“No deal,” she said slowly, savoring the words. “You’ll die in prison.”
Without warning, he pounced on her, his body weight too much for her to withstand. She fell to the floor, screaming from the pain in her wounded shoulder, her breath knocked out of her lungs. She still clutched the handle of her gun, but she couldn’t fire it from underneath his body. But his weight started to shift away, as Elliot pulled his arm, twisting it to his back. He squirmed free and turned, hitting Elliot in his side with a strong punch with his right.
Lying on the floor, she fired, the bullet entering the back of his head at an angle and exiting above his ear, missing Elliot by a few good inches. She breathed when she heard the bullet crash into the ceiling lamp, covering them with glass shards and dimming the light by more than half.
Moments later, they returned to the SUV. Elliot walked with a bent gait and kept an icepack over his swelling eye, improvised from ice cubes she’d found in the freezer wrapped in a small towel. She looked inside to check on Bill, and her breath caught.
He was gone.
56Ravine
“He’s gone,” she shouted, looking around desperately, knowing he couldn’t be too far. They were in the middle of an open field, the grasses weighed low by ground frost. If he’d run toward the highway, he’d be visible from afar, nowhere to hide. In the distance, behind the house, the edge of the woods drew a straight line cutting across miles of terrain, running parallel with the road.
In the corner of her eye, she caught a hint of movement. “There—” She pointed at the forest, where she’d seen Bill’s tall frame disappearing between the barren trees. He wasn’t easy to spot, his dark suit almost the color of wet tree bark in the dimming light of dusk.
They sprinted in pursuit, both running crookedly, faltering at times. Her shoulder hurt every time her legs pounded the ground, but she didn’t stop. Her mind raced, twisting and turning hypotheses and theories. That’s why he’d been so calm. His plan was already conceived, his exit strategy clear. But going where?
He was gaining a lead, but soon the woods cleared, and they found themselves on a stretch of grassy flatland, Bill’s silhouette frozen still some 50 yards ahead of them in a strange pose.
He’d stopped running. He stood calmly, looking straight ahead, not caring about them. That annoying feeling tugged at her gut.
“Is there a ravine or something over there?” she asked, panting, out of breath. Then, without waiting for an answer, she sprung ahead, running as fast as she could. Elliot kept up with her, his footfalls heavy, grunting at times.
She knew where she’d seen that eerie calm before. In people who’d decided to end their lives. In suicidal patients she’d worked with during her hospital rotation.
She was a few yards away when he dove, headfirst, falling to his death in perfect silence. Kay reached the edge just in time to see him splat at the bottom of the deep, rocky ravine.
Then a woman’s shriek ripped through the air.
57By a Thread
Two fire trucks pulled close to the ravine, silencing their sirens as they entered the grassy stretch of land. Kay directed them with one arm raised high in the air, while Elliot rushed over to speak to the driver of the first truck. The darkness lit by their red flashing lights seemed surreal, altering the colors of the landscape and blinding her whenever she looked that way.
In the silence left behind by the sirens, Kay heard a whimper coming from below.
“Somebody, help me, please,” the girl cried, her voice weakened by the prolonged effort to hold on to the cypress branch that had been supporting her weight over the abyss.
Kay rushed to the edge and kneeled in the damp grass. “We’re right here, okay?” she shouted, making sure her voice carried over to the girl. “Just a few more minutes, that’s all. I swear it won’t be longer,” she said, while a frown of concern dug trenches on her forehead.
A strangled whimper came from below. She squinted, but couldn’t see much in the darkness, the flashing red lights doing more harm than good to her night vision. But those flashers told the girl help had arrived. “Hang in there, okay? You’ve done so good, surviving this, holding on the way you have,” Kay added, forcing herself to sound convincing, but fearing the adrenaline was leaving the exhausted girl’s body, weakening her muscles and softening her resolve. “What’s your name?”
“I—I can’t…” the girl replied, stuttering, then trailing off.
“Yes, you can,” Kay demanded, standing up to meet the firefighter who was approaching with Elliot by his side.
“I’m Chief Hopper,” the firefighter introduced himself. She shook his hand and nodded, but her question was for the girl below. “What’s your name?”
Silence engulfed the scene for a long moment, then her weak voice was barely audible. “Kirsten.”
“Good,” Kay replied, looking at Elliot. “I’m Kay. My partner and I have been looking all over for a girl named Kirsten. She’s from Oregon.”
“Oh, God,” she cried, then started sobbing. “I can’t—I can’t hold on.”
“One minute, Kirsten,” Kay asked imperatively. “Count with me. Count the seconds, every three of them. One,” she started, then listened, and heard nothing. “Four,” she continued, shouting, her voice demanding.
“Seven,” Kirsten’s weak voice came through, and she held her thumb up smiling widely.
The fire crews deployed powerful worklights that flooded the scene with brightness. One of them approached with a thermal-imaging camera and showed them the image of the girl’s body lying down on the branch, in shades of red, green, and blue on the screen of a tablet.
“Ten,” Kay and Kirsten counted together as three more seconds had passed, a little louder this time.
“Yes, that’s it,” Kay cheered, “keep going. We’re almost there.”
“We have to secure the tree first,” the man holding the thermal-imaging camera said. His name tag read, BOONE.
