Jeffery Deaver - The Sleeping Doll

"No. I'm on a path. The beach is below me, maybe two, three hundred feet away."

"Okay, he's there! You see that small island? Seals all over it. And gulls."

"Got it."

"The beach in front of that."

"I can't see it from here. But I'm moving that way."

"No, Win. There's no cover for your approach. We need tactical. Wait."

"We don't have time. He's gotten away too many times already. I'm not letting it happen again."

The gunslinger attitude…

It bothered her a lot. Suddenly she really didn't want anything to happen to Winston Kellogg.

…afterward. How does that sound?…

"Just…be careful. I lost sight of him. He was on the beach, but he's in the rocks now. There'd be perfect firing positions from there. He can cover all the approaches."

Dance stood up, shielding her eyes as she scanned the beach. Where is he?

She found out a second later.

A bullet slammed into the rocks not far from her, and then she heard the crack of Pell's pistol.

Samantha screamed and Dance dropped to cover in the recess, nicking her skin, furious that she'd presented a target.

"Kathryn," Kellogg called on the radio, "are you firing?"

"No, that was Pell."

"You okay?"

"We're fine."

"Where did it come from?"

"I couldn't see. Had to be the rocks near the beach."

"You stay down. He's got your position now."

She asked Samantha, "Does he know the park?"

"The Family spent a lot of time here. He knows it pretty good, I'd guess."

"Win, Pell knows Point Lobos. You could walk right into a trap. Really, why don't you wait?

"Hold on." Kellogg's voice was a quiet rasp. "I think I see something. I'll call you back."

"Wait… Win. Are you there?"

She changed position, moving some distance away so Pell wouldn't be looking for her. She glanced out fast between two rocks. Couldn't see a thing. Then she noticed Winston Kellogg making his way toward the beach. Against the massive rocks, gnarled trees, the expanse of ocean, he seemed so fragile.

Please…Dance sent him a silent message to stop, to wait.

But, of course, he kept on moving, her tacit plea as ineffectual as, she reflected, his would have been with her.

Daniel Pell knew more cops were on their way.

But he was confident. He knew this area perfectly. He'd robbed plenty of tourists in Point Lobos-many of them stupid to the point of being co-conspirators. They'd leave their valuables in their cars and at the picnic grounds, never thinking that anybody would conceive of robbing fellow humans in such a spiritual setting.

He and the Family had also spent plenty of time just relaxing here, camping out on the way back from Big Sur when they didn't feel like making the drive up to Seaside. He knew routes that would get him to the highway, or to the private residences nearby, invisible routes. He'd steal another car, head east into the back roads of the Central Valley, through Hollister, and work his way north.

To the mountaintop.

But now he had to deal with the immediate pursuers. There were just two or three, he believed. He hadn't seen them clearly. They must've stopped at the cabin, seen the dead deputies, then pursued him on their own. And it seemed that only one was actually nearby.

He closed his eyes momentarily against the pain. He pressed the stab wound, which had opened in the fall down the rocks. His ear was throbbing from Sam's blow.

Mouse…

He rested his head and shoulder against a cold, wet rock. It seemed to lessen the agony.

He wondered if one of the pursuers was Kathryn Dance. If so, he suspected that, no, it wasn't a coincidence she'd shown up at the cabin. She'd have guessed that he had stolen the Infiniti not to go north but to head here.

Well, one way or the other, she wasn't going to be a threat much longer.

But how to handle the immediate situation?

The cop pursuing him was getting close. There were only two approaches to where he was at the moment. Whoever came after him would either have to climb down a twenty-foot-high rock face, completely exposed to Pell below, or-taking the path-would turn a sharp corner from the beach and be a perfect target.

Pell knew that only a tactical officer would try the rock face and that his pursuer probably wouldn't be decked out in rappelling gear. They'd have to come from the beach. He hunkered down behind a cluster of rocks, hidden from above and from the beach, and waited for the officer to get close, resting the gun on a boulder.

He wouldn't shoot to kill. He'd wound. Maybe in the knee. And then, when he was down, Pell would blind him with the knife. He'd leave the radio nearby so the cop, racked by agony, would call for help, screaming and distracting the other officers. Pell could escape into a deserted area of the park.

He now heard someone approaching, trying to be quiet. But Pell had hearing like a wild animal's. He curled his hand around his gun.

The emotion was gone. Rebecca and Jennie and even the hateful Kathryn Dance were far, far from his thoughts.

Daniel Pell was in perfect control.

Dance, in yet another spot on the ridge, hidden by thick pines, looked out fast.

Winston Kellogg was on the beach now, close to where Pell must have been when he'd fired at her. The agent was moving slowly, looking around him, gun in both hands. He looked up at a cliff and seemed to be debating climbing it. But the walls were steep and Kellogg was in street shoes, impractical for the slippery stone. Besides, he'd undoubtedly be an easy target climbing down the other side.

Looking back to the path in front of him he seemed to notice marks in the sand, where she'd seen Pell. He crouched and moved closer to them. He paused at an outcropping.

"What's going on?" Samantha asked.

Dance shook her head.

She looked down at Linda. The woman was half-conscious and paler than before. She'd lost a lot of blood. She'd need emergency treatment soon.

Dance called MCSO central and asked for the status of the troops.

"First tac responders in five minutes, boats in fifteen."

Dance sighed. Why was it taking the cavalry so damn long? She gave them her approximate position and explained how the med techs should approach, to stay out of the line of fire. Dance glanced out again and saw Winston Kellogg ease around the rock, glistening burgundy in the low sun. The agent was heading directly toward the spot where she'd seen Pell vanish a few minutes earlier.

A long minute passed. Two.

Where was he? What-

The boom of an explosion.

What the hell was that?

Then a series of gunshots from behind the outcropping, a pause, then several more pistol cracks.

"What happened?" Samantha called.

"I don't know." Dance pulled her radio out. "Win. Win! Are you there? Over."

But the only sounds she heard over the rush of the waves were the edgy cries of the frightened, fleeing gulls.

Kathryn Dance hurried along the beach, her Aldo shoes, among her favorites, ruined by the salt water.

She didn't care.

Behind her, back on the ridge, medical technicians were trundling Linda to the ambulance parked at the Point Lobos Inn, Samantha with her. She nodded to two MCSO officers ringing yellow tape from rock to rock, though the only intruder to trouble the crime scene would be the rising tide. Dance ducked under the plastic tape and turned the corner, continuing to the scene of the death.

Dance paused. Then walked straight up to Winston Kellogg and hugged him. He seemed shaken and kept staring at what lay in front of them: the body of Daniel Pell.

He was on his back, his sand-stained knees in the air, arms out to the sides. His pistol lay nearby where it had flown from his hand. Pell's eyes were partly open, intensely blue no longer, but hazy in death.