It is all I can think about now. I move across the rough ground and I slide through a patch of snow and feel myself touching its coldness with my right hand, pushing myself back up to rebalance and to keep moving forward.
I must breathe. I need air. I am bleeding.
I come to the first tree and I grab at the rough bark with my right hand and there is a low branch there to catch me. I slide around to the far side and lean my weight against it. I am in the dark now and I press against the pain in my left shoulder. Hand, shirt, coat, anything to stop the bleeding. I cannot stay here.
In my mind’s eye, I see my truck. It is far away through an endless forest. Across a continent. But it is my only hope.
Breathe. Breathe.
I go to the next tree. I grab for another branch. I lean against it and catch whatever breath I can find.
Then the next tree. And the next.
I see light. It is coming from behind me. I am casting a long shadow through the woods as I stumble from one tree to the next. The light is coming from behind me but I do not look backward.
I hear the voice now. The low whisper.
“Yes. This is good.”
I will not let this happen. I cannot go down this way. I move to the next tree. The light follows me. The light and the voice.
“Perfect. Keep going.”
I find a measure of strength from somewhere. It is impossible, but I suck in a breath of air and it seems to fill my lungs, finally. I push myself to the next tree, then the next. I am actually moving now. I am almost walking. I am finding branch after branch and then I trip and catch myself. I hang by one arm and I’m twisted around. I see the single bright light shining down on me. It is over his head. He is wearing it as he follows me through the woods. He has the camera. He has the audio recorder. He is a walking movie studio and he’s following my every step.
I taste the blood in my mouth. I pull myself up and turn. I have so far to go.
No. It’s not that far. I can see the truck. I am close.
Another tree, then another, and this time a broken branch scratches against my cheek. There is water at my feet and I feel it soaking into my shoes. It is cold and it comes up through my body like electricity. My left arm is still dead and useless and I’m swinging my right arm and hurling myself forward like something from a monster movie. Which is exactly what this has become. I know this. He is right behind me and there’s no way I can get away from him. Unless…
I see the boat launch, the concrete slab angled down into the lake. I know if I take one step on it I’ll go right in and never come out. I reach out and grab the rough wood of the dock. The platform over the water, where I first stopped to look at the edge of the lake and to wonder if he could possibly be here somewhere. My truck is just across the street here. A few yards away. It is waiting for me. If I can get in I’ll find a way to put the key in. I’ll turn it and I’ll press the gas pedal and then steer down the long empty road until I reach something. That’s my only way out of this.
I see my shadow in front of me again. The shadow grows shorter and I know he’s close. I turn and try to swing at him but I feel myself going down onto the dock. I feel the wood against my face. I can’t breathe again. I have to breathe.
“Bravo,” he whispers to me. “I’m getting every second here. This is beautiful.”
I roll away from him. I feel myself come to rest by the post at the end of the dock. I reach out for something to hold on to. Something I can grab and throw at him. Or plunge into his neck. There is nothing but the post and cold water, inches below me.
He comes closer. The light is getting brighter and brighter. He is wearing it on his head like a miner’s helmet. As he bends over me, the audio machine pulls down from his chest, straining against the strap. The camera is on its own strap, looped around his neck now. He pushes the microphone closer to me.
I wave with my right hand. Come here.
“What a great scene,” he says. “I’m so glad you showed up now.”
I wave again. Come here.
He comes in for the close-up. Time to say good night.
I push myself up. I reach out and grab one of the straps. All I have is dead weight now, but it might be enough. I fall backward, bringing him with me. He collapses across my body and rolls right over me, head first into the water. I hear an instant of hiss as the hot light hits the cold water and then his body follows with a great splash. I am lying on the edge of the dock and I’m soaked and it is icy cold but it feels good. It wakes me up and lets me take one more breath. I’m still holding on to that strap. I roll all the way over so my arm is in the icy water and I’m reaching below the dock. I feel for a cross beam and I pull the strap through and around and then I pull back as tight as I can. He is thrashing now and for one second his head comes back above the water. He is spitting water and screaming and then he says his last words, “Cut! Stop rolling! Cut!”
I pull harder and he’s back below the water. He’s half under the dock and I hold on to that strap like it’s the last good thing I’ll ever get to do on this earth. I hold on to it for as long as I can until the thrashing grows quieter, until he is still and it’s just me facedown on the dock, looking through the narrow slit between the planks and I see his dark form below me. I hear a drop of my blood falling into the water. Then another. Then another and I finally see another light moving across the water. It sweeps across my face and then it’s dark again.
Then I sleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Faces. Voices. Something covering my mouth, then the sensation of movement. More faces and voices. Lights shining in my eyes.
Then more sleep.
When I finally opened my eyes for good, I saw Chief Roy Maven of the Sault Ste. Marie Police looking down at me. So I knew I wasn’t in heaven.
“Where am I?” I said. I was leaning back at a forty-five-degree angle. My chest and left shoulder were wrapped in bandages, and there was a tube coming out of my side with blood draining through it. There was an IV drip in my left arm. I tried flexing the arm. It hurt like hell, but it moved.
“You’re in the hospital,” he said. “In Hancock.”
“Your daughter…”
“She’s fine. She’ll be just fine. Don’t worry.”
“You should be down there with her.”
“I’ll go back down today,” he said. “I just wanted to see what happened to you.”
“What did happen to me?”
“A single. 45-caliber slug through the upper lobe of the left lung. The doctors saw entry and exit wounds, but then they took an X-ray.”
“Don’t tell me.”
“For a minute, they thought a fragment might have stopped near your heart,” he said. “They didn’t know this wasn’t the first time for you. The agents gave me a call and I told them about your… previous history.”
“I’ll have to stop getting shot in the chest. It’s going to catch up with me one of these days.”
He smiled at that. Just a little bit, but it was the first smile I’d seen from him since this whole business started.
“I should be dead,” I said. “He had me lined up straight in the chest, point-blank range.”
“Good thing he’s a bad shot.”
“No, he still had his homemade suppressor on the barrel. That must have knuckleballed the shot.”
“I guess he didn’t take it off yet,” Maven said, “because he was saving it to use on me.”
I looked at him. “Yeah, that may have been the general plan.”
Maven stepped closer. “It was the exact plan, Alex. The bullet that went through your chest was the bullet he was going to use to kill me.”
