Cold Springs(85)

But not even Leyland had the strength to stop him.

Chadwick tore off the mask.

The sniper was not Pérez. It was no one Chadwick knew. He was young—maybe thirty, Hispanic, with the build and haircut and hardened face of an enlisted grunt. His eyes were glazed with pain, the knife still buried in his abdomen.

Chadwick held the man against the tree, staring at his face until Olsen snarled, “Chadwick—for Christ's sake. I need your help. Smart is wounded.”

Chadwick paused, then dropped the sniper. The man crumpled into a ball at the base of the tree and curled over to shelter the knife, as if anxious that no one should take it from him. There was blood—a lot of blood.

The boy named Smart lay on the ground nearby, two other Black Level kids hovering over him, Olsen putting pressure on his arm to stop the bleeding.

Chadwick yelled at Baines for the med pack, then ordered Leyland to watch the sniper, though it was obvious the man wasn't going anywhere.

“He shot me.” Smart was trembling. “He shot me.”

“Take it easy, son,” Chadwick told him. “You're going to be fine.”

Chadwick worked quickly, automatically. The wound was not bad—a small rivulet carved into the skin by the bullet's path. The high velocity of the weapon had helped, reducing the amount of damage.

By the time Chadwick had dressed the wound, Smart was actually smiling weakly at the humor the other black levels were throwing out. Smart-Mouth was going to be okay. The kid was tough. He was going to have a nice scar to show the girls back in Des Moines.

Sirens wailed in the distance.

Chadwick felt Leyland tug his sleeve, stepped aside to let Leyland take over. He walked back toward the sniper, only to find Olsen kneeling over the man. Seeing Olsen's eyes, Chadwick wondered if she would go into shock before the sniper did.

“He's going to die,” she said.

“No, he won't,” Chadwick promised, but when he looked down at the young sniper's pallid face, he was not at all sure about that.

The state troopers arrived, then a fire truck from Fredericksburg. While they waited for the ambulance for Smart, and the firefighters tended to the sniper, a state trooper finally asked the obvious question—a question that rage and shock and concern for Smart had completely driven from Chadwick's mind.

“Is everyone accounted for?”

Leyland started to say yes, but Chadwick put the back of his hand on the instructor's chest. A feeling like an ice pick cut through him, and he finally realized what had just happened.

“Everyone is not all right,” he said. “We have one missing.”

Mallory Zedman was gone.

22

“Get down here,” Chadwick said into the phone. “Now.”

“I can't . . . what time is it?” Ann Zedman sounded bewildered. “Chadwick, I can't. I have a meeting with my lawyer at eight in the morning. This time tomorrow night I could be in jail.”

“Maybe you didn't hear me,” he said. “Mallory's gone. A man came after her with a high-powered rifle.”

“Stop,” she pleaded. “Please—I can't be more worried than I already am. But if I leave town, I'll only make things worse.”

“I may have killed a man tonight, Ann.”

In the night sky, the Milky Way shimmered like frost. Chadwick wished he could shut down the lights of the Big Lodge, turn off the flashing police car lights at the front gate. He wished he could send inside the counselors and white levels who stood milling around, shivering in their nightclothes, hungry for news. He wanted to be alone with Ann's voice and the stars.

He turned from Olsen and Kindra Jones, both watching him from a few yards away, and moved farther into the darkness, the frozen grass snapping under his feet.

“Ann, I can't see straight about this anymore. No one here knows the history. I need you.”

“Chadwick—oh, God. If you'd told me that a week ago . . . a month ago.”

He felt her despair pulling at his ear, as if they were children, speaking through a wall with cups and string.

“I'll try to arrange something,” she said at last, when he didn't answer.

“Call me with flight information. I'll meet you at the airport.”

He gave her his cell phone number.

“Just find Mallory,” Ann said. “Please . . . if I lose her . . .”

Chadwick tried to say something reassuring, but Ann had already hung up.

Down the gravel road, at the limestone-columned gates of Cold Springs, Asa Hunter was talking to the sheriff and a plainclothes detective. He turned, wearing that same look of cold anger he'd had years before when he'd impaled the blade of his knife in a live oak. He saw Chadwick, motioned him forward.

Chadwick wasn't worried about the sheriff—old Bob Kreech was as easy to understand as a water moccasin. But something about the plainclothes officer was wrong. He looked too young. His suit was too nice.

“Mallory made it as far as the road,” Hunter told Chadwick. “They found this.”

He held up a compass—the cheap plastic model all black levels were given for Survival Week training.

“They found fresh tire ruts nearby,” Hunter said. “A large vehicle pulled over. One guess, she flagged down a truck, hitched a ride.”