David Morrell - The Covenant Of The Flame

Nothing.

Jesus.

She retreated toward the swimming pool. Next to a maintenance shed, she found a long metal pole. The pole had a net at one end, obviously used for skimming leaves and other debris from the surface of the water.

Hurry! She pressed the pole against the bottom of the shed, squeezing it, flexing it, twisting. The pole was strong yet pliant. Maybe.

Her temples throbbed from the force of her rapid heartbeat. No choice.

Tess crammed the pistol into her purse, which still hung securely from her wrist. With equal speed, she gripped one end of the pole, shifted the other end toward the back of the yard, lifted the pole, and raced toward the wall.

When the far end of the pole was five feet from the wall, she rammed it into the lawn and hurtled upward.

It had been years since she'd practised this event. In track-and-field, pole vaulting had never been her favorite activity. But now she had to pretend she was in the Olympics. As her body arched higher, she felt the pole begin to bend. Its metal creaked. If it snaps…!

With a stunning jolt, she slammed against the top of the wall, clawed with one hand, snagged the rim, let go of the pole, fumbled with her other hand, and dangled from the wall, squirming upward.

At the top, hands scraped and bleeding, ignoring the pain, Tess lay flat, then hung from the other side, and dropped toward blackness. She feared she'd hit a bench that might break her ankle.

Or a stake that supported a sapling and might impale her.

Instead her feet struck the soft earth of a garden, and with practised agility, she bent her knees, tucked her elbows against her sides, then rolled across pliant dirt and cushioning flowers.

In a frenzy, she sprang to her feet, studied the gloom ahead, the vague shadows of trees, the bulky dark outline of another mansion, drew the pistol from her purse, and ran.

When she'd been ten, her best friend had lived here. They'd often played in this yard, and one of their favorite games had been hide-and-seek.

Tess remembered an afternoon when she'd found so good a hiding place that her friend had finally given up looking.

Now Tess hurried toward that hiding place, hoping that the yard had not been relandscaped. When she heard the trickle of water, she increased speed.

In a corner at the back, she came to boulders that had been piled and cemented together to form a miniature, shoulder-high, imitation of a mountain from the top of which water bubbled and streamed down a series of zig-zagging crests toward a goldfish pond. A pump in an alcove behind the boulders kept the water circulating.

The alcove had a metal hatch to protect the pump from bad weather. Bushes flanked the boulders. Tess crept through the sharp-edged bushes, knelt at the back, and groped in the darkness, finding the hatch.

She squirmed into the alcove, closing the hatch behind her. In total blackness, with the pump whirring next to her, she sat with her knees bent toward her chest, her arms around her knees, her head stooped. The cramped position made her muscles ache, but at least she could rest and gain time to decide what to do.

Years ago, the reason her friend hadn't been able to find her was that they'd once investigated this alcove, and Tess's friend had been disgusted by the spider webs inside. Her friend hadn't thought to look here because her friend would never have chosen to hide here. But Tess had been a tomboy, and spider webs had meant nothing compared to winning the game.

Now, feeling spider webs against her hair as well as something tiny with many legs skittering across her right hand, making her skin tingle, Tess again ignored what would have nauseated her friend, although she needed all her discipline to repress a shudder. The main thing was that she'd reached safety. In this grownup, deadly version of hide-and-seek, no stranger could find where she'd hidden, because no stranger could possibly know about this alcove behind the boulders.

Tess winced. Her hands hurt from scratches and burns. Her back stung from when she'd crawled through the shrubs. Her legs, arms, and chin throbbed from the numerous times she'd struck objects or fallen.

But the pain in her body was nothing compared to the pain in her soul! Her mother was dead!

No! Tess couldn't believe it. She couldn't adjust to it.

She'd killed at least two men tonight, and she couldn't adjust to that either, no matter how much she'd cursed – and continued to curse – the gunmen who'd killed her mother and no matter how fiercely she'd sworn to get even.

She wanted to vomit.

No! Instead, silently, she wept, hot tears streaming down her cheeks as she trembled in the cool, damp, black confinement of the alcove.

She needed to think.

In time, when she decided the area would be safe, she needed to get away.

But more than anything, she needed to find out who was after her and why they'd turned her life into hell.

And get even. The bitter, angry thought kept coming back. Yes, someone definitely was going to pay.

She fingered her purse. As exhaustion overwhelmed her, she thought of the photographs that her purse contained, and one photograph especially, as repulsive as it was confusing. The bas-relief statue. A muscular, long-haired, handsome man straddled a bull and sliced its throat while a dog lunged at the gushing blood, a serpent sped toward a clump of wheat, and a scorpion attacked the bull's genitals.

Insanity!

In the dust-laden classroom on the second floor of the abandoned school in Brooklyn, the chameleon completed his report.

The room – shadowy because of the plywood over its windows -was silent for a moment, the chameleon's associates frowning.

'So the woman escaped?' the fourth man finally asked, unconsciously twisting the ruby ring on the middle finger of his left hand, grasping its insignia of an intersecting cross and sword.

The chameleon hesitated. 'I believe so. The member of our watcher's team who hid behind the mansion didn't see the woman leap from the balcony to the tree. But he did see her climb down the tree to the lawn. And he definitely saw her shoot two men.'

'But where did she get the weapon?' the fifth man asked.

The chameleon shrugged.

'Are you sure the enemy didn't chase the woman and catch her?' the second man asked.

'I can't be certain. The fire department and the police arrived. Their approaching sirens gave the enemy ample warning, time to pick up their dead and flee the area before the authorities arrived.'

'I hope that our own operative fled successfully,' the third man said.

The chameleon nodded. 'More, I believe there's a good chance that the woman is safe.'

'But we don't know where she is.' The sixth man scowled. 'The enemy doesn't either. If I understand your logic, you counted on using the woman as bait to attract the quarry. But your plan won't work now. We're back to where we started.'

'Not necessarily.' The chameleon squinted. 'At the moment we don't know where the woman is. But we will – and soon.'

'How?'

'You put a tap on the woman's phone.'

'As you ordered,' the electronics expert said.

' And on the policeman's phone . In her place, desperate, confused, afraid, what would you do?' the chameleon asked.

'Ah.' The sixth man leaned back. 'Of course. She'll contact the policeman.' With a smile, he added, 'So now we concentrate our surveillance on him .'

'Eventually he'll lead us to the woman,' the chameleon said. 'More important, I take for granted that the enemy will be as clever as always. After all, they've had years of practise. Does anyone doubt that their logic will be as calculated as mine, that they'll come to the same conclusion?'

The fifth man traced his finger through the dust on his miniature desk. 'They've proven their survival skills. Again and again, they've anticipated our traps.'