Shoreline Page 14

  Nora clenched her eyes tightly shut, and then opened them, trying to find some sort of courage. She began uncoiling herself, looking about for the best path across the morass of weeds to the bank beyond it and the beach below. She squatted, surveying the area, fighting to keep her breathing even and calm. More starlight than Nora had ever seen gleamed above and the air smelled impossibly sweet. A chorus of insects sang loudly, pulsing, one group responding to the other in a constant refrain.

  The soft glow of a lit cigarette exposed a guard posted at the top of the beach stairs. This meant she couldn’t take a direct line through the tall weeds, for she would pass too close to him.

  Surveillance cameras. Where would you be if you were a surveillance camera? She peered hard into the darkness.

  Corners. She looked up at the top of the barn. The light perched above the sliding door cast everything behind it into what felt like deeper darkness, but Nora decided to simply assume there was a camera there and give it a wide berth. Still, there would be cameras around the edges of that house. How well would they pick up a dark-clad, dark woman sprinting in the dark?

  Motion sensors? The group of women hadn’t triggered any by the farmhouse. She would have to run behind the farmhouse in order to stay as far from the beach stairs and the man stationed there as possible. Should she go for the shortest distance between two points or just dart in some crazy pattern?

  She decided to trust her speed. She would aim for the furthest edge of overgrown land beyond the house, the point where the towering forest loomed darkly. Then she would follow the tree line north and finally duck into the trees at the top of the bank and make her way down. It was at least five hundred yards of exposed running. But maybe, maybe if the cameras thought she was an aberrant blur—at least at first—then she would get away with it.

  She placed her left hand on the side of the barn to steady herself. Then she inhaled, exhaled, and shot away from the side of the barn. She immediately slipped on the dewy grass, but quickly regained her balance and gave it everything she had.

  She expected to hear gunfire, but there was none. She pushed herself as hard as she could and cleared the house then barreled toward the lake, chest heaving. As fast as she was running she found that the night air felt cool and refreshing against her face. She felt sharp and in focus, aware of the way the weeds caught at her legs, and, on some level, frightened anew of ticks.

  She swept past the farmhouse, now brightly lit in the dark. As she sprinted past she saw an imposing fireplace. The heads of some heavily antlered deer had been mounted on the wall above it. And then she had cleared the house and was almost to the trees. She veered toward the lake.

  Easy. She had done it. She paused at the edge of the bank, looking back. The man with the cigarette was now some five hundred yards to her left. He had not moved. Chest heaving, she stared woozily at the edge of the bank. The descent seemed impossibly steep, and the trees swayed in front of her, black and ominous. Far below, the waves were thumping rhythmically against the shoreline. She tried to catch her breath, steeling herself for the next step and casting a quick glance backward at the barn where Pete and April Lewis remained captives. It looked still and benign.

  Nora clutched a thin sapling and took a step over the edge of the bank.

  That is when the floodlights set high in the trees sprang instantly to life, illuminating, it seemed to her, every contour of her body.

  * * *

  Nora froze.

  The man at the top of the beach stairs swung about, the cigarette plummeting from his mouth. He stared at Nora in confusion for a moment, then aimed his rifle directly at her.

  She plunged into the trees just as the spatter of gunfire punctured the stillness.

  Immediately, she slid several feet. Branches scraped at her cheeks and hands, and she fought to find footing in the brambles along the ground. An eruption of shouting followed the gunfire and she heard what seemed to be a thousand voices, men and women, calling to each other, issuing directions. The voices seemed to be descending on her, and gunfire whizzed past her thudding into tree bark.

  She charged headlong through the trees, scrabbling, sliding, tumbling down the side of the bank. It seemed that her pursuers were materializing out of nowhere; she realized that the beach itself must have had several people posted there who were now climbing up to cut her off. She darted toward the stairs, climbing upward again, and trying to take advantage of the dark shadows created by the floodlights. Then she scurried down again toward the lake, clinging to low-hanging branches to keep from toppling over. Several tore off in her hands, causing her to slide swiftly down the steep embankment. Others held and she continued running, zig-zagging. She could not duck when she heard the gunshots behind her. There was no way of telling if she were putting herself more directly in the path of the bullets or dodging them, and every instant was different as her feet could not find solid ground for more than a moment. Just ahead of her two men pounded up the wooden staircase, flashlights bobbing. She gasped, halting, wondering how to get over the stairs or around them. Then she realized that there was a big enough gap that she could pass between the stairs and the bank if she flattened herself. She listened, desperately trying to assess if anyone else were coming up or down the stairs. But the crashing behind her and the sound of the rifles spurred her on. A bullet barreled into the staircase just inches from her face, sending shards of wood flying, and she threw herself against the bank, feeling cool earth against her cheek. She shimmied under the staircase to reach the other side.

  West, west, west, she repeated to herself. Fear now overwhelmed her, and all she could do was run and dart and untangle herself from groping branches. Shouts of men and women behind her seemed to electrify her feet while terrifying her brain so intensely that she could not process, could not plot a course, could only plunge ahead, fired by a mad hope of reaching the beach.

  And then she was there, skidding down the last few feet to land on an unwieldy layer of flat rocks. She found herself just beyond the last yellow pool cast by the tree-suspended floodlights. She glanced back. The boat that brought her bobbed in the waves, the dock still groaning. She could see a shadowy figure not far from the boat, and as soon as she turned to run she felt the bullet slam into her back. She pitched forward from the force of it, the wind knocked out of her, more grateful for Kevlar than she had ever been. Her knee screamed in protest where she landed, heavily, on a sharp rock.

  “She’s down!” called the man by the boat. His voice drew nearer. “She’s down, hurry!”

  Nora did not stay down. She rolled back the few feet she had descended from the bank, and, grabbing the undergrowth, pulled herself into the cover of the trees again, fighting for breath. The pain in her back felt as though she had been sucker-punched. She heard footsteps clattering across the rock, and flashlight beams scanned the shoreline, even boring into the lake itself. Nora crawled some distance and then arose to continue running. Only when she had gotten beyond the range of the flashlights did she descend again and begin dashing along the beach.

  The beach was so rocky. She tried to lighten her step, scared to put too much weight on one foot and ultimately twist an ankle. Her knee ached from the fall, though nothing like the roar of pain in her back. On the upside, she had fallen on her hurt wrist and seemed to have jammed it back into alignment, for its pain had subsided.

  The shouting had just begun to abate and fall away when she heard the unmistakable sound of gunning engines.

  She thought for a moment that they had brought motorcycles to the beach, but suddenly realized it was much worse. Four wheelers. Four wheelers with headlights were bearing down on her. Trees or water? she asked herself wildly. Trees or water?

  No. She was not a strong enough swimmer, and the pulsing black waves terrified her. She knew there were massive rocks under the surface against which the waves could hurl her. More than this, she was certain that if they thought she had gone into the water, they would send the boat after her. She
galloped back into the shelter of the trees, trying as hard as she could not to slow down. She had to keep running. She could not stop.

  They were hunting. Cries of outrage had turned to whoops as the four-wheelers careened across the rocky beach. Each bore two riders, one with a rifle, the other driving. Nora climbed as fast as she could but kept heading west with every step. She did not look back, trying to play hide and seek the way she had as a child: surely if she did not look at her seeker he would not see her. She could not tell if the light that occasionally fell across her legs and back was enough to indicate her location, or if the four-wheelers were traveling too fast to really see her. Up, she whispered. Climb up. The lakefront portion of the compound had to end eventually. There had to be a limit as to where they could come down from and where they could ride.

  Not that trespassing was going to be a law that impeded them. Idiot, she said to herself. These people aren’t going to stop out of deference to some border or boundary line. They would keep coming. They would hunt her all night if they had to. She paused, her chest hollowed out by pain and cramping. She clung to a sapling, listening to the engines and the laughing below.

  She was sport.

  She began to run again, and then suddenly, unexpectedly, she ran out of trees. Bank erosion had made for a bald mudslide of land. In the moonlight, it seemed to stretch for at least five hundred yards. She skidded to a halt and then fled back to the trees, praying they hadn’t spied her in the moment she had been exposed.

  She was stuck. She couldn’t swim for it, and if she ran along the beach now, they would catch her easily.

  What am I going to do?

  Her chest heaved up and down as she looked all about her. The roar of their engines seemed to taunt her. They had arrived at the eroded stretch, and they too had circled back.

  Well.

  Well, they would not add her head to the group above the mantel of the farmhouse.

  She didn’t have time for that.

  She darted to the edges of the beach, skirting as best she could the bobbing of their lights, gathering the heaviest lakestones she found. Most were disc-shaped and she weighed them anxiously, wondering if she could propel them with sufficient force; her wrist felt better and yet not in peak form. Perhaps two-handed … yes. She made three piles behind three wide trees, engaging as she did so in a dance of feinting and falling back, dodging her hunters as they circled and swooped.

  When she was ready, she picked two large rocks, each the length of her forearm and slightly heavier than she could carry comfortably. She cradled the first in the crook of her arm like a discus. Then she slipped down a few feet below the tree she’d chosen and crouched at the line where the beach met the bank. The first ATV was just making the edge of its circuit and heading back toward her, its headlight bobbing. She ducked behind some of the tallest brush, her chest heaving. As the four-wheeler approached, she saw that the driver was aiming his headlight on the woods behind and to the right of her.

  She waited.

  A hundred yards. Fifty. Ten. Now.

  She popped up and slung the rock as hard as she could at the shadowy form in the driver’s position; without waiting to see if it had hit its mark, she crouched down, grabbed the other, and heaved it too before diving into the woods, rolling slightly. A shout went up and an explosion of gunfire ripped through the night.

  The headlight now glanced about as the four-wheeler careened out of control. She had flattened herself against the tangled underbrush. She realized that the other rider must have subdued the ATV, for the engine was idling then, and only one of the four-wheelers was still making its circuit, its headlight scanning the trees. She began dragging herself with her elbows toward her next stockpile of rocks.

  She heard a woman yell, fighting to be heard over the roaring engines, “He’s hurt. I need help.”

  “Find her, dammit!” countered another voice.

  Both machines idled now and their headlights were trained on the bank. One woman and two men on foot, equally spaced some fifty yards from each other, started into the trees.

  Apparently I did not think this through.…

  She clutched the next two stones and waited, struggling to control her breathing. Left flank. A man was drawing near. The four-wheeler’s headlight framed him in a hazy halo of light, and Nora could see that he carried a flashlight in his left hand, the rifle resting on his right hip. He was looking left and right, but his footsteps were steady.

  She did not hesitate. She sprang up, slinging the heavy stone directly at his throat. There was a sickening thud and he fell backward. For once, the weapon did not discharge, exposing her, although the flashlight now lay in the underbrush. Nora pounced, grabbing and extinguishing the flashlight. Then she tugged the strap of the rifle down the man’s arm to disengage it. The ATV headlight showed his chest heaving up and down as he gasped for air. Blood dribbled out of his mouth. The lakestone had crushed his windpipe.

  She pocketed the flashlight, shouldered his rifle and dashed toward the beach.

  Afraid that one of her first two stones might have damaged the first ATV, she leapt astride the second one.

  Be easy. Be easy to figure out.

  She had never ridden a four-wheeler, of course. She could hear Pete’s voice in her head. No bars. No boats. No ATVs. What the hell, Nora?

  Okay, Pete. Help me out.

  It had brakes like a bicycle. Oh my God, she whispered, staring blankly at the machine. She clutched the handle bars.

  Gear shift. It was idling, so it was on, so that was done. Gear shift? She punched at a backlit button with an up arrow, and saw a number light up on the dashboard. Okay. First gear. Gas? She looked at the handlebar grip and realized she had seen enough motorcycles in the movies to have an idea. She twisted the grip forward and the machine surged forward. Zift.

  She clamped down on the brakes, then aimed her rifle at the other ATV and shot at its wheels.

  Quickly, she turned the handlebars to maneuver out from behind the other ATV, aiming the headlight straight ahead as she did so. Shouts and gunfire poured down from the bank as she accelerated. The ATV started whining and she pushed the up arrow quickly. Nothing happened, so she released the gas and tried again, grateful that it sped forward even more quickly. It seemed to resist her and she struggled; all the muscles in her arms strained as she tried to control the handlebars. The rocks made it difficult, and there was a hail of gunfire coming from the beach behind her, but she continued accelerating, shifting the gears doggedly until she dared not go any faster. She kept closer to the edge of the water, fearing the piles of driftwood as much as the rocks.

  She kept going for what seemed like miles, expecting all the time to be pursued via boat or four-wheeler or helicopter. She did not know the limitations of the group and its leader’s wealth and resources. How easily would they give up? She had injured one of them and probably killed another. It was as close as she’d gotten to killing with her bare hands. She remembered the man’s face as he choked on his own blood, unable to make a sound in the underbrush. The memory made her squeeze her eyes shut and the vehicle swerved, jolting her back to reality.

  She drove on for over twenty minutes until she was forced to stop at a long low wall constructed of six-foot cement blocks jutting out into the water. There was no driving around it, and no way to get over it. Where this wall met the bank, she spied a wooden stairway threading its way upwards.

  She needed a telephone. But she had no money, no ID.

  Let it be just some mellow hipster couple living by a vineyard. Some Downton Abbey-watching couple. Cardigans. Let there be cardigans.

  She soon found herself on a well-kept lawn; it was a modest two-story house, well-lit. No high ceilings. No dead deer. She ran to the deck and paused a moment. She stowed the rifle she’d swiped out of sight, then mounted the steps and knocked as calmly on the sliding glass door as she could muster.

  A wide-eyed teenaged girl in a tank top and pajama bottoms came into sight in th
e living room. She stood gaping at Nora. Her bright blonde hair hung in two matching braids. She did not open the door.

  Nora could only imagine how filthy she looked. She knew she had an ugly bruise from where Goatee had punched her. She waved, ridiculously, then said, “I’m Special Agent Nora Khalil with the FBI.…”

  But the girl vanished from sight.

  Nora suppressed a scream of frustration, and was about to take off running again when the girl came back into sight with a rifle cradled in her arms. She approached the deck doors with a slow and steady step.

  Okay, at least she’s giving me a chance. I look scary. I get that. I’d want my gun, too.

  Nora tried to introduce herself again. She engaged in a bit of pantomime as she did so, holding her thumb and pinky finger up to her ear like a receiver. “I desperately need a phone. If you have a cell phone you could just call the number for me and hold it up without letting me in. I can shout through the door or FaceTime them or something. Please?”

  The girl stared at her, incredulous.

  Nora tried again. “I understand how rough I must look right now. If your parents are around, please call them out here and have them supervise.”

  “You got some ID?”

  Smart girl.

  Nora shook her head. “I was abducted by some bastards down the beach from you. I swear. Please just call the number for me. You have nothing to lose, I promise.” She held up her hands. “My hands are where you can see them. But lives are at stake. Please.”

  She saw the girl thinking about this. Then she reached into the wide pocket of her pajama bottoms and pulled out an iPhone.

  Relief flooded over Nora. “Thank you! Thank you so much. Dial 814-555-6218.”

  The girl keyed in Anna’s number rather clumsily, for she was still holding the rifle in what was clearly her phone hand. She hit the speaker button and waited, eyes riveted on Nora.

  “Please pick up,” Nora whispered against the glass. “Don’t let it go to voicemail.”

  “Special Agent Anna Dixon speaking.” Anna’s voice could just barely be heard through the glass.