Blind Descent-pigeion 6 (25 page)

  Options skittered through her mind. They were few in number and low on appeal. She could remain in her chimney and wait to be shot. Slim possibilities occurred to her: the would-be attacker might make a mistake, create an opening she could parlay into an escape. A mistake of that magnitude would require a gunman both unbelievably stupid and a tad psychotic. Judging by the deadly efficiency with which Brent had been dispatched, this fellow was probably neither. There would be no long cinematic tortures or lengthy rationalizations. Chances were he'd not poke the rifle barrel through the bars to prod his caged quarry so she could wrest the weapon from him in a moment of glorious heroics. He'd point, shoot; she'd fall, die; a crumpled, dead, middle-aged lady on a heap of antique bat shit. No glamour there.

  "Shit," Anna whispered, then, with a nod to the Hodags, "Shucks." She needed all the help she could get. The saw of the wind precluded any possibility of listening for approaching footsteps. Not that early warning would do her any good. Diving into a hole had been a serious error in judgment. Odds were, running, she'd have made it, if not unscathed, then at least alive. Moving targets were devilishly hard to hit with any kind of accuracy.

  Now whoever it was would be closer, know precisely where she was, where she could and could not go.

  Anna eyed the rectangular chunk of uncut blue in the iron grid. She was in fairly good physical shape, but climbing out was going to be considerably slower than dropping in. At best guess, there would be thirty to sixty seconds during which she'd be a tempting target.

  Still, there was nothing but to do it, and she tensed up, gauging the distance with the concentration of an Olympic gymnast: eighteen inches, a jerk, a push, a scramble. Readying her muscles, she shifted her weight and flexed her fingers, mimicking the tiny nervous movements of a cat preparing to pounce. On three, she told herself.

  Before she'd begun her countdown, a glittering ruby detached from the sky and fell to a narrow shelf of white limestone. The red was unreal, luminous. Blood, Brent's blood, dripping through the bars with mesmerizing slowness.

  A second drop, perfect and beautiful in the harsh light of the winter sun, formed on the underside of the iron, quivered, sending thousands of microscopic reflections across its scarlet surface. Caught up in this minuscule drama, she watched as it grew too great to support its own weight, then fell three feet to explode in sudden and sparkling splendor. In this brief life and death of a droplet Anna's mind had time to paint a grisly future: her grabbing for the bars on either side of the trap, ramming her boots into the sides of her rock prison, and shoving her head and shoulders up through the grate. A bullet ripping through her spine, bits of bone, white and sharp as shrapnel splattering the rock beside her. Her bowels letting loose and her legs going numb as the nerves were severed. Fingers uncurling and the weight of her dead legs dragging her down. Light receding to a pinpoint as she fell to the bottom of Big Manhole.

  The vision sucked the breath from her. She shook free of it and began to scream like a berserker warrior reminding himself of his own bravery. Intellect was over. Time for instinct.

  She lunged upward toward the light.

 13

Tacky with Brent's fast-drying blood, Anna's hands caught the metal and held as if mated with Velcro. No small blessing under the circumstances. Without a glance at Roxbury's corpse, she kicked up from the limestone, pulling with all her strength. Adrenaline made her virtually shoot upward; half her body cleared the grid in a heartbeat. In another she had one knee on the iron bars and was scrambling on all fours over the ledge of stone that backed the entrance to Big Manhole.

  Moving too fast for balance, she was unable to straighten up, and loped along on hands and feet. Wind tried to push her back, but fear made her unstoppable. She was a stampede of one. Rock and lechuguilla raced past a mere foot or two from her eyes as if she swooped over the desert in a low-flying plane. "Serpentine! Serpentine!" A line from an old Peter Falk movie blossomed in her mind. Had she had breath, she would have laughed. Had she time, she would have complied and zigzagged to avoid the sniper's bullets.

  A moment more and she found her balance, pulled herself up, claiming her ancestry as a Homo sapiens, and began to sprint up the hill. This tiny evolution had transpired in seconds. That was as long as the honeymoon was to last. The time had been purchased by the element of surprise. Evidently her attacker didn't think she'd have the courage-or the cowardice, depending on how one looked at it-to make a run for it across the open country.

  A shot cracked behind her. Energy in the form of liquid panic spurted into her gut, but her body was already performing at its peak. There was no more speed to be gotten from her legs. The next noise brought her down. Whether the crack was from bullet or bone, she couldn't tell. Both feet flew to one side, and she smashed down on hip and shoulder. With the breath knocked half out of her and her brain skidding in her skull, she considered for a moment lying where she fell. An instant's betrayal of life and those who loved her, and it would all be over.

  Oblivion's temptation flickered out in a gust of anger. She clawed at the rock, determined to drag herself as far as she could. The gunman could damn well work for this kill. Though hurting-a fact she vaguely sensed through the insulating layers of nature's own anesthetic-everything seemed in decent working order. Again she scrambled animal fashion over the ground, wondering with an odd detachment where she'd been hit and waiting with the same carelessness for the bullet that would end her life. The spill she had taken had been of long enough duration the shooter could take careful aim for the follow-up shot.

  None came. A clue. What kind of rifle carried only that many bullets? How many? Worthless. Anna couldn't remember if the gun had fired twice or a dozen times, and she didn't know for a fact that Brent had been killed with a single shot. Didn't matter. The shooter was reloading. She had time. Hope did what fear could not, and she squeezed more speed from her muscles.

  The top of the knoll had been graded flat to provide parking space. A low berm of dirt around the crown of the hill resulted. Anna hurled herself over it and rolled. When her belly came under her once again, she pushed to elbows and knees and wriggled toward the Blazer. Another shot rang out, but she didn't hear or feel it hit. If her guess was right, and the rifleman had come to the cave's mouth to kill her, he'd put himself on the downhill slope. As long as she stayed low she'd be out of range till he climbed to the top of the hill.

  By then she'd be gone.

  Unless Brent had taken the keys with him.

  Anal retentive, Anna thought as she dragged open the Chevy's door and crawled lizardlike onto the seat. "I'll bet the son of a bitch-" Keys dangled from the ignition. "All is forgiven," she said aloud. Swinging into position, she cranked the key over while muttering a mantra of "pleasepleaseplease" left over from a childhood in which begging occasionally produced favorable results.

  The engine fired up without complaint, and she promised herself she'd write General Motors a thank-you note if she made it back to a post office alive. Haste precluded finesse. Dropping the Blazer in reverse, she floored the gas pedal and jerked the Chevy in a tight arc, its tailpipe pointed about where her stalker would be coming over the hill if he'd continued on her trail. Before the truck came to a full stop, she jammed the gear lever into first and poured on the gas. Gravel flew from beneath all four tires as they scratched down through the dirt to find purchase. Then the Blazer leapt forward, its power fishtailing the body over the ruts of the road and down the far side of the hill.

  The jolting knocked Anna from one side of the cab nearly to the other. Without seatbelt and shoulder strap it was a battle to keep her feet on the pedals and the car on the road. If there were any more gunshots the racket of the engine drowned them out. She didn't so much drive as ride the bucking, skidding beast of metal until she'd put a lump of hillock between her and the knoll she'd left behind.

  Unable to control the raging jitters, she mashed on the brakes rather than easing to a civilized stop. The Blazer skidded, shuddered, and died. Gasping for breath, Anna clung to the steering wheel and studied the rearview mirror for any sign of pursuit. Reaching up, she wrenched the little mirror this way and that, widening the scope of her search. Vanity stopped her from simply turning around and looking out the Blazer's rear window. Should she take a bullet, she'd just as soon it wasn't in the face. That was too personal. Brent wasn't merely dead; he had been ruined. Though it probably mattered not at all to the dead, it bothered the living, and, at least for the moment, that was the side she was on.

  No lumpish hostile appeared. Anna would have been surprised if one had. She had escaped, but so had the shooter. He still had his anonymity. He'd be a fool to risk it just to shoot someone who might or might not be a threat to him.

  Or her.

  Anna tried that out. No sense being close-minded about things. Cowboy movies had trained her to think of rifles as boys' toys. Usually true, but women in law enforcement were out-shooting their male counterparts on the rifle and pistol range. They seemed to have a natural aptitude for it. Lining up a bead on a target was not unlike threading a needle, plucking a splinter from a toddler's finger, dotting the "i" in icing on a birthday cake: hand to eye, steady nerves. They were born to it.

  With a last long look into the mirror to guarantee the coast was indeed clear, she finally shoved open the Blazer's door and stepped out. Her foot buckled under her, and pain, kept at bay by necessity, crippled her. Screaming at the suddenness of it, she fell to her knees beside the truck. When the shock cleared she dragged herself around till she was sitting, back against the front tire, to assess the damage. A bullet had struck her left foot. It was that which had downed her with such vicious abruptness on the hillside. Lead had torn away the heavy lug heel of her hiking boot and pulled the leather away from the sole. Near as she could tell without taking the boot off, it hadn't drawn blood, but the force had twisted her ankle sufficiently to break or sprain it.

  "Dagnabbit," Anna said, then ground her teeth lightly. Cowboy cursing reminded her of low-fat ice cream: mildly ridiculous and totally unsatisfying.

  Having unlaced the offending boot, she considered it for a moment. Her first instinct was to remove it, run her fingers over her foot to reassure herself it was all there. Intellectually she knew it was; there was no blood, and, though it hurt, she could wiggle everything that was supposed to wiggle. The ankle would undoubtedly swell. Once she got the boot off she might not be able to get it on again. With a lame foot she'd be useless, and there was something more she needed to do. Lacing the boot back up, she cinched it tight, splinting the ankle. Given good support, she could push herself a little further.

  The ankle hurt, but she could put her weight on it. Not broken, she told herself, and limped away from the Blazer. She had taken the keys from the ignition and snapped them in the outside pocket of her jacket. Donating her vehicle to her attacker and spending the night under a juniper would not be a happy ending.

  Anna was banking on the fact that her would-be murderer didn't think she'd stop once she got clear of his sights; that he'd turned and run the minute she'd disappeared over that second hill and would be hightailing it back to the park to cover his tracks. All Anna wanted was a glimpse of him. Or her.

  That's all she got.

  Having circled three-quarters of the way around the hill she saw, half a mile or more away, a tiny figure. Blurred and indistinct in khaki clothes or desert camouflage, it trotted over a ridge and down out of her line of sight. The shooter could have been six feet tall or six inches, black or white, male or female. All the hard-won sighting told her was that he was probably headed back toward Carlsbad's headquarters, and she'd already guessed that much.

  Adrenaline, vengeance, hope all abandoned her at once, and suddenly she was so tired it was an effort to draw breath. Her ankle throbbed, drumming its dissatisfaction at the recent abuse. Cold poked icy fingers into her ears, irritating the eardrums. Brent's blood caked and itched on the skin of her face and neck. Eschewing cowboy delicacy, she called down vile imprecations on all things living and dead, on the wind and the cold, the uneven dirt and the knife-edged plants. By the time she'd reached the truck she'd used up the vocabularies of several generations of sailors and, had there been any truth to the conceit, would have left a blue streak as wide as the Danube in her wake.

  Brent didn't carry a radio in his vehicle. As he wasn't BLM or NPS, it made sense. Anna cursed him anyway, because she was in that sort of mood. Every jolt and rut pained her. Her ankle complained so bitterly that pushing in the clutch pedal was torture. She cursed Roxbury for having a manual transmission. Cursing him was easier than remembering him, than feeling his blood on her flesh and knowing somebody was going to have to break the news to his wife.

  When she reached the highway she goaded the Blazer along at sixty five miles per hour in third gear rather than trash her ankle further. Finally she could stand the whine of the engine no longer and used her right foot to shove in the clutch. The Blazer careened into the oncoming lane. "Never a cop around when you need one," she growled as she righted the vehicle; then she smiled. Anything taken to absurd extremes ran the risk of becoming ludicrous. Even ambient crankiness.