Giles Blunt: Crime Machine

“Is only one bathroom?” Another man’s voice. Again a foreign accent.

“Yessir. You mightn’t consider it for your primary residence, but for a northern getaway? I think you’d be hard put to beat it.”

Their footsteps thudding toward the hall and the light going out.

“You-all check out the other bedrooms,” the man said, “and then I got a little something to warm us up.”

Sam shifted her position under the bed. She could hear the man and woman in the hall, some foreign language. How long could it possibly take you to check out a little bungalow? Leave, she told them. Just leave.

Footsteps moving back toward the kitchen or living room, no longer in the hall anyway. The people didn’t leave, but she couldn’t hear them anymore.

She tried to regulate her breathing, to calm down. They would go soon. Another few minutes maybe.

From the living room, the clink of glasses. Laughter. Sam prayed they were not planning on an all-night booze-up.

She waited, thinking about the window. The house was such an open style there was no chance of getting to the front door without being seen. She had never seen the back door, but it would have to be somewhere near the kitchen. That meant the window.

Is there one single solitary thing I have to be grateful for in this situation? she wondered. One single solitary thing to justify that famous “attitude of gratitude” her father was always encouraging her to cultivate? Maybe one. Got to the bathroom before all this. Otherwise there’d be a whole other layer of anguish.

Gunshot.

Sam’s head hit the box spring. Her father had taught her to shoot when she was nine. There was no doubt in her mind, not for one instant, that someone had just fired a gun.

Another shot.

A man shouted. The kind of yell a man lets fly when his team has just scored a goal.

When you get lost in the woods, her father told her-and everyone gets lost in the woods, even Indians-the first thing you do is what you don’t do. You don’t panic. Panic will kill you faster than any wolf, faster than any bear. Panic is the quickest cause of death known to man. What you do is you notice it, you name it for what it is, and you lock it away in a little safe where no one can get at it, not even you, understand?

Don’t panic, she told herself. Maybe no one has been shot. They were looking at a house-why would anyone shoot anyone? Maybe someone’s shooting blanks for some reason. Maybe they snorted some coke or something and they’re going a little wacky. Don’t panic.

She tried to get control of her breathing, her heart rate. No one knows I’m here. Whatever’s going on, it’ll be over soon. They’ll leave, I’ll leave. Life will be normal and no one will be dead. Not me, at least.

None of this slowed her heart rate. Blood thundered in her ears.

She eased herself out from under the bed. There were two windows side by side, one with an air conditioner fixed into it. Outside, moonlight on snow. She turned the lock on the other one and lifted. It didn’t move. Her heart jacked itself up even more. It was all she could do not to scream.

This is panic. Heaving up on the window grips, pushing on the sash, nothing moving. Thinking, this is panic, get back under that bed.

Grabbing the chair. To this moment still having made no sound.

I do this and there’s no going back. It’s one chance and no more. I should get back under that bed.

She swung the chair with all her strength, spinning her weight into it. The noise was terrifying.

One knee over the sill and onto the slight ledge outside. Hands on the sill and glass slicing into her in many places at once. She pushed herself off, coat ripping, and hit the ground hard, knees and hands. Then up and running, and bullets spitting snow in front of her before she even heard the first shot.

She made straight for the darkness of the trees, thinking, my tracks in fresh snow saying shoot me. She dropped down behind an outcropping of granite and looked back. Someone had turned on the bedroom light, but there was no shadow in the window. Think, she said. To her left, the platinum lake, the ice still too thin for anyone heavier than a cat. There’s only two ways back to the car, one on either side of the drive and then the road. He saw me come this way. He’s going to bust out that front door and head for this side and he’s going to hear me even if he can’t see me and then I’m dead and I really do not want to die.

The open ground between her and the house looked like the worst place in the world. She left the rocks and ran right back through it, keeping close to the rear of the house, and then into the woods on the other side. Every instinct told her to run all out. I’m fast, she said, but I’m not Loreena Moon and I’m not about to outrun bullets. The trick is not to run fast but to run silent.

She tried to remember all of the tracking lessons her father had given her. How to move in on your prey without being detected. Keep your steps to the rocks, right on them or close by. Ease your weight by grabbing low branches close to the trunk. Don’t step on twigs. Great bit of Indian lore there, Dad. I’d never have thought of that. Being a good tracker was not the same as being good, meaning living, prey.

When she was well past the front of the house, she crouched amid a stand of pine and listened. She could see the drive, could hear the man crashing through the woods on the far side. How dumb was this person likely to be, was the question. How long would it take him to see that there were no tracks over there, no footprints in the night’s thin layer of snow. Then he would either wait or head down to the back of the house and see her trail doubling back.

He came out of the woods and turned slowly, conning the snow, the woods. Sam reached into her pocket for her cellphone. Not there. She felt her other pockets. The man moved back toward the house, the gun long in his hand. Sam took off again. A few moments later the road was in sight through the trees. Her car was down the road a little toward town. To avoid crossing the open driveway, she would have to get to the far side of the road and into the woods, which climbed a steep hill, or risk the open road.

The man was crashing through the brush behind her. Sam broke for the road and ran for it. If he saw her, he would have trouble getting a shot, and by the time he reached the road, she would be at her car. A bee whizzed by her face and then the following crack told her everything she needed to know. She got to the hydro utility road and her car parked maybe fifty feet in from the road.

If he’s made it to the road, the noise of me starting this thing up is going to tell him where I am.

She kept the lights off. The Honda started first try. She took it slow on the service road; the slight rise would have been enough to render those bald tires useless. As she rolled up to Island Road, she saw him coming and gunned it, back tires spinning but drifting up onto the road. It was agony to ease off on the pedal, but it was the only way the tires were going to grip. A bullet slammed into the back end, and the man was yelling, running toward her in the rear-view.

The tires caught and she eased her foot down, keeping low in the seat. Another bullet slammed into the trunk. She rounded a curve and breathed a little easier. He couldn’t get a shot and he wasn’t going to catch her on foot. His best move now would be getting into the car she’d seen shadowed in the driveway and coming after her all Terminator. She had the advantage of knowing Island Road, which had some serious twists and turns, and he couldn’t be sure if she was headed to town or farther north.

A car coming the other way blasted its horn and flashed its lights. She put her headlights on and kept it fast, the Honda fishtailing on the hills and curves. Nothing in the rear-view, but then you could only see back to the last curve. Up ahead, the Chinook Tavern on the right and beyond that the highway.