Desolation Point (21 page)

She sidestepped cautiously to a lower section where trees and undergrowth gave her something to grab on to and use for traction. From that level, Merrick’s trail was just about visible, snapped branches and parted bracken showing her the way. She briefly contemplated following in his footsteps again, but realized that if he decided to wait for her somewhere along the path, she would walk straight into an ambush. Her boots dislodged more stones as she set off. She shook her head in exasperation. If she continued to make this much noise, she might as well walk on the trail. At the moment, however, sacrificing a silent approach in favor of an unpredictable one seemed to be the lesser of two evils.

*

Sarah wasn’t entirely sure what she had been expecting. In some of her darker moments during the hike, she had imagined a lair rigged with explosives and beset with devices of torture. Certainly at no point had she supposed Merrick would be dragging her toward a small yet civilized camp.

She let him steer her over to the side of a khaki two-person tent and sat when he pushed her down. Now that they had apparently reached their destination, a dreadful sense of anticipation had started to make her legs quake, and her stomach threatened to rebel against the water she had drunk. She waited nervously as he tied the end of the rope around the stump of a stout shrub, but he walked away as soon as he was satisfied that she was securely tethered. She took a deep, relieved breath. There was no sign of his girlfriend at the camp. Somehow she was sure that the gunshot she and Alex had heard had sealed the woman’s fate. The pain in her wrists brought tears to her eyes as she drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, but there was something undeniably comforting about making herself as small a target as possible.

A heavy thud and a metallic clatter startled her. She looked up to find Merrick kneeling at the entrance of the tent. Once he was certain she was watching him, he unzipped a duffel bag identical to the one she had stolen and began to unpack it. She turned her head away from the sight of him lifting out an assortment of weapons, but not before she had seen him slap a clip into another handgun and angle the blade of a vicious-looking Bowie knife so that it flashed silver and then gold as it caught the sun. It took some time and concentration, but she managed to tune out the noises he was making and listen instead to the sounds of the forest around her. Water was rushing over rocks somewhere to her left, something small and energetic scratched through dried leaves at the base of a tree, and a bird of prey gave a shrill cry high overhead. There was nothing to suggest that Alex was nearby, for which Sarah was immeasurably grateful.

She heard Merrick strike a match, the sound quickly followed by a smell of burning. When she looked back, she saw him sitting cross-legged by a small fire. He was paying absolutely no attention to her, so she took the opportunity to move her hands behind her knees, enabling her to reach the stones in her pocket. Blindly, she ran her fingers over and along the various edges and surfaces, trying to find one that might be sharp enough to cut through the ropes at her wrists. She pulled out a likely candidate, manipulating it in her fingers to turn its sharpest edge against the first strand of rope. It took mere seconds for her to concede that her efforts were going to be in vain. It was a great idea in theory, but in practice her fingers were too stiff and too sore for the kind of fine dexterity the task demanded. The stone was nowhere near large enough or sharp enough, either, and the rope itself was so thick it would probably have stood up well to a serrated blade, never mind a little piece of granite.

“Bollocks.”

She would have kicked herself for her own naive stupidity, had Merrick not already spent a large part of the morning kicking her. He stood up and she immediately closed her fist to conceal the rock, certain that her cursing had alerted him. Instead of coming across to her, however, he went into the tent. She heard rustling and banging as he searched for something. Keeping one eye on the tent’s entrance, she brought the rope to her mouth and began to worry at the knot. The gag got in the way, making it difficult for her to breathe, and a musty, blood-tinged scent rushed into her nostrils. She didn’t care. At least she was doing something. Even if it didn’t work, at least she was doing something.

*

For the second time that morning, Alex could smell smoke. She immediately stopped walking and wiped her sweaty palms on her pants. Her heart was beating so forcefully that she had an irrational fear Merrick might hear it. She crouched low, grasses prickling her chin, and tried to gauge her distance from the fire, but the strengthening breeze made it all but impossible. A sharp rip of pain at the base of her thumb prompted her to ease her grip on her stick. Instead, she took her anxiety and frustration out on a splinter that had worked its way beneath her skin, scratching at it roughly until the skin around it became red and heated. When she breathed in, smoke tickled at her throat and she had to keep her mouth shut to stop herself from coughing.

The fact that Merrick had stayed in one place long enough to light a fire suggested that he was finally ready for Alex to catch up with him. She closed her eyes against the implications of that; she didn’t even want to consider what he had planned for Sarah. In the darkness, an all too familiar sense of helplessness threatened to overwhelm her. She couldn’t do this. In spite of her earlier bravado, what could she honestly hope to achieve against an armed man who was holding an injured woman hostage? She would get herself killed, and worse than that, she would get Sarah killed.

The splinter suddenly came free and she stared at the small droplet of blood that formed in its wake. She automatically stuck her thumb into her mouth, a habit from childhood that was surprisingly soothing. She put her other hand into her pocket and her fingers touched the cool metal of the keys that had started this nightmare in the first place. Whatever those keys unlocked had been worth breaking Merrick from jail and sending him into the wilderness. It had made him murder indiscriminately and, after Sarah had unwittingly intervened, had made him chase her down with a single-minded relentlessness. Alex had never really had the time to consider the potential consequences of what might be hidden out here, but given Merrick’s links to white supremacist groups, they became more frightening the more she thought about them.

The keys jangled lightly on their chain as she brought them out and set them on the palm of her hand. Merrick wasn’t interested in a trade, she knew that as surely as she knew she didn’t intend to offer him one. In which case, keeping the keys on her person would only work to his advantage if the likely odds played out and he killed her. She switched the GPS on and studied the coordinates of her current location. There was a memory function in the GPS’s menu, but she didn’t dare use it, and there was no way for her to write the coordinates down. Precious minutes ticked by as she tried to memorize the short sequence of numbers, but she persevered until she was confident that she knew them by heart. She looked around for some kind of landmark and spotted a bizarrely shaped tree just to her left that was bowed by the prevailing wind and stunted by vicious winters but that continued to thrive regardless. She bent down to tuck the keys beneath one of its gnarled roots.

“Good luck finding those, you fuck,” she muttered.

A subtle darkening of the forest around her made her look up at the sky. Gray storm clouds had gathered overhead, blocking out the sun, and she wondered whether it was cold enough for snow to fall instead of rain. Either option might work to her advantage, reducing both the visibility and the likelihood that Merrick would hear her approach. Feeling slightly heartened, she cautiously set off walking again. A solitary droplet of sleet landed on her nose and she caught it with her tongue as it slid lower. Within seconds, the drizzle became a downpour and fallen leaves began to crackle as the heavy drops landed on them. She walked on with more confidence, heading into the encroaching mist for cover and continuing to plot a course around Merrick’s original path. The smell of smoke became ranker as more sleet fell, the moisture presumably starting to extinguish the fire. She entertained the spiteful little hope that Merrick had been cooking himself a meal that would now be ruined. The thought made her smile grimly as she pulled her hood up and used the smoke to guide her through the storm.

The deterioration of the weather seemed to have messed up Merrick’s game plan somewhat. Huddled with her back to the worst of the sleet, Sarah watched him pace the perimeter of the small clearing, obviously straining to hear Alex’s approach. He was brandishing a handgun and she had seen him tuck a second one into the back of his pants. She used his distraction to continue working on the knot at her wrists. Although it was far from untied, she had managed to slacken it, twisting her right wrist until the rope was slick with blood. The blood made a decent lubricant, while the anesthetizing coldness of the sleet helped her to bear the discomfort. She could see a gap around her wrist now and was on the verge of attempting to wriggle it free completely when she heard Merrick’s heavy tread coming toward her. She dropped her hands, terrified that he might have seen what she was doing, but he barely even looked at her. He stooped to unfasten the rope from the base of the shrub and pulled her up by the collar of her jacket.

“Time to find out how close your boyfriend is,” he said, shaking her like a dog.

She had been cramped in one position for so long that her legs were too numb to hold her. He gave a snarl of anger before hauling her bodily into the center of the clearing. He pressed his arm across her throat, making her gasp for air, and she struggled to gain her footing even as she clawed at his sleeve. He slapped the side of her head with his gun, more as a warning to behave than anything else, but it still made her ears ring, and he had pulled her gag away by the time she could focus again.

“Scream for me and I won’t hurt you,” he said.

The soaked material of his jacket rubbed coarsely against her throat as she shook her head. “No fucking way,” she managed to choke out.

“Suit yourself.” His voice was calm and measured, and that alone was almost enough to make her obey him. She ground her teeth together and tasted blood where a cut on her lip had reopened. Before she could stop him, he kicked at her legs and she lurched forward onto her knees. He reached around and half-opened the zipper on her jacket, and then tugged at its collar until it gaped at the back. Sleet hit the skin he exposed and her teeth chattered uncontrollably as she felt the tip of a knife pricking at the side of her shoulder blade.

“You ready to scream for me now?” he asked, pressing the knife just hard enough to break the skin.

She sobbed once but shook her head again. She wouldn’t willingly draw Alex into this; he would have to kill her before she did that. The knife moved, etching a tight line down her back, and she heard his breathing become harsher and faster. For a fleeting moment, she wondered what he had done, but then the pain hit her and everything slowly tilted sideways. She grasped at the wet earth for a few seconds before he righted her. Warmth and cold trickled beneath her shirt, and when she bit down this time, blood flooded into her mouth. Behind her, Merrick was waiting, his body shifting as he tried to scan every section of the clearing. Threads of mist twisted through the trees that surrounded them, playing tricks with perspective and muffling any sounds. As he looked to the left, a sudden flash of light on the opposite side of the clearing caught Sarah’s eye. The light instantly vanished and she knew that Merrick hadn’t seen it. With a sinking heart, she realized that Alex was close, closer than she had expected, close enough to do something stupid and impulsive unless Sarah acted first.

When Merrick bent her forward to cut her again, she forced herself to go limp. She slipped from his grasp and he cursed incoherently, fumbling to keep control of his gun, his knife, and his hostage. The blade skimmed a hair’s breadth from her eye, but before he could get a firm hold on her collar with his other hand, she bit down on the one holding the knife.

Unlike Sarah, he did scream. She kept her teeth clamped on his skin until his fingers went into spasm and he let go of the knife. Then she threw herself back and slammed her head into his nose. Cartilage splintered as his nose gave way beneath the impact, but she was already falling forward again, too stunned to do anything else and struggling to remain conscious. She heard him speak but couldn’t tell what he was saying, only that he sounded surprised. Something splashed beside her, landing in a puddle of mud and blood. She reached her fingers out to it and clasped them around cold metal. The pistol felt heavy in her hands, heavier than she would ever have supposed, and someone, a voice she recognized, was imploring her to shoot.

*

Watching Merrick torture Sarah and not being able to do a thing to stop him had been the most awful experience of Alex’s life. Poised at the edge of the clearing, she had forced herself to remain concealed as he sliced into Sarah’s back. Even when he stopped cutting, he kept the knife at her throat, and there was no doubt in Alex’s mind that he was prepared to kill Sarah at the slightest provocation. More than anything, she wanted Sarah to know that she was there, that Sarah wasn’t alone in this. As soon as Merrick had his back turned to her position, she struck a match, but the storm snuffed out the flame before she had a chance to put it out herself, and she wondered whether Sarah had even seen it. What Sarah did next gave Alex her answer.

Alex was already running, her stick held high like a baseball bat, as Sarah bit into Merrick’s hand. His scream was cut off by the impact of Sarah’s head with his nose, but the ensuing struggle left her quiet and unmoving at his feet. Distraught, Alex wavered for a second, but despite the blood pouring from his nose, Merrick was far from disabled. He had picked up the knife again and he was dangerously close to Sarah. His head whipped around when he heard Alex’s footsteps, but at her appearance he seemed to falter as if shocked, and he lowered his gun arm a fraction.