Overkill(94)

When the fusillade stopped, Zach howled Kate’s name. “No!”

Out of the fog came Eban’s evil cackle. “Uh-oh.”

“Kate? Kate? Oh, Jesus.” Zach gave a tortured shout. “Clarke, you murdering son of a bitch!”

Zach could hear tree branches snapping and rocks scattering underfoot as Eban made his way down the path.

“Kate, talk to me,” Zach crooned.

“You’re breaking my heart, Bridger.”

Eban was breathing so heavily now, Zach heard every labored inhale and exhale. He was picking up speed, coming on fast.

Zach moaned Kate’s name. “Please.”

“Aw, is she dead?” Eban taunted.

A thud. He’d run into something. He stopped, cursed a blue streak, fired several rounds. Then he began moving again, huffing breaths, rapidly stumbling along. “That’s too bad, Bridger. Y’all looked so cute together.”

“Where are you, Clarke?” Zach shouted. “I’m going to kill you.”

“Oh, I don’t think so. I—”

When the ground suddenly dropped out from under Eban, he uttered an exclamation of shock. As he fell, the pistol attached to his hand clattered against the sheer rock walls of the chasm, which tapered to a jagged floor much farther down than Zach had intimated to Kate.

In the last split second, Eban must have realized his doom. One sharp scream erupted from the crevice, but it was soon absorbed by the opaque, silent fog.

Zach waited. When no other sound was forthcoming, he came out from behind the boulder, walked over to the edge of the fissure, looked down, and said, “I doubt you saw God.”





Chapter 38





Zach?”

“Here.”

He drew Kate from behind the tree where she’d waited silently and motionlessly. Neither said anything, just clung to each other. Eventually, he ran his hand over her head, where her hair was damp and plastered to her skull. “Are you all right?”

“Basically.”

She was holding it together, but her teeth were chattering, probably more from the aftereffects of the trauma than from the chill. He stroked her cheek. “For right now, basically is pretty damn good.”

She glanced in the direction of the chasm and shuddered. “What do we do now?”

“Go back to the house. Notify the authorities. I don’t have a land line. We’ll have to use either Cal or Theo’s phone to call in their murders.”

“Oh, Zach.”

“I know. They didn’t stand a chance. There was nothing we could do. Still—”

Suddenly the fog became a winding sheet of glaring light, blinding them.

“Freeze!”

Neither did. Both raised a hand to shield their eyes. Zach made out the shape of the man. In his left hand he held a powerful flashlight. In his right, a pistol.

“Morris?” Zach said. “Turn off that damn light.”

“Throw down your weapon.”

“I don’t have a weapon.” Zach stepped away from Kate and slowly raised his hands.

Kate said, “Can you direct the light down, please? It’s blinding us.”

“And let Bridger slip away in this fog? I don’t think so.”

“I have no intention of slipping away.”

“You were running from a crime scene. I heard gunshots. There are two dead guys inside your house.”

“Which is why I was running away.” Zach was about to lower his hands when the deputy brandished the pistol.

“Keep your hands where they are!”

“You can’t think that Zach killed those men,” Kate exclaimed. “Eban Clarke did.”

“Clarke? What would he be doing up here? You know what? Save it. I’m taking you both in. Maybe the sheriff will give me my job back.” He took a step toward them.

“Stay back!”

“Don’t move!”

Responding to their simultaneous alarm, he stopped.

Kate said, “There’s a crevice.”

“Crevice?”

“A deep one,” Zach said. “Directly in front of you.”

The deputy pointed his flashlight downward and moved the beam along the ground until it shone on the brink of the drop-off. The emptiness below was layered over by a thick blanket of fog.

Zack said, “Eban Clarke is at the bottom of it.”

“Holy shit. How deep is it?”

“Deep enough, and he took a hard fall.”

“Dead?”

“That would be my guess.”

Morris inched forward and called down several times. He got no response, not a moan, not a stir, not a breath. “Jesus. What happened? And I want to hear it from Kate, not you, Bridger.”

“Eban Clarke tracked his two friends here.” She told him their names and their reason for seeking her out. “Then Eban surprised us all.” She described his arrival and the brutality of the murders. “He had this…” She looked to Zach for help.

“Clarke had a braced automatic forty-five.”

“Zach and I managed to get away,” she went on, “but Eban came after us. Heckling. Shooting sporadically. He had almost caught up.” She paused, then said, “He didn’t see the cranny.”