Jeffery Deaver - The Bodies Left Behind

They pitched a log, two boulders and a dozen smaller rocks.

They heard a cry. “Hart, my hand. Broke my fucking hand.”

Brynn risked a peek. The partner had dropped his shotgun into the brambles.

Yes!

Hart was gazing upward. He saw Brynn and fired two shots from his Glock. One spattered the cliff nearby but she dodged before the shrapnel hit her.

She heard Hart call, “Comp, the fuse’s out. Look. Get that rubble off the path. Kick it off.”

“Hell, Hart, they’re going to break our skulls.”

“Go ahead. I’ll cover you.”

Brynn was nodding at a log, about five feet long and a foot in diameter, with several sharp spiky limbs a few inches long. “That.”

“Yes!” Michelle smiled. Together the women got onto their knees and pushed the trunk parallel to the cliff’s edge. Gasping from the effort, they collapsed against it.

Brynn held up a finger. “When I tell you to, throw a rock behind them.”

Michelle nodded.

Brynn grabbed the spear.

She thought of Joey. She thought of Graham.

For some reason her first husband’s image made an appearance.

Then she nodded. Michelle pitched a rock down the ledge.

Brynn stood. She saw Hart looking behind him, toward the clatter of the rock and, giving an otherworldly howl, she flung the spear at the partner’s back as he bent down to muscle some debris off the ledge.

“Comp!” Hart cried, looking up at just that moment.

The man spun around and danced back from the spear, which missed him by inches, digging into the stone at his feet with a burst of sparks. He slipped and rolled off the ledge. All that kept him from falling was his left-handed grip on a crack in the rock. His feet dangled above the vicious thorns.

Hurrying to him, Hart glanced up and fired. But Brynn was out of his line of sight and helping Michelle push the deadly log closer to the edge.

Brynn took another fast look-Hart was bent over, his back to her, gripping his partner by the jacket and struggling to pull him up. They were thirty feet below, in a direct line, and the rock face here was smooth. The impact of the log would shatter bones if not kill outright. One of them at least would be knocked into the sea of thorns.

No hesitation now.

Brynn got a good grip on her side of the log and Michelle on hers. “Go!” Brynn whispered.

The log was twelve inches from the edge of the cliff.

“More!”

Six inches.

Which was when a sharp crack sounded on the cliff face only feet below Brynn and Michelle, and a shower of dust and stone chips blew into the night. A moment later the distant boom of a rifle shot filled the air.

The women dropped to their stomachs. Brynn crawled to Amy and pulled the hysterical girl to the ground, cradling her.

Another shot. More rock exploded.

“Who?” Michelle gasped. “That wasn’t from them. There’s somebody else out there! Shooting at us.”

Brynn stared into the distant woods.

A muzzle flash from a long way off. “Get down!” She ducked and another high-velocity rifle round slammed into the log they’d been pushing forward.

Brynn risked a fast look downward. Hart had pulled his partner back onto the ledge but they too were crouching, not sure of what was going on. It seemed the shooter was focusing on the women but the men were probably wondering if they themselves were the targets. The two men, completely exposed, apparently decided to retreat back down the ledge.

Brynn said, “They’re leaving. Let’s get out of here.”

“Who the hell is it?” Michelle muttered. “We almost had them!”

“Come on. Hurry.”

They couldn’t return to the clearing, where they’d be easy targets for whoever was shooting, so they crawled closer to the gorge, away from the sniper. They were soon safe on the other side of the hill, though nearby was a sheer drop into the gorge; Brynn eyed it warily and kept as far away as she could. She asked Amy, “Honey, did Rudy and your mommy have other friends who stayed with you? Somebody who wasn’t at the camper tonight?”

“Sometimes.”

That was probably it; a partner of Gandy and Rudy who’d seen the carnage at the meth lab and had somehow trailed them here.

The silence was interrupted by the beckoning sound of a big tractor-trailer downshifting as it came to the bridge. Brynn looked along the edge of the gorge. They could walk that way to the interstate under pretty good cover.

The sky was now growing lighter-dawn couldn’t be too far off-and they could easily pick their way through the paths toward the highway. Brynn hugged Michelle. “We almost had ’em.”

Not smiling, Michelle said, “Next time.”

Brynn hesitated. “Well, let’s hope there isn’t one.”

Though it seemed from her fierce expression that the young woman wasn’t hoping for that at all.

“ANOTHER COP?” LEWISasked, referring to the shooter.

He was flexing his hand. It wasn’t broken but the rock had jammed his thumb. The man was mostly upset he’d lost his shotgun in the bramble patch. And his anger at the women had grown exponentially.

As they hunkered down behind a boulder at the foot of the ledge, Hart listened to the dead deputy’s radio. Routine transmissions about search parties. Nobody had even heard the shots. Nothing about any other cops in the area.

“More meth people, I’ll bet. On the way to the camper.” Hart turned on his GPS. He had to tame his anger. They were so close to their prey. But they couldn’t go after them; the ledge was the only way and they’d be sitting ducks.

“We’ll go around to the left, through the woods. It’s longer but we’ll have good cover right to the highway.”

“What time is it?” Lewis asked.

“What does it matter?”

“I just want to know how long we’ve been doing this shit.”

“Way too long,” Hart said.

HOLDING THE BUSHMASTER .223 rifle, James Jasons looked at the rock face he’d just been firing at. He’d done the best he could, considering there was virtually no light and he was more than two hundred yards away from the target.

He waited, scanning the area with his night-vision binoculars, but saw no signs of the men or the women. There would have been quite a story about how the cave-man confrontation-the two men dodging rocks and logs-had come about.

For ten minutes he scanned the field and forest around him.

Where were they?

The men had fled back down the rocky ledge. Since they had apparently lost their car they’d be making for the interstate-to flag down a ride. But there were a lot of different routes they could take to get to the highway from the ledge. The odds were that they’d be coming in this general direction. It was wildly overgrown but possibly Jasons could find them. On the other hand, they might have gone around to the far side of the hill, after the women. It seemed like a much steeper climb and would have to be made without cover, but who knew? Maybe the men were pissed off about the attack and hell-bent on getting their prey.

Still, Jasons didn’t want to do anything too quickly. He looked over the brush, scanning with the night-vision binoculars. Much of the vegetation moved but that seemed due to the breeze, not escaping humans.

He saw movement not far away. He blinked and gave a gasp as he focused his binoculars. He was looking at a wild animal of some kind, a coyote or wolf. The night-vision system gave it a ghostly green-gray color. Its face was lean and the teeth white and perfect, visible through the slightly bared lips and jowls. He was glad the creature was some distance away. It was magnificent but fierce.

The animal lifted its head, sniffed, and in an instant was gone.

I’m a long, long way from home, James Jasons thought. He’d tell Robert an edited version of the story, in which the animal, though not the gunfire, would figure.