The Ridge

“Good luck,” he said.

“You, too.”

He got behind the wheel then, and the little motor bubbled to life, and then they were out of the barn and driving off into the night, down toward the trestle. Dustin didn’t even look back at her.

Audrey stood alone for a moment. Around her the cats were on the move, gathering near the fences, watching with curiosity. A lion roared, one tiger responded, and then it was quiet again. Snow was falling steadily. Audrey watched the tiny headlights of the cart move toward the trestle, and then, after a hesitation, she followed.

Kimble parked the cart just outside of the torn-down fencing, turned to Dustin Hall, and looked him over. The kid gazed back with a blank face, oddly unbothered. You had to have some nerve to work around those cats, though, and after everything that had happened this week, with the deaths and the escaped cougar and the kid’s dealings with Shipley, maybe he was getting a little desensitized.

“You ready to help?” Kimble said.

“Sure.”

“Come on, then.”

They got out of the cart and Kimble took a gas can in his left hand, keeping the gun in his right. Dustin Hall picked up a can in each hand.

“Give me a moment,” Kimble said. “When I call for you, come on out.”

He ducked through the fencing and went out onto the trestle. He went to the spot where he’d stood with Jacqueline, and then he dropped to one knee and stared into the shadows where the foundation bracings met the rocks and water below. Where she’d seen the ghost, and seen her fate.

There was nothing.

Kimble touched the weathered planks with his palm—built by dead men—and remembered the way she’d kissed him back up at the car, remembered the feel of her on top of him in the dark lighthouse, remembered that she’d had the gun pointed at his face and her finger around the trigger in the end and had not pulled it.

You know what you’ve done… I’m scared of him.

“All right, friend,” Kimble whispered, staring down at this demon who would not show himself. “We’ll see how you like a little heat. I’m going to set your fucking house on fire.”

He stood up again, called for Dustin Hall, and began to pour gasoline over the boards. He was very careful to see that the old wood drank it up and that as little as possible fell to the water below. He didn’t want to waste a drop.

They worked swiftly and in concert, no sounds but their footsteps echoing on the boards and the gasoline splashing. Snow fell around them but the wind had lain down and it was a quiet night. Kimble worked on the western end of the trestle, Dustin Hall on the eastern, closest to the preserve, as instructed. Kimble wasn’t sure they had enough fuel, and he thought that it would be better if he could get the fire going on both ends and let it work toward the middle. If even one end collapsed, the rest of the trestle would come down.

When his cans were empty, he discarded them and walked back across the trestle, gun in hand, to join Hall.

“It’s all gone?”

“Yes.”

Kimble bent and picked up one of the cans, turned it upside down and shook it. Only a few drops flew out.

“All right,” Kimble said, feeling the matches in his pocket. “You need to get the hell out of here. Go on up with Audrey. I’ll come up when I’ve seen that it’s burning.”

Dustin Hall didn’t move. He was looking at the lighthouse.

“You say there are infrared lights in that thing? On right now?”

“Yes.”

“And it bothers him.”

Him. The word snagged on Kimble’s ear, and he realized Hall had used it earlier. Not in an informal, pronoun sort of way, either, but with a personal touch to it. As if he were speaking of someone he knew.

“I think it does,” Kimble said slowly, and it occurred to him now that he hadn’t had time to follow up with Hall about the allegation that Shipley had moved the rifle in the cage.

The kid turned back to him, snowflakes melting on his glasses, and said, “That’s good to know,” just before he slammed into Kimble with a lowered shoulder.

Kimble stumbled backward, his first instinct to lift the gun, his second that lifting the gun was no concern, balance was the only concern, and he was losing his fast. He reached for something to catch him, but there was nothing but snow and darkness.

45

AUDREY WAS STANDING IN the trees at the crest of the ridge, snow speckling her hair, the wind stinging her face, and the night had taken on a magical surrealism to her—she was a part of this but not, detached from it all, those sounds of footsteps and splashing gasoline on the bridge couldn’t belong to her world, they represented something far too strange, and the silent snow only contributed.

Then Dustin slammed into Kimble and the deputy was off the bridge and pinwheeling through darkness and Audrey’s scream shattered the dreamlike feel of the night and grounded her in reality once more.

For an instant, she started toward Dustin. She was horrified but did not blame him yet; her initial response was to think that he had done what he believed was right, acting out of fear of Kimble, acting in self-defense, even in defense of her. It was Dustin’s response to the man’s death that brought her to a stunned halt.

He showed no outward emotion, neither fear nor horror, as he knelt on the edge of the trestle and looked down to where the chief deputy had fallen into the same black water and jagged rocks that had claimed Audrey’s husband, and though he surely knew she was there from her scream, he paid her no mind.

Not at first.

At first he simply stared into the darkness, then nodded his head and, as he straightened, lifted his right hand and snapped off a crisp salute.

Audrey felt the first creeping knowledge then, tendrils of memory and understanding seeping through, too fast and too vague to be grasped firmly, but strong enough for her brain to accept them and merge them into one central, critical point: Dustin was dangerous.

Even to her.

He brushed dirt and snow from his jeans casually, in no rush, and then finally pivoted toward her, searching for the place where he’d heard the scream. He found her, and then, still at a calm, measured pace, began to walk off the trestle and through the snow. Coming for her.

It was his pace and his silence that extinguished any remaining doubt, and she began to back away, not running yet, because she didn’t want to turn her back on him, didn’t want to lose sight of him even for an instant. It was only when she began to move that he broke the silence.

“Audrey, come down here.”

His voice did not belong to the competent but socially awkward young man who’d helped her handle the cats for so long. It seemed to come from another man entirely, the voice dark and demanding and with a quality of patient threat to it, like an interrogator who wanted to make it clear that he would play the game but for only a while, and then God help you if you hadn’t satisfied his questions.

She continued to backpedal. The rocks were slick with snow and she slipped once and almost went down, and for the first time she looked away from him, conscious of how close to the edge of the ridge she was, how treacherous the footing. The trees were just ten paces away, and beyond them the fences, and in the moonlight and snow she could make out only the white tigers and the eyes of a handful of others. Kimble had fallen from the bridge with her car keys and her cell phone in his pockets; it was now just her and the night woods and Dustin