All the while the horn continued to blare. That this unknown person had entered my own vehicle to summon me was somehow more galling than the obnoxiousness of the sound itself.
Who can it be?
Not Ronette or her husband, checking in on me. They would have done the neighborly thing and walked up the trail.
I hadn’t told Zane Wilson where I was staying. Nor did he have a working vehicle of his own.
Gary Pulsifer knew where I’d chosen to pitch camp. In his drinking days he might have laid on the horn to summon me. But the new man he’d become seemed above those kinds of adolescent antics.
Billy, if he had managed to find his way here, would have been circumspect to say the least. As a former combat soldier, he would have approached the cabin with caution and under the cover of darkness to assess whether someone other than his family and me was waiting for him.
I had a thought that I might have disclosed the information to others, but my memory had a hole in it.
Eventually I drew near enough to the gate to see the looming shape of Aimee’s Tahoe. My Scout would be parked behind it. Presumably the vehicle driven by our visitor would be blocking me from backing out. I decided to make a semicircle through a stand of poplars and beeches to approach the interloper from behind.
Just as darkness makes blood appear black, so did the night rob this familiar truck of its redness. Crew cab. Extended bed. Off-road tires. It belonged to Gorman Peaslee: out of jail and out for revenge.
From experience, I knew he possessed an arsenal that extended from slingshots to shotguns to, in all likelihood, modern sporting rifles equipped with bump stocks to make them nearly fully automatic weapons. I supposed I should have considered myself grateful he hadn’t brought along his pack of man-eating Rottermans.
As I snuck up on him from the rear, I could make out that the big man was standing with the driver’s door open and his right hand planted on the horn. His left hand gripped the top of the door. So whatever weapon he might be carrying, I would have the drop on him at least.
He seemed to be in shirtsleeves, which struck me as odd considering the chill and dampness.
I pressed the thumb lock on my holster and quietly drew my service-issued SIG P239. I had no qualms about leveling the night sights at his center mass.
“Knock it off with the horn, Gorman.”
He tensed immediately and drew himself up to his full height, but while he removed his hand from the horn, he didn’t remove it from the inside of my vehicle.
“Bowditch?”
“Don’t make a move. I’ve got a gun aimed at your back.”
“Warden Bowditch?” His voice sounded unexpectedly shaky. And a bit too loud.
“I don’t appreciate your letting yourself into my vehicle. Let alone putting your greasy hands on it. What are you doing here?”
He just about shouted the next two words. “It’s him!”
I didn’t feel the bullet where it grazed the side of my head. The sensation was of my hair being lifted as if someone, leaning close to me, had blown breath upon it. Then I heard the gunshot.
The sound triggered my reflexes. I threw myself facedown in the mud.
Gorman was shouting, “He’s there! Behind my truck!”
I had no clue where the shooter had stationed himself for the ambush. But my instincts had me crawling on elbows and knees along the passenger side of the Ram. Despite what you might have seen in movies, bullets can easily punch holes through the metal frames of cars and trucks. They might bounce off the engine block or the axle, but you’re about as safe hiding behind a motor vehicle as you would be taking shelter behind a sheet of plywood.
For that reason, I scrambled into the woods, where, at least, the trees would provide some camouflage. I had dropped my Maglite, I realized. But the pistol might as well have been super-glued to my hand.
Now I felt a sharp stinging along my scalp. I pressed a muddy palm against my hair, an inch above my left ear, and it came away warm and black with blood. So the shooter wasn’t a marksman, at least; he had missed what should have been an easy head shot.
As Gorman continued to shout directions—he had lost sight of me but guessed where I was headed—it dawned on me that he hadn’t moved at all. He continued to stand beside the open door of my Scout where I’d first discovered him. It was as if he had been chained there.
Now a bullet shattered against a tree trunk five feet above my head.
So the assassin had night-vision sights on whatever rifle he was using. But at least I had a better sense of his position now. He was firing from the cabin side of the gate and across the parked vehicles. He had expected me to come straight down the road toward the sound of the horn.
My wariness had saved my life—for the moment.
The night scope provided him with an advantage, but he would be cautious about giving himself away because he knew that I was armed as well.
What happened next caught me off guard. Gorman began to run. He took off down the road in the direction of the highway. I followed him with my eyes until I heard the supersonic explosion of a bullet slicing through the air. Gorman stumbled, threw out his arms, then sprawled to the ground. The first round had caught him in the lower abdomen: a poor shot. It required a second round to the back of his shaved head to put him down.
I took the opportunity to make my move. I used a spruce bough to pull myself to my feet and ducked behind
