Heartbreaker (23 page)

The women screamed again. Tim cried out. Jess cursed.

The Jeep jolted over a rut and was momentarily airborne, flying off the road to hurtle across about ten feet of weeds before landing with a jarring crash against the trunk of a massive pine.

Lynn was thrown violently forward. Her head crashed into the back of the front seat. For an instant she knew nothing. Rory, who had been restrained by her seat belt, tugged frantically at her mother’s arm even as she released the seat belt’s catch.

“Mom! Mom! We’ve got to run! Mom!”

“I’m coming.” Lynn was groggy, but Rory’s urgency penetrated her momentary fog. Lynn moved.

“Come on! Come on!” Jess was out of the Jeep, jerking open Rory’s door, dragging her out. Lynn rolled out after her. On the other side Theresa scrambled out, clutching the wailing baby, sprinting into the woods.

Steam rose from the front of the Jeep. The smell of radiator fluid was strong.

Slumped over the steering wheel, Tim did not move.

“Follow me!” Theresa screamed over her shoulder.

A glance back told Lynn that their pursuers were closing fast. Bullets sang through the air around them.

“Follow her!” Jess yelled, grabbing Lynn’s hand and dragging her with him as he ran after Theresa. Lynn stumbled and nearly fell as she tried to run in his too-big boots. She kicked them off. He pulled her relentlessly on.

“Rory, hurry!”

“Mom, wait!”

Unable to free herself from Jess’s grasp, Lynn stretched her hand back to her daughter even as the three of them darted through the trees. Seconds later Rory caught up and grabbed hold.

“What about Tim?” Lynn screamed, glancing back. The front end of the Jeep had been reduced to a smoking heap of scrap metal scrunched against the trunk of the big pine, which was scarred from the impact. Tim’s forehead rested against the steering wheel. Had he been knocked unconscious in the crash?

Though they could not possibly have carried him, it seemed monstrous to just leave him behind.

Their pursuers were only a few yards beyond the Jeep.

“He’s dead. Shot in the head.” Jess, voice emotionless, never glanced around or even slackened his stride.

Shocked, Lynn sucked in great gulps of air, fighting the shivers that raced up and down her spine—and she kept running. Brambles, sticks, and rocks of all sizes stabbed through her socks, but she scarcely noticed the assault to her soles as she ran for her life.

Bullets smacked into trees and ripped through the undergrowth as they leaped fallen logs and dodged tree trunks in pursuit of the elusive cream flannel nightgown.

Lynn was reminded ridiculously of Alice again, in pursuit of the White Rabbit.

They followed the nightgown around a small hillock, losing their pursuers as they rounded it.

All at once the tantalizing flash of cream was nowhere to be seen.

“Where did she go?” Jess stopped, glancing around wildly. Lynn and Rory stopped too, their gazes darting around the forest.

“Here!” The sound came from somewhere close at hand. Lynn glanced around. A needle-carpeted slope rose to their immediate left. Access to it was hampered by a thick clump of leafy shrubs. Ahead and to their right the forest stretched on endlessly.

The sound of a baby crying, centered near her feet, caused Lynn to glance down.

“Here!” the voice said again, urgently. A hand shot through the bushes at the base of the slope to tug at the leg of Lynn’s jeans. The baby cried louder.

“There!” Lynn jerked her hands free, pointing. Drawn by the baby’s noise, the others were already looking down. The hand withdrew almost as suddenly as it had emerged. The three of them stared for a surprised instant at where it had been.

The clump of shrubs concealed a dark opening about the size of a manhole cover in the base of the slope.

The baby’s cry was already growing distant, as if it were being borne away.

“Get in there,” Jess said, pointing at the hole. Neither Lynn nor Rory needed any urging. Lynn was on her knees before he finished speaking, squeezing through the bushes, crawling through a trickle of water into the hole. Inside, it was dark and narrow, with more the feel of a passage than a cave. Rory was right behind her. Jess was behind Rory.

Theresa and her nightgown were nowhere to be seen, though Lynn could hear the baby still wailing its little heart out. From the steadily decreasing volume of sound she knew they were some distance away, and moving fast.

Jess’s stocking feet had no sooner cleared the opening than their pursuers ran around the hillock.

The sound of the baby crying was faint now.

Too faint for the men chasing them to hear?

L
YNN WAS NOT WAITING AROUND
to find out. With the baby’s cries to guide her she crawled along the passage, which sloped downward. Rory and Jess followed. Beneath her the rock was wet and slippery. In the center of the surprisingly smooth stone floor, a stream of water rushed along a well-worn groove.

She kept picturing Tim’s blond head slumped over the Jeep’s steering wheel. Did he have an instant, as the bullet slammed through his brain, when he had realized what was happening? Had he experienced a flash of blinding pain? Or did he never know what hit him, never even know he was hit? Had he died in a fraction of a second, without ever knowing or feeling anything?

Lynn shuddered. Such thoughts were horrible and did no one, least of all Tim, any good. She forced the disturbing images from her mind. Her focus now had to be on the living—and on staying alive.

As she descended, the damp, musty smell grew stronger. It was so dark now that Lynn could see nothing, not her own hands, not the rock walls on either side of her. Behind her she could hear breathing that told her that Rory and Jess were still with her. Ahead of her the sound of an infant crying beckoned. An insistent squeaky sound from somewhere above caused her to instinctively hunch her shoulders to protect the vulnerable back of her neck. Bats? she wondered with revulsion.

Lynn crawled out of the passage into what she sensed was a larger chamber. There she paused, uncertain of where to go next as she no longer had the walls to direct her path. Rory bumped into her leg and crawled up beside her. Jess joined them.

“They’re not behind us, are they?” Rory whispered.

“I don’t think so. We would have heard something,” Lynn replied.

“Like gunshots.” Jess’s contribution was dry.

“I hear the baby,” Lynn said. “Should we try to find that girl—Theresa?”

“It’s going to be kind of hard, considering we can’t see a thing,” Jess said. “Apparently she knows where she’s going. We don’t.”

“How did you know she was Theresa?” Rory asked.

“Intuition,” Lynn said, not bothering to state the obvious: How many stray girls could be running for their lives in this small bit of the Uintas? Santa Claus had been looking for Theresa. Who else could the girl have been?

“You never did smoke that cigarette, did you? What did you do with it—and the lighter?” Jess asked.

“The lighter!” Lynn remembered with sudden excitement. She reached down into the pocket of Jess’s goose-down jacket, which she still wore. The lighter was there, along with the cigarettes. Lynn touched them wistfully but left them alone.

At the moment there were more urgent matters to take care of than pampering herself with a nicotine fix.

“I have it!” She produced it triumphantly, started to flick on its flame—and stopped. “Do you think I should?”

“If we’re going to find our way out of here, yes.”

Lynn flicked the Bic. On the second try a small orange flame sprang to life. Lynn blinked as her eyes adjusted to the flickering light.

“It’s a mine!” Rory gasped, glancing around. Her words echoed Lynn’s observations. The chamber they were in had been carved out of the mountain by man, not nature. Ancient wooden beams supported the ceiling. More beams shored up the walls. The entrance to another passage, larger than the one they had vacated, was located in the wall opposite where they sat. Unless they retraced their path it was the only way out.

“Theresa must have gone in there,” Lynn said, gesturing with the lighter. The movement of the flame cast weird shadows on the stone.

“Then so should we,” Jess said.

He and Lynn exchanged glances. The alternative was to go back the way they had come. An unspoken consensus was reached between them: no way.

The ceiling was tall enough to allow all of them, even Jess, to stand without stooping. They did. With a gesture Jess indicated that Lynn should take the lead.

Once again, she reflected sourly, she was the point man because she held the light. One-armed as Jess was, it wouldn’t be fair to pass it to him.… She guessed.

As Lynn stepped into the passage the faint wailing of the baby told her that they were on the right track. Theresa was in front of them. Theresa, who presumably knew the way out.

Lynn and Rory could stand upright in the passage, but Jess was forced to duck. They had to walk carefully because the floor, besides being wet and slippery, sloped downward at an ever steeper angle. Lynn got the impression that they were descending deep into the bowels of the mountain.

All at once it occurred to her where they were almost bound to end up: the mining camp.

Where all the dead bodies were. The scene of the atrocities. The place where the nightmare had begun.

At the thought of exiting through a field of putrefying corpses, Lynn’s stomach churned.

At least the bad guys were no longer there. They were half a day’s hike up the mountain, searching for their prey.

Stepping carefully over fallen timber, Lynn glanced back at Rory and Jess. Their destination had occurred to him as well, she felt sure. Only Rory remained in ignorance, and Lynn hoped to keep it that way for as long as possible.

Maybe there was another way out the mine. If there were two entrances, maybe there was a third, or even more. Maybe Theresa was heading for still another opening.

Lynn realized that she could no longer hear the baby crying.

She slipped, threw a hand against the wall to catch her balance, and dropped the lighter. It hit the rocks with a clatter. The flame went out.

A darkness so impenetrable that it was suffocating descended upon them.

“Mom!” Rory’s protest was a muted wail.

“I dropped the lighter.” Sinking to her knees, Lynn began to feel carefully along the cool, wet stone from one wall to the other. Fortunately the passage was only about three feet wide.

She encountered a large, warm hand groping along the floor and realized that Jess and Rory were on their knees searching too.

“It must have bounced,” Lynn said, as she turned up nothing.

“Crawl forward a little bit,” Jess directed. “Rory, you stay where you are so we don’t lose perspective on where the lighter was dropped.”

“It’s got to be here—I’ve got it!” Sweeping through a thin layer of running water, Lynn’s fingers touched plastic. She scooped it up, clutching it triumphantly. She got ready to flick the Bic—

“Don’t!” Jess warned in a hoarse whisper. “Wait!”

“Why?” Lynn asked, puzzled.

“Look back.”

Lynn did as he directed. What she saw made her heart start pumping double-time.

A faint golden glow shone behind them.

A light. Obviously someone was carrying it. Someone else was carrying a light as he traversed the passage—and it didn’t require a genius to figure out who the someone must be.

Their pursuers were back on the trail.

“Oh, my God!” Rory whispered, her voice shaking. “They’re right behind us!”

“Get going!” Jess ordered. “Move!”

Lynn needed no second urging. Thrusting the lighter into her pocket, she scrambled to her feet. Trailing one hand along the clammy rock wall for guidance, she began to walk as quickly as she dared. Toward where? That was the question. All she knew was that they had to keep going forward.

“Mom, they’re going to catch us!” Rory sounded near hysteria.

“Shh!” Lynn whispered fiercely. “They will not! They don’t even know for sure we’re here.”

Somewhere far ahead the baby started crying again. Poor baby, Lynn thought, to be caught up in this. Surely, though, even if Theresa was captured, the baby would be unharmed. What kind of monsters would murder a helpless infant?

The men behind them?

Lynn shivered.

“They know Theresa is here,” Rory said. “Maybe they’re following her now, not us. But they’re going to catch us too. They’ll kill us, Mom!”

“Keep going!” Jess said. “And quit talking. They might hear.”

Without the lighter it was so dark that Lynn could not see so much as an inch in front of her nose. She felt her way along the passage with her toes and her hands, guided by the faint sounds of the unhappy baby. The passage took a right angle. Footing grew more treacherous as the amount of water running over the stone floor increased.

Glancing over her shoulder, Lynn saw that the light still glowed behind them. It was faint, distant, but unmistakably there.

There was no chance of hiding or turning off and thus eluding their pursuers. The walls were solid rock. There were no crossways or byways. They could go only forward, or back.

Lynn took a deep, steadying breath, fighting the growing panic that threatened to engulf her. All they had to do was reach the exit before the bad guys, then run like hell.

“Hurry!” Jess breathed. He was closer now, right behind Rory. The two of them were practically on her heels.

“You want to lead? It’s tricky,” she said. “I can’t see a thing. I could be on the brink of the Grand Canyon and not know it.”

“We’re better off if I’m last,” Jess replied.

“Oh? Why is that?”

“What do you think they’re going to do if they realize we’re just ahead of them?”

“Start shooting!” Rory gasped. “Oh, Mom, run!”

“I can’t run, and neither can you. We’re just going to have to walk out of here very fast.” Having said that, Lynn picked up the pace as much as she dared. Despite her fear-dried throat and pounding pulse, a warm, fuzzy feeling lodged in the region of her heart as she absorbed the implications of Jess’s words. He was staying in last place to act as a human shield.