Jeffery Deaver - The Bodies Left Behind

They approached it very slowly. Hart didn’t think it was a trap-couldn’t imagine what it would be-but he didn’t trust anything about Brynn now.

The Trickster…

“Cover me. I’ll check it out. Don’t shoot unless I’m about to get shot or stuck. I don’t want to give us away.”

A nod.

Hart, crouching, moved in close until he was about three feet away from the object. It was a white tube about eighteen inches long and three inches wide. One end bulged out. He prodded the object with a branch. When nothing happened he looked around. Lewis was scanning the nearby scenery. He gave a thumbs-up to Hart.

The man bent down and picked it up. Lewis joined him.

“A sock with a billiard ball inside.”

“That was theirs?”

“Has to be. It’s clean and dry.”

“Shit. One of ’em was going to use that to clobber us. Man, that’d break some bone.”

Brynn, Hart thought.

“What’s that?” Lewis asked.

Hart looked at him, eyebrow raised.

“What’d you say? I missed it.”

“Nothing. Didn’t say a thing.” Had he said her name aloud?

They’d continued straight, going almost due north, just now their prey had come into view.

They were directly behind the women on a relatively flat stretch of forest, mostly oak and maple and birch, that seemed to end in a clearing about a quarter mile ahead. To the right the ground dropped sharply toward a small, rocky trough-a streambed feeding what seemed to be a small lake, surrounded by dense pine forest. On their left the ground rose to a series of ridges, some covered with trees, some dotted with brush and rock, some bald.

Hart crouched, motioning Lewis to join him. The man complied instantly.

“We’re going to split up here. You go way round to the left. That ridge, see it?”

A nod.

“You’ll be in grass, so you can move faster. Then come in and get close to them on their left flank. I’ll keep going straight, come up behind them. When they hit that place there-see that sweet little clearing?”

“Yeah, got it.”

“I’ll wave the sock.” He tapped his pocket where he’d stuffed the billiard ball cudgel. “You shoot. That’ll keep ’ em down. I ’ll come up behind and finish them.”

“Bodies?” Lewis asked. “We can’t leave ’em. The animals’ll carry the parts off all over the park. That’ll be a lot of evidence.”

“No, we’ll bury them.”

“Been cold this April. Ground’s pretty hard still. And what’ll we dig with?” Lewis looked around. He pointed at a small lake to their right. “There. We could weigh ’em down with rocks. Probably nobody comes there. It’s a pretty shitty little lake.”

Hart glanced at it. “Good.”

“Now, I’ll set the choke wide but if I don’t hit both of ’em with the first shot the other’ll go to cover right away. We’ll have to track her down. Who’d I ought to target first? Michelle or the cop?”

Hart was watching the women make their way through the forest, casual as oblivious tourists. “You get Michelle. I’ll take Brynn.”

“My pleasure.” Lewis nodded. It was clearly his preference anyway.

THE WHITE F150 sped out of Humboldt and onto the highway.

The pickup truck was doing close to fifty, the gassy engine accelerating hard.

Graham Boyd was driving and his only passengers were three azaleas in the truck bed, which he hadn’t bothered to untether. He’d locked away the pellet gun in the same closet that contained Joey’s skateboard.

After the confrontation with his stepson he’d gone into the boy’s room to talk to him but he was pretending to sleep. Graham had called, “Joey,” twice, in a whisper. Part of him had been relieved that the boy didn’t respond; he’d had no clue what he was going to say. He just hated that all this tension was unresolved.

He’d thought about taking the game cartridges, the computer and the whole Xbox itself and locking them in the toolshed. But he didn’t. It seemed to him that when it came to children, decisions about punishments shouldn’t be made in anger.

You’re the adult, he’s the child.

Chalk that one up to instinct.

He’d checked five minutes later and the light under the boy’s door was still out.

“I’m pretty worried, Graham,” Anna had said.

He’d stared again at the picture of his wife in her velvet helmet and riding outfit and then walked out the back door, with a full beer bottle in his hand, so cold it stung his fingers. He’d stood on the small deck, which he’d built himself, and looked up at the half-moon.

He’d fished his phone from his pocket, intending to try to reach Brynn.

But then paused. What if the man answered again? Graham knew he wouldn’t be able to stay calm. If he gave away that they were suspicious and the police were on their way then the man might hurt Brynn and flee. He’d dropped the phone into his pocket and poured the beer onto a mulch bed surrounding a Christmas azalea behind the deck.

When he’d returned to the living room he’d blinked in surprise. Joey had come downstairs, in his pajamas. He was curled up on the couch beside his grandmother, his head in her lap.

Anna was whisper-singing Joey a song.

Graham’s eyes had met his mother-in-law’s. He’d pointed to himself and then the door.

“You sure you want to do that, Graham?” she’d asked softly.

No, he’d thought. But nodded.

“I’ll hold down the fort here. Be careful. Please be careful.”

He’d fired up the temperamental engine and sped out of his driveway, tires skidding and scattering gravel.

Now he gripped his phone again, started to type in a number-Sandra, of course, wasn’t on speed dial. But he hesitated and decided not to call her. He slipped the device back into his pocket. The protocol was off; the hour was late and he’d already talked to her earlier, briefly, sneaking a call when Anna was in the bathroom, to tell her he couldn’t make it tonight. And even if she answered now, which she probably would not, what would he tell her?

He wasn’t sure.

Besides, he reasoned, it was better to concentrate on his driving. He was going just over seventy in a forty zone, defying any trooper to stop him.

What exactly he would do when he got to Lake Mondac, he had no idea.

Why he was doing this was even more of a mystery.

For his part, he longed to be lying in bed, end-of-day groggy, with his arm around his wife’s tummy and lips against her shoulder. Talk about his day at work and hers, a dinner party coming up on Friday, their child’s braces and report card, a refinancing offer on the mortgage, until they dozed off, one after the other. But that wasn’t apparently to be his fate. Would it ever be? And when? Tomorrow? Next year?

Defying the troopers further, he edged the boxy truck up to eighty, as the kidnapped azaleas shivered in the back.

“THERE!” BRYNN WHISPEREDexcitedly. “See that?”

“What?” Michelle was following Brynn’s extended arm as they crouched behind a still-bare dogwood, the ground beneath them thick with crocus shoots and fragrant decay.

In the distance, a thin sparkling ribbon.

“The river. The Snake.” Their lifeline.

They walked for five minutes without another glimpse of the water. Brynn was looking around to orient herself and make sure they were traveling in the right direction when she froze.

“Jesus.” She crouched, a hum of fear in her chest.

It was one of the men: the one with the shotgun, Hart’s partner. He was no more than two hundred yards away, on a ridge to their left.

“It’s my fault…” Michelle’s face was grim. “I had that fucking outburst!” Her face revealed the self-disgust of earlier. “They heard me!”