Hunter's Moon (42 page)

The tree line broke at the road, massive roots twining through the ditch that ran alongside the asphalt surface. CJ stopped at the edge of their cover, his eyes searching for headlights. The pain in his shoulder had settled into a deep throbbing ache that sent occasional sharper flashes through his arm and chest as he moved.

Behind him, Artie leaned against a tree, spent from a flight that alternated between runs and forced marches through the forest. CJ didn’t like how pale Artie looked, hoping it was only a trick of the meager light.

Once or twice, CJ thought he’d heard footsteps and faint voices behind them, following the sounds of dry leaves crunching beneath hunting boots, but he couldn’t be sure, not knowing if whoever had shot at them had picked up their trail.

He saw no cars in either direction, and in the silence CJ thought his breathing sounded overloud, his exhalations like smoke in the cold air.

“Now what?” he muttered to himself.

Artie’s answer was a cough—one that originated from deep in the chest. He tried to stifle it but it worked its way out, and CJ cringed at the loudness of it. When he was done, Artie pushed himself away from the tree and met CJ’s eyes, reaching out his hand.

CJ understood and handed Artie his gun.

“You can’t outrun them as long as you stay with me,” Artie said. “So you either need to leave me here and get help, or we both need to be ready to shoot back.”

“Well, I’m not leaving,” CJ said.

Artie nodded, a grim expression on his face.

“But we might not have to do that other thing either,” CJ added.

Peering north, he saw a faint glow growing where the road curved to meet up with the 458. He handed Artie his gun and took a step down into the ditch, crouching as the vehicle approached. It wasn’t until it closed to within fifty yards that he saw it was an SUV of some kind. He stayed low, hesitating. For all he knew, whoever was in the truck were the people who’d shot at them. It was unlikely, considering that it would have taken them just as long to get out of the forest as it had taken him and Artie. What made him step out of the ditch as the truck came close to passing by was that he didn’t see much else in the way of choices.

CJ walked out onto the road and, lifting his hands in the air, crossed over to the oncoming lane, almost stepping into the path of the approaching truck. There was the danger that whoever was behind the wheel would floor it, since it wasn’t a safe practice to stop for strange men on lonely country roads. But even if that happened, they might call the police, which CJ would see as a victory.

When the headlights fell on CJ, the truck slowed, and he allowed himself a glimmer of hope. But anticipating that the driver might panic and speed up, he took a step back into the other lane, keeping his hands out in front of him, despite the pain caused by raising his arm.

The truck continued to slow until it stopped about twenty feet from CJ. Fighting the glare of the headlights, he tried to see through the windshield but couldn’t make out anything other than a dark shape. He continued to stand there, suspecting that the driver was considering what to do—whether it was safe to stop and help. With this strange stalemate stretching on, he began to feel uneasy. Something wasn’t right.

“I need help!” he shouted, hoping his voice carried over the engine noise and the rolled-up windows. “I’ve been shot!”

To illustrate, he lowered his right arm to display his shoulder, unsure whether dried blood was even visible on a dark coat at this distance.

As his voice faded, and as the truck continued to idle with no movement from inside, CJ’s uneasy feeling became much more pronounced. Cautiously, he took a few steps backward until he was on the far shoulder, as far away from the truck as he could be while still remaining on the road. Then he started to walk north, on a course that would take him past the driver’s-side window.

The driver must have intuited his plan, because CJ heard the engine begin to rev. At that instant, just as CJ reached a spot that faced the window, only to see that he still couldn’t make out the driver’s features, a beam of light shot out of the forest, catching the man in the SUV full in the face.

CJ saw him for only a moment, quickly losing him as the SUV shot forward. But it was long enough for him to feel a shudder shake his insides. A flash of nausea struck him and it was all he could do to keep from vomiting.

The truck was gone, vanished down the road, but CJ remained in his spot, his legs unwilling to move. What eventually unlocked them—besides Artie stepping from the forest brandishing the flashlight he’d found in CJ’s bag, his anxious voice calling to CJ —was the knowledge that now their hunters would know their location, which meant he and Artie had to move.

Even so, he had to choke down his bile again before he could respond to Artie. He ran the few yards that separated them, reached out his hand, and pulled Artie up and out of the ditch.

“We have to go!” he said, not bothering to whisper. “We have to put as much distance between us and this road as we can in the next two minutes.”

He took the older man’s elbow and started to lead him across the road. But Artie pulled back. “What happened?” Artie asked.

“Who was that in the truck?”

CJ opened his mouth but nothing came out. He closed it, and his eyes looked past Artie, following the dark road down which the truck had gone.

“Daniel Wolfowitz,” he said.

Dennis had the radio tuned to a country station, which was a bit of a departure for him, but his antenna had broken off during his last car wash, so Hank Williams was the only voice he could find riding the ether at the moment. He had to admit the guy wasn’t too bad. Dennis wouldn’t go out and buy any of his CDs or anything, but for now Hank would do.

Periodically, Dennis tried CJ’s cell phone but kept getting the same result. Either it was off or he was somewhere out of range. Dennis was inclined to believe the former, because the signal from the GPS device Artie had loaned him was coming through loud and clear. Artie had given it to him to make sure they didn’t lose each other when the hunters reached Black Mountain. It would save Dennis from driving up and down the road, wondering if he’d missed them.

He was still a little bemused by Julie’s call, though there had been no mistaking the concern in her voice. It didn’t bother him too much. He would just meet up with the hunters a day early and, in doing so, get in a hike, which his expanding middle needed, and would appease a woman who had brought him a number of free lunches.

A light rain started falling, fat raindrops that signaled a heavier storm up ahead. He flipped on his wipers and frowned as the one on the driver’s side dragged part of a tomato over his windshield. A number of the cars parked along the road during the tomato fight had been covered in tomatoes. While Dennis’s truck had gotten off comparatively easy, so far he’d found rotten tomatoes in the grill, exhaust, and now the windshield wipers.

He lowered his window, reached his arm out, caught the wiper on the up stroke and snapped it. The piece of tomato dislodged, and a few seconds later its trail across the windshield had been cleared away.

Chapter 34

Like childhood abuse, he’d been conditioned to act as if it had never happened, even as it had served to shape his life. CJ understood the beaten child’s tendency toward compartmentalization— to act as if the horrible thing were an episode of a television show that one could hardly remember, even though it provided an undercurrent for future events. Eddie’s murder was the architectural framework for CJ’s life. And twenty-five years after the fact, it appeared it would also be the cause of his death—for this could only be an execution.

After one steep rise after another, CJ’s legs burned, and the older man’s knees had taken all they could. Still, he’d done better than CJ thought he would, tackling the trail without a word of complaint. CJ had found what amounted to a small cave on the side of a hill. It was made up of loose dirt, the evidence of which could be seen in the piles of red earth along its base. He’d gathered a couple of large fallen branches, still reasonably thick with leaves, and had covered the cave’s opening as best he could. Then, with Artie safe inside, he’d inspected his handiwork. Even looking right at the spot he could hardly make out anything beyond the branches, which meant the hunting party wouldn’t either. At least that was the plan. Unfortunately it was the only option they had. If they stumbled along in the dark, and at the speed Artie’s legs would carry him, there was a strong chance they’d run right into their pursuers. In CJ’s opinion their best chance was to wait until light, try to guesstimate their whereabouts, and then make a run for it—maybe toward Spring Cove if CJ was able to get his bearings.

Had CJ not recognized Daniel Wolfowitz, there might have been the chance that Graham would have given up. Those few moments on the road had changed that. Now Graham wouldn’t stop until CJ was dead, of that he was certain.

What made their situation worse was that they couldn’t trust the road. That meant they had no clear idea where they were headed now. Neither of them had their cell phones but had left them back at the campsite, and so they were, for all practical purposes, cut off from any help.

Artie hadn’t said anything since they’d left the road behind, which suited CJ just fine. He was surprised he could think at this point and doubted he could have spoken with any coherence. It was difficult even to think it: Graham was trying to kill him. His own brother was somewhere out there—hunting him.

The shock and revulsion he’d felt on seeing Graham’s campaign manager had faded, replaced now by anger. But even that emotion wasn’t as strong as he would have thought, and at some point during their flight—when he and Artie had reached the top of a rise where the wildness of the Adirondacks spread out before them—he suspected it was because he’d always known Graham was capable of something like this. On some level he might have even been waiting for it.

He wondered about the other shooter. Who would Graham have picked? Definitely not Daniel. CJ was sure that Graham’s campaign manager was just the driver. He supposed it could be anybody. He shook his head. It didn’t matter who pulled the trigger. CJ just couldn’t give them a chance to do it again.

The sky was lightening as he watched, and CJ heard Artie stir behind him.

“How you holding up, boss?” He thought that over and said, “I mean, Pop.”

“Fine,” Artie responded. Then he added, “son,” which sounded right as well, if in a stranger way.

They lapsed into silence again. CJ thought the sky was now reaching the place when the two of them could set out again and hope to stay on something like a straight path. He was about to suggest as much to Artie when the older man broke the silence.

“Why?” was all he said.

It was probably the only thing he
could
say—the only thing he could ask—that meant anything.

CJ sat on the soft ground, feeling the cold bite through his jacket. He knew he owed Artie an explanation. The man had a right to know why his life was on the line. The problem was that CJ didn’t know. Sure, it had to be about Eddie, and yet that didn’t account for everything. No, something else was at play, and during the last part of the night, when CJ sat awake wondering if his brother was going to step out of the woods and shoot him, and looking for something to ponder that didn’t have him wondering what had happened to Thor, he’d realized that Graham had learned about CJ’s plan to ruin him.

He told Artie as much, serving it up on a platter that contained the ugly past—the things that had caused him to want to do something to hurt his brother, something to make Graham pay for that which he’d never paid. He told Artie everything— as much as he could, as much as he knew. And when CJ’s soul was laid bare, Artie’s only response was a question. “Where are we going?”

CJ didn’t answer because he didn’t know, except it was then he noticed that while the darkness was fading, the largest portion of that commodity in front of them wasn’t just the general kind, but the type that belonged to a large, solid object—an object more visible now with the increasing light.

“It looks like we’re headed toward a mountain,” CJ said. Technically they were already on the mountain, but CJ decided not to amend his initial statement.

Artie looked past CJ and saw the peak. He offered a small chuckle. “Just so you know, I’m pretty sure the steroids are well and truly spent.”

CJ smiled and would have answered had he not heard a twig snap. Artie heard it too and, without making a sound, lifted his gun from where it rested on the dirt. CJ, whose own gun had not left his hands, shared a surprised look with Artie before turning his attention to beyond their makeshift barricade, listening intently for a repeat of the noise. He hadn’t wanted to trade shots with anyone—not even Graham—but if he and Artie found their escape cut off they’d have no choice.

He heard nothing for what seemed a long time and was beginning to think they’d just heard an animal when the sound of crunching leaves came to him from somewhere near the rise to the left. They were human sounds, and whoever was making them wasn’t expending any energy trying to keep quiet. That theory was proven a little later when CJ heard a heavy footfall followed by a curse, muffled only by distance.