The trick would be to get him to chase me up the south face. I’d be unprotected if I baited him. I looked up at the potential routes, searching for safety zones. Nope. It was all exposed.
I didn’t have much longer to stew on it. I just needed to gather enough confidence to traverse the steepest part of the slope. From where I was standing, it looked incredibly intimidating. Make a decision, Miranda. If I took a curved path, the shape of a question mark.…
Crack, another shot sailed over my crouched position. I looked down. I wasn’t in the best shoes: some cross-trainers I bought for the Hip Hop Cardio class I never took.
They were going to have to outperform their mission statement, though. They needed to give me traction up the only road out of hell.
Chapter 8
I sprinted up the gravel incline just as, crack, another gunshot exploded in the air behind me, instantly followed by the sound of dirt puffing up by my feet. He was getting closer. I kept climbing. This was only going to work if I managed to do one particular thing—not get hit by a bullet.
I hadn’t realized how insane my plan was until I was fully exposed on the rock face. I’m sure I looked like the biggest target this wacko had ever seen. Yet there I was, heading up the cliff as fast as I could, in the strategic path of a question mark.
He started running up behind me. He really did. Straight upward, the cheat. And I began to believe this entire ploy might just work.
If he would enter the slide zone, I’d gain about five minutes on him. The rocks would tangle him up. He might sprain an ankle. At the very least, he’d slide all the way back down and be bewildered. I’d be free to make a mad dash. I might even manage to separate him from his gun.
Crack—another shot. Missed, but splattered the dust directly near my hand.
I could see him fiddle with the gun. Because it was broken?—no, to reload it. He was coming up a lot faster than I anticipated. I was just nearing the top and he was already nearing the end of the loose shale, a patch of hillside about the size of a grocery store aisle. He’d already traversed most of it fast, surprisingly without incident. What was motivating this idiot?
The footing beneath him was holding up agonizingly well, and I’d stopped to watch all this, letting him gain on me, assuming I’d have already achieved the desired landslide by now. No such luck.
I’m not sure what I did to give him road rage but now he’d taken it off the road. Was life so bad in the Wild West that people chased after fellow motorists on foot?
“I’m just a mother!” I yelled at him.
He was nearly across the band of “helpful” geology. I was nearly at the end of my safety zone. The rest of my climb was going to put me in a long corridor of easiest targeting. Crack, he fired another shot at me.
And then his foot plunged.
Downward. Deep. I didn’t see it at first but I heard it. I’d ducked down after the last bullet whizzed by my head (note, Miranda, the best time to duck is before the deadly projectile arrives, not after), but I heard something like miniature thunder down below me. I heard, yes, a rockslide. It was like thunder, or a bowling alley.
I looked, and not only was he sliding down the slope, as I’d hoped, but the entire diagonal section of rocks cascaded with him. He was riding a magic carpet of sharp, jagged stones. The avalanche knocked him off his feet—the point a guardian angel should step in—and, dumbfounded, I watched him plummet all the way down to the hard ground of the ravine. Didn’t see that coming.
The only sign of the disturbance was an elongated cloud of dust rising below. But he was down there. In bad shape. He had to have fallen a hundred feet.
I strained to see through the dust and detected a crumpled heap of errantly strewn limbs, lying motionless. His leg was rotated awkwardly outward, probably broken.
Okay, what now? The only route down was to march back past him. But what if he was faking it? What if he was waiting until I got close to shoot me, up close and personal?
I picked up the sharpest piece of shale I could find. It felt heavy enough to do damage, but light enough to throw. Maybe I could spin it at him like a Frisbee.
I started scooting down the hillside, trying and failing to be quiet. He hadn’t yet looked up or moved. Spinning a rock like a Frisbee is ridiculous. What is wrong with you, Miranda? I could see him more clearly as I got closer. He was sprawled, facedown. It felt very likely that I would tumble forward to plummet as he had, and land right on top of him, dead.
I held my rock-weapon up, like a quarterback ready to throw.
“You almost killed my daughter!” I shouted.
I wanted to just throw my projectile at him, but I had some more choice words. “My daughter…she’s four! And you were shooting at me! Why?!”
He really was quite still. I knew I should walk away, continue on to get help for Aaron—every moment counted. But I felt drawn to see him up close—to know what we were dealing with.
“Hey!” I said. “Hey, I’m right here with a sharp rock! You don’t have to pretend to be out! You don’t have to fake it.”
I started to wonder if he was still breathing. I moved between him and his rifle, lying in the dirt about ten feet away. I kept my shale-football-Frisbee-rock-spear held high above me and felt the clichés bubbling to my mouth.
“One false move, buster, and you’re going down in flames!”
Flames? I knelt by his side. I needed to flip him over. Buster?
I steeled myself.
