It was more instinct than sense, but he rolled again, managing to flip Stitch with him, and Stitch kept the momentum going, slugging in raw fury at Taylor. Somewhere in the background — behind Stitch’s cursing and grunts — Taylor could hear Orrin shouting at them, and the woman’s shrill tones.
And then a rifle butt slammed into his head, and all the fight drained out of him. Through the sick pain he could see Orrin standing over him, ready to strike again. And through the blur of tears and blood he saw Will edging forward, crowding the woman. She backed up, yelling for Orrin, bringing her rifle up to fire.
Orrin stepped away and turned his own rifle back on Will, who stopped in his tracks.
Stitch scrambled up, grabbed Taylor’s jacket collar, dragging him to his knees. The barrel of his gun knocked against Taylor’s face. He didn’t care, didn’t notice, all his focus on Orrin.
Orrin stared at Will. It felt like forever before he nodded at Taylor. “Yeah. He’d be less trouble. Kill him.”
“Well, that doesn’t make sense,” the woman objected. “Why don’t we kill him?” She nodded at Will, who stared stonily back at her.
Orrin said reasonably, “Because if you kill him, you’ll have to kill pretty boy anyway. And we need to hang on to one of them in case we need a hostage.”
Taylor heard his death sentence with something like relief, just making out the words over his own pained gulps for air and the distant thunder of the river crashing over the boulders down the mountainside behind them.
The woman and Stitch began to debate Orrin’s decision. Taylor brought his head up for one last look at Will.
“My God, do I have to do everything myself?” Orrin inquired rhetorically, and the bullet slammed into Taylor’s chest, left side — for a change — knocking him back. He went with it, letting himself topple right over the side of the mountain.
He nearly blacked out with the pain.
He slid and slithered a few feet, stones showering down around him, the momentum of his fall carrying him several yards down the slope. He rolled, trying to protect his head from trees and boulders, trying to absorb how badly he’d been hit, listening to the sound of the shot reverberating off the mountains — and the echo of Will’s cry.
Will sounded… There were no words to describe that cry. Horror, grief — he’d sounded mortally wounded.
And after that one outcry, he sounded mad enough to kill — beyond rage, beyond sanity. Taylor, snatching frantically for handholds, anything to slow his descent, could hear him over the roar of the river below, ranting, swearing, threatening.
And then silence.
Jesus. Jesus, Will…
Let him be okay. Don’t let them have changed their minds, don’t let them have killed him…
He managed to grab onto a tangle of tree roots. A boulder, loosened by his brush against it, crashed on down the slope and plunged into the tumbling water below with a loud splash.
There had been no second shot, right? He hadn’t heard a second shot.
The vegetation he was holding on to loosened in the wet soil above him, and Taylor refocused on his own peril: legs dangling over an outcrop of rocks and nothing but the cold night air and a couple hundred feet of falling beneath him. He shifted his grip, hauled himself up a foot, onto firmer ground. Dug his fingers and boot tips into the soggy earth.
He could hear voices drifting above him.
“He went into the river,” Stitch called. “I heard his body hit the water.”
Taylor, a couple of yards to the left, jammed his face into his arm and smothered his whimpers in his coat sleeve. He had to stay motionless, had to stay quiet, but the pain from being shot — again — was stupefying. Almost impossible to get beyond it.
But after a few moments of relative calm — of no longer falling down the slope and no more rocks raining down on him — and no more shooting at him — he did manage to think; and he began to wonder why he wasn’t soaked in blood. There had been a hell of a lot of blood the other time; his body had begun to shut down immediately. That wasn’t happening. Excruciating though the pain was, it was just…pain.
He reached up, feeling the hole in his jacket. He poked his finger through the leather, felt the hole in his shirt pocket — and there was dampness there, but not nearly enough — and then his fingertip touched metal. Dented metal. The stainless steel of Will’s flask gently leaking bourbon around the lodged bullet in its face.
And for one crazy moment he almost laughed.
Jesus Christ. Saved by the bourbon. He struggled against the hysterical giggles threatening to burst out of his throat. It wasn’t that funny, for God’s sake, and he was still in a hell of a lot of trouble, but the relief of not being really shot again outweighed the extreme pain of being…well, shot again.
Let’s hear a round of applause for the man upstairs…
He pulled himself up a few inches, trying for a more secure position, then rested, gathering himself, listening for what was happening topside. He couldn’t hear much over the river’s boom. But then he heard voices — and froze.
He knew that Stitch had been joined by the others, that they were all looking over the edge of the cliff, trying to spot his body in the water below — or on the slope.
He could just make out snatches of their discussion.
“He went
