Run to Me (35 page)

Gone was all sense of plan or direction other than keeping to the cover of the trees. She’d lost her bearings the moment they’d veered away from the cliff edge. Through the next wall of foliage could be a road, more forest or another drop-off. She only ran faster.

Even in her panic she sensed it wasn’t fear of death alone that was driving her. It was something else, something far
worse. A flickering awareness that, once fully realised, would rip through her mind the way no bullet could tear her flesh. Something was stirring in the depths of the pit, slithering upwards, determined to show itself.

Turning her focus to the woods behind them, she listened for footsteps. They’d heard nothing since leaving the cliff. No more shots since . . .

Her heart clenched. A pain sharper
and more soul-destroying than the one in her arm. Chase. She tore her mind from the image of him lying still and bloodied. Not now. Jesse! Rounding a tree, she urged him faster.

Despite the silence, she wasn’t fooled. Whoever had shot at them wasn’t far behind. She’d had neither the time nor presence of mind to conceal their trail. Only the trees were now protecting them.

Plunging through a
tangle of undergrowth she stopped, gasping at the sudden loss of cover. A clearing. A single-storey shed sprawled in its centre. One of Downeaster’s small local sawmills. It was early but some workers might already be inside.

She hurried towards it, pulling Jesse with her through a yard littered with machinery, equipment and piles of logs. They reached the building and fell against its door.
Jesse helped her push it open.

Whatever hopes she’d had for assistance vanished the moment they stepped inside. The place was deserted. In fact – Oh God, hadn’t she heard the company had closed one of its mills last spring?

She looked around, fears deepening. Except for one walled-off corner, the building was nothing but a huge open room. Benches and racks filled much of the space but nothing
big enough to hide inside or protect them from gunfire.

‘Come on.’ Jesse yanked her towards the corner room.

A pitted sign hung askew on the door: LOADING BAY: NO OPEN FLAME. Inside, a garage, dark and empty. They ran for the roller door at its far end, but even together they couldn’t lift it.

Cursing her useless arm, she straightened. She spotted a lever mounted to the wall, grabbed it and
heaved.

With a shriek of protest it yielded an inch. A flurry of sawdust showered over them. The lever didn’t work the roller door at all. It was connected to a pair of drop-away panels in the ceiling. The sawdust had fallen through a crack between them. Some kind of storage compartment for shavings.

Her hopes flickered – could they hide up there? She glanced around and felt them deflate. Not
without a ladder. She wiped the stinging grit from her eyes and pulled Jesse back to the door they’d entered by.

Eyes streaming, they stepped through and froze. A silhouette was sliding past the opposite window. Their pursuer was here.

Shyler pulled Jesse behind her and side-stepped along the wall. As the door across from them creaked open they rounded the corner of the garage and slipped back into the mill’s deeper shadows.

‘Hey, Zacky, you in there?’ came a man’s voice.

Shyler’s heart kicked. That name again. The woman at the cliff had used it as well. Why were they calling her son Zack? Had they mistaken him
for someone else?

‘Trick or treat.’ The door flew back. The man burst in and opened fire, sweeping the room in a hail of bullets. She shoved Jesse down behind a bench and threw herself over him.

When the ear-splitting din finally stopped, the voice called again. ‘Guess this is it, Zacky-boy. Not many places to hide in here.’

Shyler clamped Jesse in her one good arm. Jesse. He was Jesse! She
could feel him trembling and held him tighter.
It’s all right, baby. I’ll never let go
.

But the voice in her head just wouldn’t stop. There was more to her terror than this man with the gun. She couldn’t stop hearing the name he’d spoken. Couldn’t stop feeling –

And at once she knew. This was the monster scrabbling from the pit. This was what had driven her from the cliff in such desperation.
Not fear of death, but fear of truth.

The man spoke again, closer this time. ‘Don’t expect any promises, will ya? Your chances for quick-and-easy are gone. It’s payback time, Zacky-boy.’

With death perhaps only moments away, she had to know. She pried the small arms from around her and eased the boy back. Cupping his cheek in her trembling hand, she lifted his face.

Zack thought his fear couldn’t
get any worse until he looked into Shyler’s eyes. Something was wrong. She seemed in pain. Had she been shot again?

‘You’re not Jesse,’ she barely whispered, trailing light fingers down his face. ‘You’re not my boy.’

His stomach dropped a thousand storeys. She knew. Reality had finally come to her. The dream was over.

Something crashed and he flinched at the noise. Still he couldn’t tear his
eyes from her face. Her filthy, tear-streaked, beautiful face. Tragg had won. They were going to die. Yet all he wanted was to scream at her that it was okay, he could still be Jesse, they could go on pretending. He just couldn’t get the words to come out.

‘Come on, kid, you know it’s no use. Just show yourself and let’s get this done.’

Tragg’s voice was even closer than before. The man was
moving down the side of the room across from the garage.

Zack grabbed Shyler’s arm and shook it. ‘What do we do?’ But she’d bowed her head and was quaking silently. It was over. The truth had destroyed her.

‘I’ll make you a deal,’ Tragg called out. ‘Whoever that bitch is
that’s been helping you, she can go free. You step out now and I’ll let her go. I never wanted her in the first place.’

It was a lie, of course, but it didn’t matter. Tragg sounded no more than ten feet away now. If they stayed where they were, he’d see them the minute he stepped round the bench.

Zack sat up. Their only hope was to make a run for it. But could he get Shyler moving again? Her eyes were streaming and so full of hurt it seemed she would break apart if he pulled her.

Yet even as he watched, something
changed. Her gaze focused, her body straightened. Shifting to get her feet beneath her, she pushed off his hand.

What are you doing?

She leaned forward, kissed his brow. And then she was gone.

He choked back his scream as she rushed away from him. Hunched below the bench top, she moved to its end and vanished around it.

Zack sat frozen in horror and panic. She’d actually gone. The minute she’d realised he wasn’t Jesse she’d left, just like that. Just like he’d feared. Just like he always knew she would!

Yet sitting there lost he suddenly realised a part of him had thought
it might end differently. Talk about crazy. In his secret dream he’d imagined her saying it didn’t matter, he was just as good. That she wanted him as much –

A shuffling sound from the rear of the building. An explosion of gunshots from a hell of a lot closer.

He shrank into a ball and covered his ears. Tragg had to be in the very next aisle, practically on top of him.

The shooting stopped.
Heavy steps thudded away to his left. Zack turned to see a large figure dart past the end of the bench. He rolled and scurried in the opposite direction.

At the aisle he turned towards the front of the building. Tragg hadn’t seen him. Maybe he could get out the way they came in.

He crawled a few yards further and stopped. Were those
footsteps? Someone breathing? The shed had a strange way of
echoing sound. He couldn’t tell if it was in front or behind him.

On impulse he turned left away from his goal, took two rights, then swung back on course. He stopped, breathing hard, trembling violently and strained to listen. Nothing.

He forced himself on.

Another bench over, the garage came in view on the opposite wall. The shed’s front door was now just twenty feet or so to his left. But
the area between was a lot more open. If he made a run for it and Tragg was nearby, he’d see him for sure.

Holding his breath, Zack chanced a look over the top of the bench. Not a shadow stirred. He ducked back down, turned and launched himself. He rounded the bench and had halved the distance when he stopped in his tracks.

Something was there in front of the door, some kind of cabinet, a metal
locker. The crash he’d heard earlier. Tragg had dumped it there to block their escape.

Zack turned to see the man step from the shadows. He dived for cover past the corner of the garage as Tragg opened fire. Flattened to the wall, he screamed when a hand reached out and grabbed him.

Stumbling back, he fell through the door into Shyler’s good arm. Before he could speak she was dragging him towards
the end of the room. What was she doing? They were trapped in here!

When they reached the roller door, she let him go and slipped something around his shoulders. ‘Keep this over you no matter what.’

Zack clamped his arms around her waist as she lifted her jacket hem up over his head. The last thing he saw before darkness descended was Tragg stepping through the loading bay door.

With the boy’s arms wrapped tightly around her, Shyler fell back against the wall. Her strength all but gone, she clung to the lever for support.

A figure slunk forward out of the shadows. Ugly sneer, eyes like a shark. Icy fingers touched her heart. Fish Hook, Scarecrow, Puppet, Snake . . . they were innocent children compared to the horror in this man’s gaze.

He moved to the middle
of the chamber and stopped. ‘So you’re the fucking whore who’s been helping him.’ He smiled. Trapped and helpless was clearly how he preferred his victims.

He raised his weapon. ‘Just so you know, that guy you killed at your cabin was my friend.’

Shyler tightened her grip on the lever. ‘Just so you know, the boy you’re trying to kill is my son.’ She heaved down with all her weight.

The panels
dropped.

At the sound overhead, the man looked up, taking the first wave of sawdust in the face. He ducked and swerved but there was no escape. Debris billowed out, filling the air whichever way he turned. He dropped the rifle and threw up his arms.

Eyes shut tight, face pressed to the top of Zack’s head, Shyler groped along the bay wall. She fumbled to the back, found the door through which
they’d entered and pushed him through it.

The instant she released him he threw off her jacket. A cloud of dust puffed out around their legs. They closed the door and fell against it.

She pressed her ear to its cold steel. The man’s roars of anger had choked off into hacking coughs. But even these were now growing weaker. A few seconds more and they’d died altogether.

‘Is he dead?’ Zack whispered.
‘He dropped the rifle, I heard it fall.’

Shyler stood quaking, reluctant to move. She had no idea how much sawdust had actually fallen out of the bin. Enough to temporarily blind the man, yes, but enough to kill him?

At a screech from behind them she spun around. Someone was forcing the mill door open, pushing back the locker the man had put before it, in order to enter. Dear God, not another
one! For some reason she’d thought there were only two of them. She grabbed Zack’s arm. But where could they run, where could they –

‘Shyler! Zack!’

She froze at the sound. A voice she’d thought never to hear again. A hand appeared through the gap, then a shoulder.

With a final heave Chase squeezed through, hunched and bloodied but very much alive. He limped three steps and sprawled across
the nearest saw bench. When he started to fall Shyler ran towards him.

They were all right. Shyler hadn’t left him. Chase was alive.

Zack couldn’t hold back his tears any longer. His thoughts were a jumble but one thing stood out. These people had come
for him. They’d risked their lives. Even when they’d had the chance to run they hadn’t left him.

Slumped against the loading bay door, he watched
them embrace. It didn’t bother him like before. In fact it actually made him feel good. And when they turned and reached out their arms to him he had to fight not to blubber like a baby.

He started forward and suddenly he was on the floor, thrown aside by the loading bay door flying open. The expressions on Chase and Shyler’s faces told him everything. Tragg wasn’t dead. He’d dropped his rifle
but he still had that little gun he kept in his shirt.

Sprawled on his back, Zack drew his legs up – no way was this dude gonna wreck things now! – and kicked at the door with all his strength.

It slammed shut with a hollow clang.

A single gunshot resounded from the chamber.

The building rocked as though hit by a tank.

A roaring sound. Choking black smoke. Whatever had exploded had started a fire in the loading bay. He could feel the heat of it even through the door. Zack rolled onto his hands and knees and started crawling.

He bumped into something big and wooden and ran a hand over it – one of the benches, knocked on its side. A little further he came to another one. He looked above it and, through
the smoke, saw the now-shattered window beside the main door.

Panic seized him. Shyler and Chase had been standing right there before the blast. Where were they now? He couldn’t see them!

He scurried faster, groped round the bench and gasped when he felt something soft and silky beneath his fingers. Hair. Oh God!

‘Shyler!’ Smoke filled his throat and he broke off into a fit of coughing. He
felt her face, her shoulder, her arm. She wasn’t moving. ‘Shyler! Get up!’

Eyes streaming, he grabbed her shirt, tried to pull. The fabric tore. He forced his hands beneath her arms and tried to drag her. She seemed to weigh a thousand pounds. ‘Mom!
Please!
’

A figure emerged through the haze across from him. ‘Help me.’

Chase pulled Shyler to a sitting position and looped her arm around his
shoulder. When he struggled to rise, Zack did the same with her other arm and together they got her to her feet. The door was only a few steps further. They squeezed through the opening Chase had created coming in.