Shooting Starr

She wasn’t afraid of the dark. Or she never had been before, even as a child. She remembered playing with her cousins, Eric and Rose Ellen, on Aunt Lucy’s farm, where, far away from city lights, on moonless nights the Milky Way made a shimmering path across an inky black sky. She remembered playing games of hide-and-seek in the big old barn on nights when clouds hid even the starlight, and the darkness was like a blanket across her face, and they’d taken delicious shivery delight in scaring each other silly.

This is no different, she told herself. It shouldn’t be. Why should it be, just because it’s the middle of the day and I can feel the sun on my face and the autumn breeze in my hair? It shouldn’t be, but it is.

For one thing, the scary things lurking in this darkness weren’t giggling children poised to jump out at her and yell, “Boo!” They were evil men with guns and no compunction about using them to snuff out the life of an innocent young woman…a little girl’s mother. Or mine.

And in this darkness there were no farmhouse windows ablaze with light, beacons to guide her home. In this darkness she was all alone.

You don’t have to be.

The whisper inside her head was enticing…insidious. She squelched it ruthlessly. She couldn’t allow herself to think like that, even for a minute. She didn’t dare.

She wondered now if she’d dreamed of Vasily last night for a reason. Because C.J. had kissed her, because it had felt so good to be held and to walk with his arm around her. Because it was so tempting to give in, abdicate responsibility, let someone take care of her, let someone else take care of Vasily. Only, she couldn’t do that. This was her trouble, her battle, her war, and she couldn’t risk the possibility of anyone else getting hurt fighting it for her.

She could learn to live with being blind, if she had to, but she could not live with that.

The dream remained vivid in her mind’s eye as she shuffled along the lane that ran between fields of hay and stubble, and although the autumn sun was a toasty burn across her shoulders, she shivered. Once again she could hear the bullets making angry zapping sounds as they whizzed past, missing her… Once again she saw the bleached faces of people she loved lying in pools of thick red blood, dead eyes staring up at the sky-Mom and Dad were there and Aunt Lucy and Uncle Mike, Eric and Ellie. It shocked her now to realize that one of the faces was C.J.’s.

What had she been thinking, to run away from him like that?

You wanted him to come after you, answered the traitorous voice inside her head. You hoped he would.

As before, she slapped the voice away, but not before she heard it jeeringly ask, Well, why didn’t he?

I shouldn’t be doing this, she thought, quickly redirecting her thoughts. It was selfish. I shouldn’t be out here alone.

She felt as exposed as a duck in a shooting gallery. What if Vasily’s men were out there now? What if they’d been watching her? Just been waiting for their chance to grab her?

If they get me, she thought, then Jake will have nobody to use as bait to catch Vasily. He’ll get away with it- with killing Mary Kelly. He’ll get away with everything!

I shouldn’t be here. I have to go back.

But where was “back”? She’d long ago lost count of her steps. And now she realized that she wasn’t walking on the gravel lane and that the ground under her feet was spongy with thick layers of fallen leaves. Oh, Lord-she was in the woods, she had to be. She’d never tried to orient herself or count footsteps in the woods-it was too big, too cluttered, too confusing. All the tree trunks felt alike. Now sapling trees slapped at her and their huge dying leaves rustled like dry bones as she brushed them. An exposed root rose up beneath her foot; she gasped and, stumbling, threw out a hand and scraped her knuckles on bark.

It came upon her so suddenly, as if she’d triggered a trap, one of those nets that fall out of nowhere and instantly immobilize: fear. Fear that had nothing to do with stalkers and snipers and nightmare visions of blood. This was fear as old as humankind, instinctive fear of the darkness and the unknown. Icy sweat sprang from her pores and her skin shivered. Fine hairs rose along her arms and shoulders and the back of her neck. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears, so it was a moment before she realized the whimpering sounds she kept hearing came from her.

Something rustled through the branches above her head and fell with a thump nearby. Adrenaline shot through her and in her panic she pushed away from the relative safety of the tree and fled, stumbling through thick drifts of leaves on legs that felt like melting rubber, arms thrown up to protect her face, her breath like sobs. A thorny vine caught at her, tore her clothing and slashed her skin, and she fought it as desperately as if it had been a wild animal attacking her with intelligent intent. Trying to elude it, she turned this way and that, becoming only more hopelessly confused, more terrified, more lost. This was worse than being lost in darkness-she was lost in nothingness, populated by terrors of her own imagining.

How long she thrashed and stumbled through the woods she didn’t know-probably no more than minutes… seconds, even. It seemed like hours. Like forever.

It ended abruptly when her foot sank into a hole left by a long-decayed stump. Pain shot through her; she pitched clumsily forward, half falling, half stumbling as she instinctively fought to forestall the inevitable. Then, suddenly there was an embankment, studded with moss-covered rocks and rotting logs-and down she went. She rolled…and slid…and bumped to a stop.

For a few minutes she lay as she’d landed, on her back, feet downhill on a steep incline. She felt oddly peaceful now; the terror, the nightmare panic, seemed to have vanished as quickly as it had come upon her. Covering her face with her forearms, she began to laugh silently-partly from relief, but mostly with chagrin and shame. She’d panicked-utterly and completely panicked. Never in her life had she done such a thing. She felt unbelievably foolish. Unforgivably stupid.

As she listened to the quietness fold itself around her she realized that it wasn’t silence-she could hear the musical tinkle of running water. She put out an exploring hand and felt cold liquid slide through her fingers. And now…yes, she could feel wetness soaking into her jeans on one side. The creek. She was lying on the edge of the creek, partly in the stream, which was barely a trickle this time of year.

At least, she thought, I know where I am now. She’d been to the creek with C.J. enough times; surely she could find her way back to the lane from here.

But when she tried to stand, the pain she’d forgotten about exploded through her leg. She gasped. Her head reeled and she sat down much more abruptly than she’d intended. Breathing hard and swearing fiercely, she rocked herself back and forth while she took stock of her situation. Oh, yes, she remembered stepping in that hole, now. Stupid…stupid. But she didn’t think her ankle was seriously injured-probably only sprained-and if she could manage to crawl out of the creek bed, she might be able to hobble- No. She mentally slapped a hand over her mouth. Caitlyn, haven’t you done enough stupid things today?

She sank back against the creek bank, closed her eyes and once more lifted both hands to cover her face. Oh, how she hated feeling helpless! But there was no getting around the fact that she was, at this moment, anyway. Like it or not-there was no way out of it-she was going to have to sit here, a classic maiden in distress, and wait for someone to come to her rescue.

“Okay, Bubba, ol’ boy,” C.J. said, giving the lab a neck-ruffling hug, “let’s go find her, shall we? Where’s Caitlyn, huh? Let’s go, big fella-go on, find Caitlyn.”

He was surprised to hear how calm and ordinary his voice sounded. Inside, deep in his guts, he was beginning to get worried. More than worried-scared to death. Okay, so Jake had assured him they were in the clear, that according to the FBI’s surveillance sources Vasily had no idea where Caitlyn was. Nobody had noticed any strangers lurking in the neighborhood, either, but that didn’t make C.J.’s mind rest easy. He had an idea he wasn’t ever going to rest easy again until Ari Vasily was either dead or behind bars.

Bubba gave his wrist a swipe with his tongue, threw him a panting, grinning, “Why didn’t you say so?” look and went trotting off across the hay field toward the woods. C.J. sighed. He knew Labs weren’t trackers, and ol’ Bubba