Thomas Perry - Vanishing Act

But he was carrying a pack and rifle and ammo and binoculars. All she had left to weigh her down was the knife in her belt. She could take advantage of her loss and try to outrun him. They had both been moving fast through the woods for hours now, up a fair-size mountain. If she was this tired, he must at least be feeling the strain.

Jane slipped deeper down into the forest, controlling her breathing now, stretching her legs, and shaking her arms to loosen the tightness in her back and chest as she broke into a trot. The going was easier now, all downhill, so she ran harder, trying to keep her momentum from building out of control and making her turn an ankle. She took no care to hide or stay quiet, only to build up her speed. She ran for fifteen minutes and then came to a rocky, clear streambed. She could tell it had filled up in the rain the night before because the banks were muddy, but now it was shallow again. She sloshed into it, and then realized it could help her. She rushed upstream thirty feet and took a dive up the bank to the right, a belly flop into the mud. Then she pulled her knees in and got to her feet and walked down backward into the streambed.

She looked at her work. It wasn’t bad. It looked as though she had gone up the bank, slipped, and gone on to the east. She cupped her hands and drank deeply from the stream, then hurried on downstream a hundred feet before she found a place where there were three stones she could use as steps, back up into the woods to the west.

She concentrated on picking up the pace again, her eyes always searching the forest ahead for the next twenty yards that would afford a foothold and her legs lengthening her strides to take them as quickly as possible.

She ran on for two hours before she found a rocky outcropping, like a shelf near the top of the next mountain. She gained it, chose north, and picked up her speed again. This was the place to lose him, while darkness was coming and there was nothing to retain her tracks. After half a mile, the rock and the sunlight both ran out. She kept going into the dusk until she found a huge thicket of thorny bushes in a hollow.

As night fell, she went down on her belly and crawled into the thicket below the level of the thorns and foliage. When she was fifteen feet into the middle of it, the bushes were taller and older, the spaces between them wider, and she could make better progress. She crawled another thirty feet before she found a patch of weeds. She rolled over and over on them until they were flat, then curled up, consciously relaxed each aching, strained muscle, and lay there for a moment with her eyes open. It made her feel dizzy and light to lie there staring into the darkness, as though she were floating.

The dream started as soon as she closed her eyes. She still couldn’t see anything, but she could feel that she was being held. She was in her mother’s lap, lying against her breast, her face on the soft silk, where she could smell the perfume. She could feel the smooth, strong hands gently stroking her back. "Mama?" she said.

"Shush," came the whisper. "Go to sleep, Janie. You need your rest." Her mother’s voice began to hum to her softly, tunelessly.

Jane whispered, "How did you come?"

"I’m not out there anymore, Jane. I’m inside you now, and my mother is inside me, and her mother is inside her, all the way back. We’re all here, just like those Russian dolls, one inside the other."

"What am I going to do, Mama?" Jane could hear her own voice, and it was the voice of a child.

Her mother treated it like the question of a child. She held her, rocked her, and said distantly, "Whatever you can, dear." Then the voice came from farther away, as though her mother were holding her out to look at her. "Are you hungry?"

"Yes," said Jane.

"You should eat," said her mother. "In the morning. But now you need to sleep."

"He’s coming for me."

"Yes, he is," her mother said. "That’s why you have to lie still now."

Her mother’s arms held her and rocked her back and forth, back and forth. "You’ll always be my baby girl." She began to hum again, the low, breathy sound that had always put Jane to sleep.

28

It was after midnight when she heard him on the rock shelf above her. He walked without trying to muffle his footsteps, and then he stopped and shouted, "Jane! I know you can hear me!"

She sat up, her heart pounding. She had forgotten where she was and a thorn jabbed into her back. She winced and slowly bent down again. She could feel the thorn slipping out, and then her shirt was wet in the back.

"Jane!" he called from up the mountainside. "You’re not going to lose me. I was born up here. I can track you longer than you can run." He waited, probably listening to hear her breaking from a hiding place and running, then called, "I don’t want to hurt you." There was another pause, and now he said, "You’ve got to understand. I can’t let somebody who hates me run around loose in the woods where I can’t see her." She could hear him walking along the ledge now. Whether he was just shouting into the woods and was trying to send his voice in every direction or had seen her and was trying to get a better angle for a shot, she had no way to tell. "All you have to do is come in, and you can have food, water, everything. I’ll only tie your hands when I’m asleep."

Jane felt the heat well up from her belly and move up her spine to her throat. She wanted to scream out at him, but that was what he wanted, too. She clenched her teeth and stayed still. It was like a hot iron pressed against her skin. She had taken him into hiding out of pity. He had used her, and done so with a cold, efficient detachment because he could—because she had let him. Now he didn’t even have to make up a nice lie anymore.

She was cold, wet, dirty, and hungry in a place where those conditions weren’t just discomforts but could kill her. He offered what?—to make her his slave in exchange for scraps of food and a chance to lie by the fire? It occurred to her he might not even be lying. It might appeal to him to keep her alive for a time, maybe for the whole summer, while he waited.

Then, some evening in September the sky would turn iron-gray and there would be frost on the ground in the morning. It might be a quick bullet in the head while she was still sleeping—tied up to sleep, he had said. More likely it would be a knife across her throat, the way he had done Harry. Winter would be coming and he would have to leave the mountains. Maybe he would explain it to her first: You have to understand. I don’t want to do this, but I can’t set a woman who hates me loose in the world.

Then she saw the beam of his flashlight stab into the darkness. It was incredibly bright, racing quickly across the expanse of forest. Wherever it passed, the trees lit up and threw huge shadows behind them that moved. She ducked down again and pressed her face into the dirt.

In a moment the beam passed and went out. She kept down, not daring to move. After a long time she heard his voice again, this time from farther away along the rock shelf. "Jane! I know you can hear me! I don’t want to hurt you ..."

Slowly, she crawled to the edge of the thicket, slithered out on her belly, and rose to a crouch. There was no way she could run through these woods in the darkness, so she began to walk. She had lost her compass, but now and then she could see the sky through the trees, and at some point the clouds would clear and she would be able to find the north star. She walked through the woods, not sure of the direction she had been going, not planning now, just covering ground. She knew that he would not give up. He had no reason to stop looking until he found her body. He could keep tracking her for weeks. She could be dead in two or three days.