Jeffery Deaver - The Bodies Left Behind

“Go.”

A click and the flame blossomed. It was far brighter than she’d expected. Anybody within a hundred yards could have seen.

Brynn leaned forward and scanned the ground, crawling forward carefully.

There! Something was shiny. Was that it? Brynn reached out carefully and picked up a tiny twig covered in bird shit.

A second possibility turned out to be a streak of mica in a rock.

But finally Brynn spotted a silver flare in the night, sitting on top of a curl of oak leaf. She picked up the needle carefully. “Shut it out,” she said to Michelle, nodding at the candle lighter.

The area went soot black-even darker now because the light had numbed their eyes. Brynn’s sense of vulnerability soared. The two men could be walking directly toward them and she’d never see them. Only a cracking branch or crunch of leaves would give away their approach.

Michelle crouched. “Can I help?”

“Not yet.”

The young woman sat down, crossed her legs and fished the crackers out. She offered them to Brynn, who ate several. Then Brynn began tapping the needle with the back of the knife. Twice she struck a finger hard and winced. But she never let go and never paused in the pounding-like the flare of the lighter, the sound of the tink tink tink seemed to broadcast their position for miles.

After an eternal five minutes she said, “Let’s try it. I need some thread. Something thin.” They unraveled a strand from Brynn’s ski jacket and used it to tie the needle to a bit of twig.

Brynn dumped out the alcohol from the bottle and refilled it halfway with water, slipped the twig and pin inside and set the bottle on its side. Brynn hit the candle lighter trigger. They stared at the bottle. The bit of wood slowly revolved to the left and stopped.

“It works!” Michelle blurted, giving her first true smile of the night.

Brynn glanced at her and smiled back. Damn, she thought, it does. It surely does.

“But which end’s north and which’s south?”

“Around here the high ground’s generally west. That’d be to the left.” They shut the lighter out and after their eyes were accustomed to the dark Brynn pointed out a distant hilltop. “That’s north. Let’s head for it.”

Brynn screwed the lid on the bottle and slipped it into her pocket, picked up her spear. They started walking again. They’d pause every so often to take another reading. As long as they continued north they would have to cross the Joliet Trail sooner or later.

Curious, she thought, how much reassurance she’d gotten by making this little toy. Kristen Brynn McKenzie was a woman whose worst enemy, worst fear, was the lack of control. She’d begun this night without any-no phone or weapon-crawling cold, drenched and helpless out of a black lake. But now, with a crude spear in hand and a compass in her pocket she felt as confident as that character out of one of Joey’s comic books.

Queen of the Jungle.

THE DANCE.

What Hart called it.

This was a part of the business and Hart was not only used to dancing, he was good at it. Being a craftsman, after all.

A month ago. Sitting in a coffee shop-never a bar; keep your head about you-he’d looked up at the voice.

“So, Hart. How you doing?”

A firm handshake.

“Good. You?”

“I’m okay. Listen, I’m interested in hiring somebody. You interested in some work?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. So how do you know Gordon Potts? You go back a long ways?”

“Not so long.”

“How’d you meet him?” Hart had asked.

“A mutual friend.”

“Who’d that be?”

“Freddy Lancaster.”

“Freddy, sure. How’s his wife doing?”

“That’d be tough to find out, Hart. She died two years ago.”

“Oh, that’s right. Bad memory. How does Freddy like St. Paul?”

“St. Paul? He lives in Milwaukee.”

“This memory of mine.”

The Dance. It went on and on. As it has to.

Then two meetings later, credentials finally established, the risk of entrapment minimal, the dancing was over and they got down to details.

“That’s a lot of money.”

“Yeah, it is, Hart. So you’re interested?”

“Keep going.”

“Here’s a map of the area. That’s a private road. Lake View Drive. And there? That’s a state park, all of it. Hardly any people around. Here’s a diagram of the house.”

“Okay…This a dirt road or paved?”

“Dirt…Hart, they tell me you’re good. Are you good? I hear you’re a craftsman. That’s what they say.”

“Who’s they?”

“People.”

“Well, yeah, I’m a craftsman.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m curious. Why’re you in this line of work?”

“It suits me,” he’d said simply.

“It looks like it does.”

“Okay. What’s the threat situation?”

“The what?”

“How risky’s the job going to be? How many people up there, weapons, police nearby? It’s a lake house-are the other houses on Lake View occupied?”

“It’ll be a piece of cake, Hart. Hardly any risk at all. The other places’ll be vacant. And only the two of them up there, the Feldmans. And no rangers in the park or cops around for miles.”

“They have weapons?”

“Are you kidding? They’re city people. She’s a lawyer, he’s a social worker.”

“Just the Feldmans, nobody else? It’ll make a big difference.”

“That’s my information. And it’s solid. Just the two of them.”

Now, in the middle of Marquette State Park, Hart and Lewis circled around a dangerous stand of thorny brush. Like a plant out of a science fiction movie.

Hart reflected sourly, Yeah, right, just the two of them. Feeling the ache in his arm.

Angry with himself.

He’d done 95 percent.

It should’ve been 110.

At least they knew they were on the right path. A half mile back they’d found a scrap of tissue with blood on it. The Kleenex couldn’t’ve been there for more than a half hour. Hart now paused and gazed around them, noted some peaks and a small creek. “We’re doing fine. Be a lot tougher without the moonlight. But we’ve caught a break. Somebody’s looking out for us.”

The Trickster…

“Somebody…You believe that?” Lewis said this as if he did.

Hart didn’t. But no time for theology now. “I’d like to move a little faster. When they hit the trail they might start running. We’ll have to too.”

“Run?”

“Right. Smooth ground’ll give us the advantage. We can move faster.”

“Them being women, you mean?”

“Yep. Well, and one of them being hurt. Pain slows people down.” He paused and stared to their right. Then hunched over the map and examined it closely with the flashlight, its lens muted by his undershirt.

He pointed. “That a smoke tower?”

“What’s that?”

“Rangers look for forest fires from them. It’s one of the places I thought she might go for.”

“Where?”

“On that ridge.”

They were looking at a structure about a half mile away. It was a tower of some sort but through the trees they couldn’t tell if it was a radio or microwave antenna or a structure with a small enclosure on top.

“Maybe,” Lewis said.

“You see any sign of them?”

Now that their eyes were used to the dark, the half-moon provided fair illumination but the ravine separating the men from the ranger tower was shadowy, and in the bottom a canopy of trees provided perfect cover.

The women heading for the tower made some sense, rather than the Joliet Trail or the ranger station. The place might have a radio, or even a weapon. He debated for a moment and risked scanning the ground with the flashlight. If the women were near, at least they’d be moving away and might not see the light.