Hannah climbed out after her mother, needing no assistance. She’d brought the brick bolo, which Shaw was ninety-five percent sure she’d never get a chance to use. With her too was the water clock. She had summarily rejected Shaw’s suggestion to leave it behind.
The three now moved north into the brush and forest—mostly pine and hemlock—that filled the land between lake and road, which ran parallel to the water. Across the overgrown driveway, to the right, the ground rose steeply to the hills where the Twins waited with their long guns.
They were about fifty feet into their escape when the sound of the engine revving hard reached them. This was followed byspinning tires. And then the grind of metal as Merritt would have driven the car onto a boulder, as if he hadn’t seen it. The engine roared and more dirt scattered. Hanging the car up and making a commotion to free it was a solid idea.
Hannah turned and gazed back, slowing. In the duskiness, her expression couldn’t be seen clearly. Was she alarmed? Proud? Worried?
Shaw touched her shoulder and nodded. She refocused on their transit. And on helping her mother, who might have been largely pain free for the moment, but was prone to stumbling, in her opioid haze.
Eighty, ninety yards from the cabin, a thick hedge of greenery arose on the right side of the road. No one on the hill would be able to see them, and Shaw directed the others onto the roadway itself, where they could make better time.
A snap. Another.
Like a soldier on point, Shaw held up a hand and they stopped. While it would have been impossible for a hillside sniper to target them, one of the Twins might have suspected an end run like this and come down here to see.
Shaw scanned around, peering into the dark. Two-handed again, he swept the ground with his pistol. No visual threat. He heard: wind, early autumn leaves rustling, the click of branches.
Another snap.
Then the intruder waddled past: the beaver that had led them to the cabin, or maybe its mate or sibling.
Offering an irritated glance toward the humans, it stalked on.
Shaw caught Hannah’s eye and they shared a smile, then continued along the overgrown road that promised at least the hope of safety.
87
On the ridge, the men looked down toward the grind and engine roar as those in the parking area below tried to dislodge the car from where it had beached on a rock.
Moll rose from his nest and joined Ryan. Together they walked into the trees just above the car.
“The hell,” Ryan muttered. “Didn’t they plan it out? Know where the rocks were? We don’t have a shot.”
Moll nodded. He wanted to pull the spray out and hit his arms and neck. But Ryan would see it as a sign of weakness. Later.
Now the sound of the car shifting: forward, reverse, forward, reverse. After a moment Moll could hear what sounded like a ratcheting jack. Tough to get a car free that way—the parking area was dirt and clay and the tool would sink under the big car’s weight. But it might lift the front end high enough to roll it backward off the rock.
Come on. Get it done.
Moll heard a voice from below, half whispering as it called, “Not working.”
Ryan said, “That’s Merritt.” After a moment: “We need to get this over with. We’ll give it a few minutes, then move in.”
“I do not want to do that,” Moll whispered in a foreboding tone.
“What choice is there, they can’t get that damn thing loose?”
Moll inhaled deeply, taking in the smell of tree bark and dirt and fragrance from petals brilliant during the day and colorless now. Soon, all scents would be hidden under the aroma of the chemical scent of burnt smokeless gunpowder.
What a few days this had been.
“See anything?” one of Ryan’s men called.
“Quiet,” Moll snapped in a whisper. You didn’t telegraph your location to a deer; why do so when your prey were armed humans?
Ryan glanced his way, eyebrows raised. It was an apology of sorts for his man’s carelessness. Moll wondered if either youngster was kin.
Kristi’s car still idled, but the jack was now silent.