Thomas Perry - Vanishing Act

She curled up with the canoe over her like a shell as far from the open side as she could go. The rain came harder now, pelting down steadily. In the distance she heard the rumble of thunder. She lay there for a long time, not exactly comfortable, but not wet, and then she fell asleep.

Sometime in the night she woke up to loud thunder-claps and then she could see the next flash, lighting up the forest around her for a second, and then the crash came, shaking the earth. The storm kept on until three in the morning, until the rain slowed and then stopped. She rolled out from under her canoe, crawled out of the lean-to, and stood up. She had not caught much of the rain, but the moisture had leached up from the ground into her clothes and she was wet and cold.

When she saw the moon, she knew it was time to move. It took her only a few minutes to stow her gear, and then she lifted the canoe once again. She slipped and slid as she carried it down the slope, but then she reached the water. Once she was launched and paddling on the dark pond, she felt strong again.

27

Jane had paddled across Charley Pond and Lake Lila by five in the morning, and she was still paddling. Her clothes had dried and the old feeling of competence had returned. She began to look for a place to head in as soon as she entered Lake Nehasane. It was still dark, the lake overshadowed by thick forests that ran up a mountainside to the east, and the sky clouded over.

She began to search in earnest after a couple of hundred feet. While she looked for shelter, she didn’t stop watching for the enemy. The rain had been hard enough to wash away any marks he had made in the woods, but it had also been hard enough to make him take some measures that he wouldn’t have taken in clear weather. He might hang clothes or a bedroll out to dry, and it was cold enough now to make anyone want to build a fire.

She kept her rifle propped on the seat beside her, muzzle upward. The big hunting knife with the hollow handle was in her belt. Before long, she saw the place to pull the canoe out of the water. It was a low bank with big rocks on both sides. She was almost certain that Lake Nehasane was where he would be. It was a big oval with lots of depths and a complicated shoreline, and it was fed on the upper end by the outlet of Lake Lila and emptied on the other into the Stillwater Reservoir. It was big enough to have plenty of fish. The lures he had bought were for lake fishing—flatfish and poppers for bass and northern pike and sinkers for bait-casting in deep water.

She would go ashore and hide her gear in thick cover and wait. Sooner or later he would be visible somewhere along the shore or on the lake. After a few more minutes, she realized that she had misjudged the time a little. She could see that dawn was coming, so she paddled harder. She took a shortcut across open water and began to paddle with determination. As she reached and held her top speed, the silence exploded in her ears. The bullet hit the canoe with such velocity that she felt it swat the craft a few degrees to the side.

Jane ducked low, and the next shot gave a whip-crack sound before she heard the deep, echoing report of the rifle. As she reached out with her paddle to pull the canoe along, she looked down and saw the entry and exit holes of the first bullet, just below the waterline. The canoe was filling up,

The next shot shattered the left strut beside her leg. The canoe seemed to buckle and founder, and then she was sideways and going down. The canoe just listed to the side and scooped itself under. In an instant she was in water so cold it seemed to clap the breath out of her lungs. She gasped, and her legs kicked in a reflex to try to lift her body out of the water. The fourth shot hit ahead of her, smacked into the water and threw up a splash so close she could feel droplets on her face.

She ducked again, putting her head under, and saw the canoe sinking far down below, looking yellowish, then green, then brown as it slowly drifted into black depths. She held her breath and swam under the surface, her hands scooping the water and her legs pulling her wet boots in a clumsy frog kick.

She saw the next bullet from under the water. It shattered the mirror surface ahead of her, not there at all one second, and then a bright silver streak made of bubbles and speed, and then lost. She came up and broke into a freestyle, swimming as hard as she could, and then her hand hit rock. She hoisted herself out, and when her feet touched, she was running. The trees started six feet back from the rocks, and then she was among them, sprinting into the woods.

She ran hard, through brambles and thickets and across glades blanketed with ankle-high plants that could have been poison sumac or ivy, scrambling higher up the side of the hill. After a time she found herself far above the lake. She lay face-down on a big rock and looked back down the way she had come, but she could see no movement in the forest below her. Then she saw the canoe.

He must have been shooting from across the lake. He had gotten into his canoe and paddled to the place where she had run into the woods. He was drifting offshore, scanning the woods and hills. Then she heard his voice. It made something in her reverberate. It was the voice she had listened to at Grand River and tried to make herself remember afterward, but now the familiarity of it made her feel sick.

"Jane!" he called. "It’s me!"

She pressed her face against the rock, trying to disappear into it.

"I found your pack in the water. I didn’t know it was you. Don’t be afraid!"

She pushed herself backward on her belly and down behind some stunted pine trees, then looked down cautiously. His head was turned up toward the woods around the lake, looking for movement or color. She couldn’t see her pack in his canoe, and she couldn’t imagine how it could have floated back up, but she did see the binoculars. He lifted them off the floor of the canoe and began to search the hillside. She dropped to her belly again and slithered away from the rocks into the trees.

In a moment he would land and come for her on foot. She stood and ran again. The ground was slippery from the rain and every step was uphill. There was no doubt that he would follow, and she knew she was leaving tracks. She had to go for distance now, just paces that she could put between them. The trees and brush seemed to grab at her and hold her back, and at every clear space she could almost feel the crosshairs settling between her shoulder blades.

It must have been an hour later when she stopped to catch her breath. She lay down with a stitch in her side and limbs that felt like stone. She was too tired to think, but she listened and stared into the woods she had come from, trying to gasp for air without making noise.

Then the voice reached out to her again. "Jane!" he called. "You’re making a mistake!"

She held her breath and then realized that she had to go on, and she needed to keep breathing hard to do it. Hiding would just give him time to catch her. "You’re alone, with no food or water!"

She sprang to her feet and ran on, higher into the woods. At noon she was at the peak of the mountain. It was bare rock, nearly at the tree line, with only scraggly pines to hide her. She moved along the ridge, trying to see him coming. If only she could find a hiding place, a cave or something. But there was nothing up here that would hide a rabbit. She started down the far slope, then rested again when she reached the heavy growth of leafy trees below.

Then she saw him. He was up on the summit exactly where she had stood, and he was combing the valley below with the binoculars. Above his shoulder she could see the barrel of the rifle and the sling across his chest.

She moved down lower on the mountainside. For once, he wasn’t lying. She had already pushed herself to exhaustion, and she hadn’t eaten or had water since midnight. In about four or five hours the mountain air would turn cold, and she was dressed in wet clothes. Even if he didn’t find her, she was going to be in trouble.