in.
Sweat greased her body, slicked her clothing. Maybe that was what finally did it. For long struggling seconds she stayed lodged there, two-thirds of the way free like a cork that wouldn’t come out of a bottle. And then her hips finally scraped loose and she popped out, headfirst, tumbling down into the grass and pine needles.
She got her head turned and her arms up in time to break the fall, take most of the impact on her forearms. But her left leg got bent somehow and there was a searing burst of pain in the ankle.
She flopped over on one hip, peered at the ankle, felt it with shaky fingers. Breath hissed out of her throat. Not broken. Tender, sore… could she stand on it? Her gaze shifted, past the trunk of the big pine growing there toward the barn. Seemed like she’d made a lot of noise flopping down, but nothing moved over that way. Three or four seconds to catch her breath, then she pushed up one knee and managed to stand with most of her weight on the right foot. Pain erupted again when she shifted weight to the left one. Grimacing, she took a couple of experimental steps. The pain was bad-sprain, maybe a torn tendon-but at least she could hobble without falling down.
Lauren was watching her with huge, frightened eyes. Tamara forced a smile, bent and lifted her and adjusted the blanket to keep her warm.
A jay squawked loudly somewhere close by. It was the only sound in the morning hush, she realized then.
Lemoyne wasn’t digging anymore.
She’d made noise falling out the window, he might’ve heard Get out of here!
The SUV was so close, the quickest means of escape, but he’d have the keys on him and even if he didn’t, it was sitting right out there in the open. Only thing she could do was get Lauren and herself into the woods, fast. The dark wall of pines rose up fifty yards beyond the trailer; she went hobbling that way on a diagonal line, ignoring the pain in her ankle, using the trailer as a shield between them and the barn. Kept casting backward looks as she passed the playset, but she quit that when she stubbed against something in the tall grass and it nearly tripped her. Couldn’t watch where you were going and your backside at the same time, just get the hell into those trees.
They loomed ahead, so dense daylight didn’t seem to penetrate more than a few yards. She was panting and staggering when she reached them. One more quick glance behind… still no Lemoyne… and then she was into their thick clotted shadow.
Chilly, dank, smells of resin and rotting pine needles. Jutting trunks, lots of stuff growing on the ground. Hard to see. She felt an immediate fear of getting lost. She was a city girl, streets and sidewalks were her thing. What did she know about finding her way through thick woods like these?
All right, don’t go in too far. Stay close enough to the clearing to keep herself oriented. She set off through the carpeting of needles, around and through the moss-hung trunks, avoiding bushes and ferns; trying to be as quiet as she could, but she couldn’t help making some scuffing noise because of her bad leg. Once her foot came down on a dead twig; it made a sound like a firecracker and the skin on her back tried to crawl up her neck.
Off on her right she made sure she had glimpses of the clearing, the rutted driveway, the SUV sitting there in the sun. So far so good. Lauren didn’t make any noise, just clung to her with sweaty fingers. Ahead, then, she heard the fast-running gurgle of water. When she got across the creek she could start paralleling the driveway. And once she got to the road, follow that until she found a house or somebody came along. Plan. Good plan, if her leg didn’t give out, if Lemoyne would just stay in that damn barn.
She almost blundered into a half-hidden deadfall, veered away just in time. Then she was at the creek. Not much more than six feet wide, low banks, rushing water maybe a foot deep. She took a two-handed hold on Lauren, eased down to the rocky bed, picked her way across through the icy water, bent low so she could see to avoid the larger rocks. The sudden cold aggravated the pain in her ankle; it throbbed and burned so much when she put weight on it that she had to practically crawl up the far bank on one hand and one knee. She leaned hard against one of the tree trunks to rest and wait for the pain to subside.
All right, that’s long enough-move.
She moved, deeper into the trees, keeping both the creek and the driveway in sight. The pines didn’t grow as close together here, and ahead they thinned even more. Through the gaps between them she could see almost all the clearing-the trailer, the SUV, the barn.
And Lemoyne.
Standing near the trailer, in the shadow of the trailer-standing still the way he had in front of the barn earlier, only this time he was all tensed with his head craned forward. Staring toward where she was in the woods.
She made like one of the tree trunks, a sick, hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach. Her heart skipped a beat, stuttered, skipped another.
Lemoyne broke into a run, heading straight at her.
Saw us!
Panic spun her around, sent her plunging away from him, away from the creek and the driveway, deeper into the woods.
27
JAKE RUNYON
Five minutes in Nevada City, and you knew two certainties about the place. The steep streets, narrow lanes, old and false-fronted buildings, and business and street names told you it was an old mining town dating back to the California Gold Rush. And the bookshops, antique stores, boutiques, restaurants, saloons, and bed and breakfasts told you the rich ore being mined there nowadays was the tourist dollar. It was the kind of place Colleen would’ve liked; she’d shared his interest in history, and she’d loved to prowl bookshops and antique stores. He didn’t have an opinion one way or the other. Now that she was gone, it was just a place like all the other places.
They pulled into the center of town a couple of minutes past seven. Two hours to kill, so Runyon found a cafe that was open on a side street off the main drag and they went in there and crawled into a booth. He was tired, gritty-eyed, but not as bad off as Bill. Hollow-cheeked, bags under his eyes, beard stubble stark against a splotchy pallor. They both needed about ten hours’ sleep. Caffeine and something in their stomachs would be enough for now.
“Just coffee,” Bill said when the waitress brought the menus.
Runyon said, “Better eat something.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Just the same. Obvious reason.”
“Yeah. Guess you’re right.”
Runyon ate two bear claws with his tea. Bill broke a doughnut into little pieces and nibbled down about half of it. Neither of them said much; there was nothing left to say until they pinpointed the location of Parcel Number 1899-A6.
Eight o’clock. “Let’s roll,” Bill said. “I can’t sit here anymore.”
They rolled. Mick Savage had provided the location of the Nevada County Administrative Center; it was off Highway 49 on the northern edge of town, easy to find. Big, newish complex-county offices, county jail, main library. The recorder’s office was in the main building, so that was where they parked, as close to the entrance as they could get.
Bill couldn’t sit still there, either. He wanted to be out and moving, so they prowled the landscaped grounds- circling each of the buildings three times. On one circuit of the jail, a county sheriff’s cruiser passed by and the officer inside gave them a long curious look, but he didn’t stop. Just as well. As amped up as Bill was, any sort of conversation might have made the deputy suspicious and then they’d have had to waste time smoothing it over.
At a quarter of nine they waited around in front of the main entrance. “They better open on time,” Bill said once. Talking mostly for his own ears. Runyon still had his engines on idle, but still he could feel the thin blade of tension himself. Getting close to it, now. No guarantees that Lemoyne had taken Tamara and the child up here, but you developed a kind of precognitive instinct when you’d been in police work a long time; he had it now and he
