Jeffery Deaver - The Bodies Left Behind

“No! Oh, my God.”

Brynn added, “House break-in by Lake Mondac.”

“Just…you mean, tonight?”

Michelle nodded.

“I’m so sorry. I-” Gandy could think of nothing to say. He asked Brynn, “And you tried to arrest them?”

“There was a nine-one-one call. We weren’t sure what it was about. I got there afterward, lost the car and my weapon. We had to run.”

“Lake Mondac? Where’s that?”

“About five, six miles south. We were making for the Snake when they found us. We had to detour. How much farther to your camper?”

“Not far.” He paused as a sheet of high cloud slipped between earth and moon and complete darkness enveloped them. A thin wash of illumination returned and he gestured to their right. Gandy led them farther through the woods. Then pointed out the start of a smaller trail. After they began down it, he stopped and gathered some brush, using it to obscure the path.

Brynn helped him add more camouflage. Michelle pitched in too, looking over their handiwork and announcing, “Perfect. They’ll never find it.”

Brynn shivered. The adrenaline from her abortive assault-and the sniper shot-had worn off. She’d dressed once more in the parka and the second set of sweats but the chill was back in her bones. “Are you in a campground?” The search-and-rescue mission here had been limited to the Joliet Trail and the Snake River Gorge.

“No, there’s an old ranger station and a parking lot. Deserted. All overgrown. Nobody’s been there for years, looks like. Kind of spooky. Stephen King ought to write a book about it. Ghost Rangers, he could call it.”

Brynn asked, “How far to the access road from there?”

Gandy considered this for a moment. “There’s a dirt road that goes for about a mile. It takes you to the main road in the park. Then it’s about four miles to the entrance on Six eighty-two. That’s the closest.” He looked their way. “You can relax. We’ll be on the highway in twenty minutes.”

“WHERE?” HART MUTTERED.

The men were moving through the dry streambed where they’d seen their prey disappear.

“Look,” Lewis called softly. He was staring at a muddy patch of ground.

“What? I can’t see anything.”

Lewis pulled off his jacket and made a tent with it. He took a cigarette lighter out of his pocket and, inside the garment, flicked it. Kneeling, Hart could see a series of footprints in the mud. They came from three people. “How old you think those are?”

“Look fresh to me. Who the hell’s with them? Shit, if it’s a cop he’s got a cell phone or radio.”

The lighter clicked off. The men stood up and looked around, as Lewis tugged his jacket on. Hefted the shotgun. He shook his head. “You wouldn’t think a cop’d be around this time of night.”

“True.”

“But who else’d be here?”

“No campers this time of year. Ranger maybe. We gotta find ’ em fast.” Hart walked a little farther up the streambed. He crouched and ran his hand over another patch of mud. “They’re going that way.” He pointed up the hill. “That a path?”

“Looks like it.”

Hart grabbed a fallen tree trunk to push himself to his feet. The wood was rotten and a portion of it crumbled under his grip.

In less than a second the rattlesnake nesting inside, about two and a half feet long, had launched itself silently into the back of Hart’s hand-on his good arm. Before he could even shout in horror, the dark, glistening stripe of muscle had vanished.

“Lewis!” Hart pulled off his glove and saw two puncture wounds in the back of his hand, near the wrist. Shit. Was he going to die? One of the fangs had pierced a vein. Feeling faint, he sat down.

Lewis, who’d seen the strike, flicked his lighter and examined the wound.

Hart asked, “Should I suck it out? I saw that on TV, a movie.”

“You’re going to be okay. You don’t want to suck it out. Venom gets to your heart faster under your tongue than through a vein.”

Hart noted that his breathing was suddenly coming fast.

“Stay calm. The calmer the better. Let me look.” Lewis studied the wound carefully.

“You going to burn it?” Hart’s eyes danced as he gazed at the Bic flame.

“No. Relax.”

Lewis let the lighter go dark. He took a shotgun shell out of his pocket and, with his Buck knife, carefully cut it open. He tossed aside the pellets and the plastic wad. “Hold your other hand out.”

Hart did and the man poured the gunpowder, fine little black cylinders, into his cupped palm.

Lewis told him, “Spit in it. Go ahead.”

“Spit?”

“I know what I’m doing. Go ahead.”

Hart did this.

“Again. Get it wet.”

“Okay.”

Then Lewis reached into his inner pocket and took out a pack of Camels. He smiled like a cookie-stealing schoolboy. “I meant to give up smoking last week.” Then he ripped open three cigarettes and sprinkled the tobacco into Hart’s palm. “Mix it all up.”

Hart thought this was crazy but he was feeling even more light-headed. He did what he was told. With the knife Lewis cut the tail off his shirt. “Put that mess on the wound and I’ll tie it.”

Hart pressed the black-brown wad onto the punctures and Lewis tied the cloth around them and helped him put his glove back on.

“It’ll sting. But you’ll be fine.”

“Fine? I just got bit by a rattler.”

“It was pretty much a dry bite.”

“A what?”

“Snake was a rattler, yeah, but a massasauga. They control how much venom they let go. They’re small and don’t have a lot, so they conserve it, use it on prey so they can eat. For defense they don’t use much. Just enough to scare off a threat.”

“Well, scared the shit out of me. I didn’t hear it rattle.”

“That’s only if they sense you coming. You surprised him as much as he surprised you.”

“No, not quite,” Hart muttered. “I feel faint.”

“You got a little venom and you’ll feel funny some. But if that was a wet bite your hand’d be twice its size and you’d be screaming already. Or out like a light. I know we’ve gotta move but it’s better you just sit still for five, ten minutes.”

Hart had been in fist fights, he’d faced down people with weapons when he’d had none and he’d exchanged bullets from time to time. But nothing had shocked him like that snake.

This is my world. You’ll see things that aren’t there and miss things that’re coming up right behind you.

Hart took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. “That’s a rush for you.” He was almost enjoying the giddy sensation. He looked down at his hand, which had stopped stinging now. “How come you know all this, Comp?”

“My dad and me’d go hunting. Same thing happened to you happened to him. He explained it all what to do. Then he switched my bare behind for not looking where I was going and stepping on the nest.”

They sat in silence for a moment. Hart wished that Lewis had pocketed one of the vodka bottles. He wouldn’t have minded a jolt right about now.

Hart remembered that Lewis’s mother was in a home. “Your father still alive?”

“Yep.”

“You see him much?”

“Not really. You know, things happen.” Lewis grinned, looked away and said nothing more for a moment. He started to say something. But didn’t. They looked around at the wilderness, the wind shuffling leaves, the faint lapping of the lake.

“I was thinking, Hart.”

“Yeah?”

“When we take care of them and get back home? You and me, we could do a job together. I was thinking with my contacts, guys in my crew, and your, you know, the way you plan things and think, we’d be a good team. This thing tonight, we just fell into it. It happened fast.”