I say, getting to my feet.
“Why not? He can’t—”
“Jet! He can’t what? Fight back?” I grab one shoulder and pull her face close to mine. “Did you bring Max up here to kill him?”
Even in the dark I see the whites of her eyes growing. “God, no! If I’d got him up here to kill him, I’d have been in control. I was fighting for my life.”
“He attacked you?”
“He tried to rape me, okay?”
This stops me cold. “He tried to rape you? But . . .”
“My God,” she says. “Not one more word until we’re safe.”
I nod slowly, my gaze on the tree line again. “Okay. We’re going back to town.”
“Without knowing whether he’s dead or alive?”
“We’re sure as hell not going into the woods after him!”
“Why not? We have the guns.”
“Jet, Max did two tours of duty in Vietnam. Most of it jungle fighting. He was hit by an AK-47. He fell on punji stakes smeared with shit and survived. So far as we know, he’s alive right now. You want to go crawling through that brush in the hope of finishing him off? Max could kill us both before we even knew he was close.”
She’s staring at the long scar in the mud as though she wants to drop to her belly and crawl after him. Instead of arguing further, I turn and walk back along the path to the turnaround.
“Wait!” she calls. “I’m coming!”
Chapter 38
Once we reach Max’s truck, which I approach with great care, we spend two minutes wiping down its wheel, its dash, and the brown leather of its interior. Jet uses the remainder of her blouse, while I use my shirt, keeping my pistol in my left hand. Though it makes the job harder, I also keep the truck doors shut. If Max is still alive, doing this work under the dome light would qualify as suicidal behavior.
“Wipe your fingerprints off Max’s keys,” I tell her. “We’ll toss them in the woods on the way down. Max won’t find them tonight, but if he dies, the police eventually will.”
“Are you going to call the sheriff or anything?”
As we wipe down the door handles and shifter, I remember what Jet said beside the pool. With this memory comes an image of Max sitting in my kitchen, warning me never to have sex with her again.
“You said Max tried to rape you,” I say softly. “Tell me what he did.”
“Not till we’re safe. We’re sitting ducks out here. You said it yourself.”
“Okay,” I tell her, twisting to pull my shirt back on. “That’s the best we can do. Bring the hammer. We’ll dump it far from this hill.”
After we climb out, Jet cocks her arm to throw Max’s car keys into the dense woods lining the edge of the road.
“Not yet,” I warn her.
She freezes. “Do you think he’s watching us?”
“He might be. Do you feel like you can run?”
“How far? I feel like I might vomit.”
“Fifty yards.”
“Go. I’ll keep up.”
Ten seconds of jogging brings us within sight of the parked Explorer.
“Wait!” Jet cries as it materializes in the road ahead of us. “Somebody else is up here!”
“That’s mine,” I explain, reaching for her hand. “Take it easy.”
We’re both breathing hard, and even in the dark, she looks paler than I’ve ever seen her. She’s staring at the Ford Explorer like it might hold a squad of hit men.
“Whose truck is that?”
“Dixie Allman ran out of gas on Highway 36. I was helping her out when you and Max rode by. I switched cars with her so I could follow you without Max noticing.”
“Why’d you block the road?”
“To make sure Max couldn’t get away with you while I was climbing up. Come on, this is our ride home.” I pull her forward and we run to the Ford.
“We’re leaving?” she asks hopefully.
“Not yet. But soon.”
The Explorer’s doors open with a grating of steel, but the engine cranks readily. Is Max lying up on the hill somewhere, listening? I wonder.
“Why can’t we go yet?” Jet asks, climbing into the seat beside me and dropping the hammer on the plastic floor mat.
“We need to make sure Max doesn’t come walking down this road. And that nobody comes to pick him up.”
“How could they? He can’t call anybody. I have his cell phone.”
“I know. And Max is probably bleeding to death up there right now. But let’s just give it a half hour to make sure.”
Jet groans with frustration, but she doesn’t argue.
“Are you going to tell me what happened?” I ask.
“Are we just going to sit here in the road?”
“No.” Shifting the SUV into reverse, I back down the narrow hill road with only the brake lights for illumination.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
“I want to be farther down the hill, and I’m not going back up to the top to turn around. I also want to be on the front side, so we can see the gate. Watch for an opening in the trees where I can get this thing turned around.”