Part 16 (2/2)

Jack clicked off the flashlight and climbed out of the hole. The moon disappeared behind a cloud, dropping a veil of darkness over them. Only a little light seemed to leak out over the mountains to the east.

They had to get out of here. Before the groundskeeper caught them. They had to tell Denny what they'd found. Joanna Kay could be alive.

Jack stuffed the tools into the bag. He picked up the bag then froze, his body alert. Karen heard it, too. The unmistakable sound of a footfall. The faint rustle of clothing. Just yards away, the clink of something brus.h.i.+ng against one of the tombstones. Someone was out there. Hiding. Watching them.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Jack motioned for Karen to be silent although he could tell by the way she'd tensed next to him that she'd heard it, too, and was also trying to pinpoint where the noise had come from.

Could it be the groundskeeper getting an early start? Not likely. It was still dark outside. And the movement had been too...furtive. Too close.

He heard it again. The sound of clothing rustling as if someone had just s.h.i.+fted into a different position and it was close. Very close.

He heard a soft click and dropped the bag as he lunged to pull Karen down behind one of the larger gravestones.

The shot whizzed past, the bullet striking a tombstone behind them, sending up a spray of granite. The shooter had a gun with a silencer and wasn't a bad shot.

Jack pulled Denny's pistol from its holster. ”Stay down,” he ordered.

Karen nodded, her eyes wide with fear, her expression one of shock. Fortunately, Jack thought, she couldn't remember the other times someone had tried to kill her. Unfortunately, he could.

He stared at her for a moment, then impulsively bent down to plant a kiss on her lips. She smiled and squeezed his knee, trust and love glowing in her gaze.

He glanced around, looking for a safe place for her. The hole they'd just dug loomed dark and deep. He motioned for Karen to slip back into the open grave. She didn't look ecstatic about the idea but she quickly complied without question.

A dream wife, he thought crazily, as he handed her the flashlight.

With Karen safe in the hole for the moment, he moved stealthily toward the direction he'd first heard the sound, his pistol drawn. Another shot zipped past with a hum, the bullet boring into a tree trunk behind him.

He rushed forward, using the gravestones for cover as he charged in the direction of the shot, determined to catch the killer, to stop him once and for all.

THE MOON FLASHED from behind the clouds, casting an eerie gray light over the cemetery. Down in the hole, the gray light only cast a long cold shadow. from behind the clouds, casting an eerie gray light over the cemetery. Down in the hole, the gray light only cast a long cold shadow.

Karen crouched, her body pressed against the damp earth, listening for Jack's return, fighting fear for her husband. She kept telling herself he was a cop. He knew what he was doing. He'd be all right.

She looked down at the coffin at her feet, fighting her own fears. The darkness, the cold earth, the moon eclipsed by the clouds overhead and that terrible feeling of helplessness. She s.h.i.+vered and tried to think of anything else but her fears.

She huddled in the dark of the grave and thought of Jack. What an odd way to spend a honeymoon. She hadn't even gotten to make love to her husband yet. And now they might both be going to jail. If they lived that long.

He had to come back to her. She couldn't bear the thought of losing him when she'd just found him.

As her eyes adjusted to the darkness in the hole, she realized that Jack had left the casket open. She could see the doll. She couldn't imagine someone putting a doll into the small box to be sealed and burying it, complete with headstone. It seemed so...sick.

She looked up at the clouds moving like waves overhead and listened for the sound of her husband returning. But she heard nothing down in the hole. Nothing but the frantic drumming of her pulse, her heart thundering in her chest.

Her gaze fell again on the coffin and the doll inside. The doll's eyes stared out, blank, but...familiar. She knelt down to inspect it more closely.

Pretty Patsy Wetsy, she thought with a start. She'd had a doll just like it.

Carefully, she reached in and started to lift the doll out, then jerked back with a m.u.f.fled cry as she saw something that froze her blood.

JACK LET HIS EYES adjust to the moonlight. Exhaustion pulled at him. Weary from everything he'd learned, sick from all that he still didn't know or understand, he crouched behind a tombstone and waited for the killer to make his move. He didn't have to wait long. adjust to the moonlight. Exhaustion pulled at him. Weary from everything he'd learned, sick from all that he still didn't know or understand, he crouched behind a tombstone and waited for the killer to make his move. He didn't have to wait long.

A dark shape leaned out from behind one of the mausoleums. The shot breezed by so close, Jack thought it had grazed the side of his face. He ducked back, breathing hard. He waited a few moments, timing it, then peered out again.

Nothing moved. Thin clouds sailed across the moon, was.h.i.+ng the cemetery in a ghostly white light. Long shadows hid behind headstones and trees, hanging on to the darkness.

Suddenly a furtive movement caught Jack's eye. Someone ran out from behind one of the grave markers and now zigzagged through the pines and granite headstones toward the chain-link fence, toward the road and a large, dark car parked at its edge, a long-barreled pistol in the shooter's left hand.

Jack leveled his gun, leaning across the top of the gravestone, waiting for a shot. Just as the figure reached the fence, he pulled the trigger. Boom. The sound echoed across the graveyard, bouncing like a pinball through the granite stones.

The would-be a.s.sa.s.sin seemed to hesitate for an instant as if the bullet had found its mark. Jack had shot only to wound the man. A leg shot. But as the figure scampered up and over the fence, dropping to the other side, Jack knew he'd erred on the side of safety and had let the killer get away.

He took one more shot, knowing it was futile. Too far to shoot for any accuracy. No chance of getting closer before the person reached the car.

The bullet shattered the back side window of the large, dark car as the driver leaped in. Jack heard the sound of an engine roar to life and watched as the car sped away in a cloud of dust and gravel.

Jack swore as he holstered the pistol and ran back to the open grave-and Karen.

”Did you get him?” she asked in a whisper.

He shook his head. ”I didn't even get a good look at him.” Medium height, medium build, wearing a baseball cap. Driving a large, dark, American-made car. He could have been the man Karen had seen with Liz at the Carlton. He could have been anyone.

”You'll get him next time.” She smiled up at him with a mixture of relief and love that was almost his undoing.

He offered her a hand up out of the hole and noticed she was holding something.

Her expression changed as she saw his gaze s.h.i.+ft to the doll in her hands. ”You aren't going to believe this, Jack.”

She held the doll out to him.

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