Part 39 (1/2)

She watched his face. His eyes darted between them, and his hand squirmed on the gun, which slipped in his sweaty fingers. She realized he was paralyzed. He didn't know what to do.

'Give it up,' she urged him. if you harm us, you only make it worse.'

At Hilary's feet, her cell phone began ringing.

'See?' she said. 'They know we're here. They're already tracking the pings on the phone. It won't take long.'

Jensen squatted and took the phone in his hand. He flipped it open, not taking his eyes off the two of them, and switched the phone off.

'Get on your knees,' he said. 'Both of you.'

Amy glanced at Hilary, who nodded. They slid down to their knees on the bedroom floor, next to each other. Jensen towered over them, s.h.i.+fting the gun back and forth between their faces.

'You killed Glory, didn't you?' Hilary asked, stalling for time, praying for the police to hurry. 'That's what this is all about.'

Jensen laughed, but it was manic and strangled, like a man who laughs at things he can't see in the darkness. Things that scare him. He pointed the gun at Hilary's head.

'Please don't do this,' she said.

The gun trembled in his hand. His finger moved on to the trigger, and she knew she had to jump for the gun. If she jumped, if she got in his face, then she gave Amy a chance to survive.

Hilary thought about Mark. She saw his face and felt his touch, as real as if he were here with her. She thought about the faces of the children they would never have. She thought about how you can go from life to death in an instant.

She readied herself to leap, but before she did, she spotted movement in the hallway behind Gary Jensen. She didn't dare look away from Jensen's eyes, but in the dim light beyond the doorway, she realized that someone was creeping down the hallway toward them. A teenage girl stalked Jensen's back with a finger pressed over her lips for silence.

It was Katie.

Chapter Forty-Nine.

The shot went wild, careening into the treetops.

Troy cursed silently to himself. He'd heard Bradley's voice in the woods above the beach, but he was aiming like a blind man. His nerves made him careless. Now, with a foolish shot, he'd warned Bradley away.

He hiked up the dirt road away from the beach. He hoped the patter of the rain covered the slow crunch of his footfalls. He had the uncomfortable feeling that he was being watched, but he couldn't see anything in the darkness, and he was confident that no one could see him. Even so, he didn't feel alone. The woods seemed alive. He told himself that it was his imagination creating monsters in his head, but every sc.r.a.pe of tree branches as the wind blew made him twitch with fear.

He wanted to quit. He wanted to hike to the main road and call his buddy Keith, who would pick him up and smuggle him on to the ferry in the morning. They could spend the night in Keith's bas.e.m.e.nt, drinking beer and playing pool and surfing p.o.r.n. Forget about Mark Bradley. Forget about the gun in his hand.

He thought: Glory's laughing at me. Glory's laughing at me.

Maybe she was the one watching him; she was the spirit he felt. Her ghost. If he listened, he could hear her voice. You can't do anything right. You can't do anything right.

He was angry at Glory. Angry at himself. All of that anger still had a focus that made him stay where he was, rooted to the ground. Mark Bradley. He wasn't going to give up while Bradley was alive.

'Where are you, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d?' he murmured aloud.

Like the answer to a prayer, Bradley revealed his location. No more than two hundred yards away, Troy saw a stream of light splash through the woods. It was deep in the trees in the campground between the beach and the cemetery. He stayed on the road and hustled, eating up the s.p.a.ce between them. Based on the direction of the light, Bradley was heading toward the graveyard, and Troy realized he could get there ahead of him and be waiting for him when he emerged into the open ground.

Troy splashed through huge puddles in the road, sprinting south. A quarter-mile further, he broke from the trees and found himself in the sprawling gra.s.s of the cemetery. He had enough light under the open sky to see rows of stones poking out of the earth. He bent low, moving from tomb to tomb, eyeing the woods. The telltale light came and went, flas.h.i.+ng on and off, and Troy was directly in its path. Mark Bradley was heading straight for him.

He stopped behind a grave marked with black marble only fifteen yards from the brush where the forest ended. It was slick with rain, and the gra.s.s was sodden as he crouched near the tomb. He clutched his gun, smelling burnt powder on his hands. He watched the trees, hunting for the shadow of a man arriving at the long carpet of headstones. His heart thumped so fast he thought he would die before he sprang up and pulled the trigger.

Troy took a deep breath. He lifted the gun.

Mark couldn't find Tresa. She'd been swallowed up by the night. After the boom of the gunshot rose above the rain, he knew that Troy was out there, firing blindly at anything that moved. The boy was a menace, and if he wasn't stopped, someone was going to get killed. Mark picked his way through the forest, breaking branches, not caring about the noise he made. If Troy was here, he wanted the boy to hear him and follow him. He wanted to draw him away from Tresa.

His ankle was swollen where he had twisted it. Each time his heel landed on the uneven ground, he grimaced. He headed south, but it was nearly impossible to keep a sense of direction inside the trees. He wished he had a flashlight to guide his path. Where the forest ended, he planned to cut across the cemetery ground to the main road. He had little hope of flagging down a car on a deserted night, but he could follow the road toward the center of town until he reached the house of one of the year-round residents, and then he could finally use a phone.

Call the police. Call Hilary.

To his left, he spied a beam of light in the maze of trees. It came and went, on and off, as someone maneuvered through the forest. It had to be Troy. They were on parallel paths, both heading toward the cemetery.

Mark pushed past the trees at the border of the graveyard, and a moment later, he was free of the dense, grasping grip of the woods. The sky opened up over his head. Rain swooped down in sheets, and he wiped his eyes with his sleeve so that he could see. Triangle-shaped pines and skeletal oaks dotted the land. He looked for the warning glow of the light he'd seen before, but the forest was dark. He eyed the trees and graves for a moving silhouette, but as far as he could tell, he was alone.

'Troy!' he shouted.

His voice fought with the storm.

'Troy, it's Mark Bradley. I know you're here. I want to talk to you.'

He wandered deeper into the cemetery land. He looked down, but he couldn't see the names on the stones.

'Troy, listen to me. Tresa's here too. Neither one of us wants her to get hurt.'

Forty yards away, not far from the woods, Mark saw a headstone grow into a large shadow, as if a ghost were rising from the earth. The silhouette detached itself from the grave and walked toward him. Mark recognized the bulky outline of Troy Geier, and he saw that the boy had a gun in his outstretched hand. Troy marched closer until he was no more than ten feet away. The gun was pointed at Mark's heart.

'I'm here,' Troy said.

'So am I,' Mark replied.

'Where's Tresa?'

'I don't know. She ran. I didn't want you shooting her accidentally.'

'I wouldn't hurt her. This is between you and me.'

'I understand.'

Troy was silent. Mark could see his gun arm s.h.i.+vering.

'Listen, Troy,' he went on, 'Tresa knows you're here. If you kill me, you'll go to jail. You'll be throwing away your life.'

'I don't care.'