wall of saplings and thick brush that lined the forest perimeter and lost his balance, falling face-first onto the rain- soaked ground. The damp leaves turned red with his blood. His face was muddied and bruised.
Keeping low to the forest floor, and running clumsily ahead, Nick ripped a strip of fabric from his shirt and tied a makeshift bandage around his head. Even with pressure in place, blood from the cut still oozed down into his eye. With branches snapping across his face, he risked a glance over his shoulder, but could not see his pursuer through the rain and mounting gloom.
Veering to his left, Nick tried to gauge where the road might be. The building housing Noreen’s office was an odd one, and quite isolated, as if a developer had bought a lot of land, built the first building of a planned office park, and then simply stopped. Nick sensed that he was heading not toward the highway, but deeper into the dense woods.
He thought about trying to find the road but rejected the notion and plunged ahead.
Another thirty or forty feet and he stopped and listened. The rain was continuing steadily, and he was breathing heavily, making it difficult to hear anything else. He held his breath and risked a furtive glance behind him. It took several seconds for him to make out the soft crunching of brush. Koller had traversed the parking lot and was moving stealthily but steadily toward him.
Through the dark, he thought he saw the man’s silhouette. He cast about, trying to get a sense of his position. There really was no place to hide.
The darkness was his ally. His injuries were his foe. But Koller was hurt, too, he reminded himself.
Crawling forward on hands and knees, Nick waited until the trees grew taller and denser before rising to his feet again. His only chance was to push deeper into the darkening woods. The predator was closing in.
Ignoring the burning from his gunshot wound, and sacrificing his forearms to the whipping branches, Nick shielded his face and barreled ahead. Here, the forest floor was uneven, and decaying leaves hid sinkholes that with one unfortunate step could break an ankle. He accelerated toward a small clearing. That was when the ground dipped unexpectedly. He failed to see an exposed rock directly in his path. His foot caught the solidly embedded stone and he tumbled down a steep embankment, landing heavily on his back in the middle of a slow- moving stream. His head snapped against a rock with dizzying force.
The water instantly soaked through his shirt and jeans, weighing him down when he tried to stand. Again, he paused and listened. Again he heard branches breaking somewhere up the embankment behind him.
For no well-conceived reason, he decided to let the bank of the stream be his guide. His lungs were burning now with each labored breath, and a painful stitch had developed in his right side.
Soaked through, he began following the stream as it widened and snaked its way through the forest in what seemed like an east-west flow. Dusk had given way to a deepening darkness. The going was slow. Twice the muddy bank gave way, dropping him into the water. Despite his intense exertion, he quickly began to chill. Now, though, when he stopped, he heard nothing except the spattering of rain and the white noise of insects.
Twenty feet… thirty… forty. Oblivious to the pain, Nick dove ahead.
Suddenly, from behind and to his right, he heard the crack of a gunshot followed by the hum of a bullet cutting through the heavy air. At almost the same moment, a small tree to his right splintered. Whirling, he saw Koller’s silhouette, perhaps a hundred yards away, climbing over a fallen log. Given the distance, the accuracy of the shot was astounding. Driven by new, intense urgency, he pushed forward.
Another shot zipped past, this one slicing into a tree, only inches above his head. The thought of hiding from the killer, even in the mounting darkness, vanished with that near miss. His only chance was to somehow get out of the woods to a neighborhood and call for help. It seemed, though it was probably totally irrational, that continuing to follow the water was his best chance.
Once again the storm intensified. Rain pelted his face, washing away the mud and blood. His injured foot ached with every step, sending hot needles up into his calf.
“Give me what I want and I promise your lady won’t be hurt.”
Koller’s taunts seemed to echo from every direction. Nick kept his vision focused forward as he thrashed ahead. He would have sacrificed himself for Jillian without hesitating, but if Koller even had her, he was bluffing about letting her live. Ramsland could never leave survivors now. Despite his bluster, he had never really intended to. There was too much blood on his hands to chance putting his patriotism to the test. He might believe in the horrible things he had done or authorized, but it was doubtful the electorate would.
Nick forged on for what he guessed to be a quarter of a mile without slowing down. His eyes stayed fixed on the ground in front of him as he dodged treacherous rocks and heavy roots. He had done well to avoid going down as the last fragments of light seeped from the forest. Several checks behind showed no sign of Koller, and Nick began allowing himself to believe he might have somehow lost the man.
The forest landscape began to change. There were fewer trees here, more low brush. It was as though the woods were disappearing. Then the brush, too, gave way. He lifted his head just in time to see the stream fall away. He dropped to his knees and inched forward, peering down into the darkness. A thin, shallow waterfall disappeared beneath him. Fifty feet straight down? Seventy-five? It was impossible to tell. The gorge, formed by the river below, cut the forest in two. It was a hundred or two hundred feet wide, and ran ahead as far as he could see. The sound of rushing water reverberated off the cliff walls. From behind him, Nick heard dead branches and leaves crunching.
How could he have made such a mess of things?
To travel the ridge of the gorge in either direction would leave him totally exposed from lack of cover. Going down beside the narrow falls was an option, but not a desirable one.
Years ago, before Nick traded in his adrenaline addiction for EMDR therapy, his skills as a rock climber hovered just below expert. In his heyday, Nick could engineer the three most common rope systems blindfolded. He knew the right knots to tie in for most climbing situations. Abseiling down a rock wall such as this was always a favorite maneuver of his. He did some rappelling in the Army and always excelled at it. But free-solo descent was a Different beast entirely, especially in the rain.
There were no ropes here to provide him a quick trip down. He had tried bouldering before, but that hardly qualified him as more than a rank novice at free-solo techniques. Still, with Koller getting nearer, he had no options.
“Necessity is the mother of insanity,” Nick muttered to himself.
Lying flat on his stomach, he inched over the cliff ’s edge. Forty feet down, there appeared to be a rock overhang. If he could descend the top part of the drop and reach the overhang before Koller spotted him, there was a chance he could hide out underneath it until it was safe to move again-until dawn if necessary.
More rustling to his back.
There were no options.
He would have to on-sight this route-figure out his holds on the fly as he worked his way down.
Turning around and dropping his feet so he was facing the rock, Nick eased himself over the ledge. He located his first foothold five feet down. Moss and the rain had turned every rock and crevice slick and treacherous. There was no sure footing here, no dependable handholds. He kept his hands just past shoulder width, digging around the loose stone until he found what seemed like a reasonable grip. His left leg was shaking, perhaps from the tension of the tiptoe hold, but probably from exhaustion as well.
The first twenty feet down passed fairly easily. The rocks jutted out like jagged teeth, making the holds painless to feel out, even in dim light. Nick was gaining on the overhang, ignoring his fear and the pain from the gunshot wound in his right arm, and focusing all his intensity on the goal.
A voice called out to him from above.
“Hey there, Doc,” Koller said. “Haven’t you read about the dangers of climbing at night without ropes?”
The monster was only a silhouette, but even in darkness, Nick thought he could see the white of his Cheshire Cat grin. He hurried his movements, inch by inch working his way down.
“You made this very easy, Doc. Set up a perfect non-kill, actually. Watch out for falling rocks. Those can be a bitch.”
A small boulder clattered past, just two or three feet from Nick’s face. He sensed the miss might have been on
