White Lies (32 page)

Zach began to despair. He was trapped. He was going to die. The only variable was how. Would Jack shoot him in the head? Snap his neck? Beat him to death, like he had the old man?

No, Zach, you're forgetting. He's already told you how he's going to do it. Something about ripping off your head and a sharp stick
?

Zach groped blindly in the darkness until he was touching a tree next to him. He got to his feet and pressed himself against it, keeping the trunk between himself and Jack. The bark was rough against his cheek, which was still sore from when he'd gone down straight on his face. The scent of sap and pine needles filled his nostrils.

Jack kept coming in his direction. He stopped on the other side of the tree.

They were only a few feet apart. Zach held his breath. Balled his hands into fists. Fire consumed his injured hand as the glass skewer jigged deeper in the wound. It was a miracle he didn't cry out—

He had an idea.

Wincing, he pinched the glass between his fingers and pulled. The broken sliver wouldn't budge. He ground his teeth tight against the pain and continued wiggling the glass in a sawing motion until slowly, excruciatingly, it began to loosen.

Then it was over.

Dizziness assaulted him. For a moment he thought he might faint. But it passed and he held the makeshift three-inch dagger in front of him. It didn't feel as reassuring as he would have liked.

“I know you're nearby, Zach,” Jack said, his disembodied voice terrifyingly close. “I can smell your fear.”

Zach was alarmed to discover he could smell Jack too, the same musky cologne he'd been wearing when he came to Zach's house to threaten him and steal a photo of his mother.

Jack moved. Undergrowth whished. He appeared suddenly, an arm's length away, a dark wraith against an even darker background.

If he glanced to his left, he'd spot Zach.

He didn't. He took several steps forward, and then he was past, his broad back exposed. Close enough. Zach rammed the glass down between Jack's shoulder blades with all the strength he could muster.

Jack bellowed in pain and surprise. So did Zach as the glass weapon, upon impact, sliced a fresh wound in his hand.

Zach stumbled backward, one lame hand clutching the other, which was already gushing blood. He turned and ran, heedless of what might lay in front of him.

A gunshot fired. Missed.

Another shot. Another miss.

He heard Jack giving chase once more.

Jack reached over his shoulder to disengage the dagger sticking out of his back. But where there should have been a handle were only razor-sharp edges, causing him to slice his hand open. Swearing, he left the dagger or whatever it was in place and spun in the direction Zach was now fleeing. He aimed the cop's SIG-Sauer P226 and squeezed off two quick rounds. In the aftermath, when the report of the shots stopped echoing in his ears, he was furious to hear Zach still moving through the forest, farther away.

Jack made chase. With each step, however, he could feel his strength leaving him. The wound in his back was a mere annoyance in comparison to the ferocious, thumping hole in his shoulder, which continued to bleed profusely. He knew he had to dispose of Zach very quickly. It was the only way to salvage this catastrophe. He already had a plan to explain the carnage. He would arrange the bodies so it would appear that when Mike busted Zach spying on Katrina, Zach somehow got the pistol and shot him to death. When Jack and Katrina came outside and confronted him, Zach threatened them, and Jack killed him in self-defense. The only hitch would be getting Katrina to go along with it.

Up until this evening she had held together remarkably well. Even when she told him she wanted some space, he knew that was her anxiety talking, and once she had a few days to let everything settle, she'd be ringing him up for company. But when he'd shot the cop—which she'd inevitably caused by blowing the whistle on them—well, that had taken everything to an entirely new level. Jack could operate on that level. But could she? He wasn't sure. All this death was a lot to deal with. What was the body count now?
Four? Yes, when Zach was taken care of. Three she would know about. Could she deal with that? Three deaths on her conscience? A cop as one of them for good measure? He wasn't sure. The difference between them was he understood the destruction as a necessary means to avoid prison, whereas she only saw it as cold-blooded murder. She was too pure, too innocent—too naïve—to accept good and evil were one, interchangeable, neither existing without the counterpart, and sometimes one had to be used to achieve the other.

This was a fact of life and something he hoped he could get her to see after he explained his plan to her. And if she didn't take to it?

He couldn't leave behind any loose ends.

Invisible branches continued to slap at his face and rip his skin. He charged ahead, never slowing, until he smashed into a tree trunk with his bad shoulder. The trumpeting pain, combined with the impenetrable darkness, distorted his perception so he no longer knew in which direction he'd been running. Only willpower prevented him from passing out. If he let that happen, he would die.

Suddenly he heard splashing. Someone crashing through water.

Jack forced his legs to carry him in the direction of that sound. A few short steps later he burst through the trees into an open glade that housed a large pond dimpled with the machine-gun patter of the rain. A crack of lightning flared overhead, Jack could see Zach forty feet out, swimming frantically toward the far shore. He planted his feet, aimed, fired. Zach cried out.

Jack ran a few feet into the water and fired again. Click. He ejected the empty magazine and seated the spare one he took from the cop with the heel of his palm. He rolled his hand over the top of the slide, pulling it back toward his chest, and returned his attention to the pond.

Zach was no longer in sight. He'd disappeared below the surface.

Jack remained where he was and waited. When the weasely fuck resurfaced, dead or alive, he'd put a hole in the back of his ratty little head.

Katrina was beginning to lose hope she would catch up to Jack and Zach. She couldn't hear them anymore. It was as if they'd both vanished—or died. Still, she pressed forward, putting one foot in front of the other. To turn back would be to give up. And she would not do that, no matter if it meant she had to walk all night and morning.

Bandit barked and looked back at her, urging her on. Apparently he still had their scent.

Good.

A thousand thoughts were swarming through her head. First and foremost were those of Zach. She couldn't let Jack get him, couldn't let Jack kill him. She was still struggling to adjust to how quickly her entire perception of Jack had changed in such a short period of time. Only yesterday she had thought, well, yes, admit it, she had thought she'd fallen in love with him. He had swooped into her broken life and had seemed like the man who would make everything better. But just as quickly as that romanticized image had formed, it had been tainted. Hell, it had been vaporized.

If only I'd been more alert
—

A gunshot bafflingly close. She reflexively ducked her head. A burst of sound from somewhere ahead of her. Bandit took off in that direction.

She charged after him, praying it wasn't too late.

The shot whistled past Zach's head, splashing into the water ahead of him. Knowing the next, or the one after that, was going to connect with the back of his skull, blowing bits of brain all over the water, he took a deep breath and dived.

Suspended in blackness, he aligned himself so his belly was parallel to the bottom and swam in what he hoped was the direction opposite Jack. He was already out of breath from the run through the forest, and his lungs began to burn badly. He knew he would have to go up for air soon. He also knew if he did so, and he wasn't far enough away from Jack, he would be an easy target. He kicked and kicked harder. Maybe it was desperation, maybe mind over matter, but somehow he managed to get a second wind and keep going for another twenty feet or so before his lungs felt ready to explode once more. Abruptly he touched slimy weeds, which became denser and denser, brushing his face, entangling his limbs. This encouraged him. It meant he had gone the right way. There had been no weeds where he'd entered the pond.

He stuck his head above the surface of the water and took a huge breath. The air was like poison to his overworked lungs, causing him to heave and cough. Serendipitously, a clap of thunder resounded overhead at the same time, swallowing the noise he made. He turned in a circle, relieved to find he was concealed by a nest of weeds and lily pads. He made out a lone shape on the edge of the far bank, which had to be Jack. Zach couldn't remain there, treading water. Jack would start scouting the perimeter of the pond soon. Nor could he swim anywhere, no matter how quietly. Once he left the cover of the weeds, Jack would spot him. His
only option, it seemed, was to crawl up the shore and make a break for the forest again.

He peddled through the water until he felt the muddy bottom beneath his feet, then he slithered out on all fours like a lizard. Dirt and slime were surely infecting the cut in his hand, but he couldn't think about that.

The blast of a gunshot sent him flat to his stomach.

Katrina stumbled into a clearing. Although there was no longer a canopy of branches overhead, the storm clouds had rubbed out the stars, leaving the night smudged in blacks and grays. The rain was falling harder than ever, pelting her exposed skin and face, blurring her vision. She held a hand to her eyes and scanned the tall grass, the large pond, the perimeter of crowding trees. She didn't see Jack or Zach anywhere.

A gunshot made her jump. She cried out, covering her head and dropping to her knees. Another gunshot. She heard the bullet ricochet off the tree to her right.

“Jack, stop!” she shouted. “It's me!” She raised her head and saw a shadowy figure circling the pond toward her.

“Katrina?” Jack said when he had closed to within ten yards of her. He was hunched over, almost limping. The closer he came, the louder Bandit growled.

“Shhh, boy,” she said. “It's okay. Just wait.”

Jack stopped before her. He looked terrible. His shoulder injury looked bad, but it was his face that shocked her. Lines etched the skin around his eyes, brow, and mouth, making him appear twenty years older. Even in the poor light, she could see he was as pale as a ghost.

Lightning flashed, slicing angular wounds in the sky. Thunder boomed.

“You should have stayed in the house,” he told her. “I almost shot you.”

“God, Jack,” she said. “Look at yourself. You need to get back to the house.” That was her last best hope, she knew: get him to
focus on his own health, thereby giving Zach the time he needed to get good and far away.

“What don't you understand?” he said harshly. “If Zach gets away, we're finished.”

“We're already finished, Jack.”

“You're giving up? Just like that?”

“I'm not giving up. I don't want to get away with it anymore.”

“I don't believe that.”

“I wouldn't be able to live a day in peace.”

“You'd get over it.”

“Two people are dead, Jack. No, I wouldn't get over that. I never will.”

“You'd still have to live with your conscience in prison.”

“At least I would have accepted my guilt. There would be closure.”

The look on his face became one of disgust, like he didn't know her anymore. “You have no idea what you're talking about with all this holier-than-thou bullshit. After a week in the slammer, after the things that would be done to you, someone as pretty as you, you'd do anything to be free again.”

“I won't let you kill Zach.”

“I have a plan.”

She glanced at the gun in his hand and wondered if she could wrestle it free. Not a chance. Should she sic Bandit on him?

“Listen,” he went on, and the anger that had been in his voice had been replaced with feverish excitement. “Zach was spying on you, right? The cop busts him. He somehow gets the gun and shoots the cop. We hear the shot, come outside, confront him. He resists. I kill him in self-defense.”

“No, Jack.”

“Yes.”

“It won't work,” she said, simply to buy Zach some final seconds.

“It will.”

“Nothing has so far.”

“We're right at the end. Just see it through.”

“The first question people will ask is why Officer Murray was watching my place.”

“Because you reported a Peeping Tom a few days ago.”

“He died in my house. If he busted Zach outside, he would have died there as well.”

“So we move the body.”

“They can tell things like that.”

“Not these yokels.”

“It's finished, Jack. It's time you accepted that.”

“I will not accept that.”

“Then you're on your own.” She felt satisfied Zach was long gone by now. Her mission was accomplished. “Goodbye, Jack.”

He raised the gun. “Afraid it's not that simple.”

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

“You think I'm going to let you just walk away from me?”

That's exactly what she'd thought. It was over. Zach had escaped. Jack had lost. Very soon the police would be swarming her house. Jack, who urgently needed medical attention, would be taken to a hospital and arrested for murder. There was no way he could talk his way out of it this time.

“Jack, there's nothing to gain from shooting me.”

“If you're not with me,” he said, his eyes flashing, “you're against me.”

“Jack—”

He aimed the gun at her forehead.