The Bequest (32 page)

She looked down the other side to the valley that sloped away from
the ridge. If ever there was a time when she needed Chad awake and
coherent, it was now. She needed his input on the lay of the land, the
nooks, crannies, escape routes, and ambush spots. While she knew the
land to some degree, that knowledge was decades old. She refused to
entrust his life, and hers, to a faded memory.

She heard movement on opposite sides as her assailants made their
way up the hill to the ridge. Once they reached the top, they would have
her in a pincer movement. She could slow them down with gunshots, but
each would eliminate precious ammunition. By her reckoning, she had
three shots to waste, but only if she were dead bang perfect with the
remaining three.

Her mind kicked into overdrive. If she were playing an action hero in
a thriller on the big screen, what possible escape would the screenwriters
write for her? She thought of the story, apocryphal though it might be, of
the old Saturday morning serial in which one episode ended with the hero
trapped in a locked room with no possible exit, only to open the following
Saturday with the hero free and clear, and a narrator who intoned, “After
our hero escaped from the locked room...” If only she could narrate
herself and Chad off of this ridgeline, far, far away from Doug Bozarth and
his armed sidekicks.

She had, at best, minutes if not seconds before the final showdown
began. If she were the screenwriter, how would she write the escape? She
knew the rules: (1) you had to be fair to your audience, no cheating; (2)
no
deus ex machina
—no miracle of God to make your escape; (3) no timely
arrival of the cavalry; the hero had to make her own escape; and (4) you
had to make extraordinary use of the ordinary.

And in that last rule lay the answer. The rootball of the downed tree
had been ripped from the ground, creating a hole, now filled with leaves.
To the west, the edge of the ridge sloped downward to a shallow valley
with a dry creekbed that meandered through it. In the spring, during the
April rains, it ran with water, but in the drought of summer, it was merely
a dusty path—a roadway, in effect, that led away from her current spot. It
was by that path that she could make her escape; it was by the rootball’s
depression that she could save Chad.

She knelt beside Chad, who was struggling to retain consciousness.
She slapped him lightly. His eyelids fluttered and then opened. His eyes
rolled back in his head. She slapped him again and his eyes focused on her.

“Are you awake?” she asked in a hoarse whisper.
“Barely.”
“I’m going to bury you in the leaves, and you can’t move. Not a

muscle. Understand?”
He nodded.
“They don’t know I’m here, so if they hear someone trampling down

the other side of this ridge, they’ll assume it’s you. When they follow, you
get out of there and go the other way. There are three of them. Wait for
all three to get by first.”

“What if they don’t all follow?” he asked.
“They will.” She left unspoken her real thoughts: They have to.
She heard voices from below. A murmur or two, then silence. Then

rustling as footsteps began their flanking movement before ascending the
slope.
“Now,” she whispered.
She grabbed Chad by his good arm as he struggled to his knees, then

she helped him crawl to the end of the tree. He slid into the depression, as
if sliding into a pool of water. Teri took the small folding saw from her
belt and gave it to him. She opened the blade and put the handle in his
right hand.

Moving
quietly,
she
scooped leaves over
Chad until he
was
completely hidden from sight. She felt as if she were burying him and
hoped to God that this was not the last time she would see him alive.

She knew her assailants had ascended the hill to the ridgeline, and
two of them now stood on either side of her, to her north and to her
south. How far away, she didn’t know, as they were blocked from sight by
trees and shadows.

And where was Bozarth? It would be just like the coward to stay
below, to leave the dirty work to others. How would Chad get down if he
was still there?

“Veterinarian!” a voice called from the north.
“Veterinarian!” another voice echoed from the south.
They were here.
She popped to her feet, leveled the rifle and fired north, in the

direction of the first voice, then spun and fired to the south. As the shots
reverberated, she heard both men scramble for cover. It sounded as if each
of them had made the same move, sliding down the slope in the direction
from which they had come.

She turned and ran down the other side, deliberately making as much
noise as she could, kicking up leaves, snapping branches, starting a small
landslide. She lost her footing, hit on her butt, and slid for about fifteen
feet, before popping back up at the bottom. She made it to the dry
creekbed, turned south and sprinted.

From behind and above her, she heard a voice call out, “He’s gone
down the other side.”
She smiled and inserted the last bullet.

Chad lay as still as he could, but pain ravaged his left side. He yearned to
move about, to twist and flop, as if the release of energy would lessen his
pain. But he remembered the command from Teri. He lay still.

A gunshot rang out beside him, followed by a second, then he heard
sounds of Teri scrabbling down the slope. After a brief moment, he heard
footsteps trample the ground nearby, then follow her downhill. He held
his breath and forced himself to concentrate. He had heard two sets of
footsteps. How many had Peggy said there were? Three? That didn’t make
sense. There had been three at the start, but he was pretty sure one of
them was dead in the meadow. And he was pretty sure Peggy had shot one
down below. His head hurt, his shoulder hurt, his whole body hurt, but he
could still do basic arithmetic: three minus one equals two, minus one
equals one.

But he had distinctly heard two sets of footsteps, one to the south and
one to the north, go by. That meant that the one Peggy shot down below
wasn’t hurt bad, or was at least not disabled. But with both of his pursuers
accounted for, that meant he was safe.

He cupped his right hand to brush away leaves, but something
stopped him. A rustling sound, very slight, down below. Another deer,
perhaps? A fawn looking for its dead mother? A dead mother that he had
killed? Or just the injured animal thrashing around in the leaves. He
suddenly felt overwhelmed by remorse. He was a veterinarian, for God’s
sake. He took care of animals. He
healed
animals. Medical doctors may
have their Hippocratic Oath, and their adage
primum non nocere
, Latin for
“first, do no harm,” but veterinarians had their own oath, dedicating
themselves to the “protection of animal health, the relief of animal
suffering...”

If the deer was merely injured, if it was in pain, he had a duty to tend
to it, to relieve its suffering. Shame pulsed through his body like a blast of
thermal heat. He pushed aside a handful of leaves from his face, then
stilled. Even that small movement sent pain to every nerve.

Then he heard something else down below again. The distinct
beeps
and
boops
of keys being pressed on a cell phone. Then a muttered “damn.”
That meant two things. One, no cell service. But two, there was a third
man.

He extended his hand, cupped a batch of leaves, and pulled them
back over his face. The man below began to move, ascending the incline,
heading his way. After a few seconds, the man reached the top of the ridge
and stood not more than ten feet away. Feet shuffled through leaves,
drawing closer as the man walked around the deadfall to Chad’s side, then
wood creaked as weight was placed on the fallen tree. The man had sat
down right next to the rootball.

Time to play the waiting game. Chad closed his eyes and tried to will
unconsciousness to settle in. He thought it was the only way to guarantee
that his pain-wracked body would remain deathly still. His very life
depended on it.

Although Teri regularly worked out, running three miles a day in the hills
around her house and pumping iron two or three times a week, artificial
workouts
in gyms and
neighborhoods didn’t really
prepare
you for
sprinting through trees, running for your life. Similarly, staged shootouts
on movie sets were no practice for real gunfights with real bullets with
people who wanted you dead. She was running on adrenaline now, and
she knew that exhaustion would soon kick in. She didn’t how much of a
lead she had nor was she inclined to check. As legendary Negro Leagues
pitcher Satchel Paige once said, “Don’t look back. Something might be
gaining on you.”

She thought she was far enough away now for Chad to unearth
himself and go for help. Sooner or later, she needed to find a spot to take a
stand. Short of a chair at a bar table in a corner, with her back to the wall,
facing the swinging doors, she needed a bluff or rise where she could
obtain a height and visual advantage, and where the men chasing her
couldn’t circle around behind.

She heard the
zzzzp
of a bullet whiz by her ear. It disappeared into
the deepening shadows in the trees ahead of her. She hadn’t heard the
shot. She didn’t know if that meant silencers or if it meant she simply
hadn’t been paying attention. It did mean, though, that her pursuers were
close enough to see her darting through the trees, even in the deepening
gloom. She hoped she was still far enough ahead that they couldn’t
distinguish her female form. It was important that they think she was
Chad, because that would give Chad the advantage he needed to seek help
before one or more of them returned to hunt for him. In his weakened
condition, he needed as big a lead as she could give him.

Up ahead, the creekbed seemed to elevate. She couldn’t tell how
high it sloped, but it appeared to be a fairly steep rise, a perfect vantage
point to target her pursuers. As soon as they felt the upswing in the
topography, they would assume Chad had gone that way, and would likely
slow and regroup at the foot of the slope, assess their options, and scout
out a plan of attack. They would be standing in the perfect place for an
ambush—particularly if she chose
not
to go uphill.

She dropped to her knees, hopefully removing herself from any
glimpse the pursuers might have of her. Then she crawled off to the side,
into the thickest stand of trees, a cluster of oaks nearly choked by cedars.
It was barely passable, even that low to the ground. She had to lie on her
stomach at one point and pull herself beneath the lowest cedar branches.
Once she felt she was safely out of sight, she turned back the way she had
come, circling back to the creekbed, but downstream. And hopefully
behind her pursuers.

Staying in a crouch, she duck-walked to an oblong boulder in the
midst of two bushes that bordered the creekbed, angled away from it. It
was about the height of a bedroom nightstand and the length of a coffee
table, an excellent spot to hide behind and rest the barrel of her rifle. The
only question was whether the bad guys had passed by this spot yet.

She got her answer soon enough, ducking just in time to avoid being
seen. From the sounds of it, there was more than one man, but not
enough noise to account for all three. She raised her head and saw two
men jogging away from her.

And neither one of them was Doug Bozarth!
Where the hell was he? Had he stayed behind because he was a
coward, or had he already found Chad? She was betting on the former—
he seemed like the type to hire his dirty work done instead of doing it
himself. But if it was the latter, she might already be too late.
She laid the rifle across the boulder and sighted down the barrel. One
man lagged behind the other, who was already around a small bend and
out of sight. She drew a bead right between his shoulder blades. She had
learned long ago that some people simply needed killing. That was an old
Texas tradition that had allowed many a killer to walk free. It hadn’t
worked for her before, and it might not work for her now. But when men
with guns were searching for you, with murder on their minds, they need
killing, even if it meant shooting them in the back. No time for remorse.
Teri pulled the trigger. The man at the rear dropped.
A fusillade of shots rang out. The survivor apparently decided a spray
of gunfire would help him avoid the fate of his compadre. And it might
have, had there been any reason to the shots. Instead they sprayed wildly,
none of them even coming close to her location. The only purpose they
served was to allow her to home in on the source.
She cocked her head, listening. Aimed carefully. And squeezed the
trigger again.
The shooting stopped.