was that held Jase Hearn together suddenly snapped deep down inside of him, like a rubber band that has been stretched too tight. And he mouthed these words: “There’s no us.”
Before he whirled and shot his sister full in the face.
Jory made a single, awful choking noise as she pitched over backward from the table, a gaping hole where her left eye had just been.
Right away, Des was up on her feet, squeezing off a round of her own at Jase. But she was a split second too late. He’d already gotten off another shot-this one at her. She took it in the forearm of her gun hand, sending her own shot harmlessly into the wall. Her right hand went numb instantly, the SIG dropping to the floor with a thunk.
Now Jase was dashing out the kitchen door into the courtyard, still clutching his thirty-eight.
And Mitch was diving to the floor for her SIG and starting out the door after him.
Des cried out, “No, Mitch! Let him go!” Wondering what on earth that sweet, chubby fool could possibly be thinking.
But she was too late. Mitch was already gone.
CHAPTER 17
Here is what Mitch was asking himself as he went rushing out the kitchen door after Jase, SIG-Sauer in hand and Des yelling after him to stop:
What in the hell am I doing?
He was a card-carrying creature of the darkened screening room, a wielder of a flashlight pen, a critic-not some gun-toting lawman. So why was he doing this? Why was he chasing Jase Hearn across the castle courtyard, tramping his way through deep snow and ice, panting for breath, his chest heaving?
Because there is no one else.
Because he’d just seen Jase murder his own sister and shoot Des’s arm to pieces. Because Jase would get away if he didn’t go after him. Because he knew this guy and, strangely enough, liked this guy. And because, well, it wasn’t coming from his head, this impulse to chase after him. It came from Mitch’s hands, which had picked up the gun from the floor without hesitation. It came from his feet, which just kept moving forward as he slip-slided and crashed his way through the snow, the sun breaking out overhead. It came from being cooped up in that cold, dark castle since last night, witnessing one person after another get strangled, hatcheted, shot. And he’d just plain had enough.
So he ran, Des’s gun feeling heavy and unfamiliar in his hand.
Jase was sprinting like mad out ahead of him, stumbling, falling, getting back up. He could definitely hear Mitch’s footsteps behind him. He kept looking over his shoulder at him, eyes wild with fear. And as Jase neared the drawbridge over the frozen moat, he spun around and opened fire.
Mitch immediately pancaked himself to the snow as two shots whizzed right over him. He did not return fire. There was no point. No way he could hit Jase Hearn from this distance. Besides, he didn’t want to shoot him.
He wanted Jase to surrender.
Now Jase was dashing across the drawbridge. Mitch scrambled back up onto his feet, covered with snow, and lumbered after him, huffing and puffing, seeing his hot breath before him, the winter air a jagged knife deep in his lungs. He didn’t have on his jacket or gloves. His hands were wet and numb. The snow that clung to his sweater was quickly beginning to melt from his considerable body heat. He felt like a slow, hairy mastodon. Also a bit dazed from that blow to the head he’d taken.
And he was not exactly used to getting shot at.
When he’d crossed the drawbridge, gasping, he discovered that Jase had vanished. There wasn’t so much as a glimpse of him anywhere in the distance. No movement. Nothing but virgin snow-covered meadows and forest. Mitch held his breath, listening. Not a sound.
But he still had Jase’s footprints to go by. All Mitch had to do was follow his trail through the snow. Jase could not get away from him. No, he could not.
So Mitch tracked him-in the direction of Choo-Choo Cholly’s miniature depot, which still lay crunched under that huge fallen sugar maple. As Jase’s footsteps approached the little station, they veered around it and made for a wide, cleared corridor between the trees. The railroad tracks, Mitch realized. Jase was following Cholly’s snow- covered narrow-gauge tracks all the way down the mountain to the front gate, to Route 156, away.
Mitch pursued him, running hard, the sweat beginning to stream down his face. Jase’s footsteps made a clear path before him down the center of the tracks, the cross-ties deep underfoot beneath the snow and ice. Wherever Jase ran, Mitch ran. Around the trees that had come down alongside the tracks. Over the trees that had fallen across them. Mitch ran and ran. Until he could run no farther without his chest exploding. He paused for just a second to catch his breath, his ears straining for a sound, any sound in the frozen winter silence. Crunching. He could hear the definite crunching of footsteps. Not very far away either. He was staying right with Jase. Maybe even gaining on him.
Heartened, Mitch forced himself farther on down the tracks. There was a quaint, hand-painted wooden sign up ahead now-“River Walk Station.” And a big bend around an exposed scenic overlook where there were handrails and benches and wonderful river views that Mitch had no time to look at. As he came charging his way around the bend, Jase’s footsteps before him veered off the tracks and curled into the woods. Crashing his way in among the fallen trees, Mitch followed Jase’s footprints until, suddenly, they stopped entirely right there deep in the woods. No more footprints. Yet, no Jase either. It was as if he’d disappeared into thin air. Either that or Scotty had just beamed him back aboard the Enterprise. Mitch stood there, baffled, seeing no sign of Jase, hearing no sound other than his own heavy breathing. How was this possible? How could Jase’s footsteps simply halt right here, two feet from the base of a beech tree? Where the devil was he?
Mitch suddenly realized where. And felt like a total moron.
Only, by the time he looked up, Jase was already diving out of the tree right on top of him, knocking him hard to the ground and smashing him across the bridge of the nose with his thirty-eight. The SIG went flying out of Mitch’s hand as he found himself flat on his back in the snow, Jase clutching him by the throat with his rough, powerful hands, jabbering at him incoherently, his breath hot and sour in Mitch’s face. His eyes were the crazed eyes of one of those unkempt wild men who prowled the streets of Lower Manhattan at four o’clock in the morning, ranting at unseen enemies in no known language.
Mitch fought back with everything he had. Fought for air. Fought for life. His hands clawed at Jase’s. But he was no match for Jase’s unleashed fury. And he was losing. And Des’s gun was gone-Mitch didn’t know where. And he was going to die here in the snow, right here, right now…
Until Jase suddenly recoiled from him in horror and screamed, “Damn you! Damn you!” And scrambled several feet away from Mitch, scratching angrily at his knit cap, yanking it from his head, hurling it off into the snow. His hair underneath was stringy and long. “Stop following me, will you?! Just let… me… go!”
“I can’t,” Mitch croaked, blood streaming from his smashed nose. “Come back to the castle with me, Jase.”
“You’ve got to let me go!” Jase moaned, staring in apparent disbelief at the thirty-eight he was clutching in his hand. He seemed genuinely repulsed by who and what he’d become. “You go back to the castle. Forget about me, please!”
“It’s no use, Jase.” Mitch yanked his handkerchief from the back pocket of his pants, stanching the flow of blood from his nose. “You have to give yourself up.”
Jase shook his head at him violently. “Never. No way. No. I can’t go back. I just can’t.”
“You have to,” Mitch insisted, wondering whereabouts in the snow Des’s SIG had fallen. If he could reach it. If he could use it…
“I’ll never, ever go back,” Jase vowed, staggering his way back through the trees toward the railroad tracks. “Just forget that!” Now he took off again down the tracks, running hard, away from Mitch, away from the castle, away. Jase didn’t bother to search for Des’s weapon in the snow. Didn’t so much as look back.
He just ran.
Mitch remained there in the snow for a moment, his nose bleeding, his throat feeling as if it had just been
