CRIME THRILLERS-A Box Set (45 page)

She was good, Lansing granted her that. It amused him to watch her cheeks glow with health and accomplishment whenever she struck the target dead center. It would not surprise him if she jumped up and down like a little child showing off to a parent. Sully clapped her on the back and smiled, but to Lansing he looked uneasy and not altogether convinced his young sister-in-law had all her marbles in one bag.

As the demonstration continued and the daylight leaked away, Carla threw spears, hurled an ax--missing the target, Lansing noted with satisfaction--and finally brought outside a bow and arrow contraption.

Lansing watched curiously as she put her feet into the bow's body on the ground and used both hands to pull back on the string to cock an arrow into place. He wanted to laugh, he truly wanted to walk out of the woods, show himself, and belly laugh all over the Torrance grounds at what a fool the girl was making of herself.

Then, as she brought the bow thing up to her shoulder and steadied it, Lansing calmed. He saw her take aim, and he found he was holding his breath. The arrow shot across the lawn and smacked into the target's center with a resounding
whack
.

Lansing shivered involuntarily and his heart double-stepped inside him. He felt the arrow piercing flesh and bone. He shook from the impact. He even reached to his shirtfront to check the flow of blood and only then realized he had not been wounded.

His eyes narrowed down to slits. His bowels rumbled softly. Hate for Carla and Sully rose from the depths of his body like erupting fire boiling high up a furnace wall. His lips pulled back from square, white teeth.

Carla reloaded the bow. Sully stepped a few paces off, as if, like Lansing, the fearsomeness of the weapon pushed him from a boundary.

Carla steadied the bow. Aimed. Shot. The arrow imbedded it's sharp deadly point snugly against the first bull's-eye shot.

Lansing stood, his entire body quivering with sudden, cold fury. He no longer felt like laughing or taunting the girl standing proudly in Sully's yard. He felt like...like...

His hand closed around the switchblade handle in his pocket, and he began to sweat. A sheen of oily perspiration coated his face and neck, gathered into droplets, and rolled down into his collar as he stood waiting.

He had seen enough. He was not afraid. Carla's weapons were laughable. They were toys used by primitive men with primitive minds. All except the bow and arrow, he amended, drenched with a full sweat now at the thought of the short steel point of the arrow coring its way into his body.

He spun around and left them practicing in the yard as twilight deepened and the forest fell into purple glades of long shadows. When he was far enough away not to fear being heard, he allowed the foul wind to escape his cramping abdomen and cursed it. He was coughing up thin ropes of phlegm dotted with blood by the time he reached the camp. He swore all the harder, the epithets conjured for his enemies remarkably original and damning. The overflow of hate rained over the silent, musky earth and was absorbed by the damp twilight.

He crawled into the bedroll and pulled the flap over his face as protection against dew, insects, and roving night creatures. In his dreams the psychosomatic ache he had felt in his chest as Carla shot the arrows returned to plague him. He woke several times fearing a heart attack and clutching at his shirt. Staring wide-eyed into the dark woods he watched for a creeping figure to pounce and attack. He ground his teeth each time at the hallucination and, having conquered it, slept again.

CHAPTER 7

"In guerrilla warfare, select the tactic of seeming to come from the east and attacking from the west; avoid the solid, attack the hollow, attack, withdraw; deliver a lightning blow, seek a lightning decision."

Mao Tse-tung

Carla knew her brother-in-law did not believe. He did not believe in her tactics and theories, or in her choice of weapons. And it was possible he did not believe Martin Lansing lay in wait somewhere in the forest behind his home.

His attitude was not crippling to her plans, but it did not make them any easier. It also meant, for the time being, she was forced into covert operation.

She had dressed for the rugged terrain in well-fitting jeans, a long-sleeved dark brown shirt to protect her arms from briers, and the creamy yellow leather hiking boots she had always preferred. In a leather holster around her waist hung the throwing ax, a sheaf of quivers for the bow was slung over one shoulder, a bag of ball bearings and the sling swung from a pouch latched to her belt. She carried the bow in the crook of her right arm.

She ate an orange while standing in front of the sink in the kitchen and drank half a glass of milk. She let herself out the back door quietly and, without pausing, crossed the beautifully mowed green lawn to the woods.

An hour later she was at the exact same spot where two days before she had felt Lansing's presence. She used the ax to break a path deeper into the snarled, sticky brush. Though it was early morning and already the sun rode high in a clear blue summer sky, in this part of the timberland the light drifted in layers of dusky blue shadows. The land rolled up and down, small hills, deep ravines, thick-bellied trees barring the way so that she zigzagged around them. Many times her bowstring caught in kudzu vines, and she had to stop to break free without damaging the weapon.

Upon gaining the rise on one of the forested hills, she slowed her pace, slower, slower, until she stood dead still. She turned her head to listen to the absence of normal forest sounds. Birds did not call and leaves failed to rustle. A prickly feeling crept up her backbone with bony fingers. She was close.

She stepped lightly, watching each twig and clump of leaves so as to avoid them and the noise they would make on her approach.

The trees thinned abruptly, the brush parted, and without warning Carla stood facing a dirty, sickly-looking, skinny Martin Lansing across thirty feet of kudzu ground cover. She sucked in air. Her hand reached for the throwing ax.

"You're early." His pale face strained with a ghostly smile.

Carla freed the ax of the holster, raised it, cocked her arm, and threw it with all her might at Lansing's head. In the same motion she turned her back to run, to retrace her steps into better cover.

She ran, listening for his horrible scream of pain as the ax imbedded itself into his maniacal brain. The scream, his longed-for scream, never materialized. No sound of chase echoed from behind, either. She slowed and realized she was trembling from neck to foot. Spasms overtook her and she breathed as if through packing material. She turned around to look behind her.

Nothing.

What had happened? Did she miss? Were his reflexes so finely tuned that he ducked the ax before it struck home? She must know the outcome. She could not leave this place without knowing.

Fifteen minutes later she had circled the place where she had thrown the ax and came again upon the tiny clearing. It was deserted. A breeze wafted the strong scent of boggy marshland in her direction. She sat on her haunches behind a great oak and watched, wondering at the disappearance. Her ax had vanished. A mound of dead wood coals showed where he cooked. Metal pans streaked with soot and grease swung gently from a forked limb over the fire pit as if only moments before a hand had set them to swinging. A spread-out bedroll lay on the ground on the other side of the cooking area. The dingy green material was littered with fallen leaves and dandelion puff. A satchel? A duffel bag? One or the other was draped over a fallen log, the bottom of the bag filled and sitting square on the ground.

But where was Lansing? And where was her ax? How could she have missed him even if she had been stunned to walk upon him so unexpectedly?

She put the crossbow's back to the ground, stood and drew the string to the latch. She flattened her back to the tree, her heart pounding loud enough to fill her ears. She situated an arrow groove, drew in a breath, and swung out around from the oak to face the clearing.

Nothing.

She moved gently into the undergrowth looking for evidence of his retreat. She went ten feet before she saw a tiny broken pine tree trampled into the ground. So he had come this way and she was behind him. Good.

She steadied her breathing, controlled the adrenalin-laced thoughts clogging her brain. She watched the ground, the trees ahead and on each side. She paused, listening. She heard him, heard something tearing its way through the choked brush. She followed the sound.

Quickly now. She must catch up to him. But the loaded crossbow slowed her pace. Vines snagged on the arrow tip, caught on the trip mechanism so that she had to stop and carefully undo the tangle to keep the crossbow from losing the arrow. Again she listened. The sound of him was ahead, but not as close now.

Damn this place, this secretive, unholy place. There was not enough light. All the shadows swayed and leaned as a breeze wrangled through the wood. Where was he hiding?

She turned around, making sure he had not come up behind her while she'd been busy untangling the bow.

Where? Ahead, he had to be ahead of her. She moved forward. Ears strained to hear the rustles, to distinguish between breeze-caressed leaves overhead from footfall. A sixth sense kicked in and she knew, without knowing how she knew, that he was nearer than before. She slipped behind a tree, her back against the bark, her breathing halted. A bird shrieked and flapped noisily into the tree tops.

Nearer. He was coming back. He had no idea she'd followed. He was retracing his steps toward the camp to find her. He must have changed his mind about running away.

The crunch of dry sticks. The squish of soggy earth sucking at a shoe.

Nearer.
When could she swing from behind the tree and show herself? When was the exact moment she should aim the bow and let fly the arrow?

His breath. An asthmatic hiss from an open mouth. He could not breathe well. He was slogging toward her tree making noise, unafraid of her.

Now was the time. Now or nevernevernever...

She let out a whoosh of air and swung all in one motion from her hiding place, the bow rising as her body turned, her arms stretching to steady her aim. She squinted to sight down the arrow.

He stopped right before her, not more than two dozen feet away. He held ax in hand, standing at the near edge of a clearing, close enough range to throw her own weapon.

Carla's fingers slipped on the arrow flight. She faltered only a moment and then she released the taut string. No time to judge! Lansing growled, an animal facing execution, and dropped forward to the ground the same second the arrow left its dangerous cradle. She saw the missile whiz the short distance, strike the fabric of the jacket he wore, and vanish as he fell to earth.

She stumbled backward, her mouth open in a small O of surprise. His hand that wielded the ax rose from the ground higher than his head. He hurled it. The blade buried itself in the ground, barely missing her left foot. The arrow had struck, she'd seen it. But not in the heart! Not in the center of his body! It flew across the clearing, was lost in the far trees. And now he was rising to his knees, his lips pulled back to show teeth. Carla jumped away, slipped the cross-bow onto a shoulder, reached for the sling.

It isn't supposed to be like this
, her mind screamed.
It isn't supposed to be so hard to kill him.

On his feet now, freeing the ax blade from where it was sunk hilt deep into soft earth, he mumbled and staggered toward her drunkenly.

Carla made the decision from one second to the next. She did not have time to prepare the sling or the crossbow. She had lost the ax. If she did not move fast, he was going to kill her, rend her skull in two.

She turned, gained sound footing, and fled. At her back Lansing bellowed. She heard the clomping and tearing of his awkward pursuit through the choking kudzu-floored forest.

But she was smaller, lighter, and faster. Her life at stake, she leaped over downed limbs, tore through tangled briers and thorn bushes, slid through shadows that threatened to strangle her with her own fear.

Mere seconds into the race, she stopped abruptly, loaded the sling with a ball bearing, swung it freely around her head even as she turned to face her attacker. He burst through thick foliage and dug in his heels on seeing her stance. "Ah," he said, more of a pronounced explosion of surprise than a word. She let go one of the leather thongs. The ball bearing hit him mid-chest, and he screamed.

Unable to wait to see how much damage she had done this time, she whirled again and fled like a wild rabbit, a tiger on its tail.

At the sun-burnished stream she stopped to dip her hand quickly into the water for a drink before heading straight for Sully's house. She had outrun Lansing, lost him in the maze of wooded ravines. She had minutes on him, but no time to spare for a real rest.

Her chest heaved with difficulty and her lungs burned. She slurped the water, her eyes darting side- to-side watching for him to emerge from hiding. She could not decide how much the arrow and the ball bearing might have hurt him. She did know the wounds inflicted were not sufficient to stop him.

The water barely slacked her thirst, and the stop helped little to still her breathing. Her ears rang as if she had been slapped in the head. Her eyes watered from the sting of the wind as she ran.

She glanced behind her once, jumped the narrow stream, the heels of her hiking boots sinking into slush, and scrambled, using her hands, up the bank to the top. When she raised her head from looking down to see where she was going, her face collided with the khaki-covered leg of a man. She fell off balance, tumbled down into the rushing, sun-dappled water with a startled yell.

"You didn't really think you'd get away with this, did you, Carla?"

Martin Lansing glared down the embankment, his eyes black with suppressed rage. In his hand he carried Carla's ax, the cutting edge glinting bolts of blue-gold light at his intended victim.

CHAPTER 8

"We must observe the principle: To gain territory is no cause for joy, and to lose territory is no cause for sorrow."