Jeffery Deaver - The Bodies Left Behind

The gun? Oh, how she wanted the gun!

But there was no choice. Brynn gave up on the weapon and began sprinting toward the girl. She intercepted her about three feet from the cliff edge, dropping to her knees painfully right in front of the child.

Startled, Amy pulled up fast.

“It’s okay, honey. Remember me? It’s all right. Be careful. I don’t want you to fall. Let’s get back, over there, into those bushes.”

“Where’s Mommy?”

“I’m not sure Amy. But I’m here. You’ll be okay.”

“I heard-”

“Come on with me.”

Brynn glanced back. Hart was struggling to get up. Still hadn’t seen her.

“Hart!” The voice came from the top of the cliff. Brynn saw the silhouette of Hart’s partner.

“Amy, let’s go over there. I don’t like that cliff.”

“Where’s my mommy ?” A raw edge to her voice.

“Come on.” Brynn hated herself for saying it but she had to: “I’ll help you find her.”

The hysteria faded. “Okay.”

Brynn moved fast toward the base of the cliff and led the girl into a thick stand of brush and tall grass, out of sight from Hart.

“I’ll help you find your mother but I can’t do it with my hands this way. Can you help me? You know how you were taping those bags?”

She nodded.

“Well, I have tape on my hands.”

“Rudy did that.”

“That’s right. It was like a joke.”

“I don’t think it was a joke. He does lots of things like that.”

“It hurts my hands. Will you take it off?”

“I’ll take it off. Okay. I don’t like Rudy. He looks at me sometimes when he thinks I’m asleep.”

Brynn’s heart thudded. “You don’t have to worry about Rudy anymore. I’m a policewoman.”

“You are? Like Charlie’s Angels?”

“Like that, yeah, Amy.”

“You’re older than them.”

Brynn nearly smiled.

Amy was slowly tugging at the tape. “How did you know my name?”

“Your father told me.”

“He’s not my father.”

“Charlie told me.”

After a number of false starts, Amy was unwinding the tape. “Why did Rudy do that?”

“He was going to hurt me. But don’t say anything, Amy. There are other people around. We don’t want them to hear us.”

“I saw them. I think one of them hurt my mommy.”

“Don’t worry; I won’t let anybody hurt you. Just don’t say anything now. We’ll be quiet. Both of us.”

“Okay.”

At last her hands were free. Brynn rubbed them. She’d scraped an elbow but the parka had protected her pretty well and there was no other damage that hadn’t been there before the tumble down the hill. She grabbed the precious map and put it in her jacket.

“Thank you, honey. Now, let’s be quiet.”

Amy nodded.

Crouching, Brynn led her back quietly toward the clearing where the van lay. She peeked through the bushes.

Hart was gone.

So was the gun.

GRAHAM BOYD DROVE fast, away from the place where two bodies lay in a fancy vacation house, his wife’s clothing in another and her car at the bottom of a black lake.

He tried to leave those images behind. But he couldn’t.

He’d thought he’d be seeing Sandra, then stopping for a fast drink at JJ’s-so he could honestly tell Brynn he’d been to the poker game.

But, man, had everything changed… He’d never experienced a night like this one.

Glancing up into the rearview mirror, he saw the police car behind him, coming up close, real fast. Graham glanced at the speedometer. He was doing eighty-five.

He drove a half mile farther, then pulled over. Leaned his head against the steering wheel, gripping the plastic compulsively with his strong hands.

A few minutes later a uniformed officer was standing beside the driver’s side window. Graham took a deep breath and climbed out of the car. He stepped up to the officer and shook Eric Munce’s hand. “Thanks. I really mean it. I knew you’d understand. Nobody else would.”

“Isn’t the most regular thing in the world but I’ll go on your word, Graham.”

Brynn’s husband zipped his jacket up. He got his flashlight and a Buck knife from the tool carrier in the back of the truck. As he relocked the box, he said, “I’m not sure I’m right. Not sure at all. But everything I know about her tells me that she’d head this way.”

“And the canoe?”

“If she used it, it was a trick. To fool those men. Shoved it in the lake and then took off on foot. Brynn hated the water. She’d never try to escape that way if she could help it.”

Lakes and oceans weren’t her environment. He didn’t explain to Munce about his wife’s control issue.

“I sure hope you’re right, Graham… I’d like a piece of those bastards,” Munce muttered, eyes gleaming. He had a round face, narrow light-colored eyes and short blond hair. He looked more like a marine than a deputy and Graham wondered if he’d been in the military. He asked.

“Yessir, I was.” Then confessed: “National Guard. Never saw the big show, though.” He shrugged with a stoic grin and asked, “But there was that ranger station on the map. You saw it? The one near Apex Lake. Why wouldn’t she make for that?”

“Might have. I’m not saying I’m certain. But I think Brynn’ll take the harder route, like I was saying. It’ll equalize them, the women and those men after ’em. On a trail, the men can move faster. In the woods she’ll have the advantage. And Brynn won’t let anybody get an edge over her.”

“Woman must be hell to play cards with.”

“We don’t play cards,” Graham said absently, staring at the map.

He then looked over the dark woods. One car whizzed past. The highway was otherwise empty.

“You’d be a good cop, Graham.”

“Me?” He laughed grimly. “No, sir.” He tapped the map. “Here’s the Joliet Trail. She’ll leave the path about there.” He touched a spot. “Then make for the Snake River and follow it right up here to the interstate.”

Munce looked at the steep hill vanishing below them into a morass of woods. “That’s a tough climb. You ever been here?”

“To the park? Yeah, but not here. Hiking when I was younger.” Graham recalled asking Joey to come with him several times in the past year. The boy had always declined, with a look on his face that said, And I’d want to do that why ? Graham had regretted that he hadn’t insisted. He believed he could’ve made Joey enjoy himself.

Thinking, Should’ve listened to my instincts.

Then: What does it matter?

Munce told him he was familiar with this area. He and Brynn had been involved in a search-and-recovery mission that had ended about a mile from here.

Graham noted the word “recovery,” as in “body recovery.” Not a successful rescue. The deputy continued, “I remember some paths. Hikers and rock climbers made them. There’re some level areas but we’re going to see mostly drop-offs, twenty, thirty feet, some of them. Even more. You’ll come on them real sudden. Watch where you walk.”

Graham nodded. He said, “I’m guessing they’ll stick close enough to hear the river, to guide them. That means they’ll be somewhere in a strip fifty, a hundred yards wide, from the edge of the gorge. That’s where we should make our way down. We can’t call to ’em loud, give ourselves away… We’ll just have to stop every so often and look around us. We could probably whisper. The sheriff said it’s two men are after them, right?”

“Yeah, what the footprints show.”

Graham looked at the deputy’s car, the shotgun locked in the front seat.

“I don’t have a gun here, Eric.”

“I can’t do that, Graham. That’s a lose-your-job thing.”