Ridley Pearson - Cut and Run

She was not alone.

Larson followed Katie into the woods. Still running, she gave away her location with the crunching of broken sticks and the thrashing of undergrowth.

Larson cut an angle to intersect her route. Having been raised in a house that bordered nine acres of Connecticut woods, he effortlessly negotiated his way through the stands of pine and fir and cedar, moving like a deer. He sprang as he ran, landing and rebounding, moving far more quietly than his prey, who crashed and banged her way more deeply into the thick.

She did not scream or call out, suggesting to him that for whatever reason, her visit to the barn was off-limits, or there was someone here she feared more than a stranger running after her. And that gave him the chills.

He bore down on her now, able not only to hear her, but finally glimpse her as a darkly moving shadow that strobed between trees. Paired now like rabbit and hound, they darted through the trees, the rare foam of gray light penetrating from the houses beyond. Larson caught a flash of skin as she looked back, her face a reflector. He could hear her panting as she ran.

Larson pushed harder, finding a sudden burst of energy. He vaulted a pile of dead limbs. Again, the woman glanced back, never breaking her stride. She looked behind a fraction of a second too long.

“Look out!” Larson called out, instinctively.

Too late.

She collided with the trunk of a fir tree, a great whoosh of escaped air as her chest impacted. Larson skidded to a stop, mesmerized by the surreal effect of seeing a human body in motion so suddenly still and quiet. Her shoulders slumped as if unconscious, yet she remained standing.

A grotesque gurgle arose from her, a wet, sucking sound mixed with escaping air.

Struggling to catch his breath, weapon in hand, Larson reached her and found her eyes open and blinking. Her right foot was angled down, touching the bed of pine needles with the toe of her shoe. She was weightless. Unsupported. Not standing and yet erect. A stain crept out of her, like something living, and spread down her left side. He holstered his weapon. Her mouth opened and shut but no sound came out.

In the limited light that reached into the forest, she seemed cut into several long pieces.

Another step forward and he saw it. She had impaled herself on a stub of a broken branch that held to the tree like a dagger, a jagged, splintered, six-inch blade of weathered wood. The wet gurgling coincided with the slight rise and fall of her shoulders. It had pierced her blouse, cleaved her ribs, and punctured her lung.

“Federal agent,” Larson whispered, simply to identify himself. Fear was their biggest enemy now. She could live through this, but she needed medical attention immediately. “I’m going to get you help. Do you understand?”

Her dark eyes moved slightly.

He realized that by helping her he would likely get himself caught, perhaps killed. Penny would be lost. For a moment, he considered leaving her, resentful that a stupid accident-her own damned fault-would cause him to lose everything. But he could not pull himself away.

He slipped off his belt and withdrew his handkerchief from a back pocket in advance of grabbing her around the waist from behind, lifting her slightly and pulling her off the stub. She shuddered and fell into his arms, and he laid her down on her back.

He tore open her blouse, and mopped around, finally finding the wound at her ribs. He held his handkerchief there, and used the belt to secure the handkerchief, applying pressure.

“Okay?” he asked, their faces only inches apart.

Again, her eyes moved vaguely. In shock, she was barely with him.

“He would have left me,” she said hoarsely. When the words came out of her mouth some blood did as well, and Larson felt himself flinch.

Whomever she meant, Larson thought not. No man would leave this woman.

“There’s a girl. A little girl,” he said, knowing that his chances were slim to none, but clinging to hope. Perhaps he could pass something along to Rotem or Hampton before he was caught. “She’s my daughter,” he said, his throat constricting.

Her mouth moved, but he heard no words.

He scooped her up and carried her in his arms, amazed by how small and light she was. He navigated out of the woods, carefully up the incline, the dense forest giving way to the clipped grass of a fairway.

She grew heavier in the silence. Larson felt his legs and back straining.

“A boy,” she said so breathlessly he thought he might have imagined it himself.

Larson paused.

“They have a boy,” she said.

He continued climbing, reaching the crest and moving across the fairway. No one approached him. No one arrived to detain him.

“A young boy,” he said, thinking of what Markowitz had written to Hope.

Her eyelids closed and opened-her way of nodding.

“Where?”

“They’ll kill you.”

“Probably,” he said.

She shook her head and went silent.

“Where?”

She managed to point out a medium-sized home that bordered the golf course, one of the ones he’d seen earlier. Her home clearly. There would be a road on the far side of the house. A car in the garage. A way out for her.

She shut her eyes and grew much heavier. She’d passed out.

He walked through low bands of ground fog that had appeared in just the past few minutes. The fog shifted like chimney smoke and swirled at his waist. The air felt noticeably cooler.

His shoes and socks soaked through, he reached the cart path and crossed it, into her backyard. He saw a swing set and a toy lawn-rake and a wheelbarrow heaped with leaves.

She came awake in his arms, risen from the dead.

“Leave me…” she muttered. “The porch. A… housekeeper.”

He carried her to the back porch where a porch light shone. “Okay. You’re here. Now tell me: Where’s the boy?”

He stepped toward the porch doorbell. He looked at her for a response before ringing it.

“The bunkhouse,” she said. “It’s down the hill from the manor.”

Larson rang the bell, then pivoted, hearing footfalls approaching the door. He had to leave and yet couldn’t tear himself away until he was sure. “The double-wide.”

Katie’s eyelids fluttered and closed.

He heard the lock come off the door.

He ran.

Hope’s maternal instincts soon drove her out of her hiding place and toward the back of the catering truck. If she didn’t get inside, she told herself, she had no chance of finding Penny.

Larson’s BlackBerry buzzed yet again-area code 314, St. Louis-and again she ended the call to keep the device from vibrating and giving her away. Wedged between the Dumpsters, she was in no position to strike up a conversation. Had it been area code 206, Seattle, any possibility of being the kidnappers, she might have dared answer.

The two caterers came and went from the truck in roughly two-minute intervals. Hope reached the back of the truck, snagged the corner of a plastic cooler, and carried it by its two handles. Bravely now, and with great resolve, she approached the building’s back door and thumped her foot against it, knocking. She knew the faces of both caterers from having observed them. She was glad to see it was one of these women who opened the door for her.

Hope explained herself. “They asked me to help you out.” She offered a perfunctory smile. “I’m on the wait staff here. Where to?”

“I’m Donna.”

“Alice,” Hope supplied automatically.

“We were told there’d be six of you.”

“Well… I’m the first,” she said brightly. “The others will be along.” A stopwatch started in her head. By the time someone determined they had seven waiters and waitresses, not six, she would have to be gone.