CUTTING ROOM -THE- (46 page)

There was no one at all on the road. It wasn't crowded in the day. After ten at night, it was as desolate as the surrounding woods. She swallowed hard, rehearsing in her mind what it was she was about to do. God forbid she should hit a deer or a bear out here. That would be terrible any day; it would be catastrophic tonight. No, tonight, things had to go perfect. In fifty miles or so, after she passed through Los Olivos, SR154 would wind and catch up again with Highway 101, the main north–south coastal thoroughfare that ran up through San Francisco and ultimately to the Oregon/California border. She was heading north. At either Paso Robles or Salinas she could cut west and catch up with I5, a major interstate that would bring her into Nevada, or maybe up into Oregon and then Washington.

If she got that far.

‘Oregon, Luna,' she said absently to her pooch, who was sleeping in the back seat. ‘I think it rains too much in Oregon.'

She spotted the flicker of headlights in her rearview before she even hit Painted Cave Road, a paved two-lane road that led up to the preserved caves of the Chumash Indians. The headlights were a mile or so back. Possibly further. She felt her throat close.

Was it him?
Or could it be some other guy out for a drive in the middle of the night, or headed home to Santa Ynez or one of the few remote homes that feathered off Painted Cave and San Marcos Pass?

Even before he flashed his brights at her with a wink, her gut already knew the answer: not many people took the scenic route at one a.m. — with the thick cloud cover, there was no way to make out so much as a mountain in the darkness. She gripped the steering wheel and sped up. The headlights went in and out of view behind her as the car made its twists and turns around the mountains. But the headlights faded further and further in her rearview as she pulled ahead. The driver was not trying to keep up.

She held her breath, her eyes practically glued on the rearview. Maybe it wasn't him.
Come on, disappear. Turn off. Let me be wrong. Let's move on to Plan B. Because I don't know if I have the stomach for Plan A …

When she figured the car had finally reached the Painted Cave turnoff, the headlights disappeared completely. It was black behind her. She held her breath, waiting for them to come back on and continue their determined trek up the mountain. Nothing. Seconds felt like minutes. She let out a measured breath. She went on for a couple of miles. Then headlights lit up behind her once more in the far-off distance, the driver flashing his brights at her erratically, perhaps in some kind of code.

Her mouth went dry and she knew it was him. Just as she'd known it was him sitting out there in the darkness of her grandmother's woods, waiting for her. Just as she knew he had been in the house. Moving her bread, touching her pictures. She wasn't even shocked when she saw the clown hair in her bed. Terrified, but not shocked.

She would never lose him. She would never outrun him. On winding mountain roads or crowded New York streets. No matter where she went, she would always be looking in her rearview mirror, remembering the words he had whispered to her years ago as she lay on sheets drenched in her own blood. Promises that she knew he intended to keep.

I'll always be close by, Chloe. Watching. And waiting for you. Then we'll have another good time, you and me.

And if she were to call the feds? Tell them she thought he was behind her, flashing his lights at her in code? Assuming they could get here in the nick of time, assuming he could be caught once again and taken back to Miami before he made good on those terrifying promises of his, there were more appeals to be filed. More deals to be made. He had gotten out once. He had won a new trial before. And but for the corruption of a Florida Supreme Court judge, he would have had one. C.J. knew he could very well win round two. Plus, the information he had on a snuff club and its powerful members had been enough to buy him his freedom once. It would again, despite his escape. Her old colleagues at the SAO had sold out once. If it meant taking down an international snuff club, they would again. At the very least, Bantling's cooperation would mean a drastic reduction in his sentence. It would move him off death row forever, to a cell where he could count down the days until he was free again. And once he was out, he would hunt her down, like a programmed Terminator. He would not stop until she was dead.

A dozen scenarios ran through her crazed head. All of them led to the same conclusion. She would never be safe. She would never be normal.

She sped up and watched as his lights faded away again. A creepy thought came to her. What if he had put a tracker on the car? What if he could stay at the same speed, let her hit the gas into freaking Canada because he didn't
need
to follow her? All he had to do was sit back and follow the Yellow Bleep Road to the next place she laid down stakes? Maybe that was why the car behind her didn't need to speed up to follow her.

She turned off on to Kinevan, a remote single-lane paved road that ran into the dense Los Padres National Forest. Further along, Kinevan turned into West Camino Cielo, as it followed a ridge-top path through the Santa Ynez Mountains. After a mile or so, the asphalt ended and the road turned to gravel and dirt, then dirt and brush. She had run trails with Luna that spawned off Camino Cielo while hiking up to Brush Peak. There was never anything or anyone out there. It was a deserted no man's land. Given what she did for a living, C.J. had often wondered while she was hiking what secrets might be buried away under the thick, unforgiving brush, deep in the trees. She turned off the lights and pulled over.

It was time to stop running.

She got out of the car and quickly popped the hood. She ran a flashlight up and down the engine, but she had no way of telling. If he'd hard-wired it, it could look like a fuel pump for all she knew.

Fear pulsed through her veins. The cold mountain air was biting. She flipped on her cell. No service. She was all alone.

She walked around the car, pacing, looking out on to the darkness.
What the hell was she doing?
Miles from anyone and anything, standing on the ridge of a black mountain, waiting for a human predator to hunt her down like a wounded animal. Her brain flip-flopped again. She couldn't do this …

Get back in the car. Get to civilization. Call Dominick. Stay in a well-lit place till he comes to save you. Flee the scene. Get a new identity. Start life over. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Off in the brush, in the canyon below, she heard the wind howl and the unfamiliar sounds of wildlife: guttural chirps, the rustle of a lizard or a snake, the scamper of a raccoon or a skunk moving about somewhere. Or perhaps something much larger.

Don't panic, whatever you do,
she told herself, shaking in the cold. She buried her hands in her jacket
. It's way too late for that. You're already committed. You're up here. He's been tracking you. To this exact spot. You need to throw him off his game. Think! Think!

If he'd tracked her, he would pick something nice and easy. Something magnetized.

She stopped pacing. She was losing her mind up here. It was too dark. She still had time. She would see the headlights at least a mile or two before they made it up the mountain. No way could he negotiate that ridge in the dark.

She got down on her back and scooted underneath the Jeep.

She shone her flashlight on the tiny silver bump on the underbelly of her front bumper. A small red light gave it away. She was right — he'd stuck it on.

So she pulled it off — and smashed it into pieces with the butt of her flashlight.

As she started to pull herself out from underneath the car, the soft, seemingly far-off crunch of gravel stopped her dead, she switched off the flashlight as if by instinct, her body half-suspended as she clung to the bumper. Had she really heard that? Was it the wind in the trees? Was it an animal? She dropped back down softly on the floor and held her breath to listen. It was a repetitive crunch, very soft, but lumbering. Definitely footsteps. Something or someone was approaching and it wasn't a snake or a lizard. It was something that could walk. The question was, was it a deer or a wild boar, maybe? A bear or a mountain lion?

Or was it human?

Black bears were everywhere around Los Padres. Freaking out a bear — or worse, a mountain lion — was not a good idea. She looked all around the underside of the car. It was too dark to see anything.

She held her breath, straining to listen. She could hear her heartbeat whooshing in her ears. Time stood still.

The crunch stopped.

She lay there under her car, eyes darting everywhere, not knowing what to do. This was not the position she wanted to be in. Even though she'd disabled the GPS, if he'd seen her pull off, he could be driving down the pass and up the ridge at this very moment. There were not many turnoffs on 154; it wouldn't be that hard to figure out where she might have turned. If that wasn't him out there already crunching his way toward her, he would be up here soon enough and she had to be on her feet when he got here. But if she stepped out and came face to face with a bear, that wasn't going to end pretty, either.

Think, damn it! You're smarter than him. He will not win. He will not win. You will, this time.

One hand held on to the underside of the bumper, and the other went to the inside pocket of her jacket. She felt the cold butt of the gun in her fingertips. She pulled it out with a shaking hand.

And she prayed for strength as the strange footfalls drew closer.

Every sense was on high alert. She strained to pinpoint exactly where the footsteps were coming from. The wind was blowing harder now, carrying off and mixing up sounds. Tricking her frazzled brain. Whistling at her. Howling. Shrieking. Closer. Farther away. To her left, to her right. All around her. Yet she couldn't see shit. It was completely black. Without a flashlight she couldn't tell if the foot that might be right in front of her face was furry or a sneaker. And she didn't dare turn her flashlight on.

This was all going wrong. So wrong. She'd finally summoned up the courage to do what had to be done, and it was spiraling out of control. Sweat rolled off her forehead and her neck, dripping down her back with a chill.
Could whatever was out there in the blackness smell her fear?
Her heart was thumping so loud, she could hear it.
Maybe he could, too. Maybe he could just follow the sounds of the telltale heart to where she was
. Her hands were wet with perspiration. They slipped off the bumper with a squeak that sounded as loud as a trombone.

She held her breath.

Then she spotted the beam of light as it swept across the blackness. The footfalls were definitely human. He was searching for her out there.

She was suddenly blinded by a bright light. He was crouched down looking under the car, searching with his flashlight.

‘Gotcha!' he whispered when the light fell on her face.

His gloved hand reached under the car and took her by the hair. Pain ripped through her head. He began to drag her out.

That was when Luna suddenly sprang to life in the back seat, barking and scratching up against the closed window, as if she was rabid.

Startled, Bantling looked up and rocked back on his heels. And that was her opportunity. The one chance she was never going to get again.

She lined up the red laser sight and shot the son of a bitch right in the chest.

‘They fall like a sad sack of potatoes when they taste the dart,' a beat cop once told her. ‘Never had one fail, unless they're doped up. Then you gotta zap 'em a few times. You gotta be careful that you don't shock 'em right into cardiac arrest. We've lost two of them that way last year. Then come the lawsuits.'

The purple and white volt of electricity lit up the black night, shooting out of the Taser like the bolt of lightning that had brought Frankenstein's monster to life.

In this case, it had taken down a real-life monster. All the way down, crashing with a thud on the dirt road. Like a sad sack of potatoes. Fifty thousand volts of electricity had stopped Bill Bantling dead in his tracks, jamming his sensory and motor functions and immobilizing his muscles. He lay there, unable to move so much as a pinky. All he could do was moan.

She scrambled from under the car and looked around. No one. No cars. No bears. No mountain lions. Nothing.

The Taser website warned of a recovery time that could be as little as thirty seconds for strong, aggressive individuals. For civilians, that precious period of incapacitation was intended for them to escape their attacker.

C.J., however, had other plans.

He lay there on his back, dressed in a black track suit, a clown mask on his face. The two small probes containing inert, compressed nitrogen were buried deep in his skin. One had hit through his cotton sweat jacket and just under his neck, the other by his shoulder. The probes were designed to penetrate up to two inches of clothing. At his side she spotted the large silver knife that he must have dropped. She kicked it away with her foot. When he started to twitch, she hit the trigger again. Another brilliant zigzag of current traveled through the night. And down he stayed. Just like every cop who'd ever Tasered a subject and then testified about it in court for her had said he would.

The probes were attached to fifteen feet of insulated electrical wire, giving her room to walk around. She opened the car door, patted a snarling, still-barking Luna on the head and took out the backpack. ‘It's okay, girl,' she said softly, her voice trembling, like her entire body. She wiped the sweat from her forehead with the sleeve of her jacket. Her back was drenched with perspiration, and the cold wind was giving her the shivers. She felt physically exhausted, as if she had just run a marathon. And it was about time to start another one. ‘I'm okay, girl. I'm okay.' She closed the door before the Akita could jump out and rip the motionless clown to pieces.