Emory hurt all over. It hurt even to breathe.
The foggy air felt full of something invisible but sharp, like ice crystals or glass shards. She was underdressed. The raw cold stung her face where the skin was exposed. It made her eyes water, requiring her to blink constantly to keep the tears from blurring her vision and obscuring her path.
A stitch had developed in her side. It clawed continually, grabbed viciously. The stress fracture in her right foot was sending shooting pains up into her shin.
But owning the pain, running through it, overcoming it, was a matter of self-will and discipline. She’d been told she possessed both. In abundance. To a fault. But this was what all the difficult training was for. She could do this. She had to.
Push on, Emory. Place one foot in front of the other. Eat up the distance one yard at a time.
How much farther to go?
God, please not much farther.
Refueled by determination and fear of failure, she picked up her pace.
Then, from the deep shadows of the encroaching woods came a rustling sound, followed by a shift of air directly behind her. Her heart clutched with a foreboding of disaster to which she had no time to react before skyrockets of pain exploded inside her skull.
She fell, landing hard.
When the worst of the light show subsided, she rolled onto all fours and stayed in that position for several seconds, head lowered between her arms, trying to stave off dizziness. Finally, she raised her head only high enough to bring into view a pair of boots.
She stared at them as they came closer, growing larger until they filled her entire field of vision. When they came to within a few inches of her and stopped, she looked up past knees, torso, shoulders, and chin into a pair of familiar eyes.
“Alice?”
Chapter 41
You could have saved me a lot of trouble and died the first time,” Alice said. “Acute subdural hematoma. I was certain I’d struck you hard enough to cause a slow but persistent bleed, which out here,” she said, spreading her arms wide, “would have been deadly. But not to you. Not to the Golden Girl. Haven’t you ever, just once in your charmed life, had a streak of rotten luck?”
Emory’s brain, not even a week away from the first injury, was feeling the effects of the car crash and now a second blow to her head. She tried to stand, but her legs were too rubbery to support her, so she came off all fours and sat.
She tried to focus on what Alice was saying, but the words made no sense. Her image was wavering, as though Emory were looking at her underwater. The fluidity was making her nauseated.
“What are you saying? What is that in your hand?”
“This?” Alice raised the pistol. “It’s known in every ER in the country as a Saturday night special. Your basic thirty-eight-caliber revolver.”
Emory was beginning to grasp what was happening. “What are you doing with it?”
“I’m about to kill you, and this time I’ll make sure you’re dead.”
Emory’s stomach pitched. Nausea surged into the back of her throat. She was only barely able to swallow it. “Why?”
“It would take forever to enumerate all the reasons, Emory, and it’s cold out here. To summarize, Jeff was a louse, but he was my louse. At least he was until I made the mistake of introducing him to you. You were a much greener pasture. Pretty. Rich. Coveted virtues to him. But he didn’t love you, you know. He never did.”
“I realize that now.”
“However, he reveled in the affluence and status you lent him. So much so that he would never have left you, no matter how rocky the marriage became. He would always have held on.”
“So you had to get rid of me.”
“You had obligingly shown me the map with the trail you planned to run on Saturday morning. You went over it with me in great detail.”
“But you were with Jeff.”
“Who never could smoke weed without passing out afterward. I plied him with two scotches, two bottles of red wine, and a high-quality joint to ensure that he wouldn’t awaken until late the following morning.
“I made the long drive, parked at your turnaround spot, which you’d also pointed out to me, walked along the trail until I found a good hiding place, waited until you ran past, then came up behind you with the rock I’d found on the path.”
She smiled sourly. “In hindsight, I should have stayed a wee bit longer to make sure you were dead or soon would be. I was afraid to touch you for fear of leaving trace evidence. I didn’t touch the broken sunglasses that caused such high anxiety.
“Anyhow, I rushed back to my car, which was still the only one there. I met no one on the road coming down the mountain. I made it back to Atlanta in record time and had brunch in bed with Jeff, who was none the wiser. It was just as I outlined it to you this morning, except I was the one who sneaked out, not Jeff.”
“You wanted me dead so you could have him.”
She laughed. “Emory, you’re thinking far too simplistically. I wanted you dead so Jeff would be blamed for it. Being convicted of your murder would cost him his life, one way or another. Two birds, one stone. You see?” She flashed a smile that was overly bright and cheery, a madwoman’s grin of self-congratulation.
Emory concentrated hard on gathering puzzle pieces until they formed a complete picture. “Did you leave the trinket off his ski jacket there?”
“It was found? I wondered. I couldn’t ask.”
Emory didn’t tell her who had found it.
“Everything was going according to plan,” Alice continued. “Jeff quickly came under suspicion. He pretended to be distraught over your disappearance, but very quickly he grew fond of the prospect of being a wealthy widower, which, of course, was to my benefit.
“But I couldn’t figure out why no one could find your body. How hard could it be? I guessed that you’d regained consciousness and staggered off the path and into the wilderness. After three days, I began to relax, believing that if you hadn’t died of the head trauma, surely you had succumbed to hypothermia.
“Then you turned up alive. Saved by Daniel Boone. Unbelievable,” she said, shaking her head at the wonder of it. “Who would have guessed that your splendor extended to rising from the dead? And that was only the first of several jolts. Your cabin-dweller was a fugitive being hunted by the FBI. You and he were in a feud with incestuous hillbillies.
“But,” she said, smiling again, “I saw a way to turn this mess to my advantage. Worse than anything, Jeff hated being seen as a fool, and your escapades were making him out to be a colossal one. He was rapidly unraveling. All I had to do was keep pulling on the thread.
“Last night he tried to convince me that you had become mentally unbalanced. So, as a friend to both of you, I drove up here this morning to lend support. He outlined his ridiculous plot with that pair of brothers. I pretended to be dismayed, when actually I was delighted. Without any help from me, he was digging himself in deeper. Which I would have been happy to sit back and watch him do. But,” she sighed, “at the last minute, he forced my hand.”
Emory’s blood turned cold. “You’re referring to him in the past tense.”
Lost in her own thoughts, Alice continued, speaking in a rueful murmur. “Incomprehensibly, he was going to chase up here and reclaim you. Even after suffering the humiliation heaped on by you, he still chose you over me.”
“My God, Alice, what have you done? You’ll never get away with it, not any of it.”
“Oh, getting away with it has ceased to matter. My goal was to have the two of you dead, and I’m halfway there.” She aimed the pistol down at Emory. “Any final words?”
“Alice, please.”
“No? Okay then.”
The shot rang out, and Alice crumpled to the ground, her right leg giving out from under her.
Hayes emerged from the fog-blanketed trees like a specter, his gun hand extended at arm’s length. “Drop the weapon or you die.”
Emory cried out, “No, no!” But her fear was more for him than Alice.
The bullet had entered the back of Alice’s leg and exited the front just above her knee. Her teeth chattered with pain, but she kept her grip on the pistol, which was aimed at Hayes, who made a huge target.
Emory thought her heart would burst from her chest. “Alice, please, listen to me, listen to him. Toss the pistol away. Don’t make him kill you. Please don’t.”
Alice didn’t seem to hear. She was focused on Hayes. “Emory’s super stud.”
“Drop the pistol.”
“If you’d wanted me dead,” she taunted, “you would have made the first shot count.”
“I don’t want you dead. But I will fucking kill you if I have to.”
“Don’t make him, Alice, please, please,” Emory sobbed. “I beg you. Don’t make him do it. Put the gun down. It’s over.”
“Over for you.” She whipped the pistol toward Emory.
The gunshot wasn’t as loud as it might have been on a clear day when the air was crisp. The fog muffled some of the sound.
But Alice was just as dead.
Hayes was beside Emory in an instant, bending down to lift her up and hug her against him. His hands closed around her head as he searched her face. “Are you all right?”
She was weeping. “I didn’t want you to have to. I didn’t want you to—”
“Shh. Shh. I didn’t.”
He indicated that she look behind her. Sergeant Detective Grange was standing with one hand braced against a tree, bent at the waist, retching violently. Knight stood beside him, his beefy hand on his partner’s shoulder.
*