Jeffery Deaver - The Bodies Left Behind

“Adoptions’re possible. I don’t know how that works.” Brynn touched her cheek. It hurt like hell. She saw Michelle’s eyes focused on Amy. “So you’d like kids?”

“Oh, they’re the best. I just love them… The way you guide them, teach them things. And what they teach you. They’re always a challenge. Children make you, I don’t know, whole. You’re not a complete person without them.”

“You sound like an expert. You’ll be a good mother.”

Michelle gave a laugh. “I intend to be.”

For the moment at least, thoughts of unfaithful husbands and marriages in shambles had faded and the woman seemed to be looking at a brighter future.

And what about me? Brynn thought.

Keep going, she told herself. Keep going.

LEWIS HAD MADE an improvised sling for the shotgun and was carrying the weapon on his back. The men were going straight up the slope as best they could, Hart figuring that the women would be taking an easier route because of the girl.

Hart thought of the professional couples and their kids he saw at the rock-climbing walls at recreation areas and sports stores near where he lived. He’d wondered if any of the parents actually had jobs that required them to climb like this. But no, of course they didn’t. They were paper pushers. They made ten times what he did, their lives were never endangered, they never felt the pain that Hart was experiencing. Yet he would never dream of swapping lives with them for any money.

They’re nothing but dead bodies, Brynn. Sitting around, upset, angry about something they saw on TV doesn’t mean a single thing to them personally. Going to their jobs, coming home, talking stuff they don’t know or care about…

They came to a flat stretch and paused, looking around carefully. He wasn’t going to forget that both women had attempted to kill them tonight and he had no reason to think they’d given up trying. Sure, they wanted to escape. But he couldn’t get Brynn’s eyes out of his mind. Both in the driveway of the Feldmans’ house and then in the van just before she released the brake, risking her own death to stop him.

You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney…

Hart had to smile.

At that moment a faint scream sounded in the distance, ahead of them. A high squeal.

“The hell’s that?” Lewis looked alarmed. “Fucking Blair Witch Project. ”

Hart laughed. “That’s the girl. The little girl.”

“She’s as good as your GPS, Hart.”

And they broke into a run.

“AN ANIMAL?” MUNCEasked in a whisper.

Graham cocked his head, listening to the keening howl somewhere nearby, to their left, it seemed, carried on the breeze. He’d seen an animal-a coyote or feral dog, maybe even a wolf-on a ridge, looking their way. Was that the source of the sound? He knew plants, he knew soil and silt and rock. He didn’t know animals or their habits.

“Could be, I don’t know.”

It hadn’t sounded like a woman’s voice. It had almost seemed like a child. But that couldn’t be.

“Maybe the wind,” Munce offered.

Though there’d been a sense of alarm, an uneasiness about it. Fear more than pain. Now silence.

Wind, bird, animal…Please. Let it be one of those.

“Down there,” Munce said. “Right below us.”

Graham was frowning at the daunting sweep of trees that disappeared away from them. They’d come about a quarter mile, picking their way slowly through the dense woodland. It was a much longer trek than expected, owing to detours around brush thick as scouring pads and steep cliffs that couldn’t be negotiated without rappelling gear-which Munce had announced he wished they’d had and Graham was grateful they didn’t.

They started down the hillside, using trees as handholds once again. Then they found themselves stymied-in a funnel of rock. “I think that’s our only option,” Munce said, pointing down a chute descending away from them. It was about six feet wide and at a forty-five-degree slope, littered with shale and gravel and dirt. Slippery as ice. And if you fell you’d slide along the rugged stone surface for a good fifty feet to a precipice. They couldn’t see what lay beyond. “Or we go back and try to make our way around.”

Just then another wail filled the night. The men looked at each other, eyes wide.

There was no doubt the sound had come from a human throat.

“We go,” Graham said, torn between a frantic need to find the source of the screams and fear that, if they lost their footing here, they’d find themselves tumbling off a cliff-or sliding into a grove of deadly honey locust.

“WHERE’S MY MOTHER?”

Amy shrieked again.

“Please, honey,” Brynn said to the little girl. Held her finger to her lips. “Please be quiet.”

Exhausted, emotionally drained, the little girl was losing it.

“No!” she wailed. Her face was bright red, eyes and nose streaming. “Noooo!”

“Those men will hurt us, Amy. We have to be quiet.”

“Mommy!”

They were on a relatively flat stretch of ground in a thick forest, the trees only a yard or two apart. They’d been moving along well when suddenly Amy had become hysterical.

“Where’s my mommy ? I want to go back to Mommy!”

Forcing a smile onto her face, Brynn knelt down and took the girl by the shoulders. “Please, honey, we have to be quiet. We’re playing that game, remember? We need to be quiet.”

“I don’t want to play any game! I want to go back! I want Mommy!”

The girl’s age was close to ten but once again Brynn thought she was acting more like a five-or six-year-old-maybe a reaction to this terrible evening, maybe a harrowing insight about her upbringing.

“Please!”

“Nooo!” The volume of the accompanying squeal was astonishing.

“Let me try,” Michelle said, kneeling in front of Amy and setting down the spear. She handed the girl her stuffed toy. Amy flung it to the ground.

Brynn said, “I’ll check behind us. If they’re nearby they had to’ve heard her.” She jogged back twenty feet and climbed a small hillock, gazed back.

The girl’s screaming seemed like a siren.

Brynn squinted through the night.

Oh, no…

She was dismayed, but not surprised to see, two hundred yards away, the men making their way in this direction. They paused and looked around, trying to find the source of the commotion.

Thank goodness, though, just at that moment Amy fell silent.

The men continued to look around them for a moment and then started walking again. They vanished behind a stone wall.

Brynn returned to Michelle and Amy. The little girl, though still unhappy, had stopped crying and was clutching her toy once more.

“How’d you do that?”

Michelle shrugged, grimacing. Whispered: “Wasn’t such a great idea. I told her we were on our way to see her mommy. Couldn’t think of what else to say.”

Well, it didn’t matter. The girl would learn the truth sooner or later but for now they sure couldn’t afford the screaming. Brynn whispered, “They’re back there.”

“What? Hart and his partner?”

A nod.

“How?”

Hart, of course. Brynn said, “Reverse-reverse psychology. Two hundred yards or so back. We’ve got to move.”

They headed toward the gorge, the ground being flatter, then north again toward the interstate. They knew the direction, because the river was on their right but, with the landscape more open as they rose higher, they were forced to zigzag-now seeking out brush and trees for cover. It was taking too long, Brynn reflected, feeling Hart’s presence growing closer.

She led Michelle and Amy back into the thicker woods and they continued north. Suddenly faint light streaked from left to right, a truck or car on the interstate. A half mile, maybe less. Brynn and Michelle shared a smile and started forward again.