breathing hard.
Franklin pointed. “Down there. I can find it.”
Sterling turned to Bradley. “Call your people. And the Cumberland County Sheriff. I wanted that logging road plugged at both ends. What’s past it if he slips through?”
Bradley barked a laugh. “Nothing but the Royal River. Like to see him ford that.”
“Is it iced over?”
“Sure, but not enough to walk on.”
“All right. Let us press on. Franklin, take point.
They moved down the first slope. Fifty yards into the woods, Sterling made out a blue-gray figure slumped against a tree.
Franklin got there first. “Corliss,” he said.
“Dead?” Sterling asked, joining him.
“Oh yeah.” Franklin pointed to tracks that were now little more than vague dips.
“Let’s go,” Sterling said. This time he took point.
They found Granger five minutes later. The marks on his throat were at least an inch deep.
“Guy must be a brute,” someone said.
Sterling pointed into the snow. “That’s a cave up there. I’m almost positive. Maybe he left the kid.”
Two State Troopers scrambled up toward the triangular patch of shadow. One of them paused, bent, picked something out of the snow. He held it up. “A gun!” he yelled.
As if the rest of us are blind, Sterling thought. “Never mind the frigging
One of them knelt, used his flashlight, then crawled after the beam. The other bent forward, hands on knees, listened, then turned back to Sterling and Franklin. “Not here!”
They spotted tracks leading from the cave toward the logging road even before the Trooper who had gone into the cave was out again. They were little more than vague humps in the fast-falling snow.
“He can’t have more than ten minutes on us,” Sterling said to Franklin. Then he raised his voice. “Spread out! We’re going to sweep him out onto that road!”
They headed out fast, Sterling tromping in Blaze’s tracks.
Blaze ran.
He went in stumbling leaps, crashing straight through tangles of brush rather than trying to find a way around, bending over Joe to try and shield him from stabbing branches. Breath tore in and out of his lungs. He heard faint yelling behind him. The sound of those voices filled Blaze with panic.
Joe was whooping and struggling and coughing, but Blaze held him fast. Just a little more, a little farther, and they would come out on the road. There would be cars there. Police cars, but he didn’t care about that. As long as there were keys left in them. He would drive as far and fast as he could, then dump the police cruiser and switch to something else. A truck would be good. These thoughts came and went in his head like big colored cartoons.
He blundered through a marshy place where the thin ice surrounding the snow-covered hummocks gave way and plunged him into frigid water up to his ankles. He kept going and came to a head-high wall of brambles. He went straight through, only turned around backwards to protect Joe. One of them got under the cap Joe was wearing, though, and slingshotted it back toward the marsh. No time to get it.
Joe stared around, his eyes wide with terror. Without the enveloping hat to warm the air in front of his face, he began to gasp harder. Now his cries sounded thin. Behind them, the faint blue voice of the law was yelling something else. It didn’t matter. Nothing did except getting to the road.
The land began to slope upward. The going became a little easier. Blaze lengthened his stride, running for his life. And Joe’s.
Sterling was also going full out, and he had drawn thirty yards ahead of the others. He was gaining. Why not? The big bastard was breaking trail for him. The walkie on his belt crackled. Sterling pulled it but didn’t waste his breath, only double-keyed it.
“This is Bradley, come back?”
“Yeah.” That was all. Sterling needed the rest of his breath to run with. The most coherent thought in his mind, overlaying the others like a bright red film, was the knowledge that the homicidal fuck had killed Granger. Had killed an Agent.
“County Sheriff has placed units on that logging road, boss. State Police will reinforce ASAP. Over?”
“Good. Over and out.”
He ran on. Five minutes later he came upon a red cap lying in the snow. Sterling stuck it in his coat pocket and kept running.
Blaze struggled the last fifty uphill yards to the logging road, almost winded. Joe wasn’t crying anymore; he no longer had breath to waste on crying. Snow had clotted on his eyelids and in his lashes, weighting them down.
Blaze went to his knees twice, each time holding his arms against his sides to cushion the baby. At last he reached the top. And bingo. There were at least five empty State Police cruisers parked up and down the road.
Below him, Albert Sterling broke from the woods and looked up the incline Blaze had already climbed. And damn, there he was. There the big bastard finally was.
