“That’s something else you’ll pay for,” he screamed.
His pain-blurred vision cleared.
He heard Sansborough crashing through the forest.
Let her run.
With the mist dispersing, it would be easy to follow her now. He fired once more in her direction, wanting to spur her into a panic, knowing that adrenaline would soon make her hyperventilate and sap her strength.
It wouldn’t be long now.
He took the almost-expended magazine from his pistol and stuffed it into a pocket. He freed a spare magazine from his belt and shoved it home. A round was already in the chamber. He didn’t need to rack the slide as so many stupid Hollywood actors unnecessarily did.
But never in a Rambo movie.
As the drizzle beaded on his windbreaker, he broke into an easy, confident jog, taking care that his breath rate didn’t increase.
That was the secret.
If his breathing remained steady, everything else about him would be steady. It didn’t matter how far Sansborough got at the start. He could easily track her down, using the “find” app. Ahead, beneath an evergreen branch, he saw something that made him smile.
Blood.
One of his bullets had struck home.
Now he had yet another way to know where she was heading.
LIZ LEAPED OVER A FALLEN tree, landed on wet leaves, slipped, and nearly dropped.
Her right arm felt numb.
She wanted to clutch it, to try to stop the flow of blood, but she had to keep a tight grip on the knife in her left hand. Racing onward, she didn’t understand why she felt out of breath. She’d run in marathons, for God’s sake. With all her stress training, she shouldn’t be breathing this hard this soon. But she’d never run a marathon after being shot.
“Sansborough, what you did to Rudy I’m gonna do to you,” Max yelled behind her. “But you won’t die as fast as Rudy did.”
Her brain raced. How had he known that she’d headed back to the lodge? The only noise made had been when she stepped on the gravel. Nothing before that. Straining to fill her lungs, she veered around a tangle of bushes. Her legs almost buckled, but this time it wasn’t because of slippery leaves.
“Bet you’re feeling woozy from all the blood you’re pumping out,” Max yelled. “Won’t be long now.”
She glanced desperately over her shoulder and felt as though she’d been punched when she saw splotches of blood behind her. If the drizzle didn’t wash them away fast enough, Max could easily follow her.
The question kept insisting.
How did he know she’d headed back to the lodge?
Running, she felt the lump of the phone in her pocket.
A wave of fury gripped her.
He was using that to track her.
She pulled out the phone and threw it away.
“You sound like you’re running a little slower,” Max shouted. “Legs feeling weak? It won’t be long now.”
Breathless, her legs losing strength, she peered down at the knife she clutched. She felt so light-headed she had to take care that if she fell, she wouldn’t land on it. The blade had sawteeth on the back, reminding her of the knife in a Rambo movie she and Simon had seen on television. The damned things were broadcast every week, it seemed. Rambo had unscrewed the cap, revealing a hollow handle that contained a needle and thread with which he’d sewn a wound shut.
Running, Liz unscrewed the cap on this one.
The hollow grip contained nothing.
She remembered a scene in which Rambo had burst from the camouflage of branches and—
JOGGING EASILY AFTER HER THROUGH the rain, Max glanced occasionally at the find app on his phone. Even though the noise Sansborough made was easy to follow—and to a lessening degree, the blood—it never hurt to be extrasure. Passing a tangle of bushes, he frowned when he saw that the dot indicated that Sansborough wasn’t straight ahead as the blood track indicated but instead she was to his left.
Somehow he was passing her.
He stopped and aimed toward a tangle of bushes. Was she hiding behind them? But he didn’t see any blood leading in that direction.
Wary, he took a step closer.
Another step. He tightened his finger on the trigger. Then he saw the phone on the ground. Dammit, she’d figured out what he was doing and thrown it away. Now he had only her blood and the sounds of her running to tell him where she was. But he no longer heard her running.
Had she collapsed from loss of blood and the shock of having been shot?
He returned to the trail she’d left and followed at a cautious walk. As water dripped off the brim of his baseball cap, he scanned the trees on each side. He passed a tall boulder and checked behind it. The rain had finally washed away the blood, but her footprints were more obvious, collecting water.
He moved faster.
He came to the stream and saw where she’d slid down to it. When she’d struggled up the opposite side, she’d made deep furrows in the mud. He stepped over a fallen log, eased down the slippery bank, started across the stream, feeling how cold the water was, and suddenly gasped from a blow to his back that hurtled him into the water.
LIZ LUNGED FROM THE HOLLOW she’d scooped from the mud under the log.
A few minutes earlier, she’d crossed the stream and entered the trees on the opposite side. There she found a dead branch that fit into the hollow grip of the knife. Then she circled back to the stream, walked through the water, and crawled under the log.
As Max descended past her, aiming toward the trees on the opposite bank, she had thrust with the rigged spear. Adding her weight to it, she pushed with all her remaining strength and plunged the blade deeper into him.
He groaned and fell facedown into the stream.
Her hands had shook. Her lungs felt starved for oxygen.
Springing toward him, she shoved the spear even deeper into his back. He raised his face from the water and struggled. Using her uninjured arm, she grabbed a rock from the stream and struck it against the back of his head. He slumped, his face partially out of the water. She struck his head again, feeling the softness of blood under his hair.
She struck a third time.
A fourth.
She heard his skull crack.
She hit him again and again.
The rock went deeper into bone.
Shrieking, she straddled his back and pressed his face into the water, holding it under until long after his death shudder had stopped.
She needed all her strength to stand and stagger backward. When she slumped on the muddy bank, she kept her grip on the rock in case she needed to use it again.
She couldn’t stop shaking.
Finally, she decided to head back to the lodge and stop her bleeding. She placed a foot on his back and tugged the spear free. The effort of using her wounded arm made her groan. Max had dropped his pistol. She picked it up. As the rain fell, the forest again seemed enshrouded by mist, but she knew that the haze was really the consequence of blood loss.
She gave Max a fierce kick just to make sure he was dead.
Then she climbed the bank and followed her trail of blood.