No One Else to Kill (Jim West Series) (26 page)

Geri stopped the car.

“Okay, now pull the car behind that row of bushes.
 
Go this way.” He pointed to the right.
 
His hand was only inches from my head.
 
Unfortunately, the revolver was not in
it.
 
The hand still tempted me, but the
odds would be dismal, so I remained still.

Geri parked the car.
 
I climbed out.

“Not so fast!”

I stood still beside the car.
 
Geri took a lot longer to get out.
 
Vic stood next to me, the car between Geri
and us.
 
I wanted to yell to Geri to run,
but I waited too long, and the thought must not have entered her mind, because
she hurried around the car to us.

“Vic.”

“Shut up!”

He had backed up when Geri rounded the car.
 
He probably thought as I did that she was
going to get right in his face to argue some more, and he didn’t want her that
close. He turned on a flashlight and aimed it at Geri’s face.
 
She instinctively closed and covered her
eyes.
 
She also stopped walking.

“Now, you two, head up that path.
 
Arm in arm, I don’t want one of you straying.
Oh, that’s a cute picture, Geri.
 
Just
like you’re out on a walk, with one of your girlfriends.”

His girlfriend remarks annoyed me as much as his boyfriend
one, but I felt better out here than in the car.
 
Out here, one always had options. It didn’t
level the playing field, but my odds had improved.
 
The night was very dark, the low clouds blocked
whatever light the moon and the stars could have provided.
 
Branches and leaves creaked, groaned, and
rustled in the stiff breeze disguising the sounds of other movement around us.

Vic’s beam of light lit up about ten feet of the path in
front of us.
 
We were in a thick section
of the forest, and if I attempted an escape, I felt confident that all I needed
was about twenty yards of separation and I could lose him. The trick was
getting Geri to move with me.

“Hey you, what’s your name again?”

I knew he was talking to me, but I ignored him.

“Hey!” he shouted.

“His name is Jim. Please don’t shout, Vic,” Geri’s voice
cracked as she talked.
 
I looked over at
her and saw tears running down her face.

Vic either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

“Jim, I can’t tell you how happy I am that you decided to
come along. This will make things so much easier.”

“I aim to please,” I said sarcastically.

“Yeah, I had lots of ideas to explain why Geri would be
out here alone, but none of them sounded very good.
 
Now, it’s going to be a lot easier.
 
She either came out here voluntarily with you
or you forced her out here. Either way, you have to admit it makes more sense
than her coming out here alone.”

He had me there.
 
I
had given him a better story.
 
Too bad
for him I didn’t plan on sticking around.

“You simply can’t keep killing people,” I said.

“After you two, there’s no one else to kill.
 
I’ll be done.”

If that remark didn’t sink through Geri’s state of denial,
nothing would.

“You know the two of you will really like the cabin.”

“What cabin?”
 
Geri
asked.

“The one we’re walking to, of course.
 
I checked it out last month.
 
It’s for sale, but unfortunately the owners
aren’t around to give us a tour.”

“Who has a cabin out in the middle of nowhere?” Geri
asked.
 
She had stopped crying.

“Who knows, but it’s not really in the middle of
nowhere.
 
We’re just approaching it from
the rear.”

I couldn’t see any sign of a cabin ahead of us, but in the
darkness it could be out there, and I had no reason to believe Vic was
lying.
 
More importantly, I didn’t know
how close it might be.
 
The urgency of
the situation tingled up and down my spine. However, I had to wait until the
opportunity came.
 
I didn’t know when it
would appear, but I knew I would recognize it.
 
Vic might be mentally prepared to kill me, and I had no doubt that he
was a damn good shot, but I could hope he didn’t have the instincts of a
professional.

For much of our trek, a space of four or five yards
separated the trees from the path.
 
Finally, I could see the woods close in on the trail a few yards ahead
of us. I tugged gently on Geri’s arm and looked at her with the corner of my
eyes.
 
When she looked back at me, I
nodded my head just a fraction to indicate the spot.
 
The bewildered look she gave me didn’t make
me confident, but I didn’t feel we had a choice.

A few steps before the spot where the forest closed in on
the path, I looked to my left like I might have heard something. Just as fast I
looked back ahead of us but tilted my head slightly to the left. I hoped to
appear like I didn’t want Vic to know I was looking over there.
 
With any luck, he might be looking to the
left when we made our break.
 
My tactic
had a lousy downside to it - I wouldn’t know if he had taken the bait when we
made our move.

My other mistake was to think of it as our move.
 
When the first of the evergreen branches
brushed my arm, I bolted into them dragging a half responsive Geri. The
darkness immediately surrounded us and branches, large shrubs, and even the
larger trees required zigzagging our way into them. The beam of the flashlight
caught up with us in pieces, and I started to feel good about the chances until
two rapid shots were fired off.

Geri went down and I thought she was hit.
 
I stopped and went down by her side.

“Are you hit?”

“No, but I can’t go on. You go!”

“I’m not leaving you!” But I heard the sound of Vic
closing in on us, and I knew I had to.
 
I
would not get another chance, and by leaving I might be able to do something to
help.
 
At a minimum it would make Vic
rethink his plans.
 
If I stayed I would
be dead.

Fortunately, the flash from the revolver along with our
dropping to the ground temporarily confused Vic.
 
He came into the woods after us but off to
our right.
 
I moved deeper into the
woods, and he must have heard me as the beam of the flashlight caught me before
I darted behind a thick clump of bushes.

I took a few more steps and nearly stepped off into dark
nothingness. I had to grab the branches of a small cedar to prevent myself from
going over.
 
I looked down and couldn’t
see ground.
 
I heard Vic crashing through
the brush behind me.
 
Staying near the
edge and behind the cedar, I moved perpendicular to him. A row of thin cedars
gave me some cover. I squeezed behind a larger tree.
 
Suddenly, the ground gave out under my feet,
and I fell.

Long ago, I read or someone told me that one’s chances of
surviving a fall from any considerable height goes up significantly if you can
land on your feet.
 
That thought raced
into my mind the first second I was falling, and during the next second I
started to fight my body to get my feet below me. The thump with the ground
came in the third second.

The good news came with the quick impact with the
ground.
 
I hadn’t fallen far enough to
pick up any real speed.
 
Additionally, I
landed at a spot where leaves, twigs, and other small segments of dead
vegetation had collected over the thin layer of dirt that covered the rock
ledge.

Bad news also came with the impact.
 
I had no time to get my feet under me, and
the impact almost knocked me out.
 
I
briefly saw stars. The fall had knocked the wind out of me, and I seemed to be
paralyzed. I felt like I was dying, but I didn’t.
 
I’d had the wind knocked out of me before and
realized that I would just have to suffer a few minutes, fight back the panic,
and let time do its healing.

While I lay there, trying to breathe but at the same time
stay quiet, I saw the light from the flashlight cut a swath through the
darkness.
 
Even though it never reached
down to touch me, the light swept by me close enough that I realized I had
fallen about ten feet into a crevice not much wider or longer than me.
 
Over the millennium, nature had cut this
recess into the side of the cliff.

“You killed him!” Geri screamed.

“Shut up!” I heard the sound of his slapping her, or at
least I imagined I did.

“You shot him.
 
I
saw him fall.” Good
ol
’ Geri lying to protect me.

“Then where is he?”

“Why don’t you stand real close to the edge so you can
look straight down?”

“So you can push me?
 
You won’t get rid of me that easy, Geri.”

I didn’t hear anything for a few seconds.

“Vic, let me go.
 
I
promise I won’t tell anyone about you.
 
As your wife, I can’t be made to testify.”

“We’ll talk about that later.”

I knew, and she had to know by now that he wouldn’t let
her go.
 
She would be dead by morning
unless I could do something to stop him.

They must have started walking away, because I heard Geri,
but the voices were broken.

“…can’t just leave him,” she said.

“He couldn’t……..morning.”
 
My mind filled in the blanks.
 
“He
couldn’t have gone far.
 
I’ll look for
him in the morning.”

My breathing returned to normal about the time I couldn’t
hear them anymore.
 
I forced myself into
a sitting position and studied my surroundings the best I could in the
darkness.
 
I had rock walls on three
sides of me.
 
I peered over the
edge.
 
The ground looked about twenty
feet away, straight down.

I stood up and felt for damage.
 
I hurt in a couple of places. Despite the
inch or so of soft debris and dirt, the ledge I landed on had a rock base.
 
My good shoulder now hurt as much as the one
I had hurt last night.
 
I had a small
goose egg on the back of my head, and my hip on my left side was sore. At least
nothing seemed to be broken, and more importantly, Vic hadn’t seen me down
here.

The rock wall had various depressions and ridges, and I
used them to try to climb out.
 
Three
times I tried, and three times I fell back down.
 
I needed more light to see what I was doing
and a better alignment of ridges and crevices. On the third attempt, I had
managed to get my head above the edge before the ridge I had placed my
supporting foot on gave way, and I slid back down.

Despite the cool night, I found myself sweating
profusely.
 
The low clouds had brought in
the warmer than usual temperatures, but they also ramped up the usually low
humidity for this area.
 
I wanted to
hurry, to get to Geri and somehow rescue her, but I knew I had to calm down and
take the situation one step at a time.

I never doubted that I could climb out, but I needed to
get smart about it.
 
Rather than simply
start climbing again, I looked for a series of spots on the side walls that I
could use in sequence to climb out.
 
I
discovered a ledge about four feet high that stuck out about two inches near
the outer edge.
 
It looked safe enough.
 
If it gave way, and I fell straight back down
I would have about a foot of safety before going over the side to the rocky
ground below.
 
I would have to keep my
weight leaning away from that side.

Unfortunately, taking my time allowed me to start worrying
about things I didn’t need to think about.
 
As a young teenager climbing the Cliffs of the Neuse in North Carolina,
I reached a ledge where I pulled myself up just to discover a copperhead
snake.
 
By good fortune, I scared it more
than it scared me, and the snake fled away. In late October, at this altitude,
all good snakes would be hibernating.
 
At
least I hoped that would be the case.

I studied the area above the ledge and saw a jagged piece
of rock that would provide support.
 
From
there I should be able to grab a low tree limb, a strong bush, something on the
ground above to pull myself up.

I stretched and grabbed the jagged rock and used it to
support me as I placed my foot on the narrow ledge.
 
Neither crumbled under my weight and I stood
there hugging the side of the small cliff and searching with my hands for
another place to grip along the top of the rock wall.
 
I found one and continued my climb.
 
My head was now above the ground.
 
I saw a small cedar that gave me something to
grasp and use to squirm to the surface.
 
Sharp things made shallow cuts in my hands as I clawed my way up and
out.
 
The ground was damp, almost muddy,
but I didn’t care.
 
I rolled over on my
back and breathed in the night air.