On the Run (34 page)

Now my thoughts about Abilene jerked into reverse.
Keep
her away, Lord. Don’t let her come to the house, or Natalie will kill
her too!
Then a hopeful possibility occurred to me.

“Jock and Jessie wouldn’t leave a loaded gun lying around,” I pointed out.

She smiled. “Wouldn’t they?”

True. I tried again. “Mikki took all the ammunition along with the guns.” That fact I was certain about, because Abilene and I had looked for bullets when she was thinking about taking a gun out in the woods with her.

Natalie nudged the drawer shut with her good knee and opened the second one below it. The left side of the drawer, where the ammunition had been stacked, was empty. The right side held a jumble of equipment for cleaning guns, several gun manuals, and some small paper targets. And I was wrong about Mikki taking all the ammunition. I don’t know how Abilene and I had missed seeing the small green box when we were looking for bullets, but when Natalie swept a gloved hand through the drawer, there it was.

Mikki, couldn’t you have been more thorough?

I had no idea if the carton held the type of bullets these small guns used, but Mikki probably wouldn’t have left it if the bullets fit any of the guns she’d taken. The carton of bullets might even be irrelevant, I realized bleakly, because it would also be just like the paranoid Northcutts to keep fully loaded guns in the cabinet.

Now, however, Natalie had a dilemma. She needed two hands to check if the gun was loaded. If it wasn’t, she’d definitely need two hands to stuff ammunition into it. Which meant she had to let go of me.

Wrong. Natalie figured out another option.

She shifted her grip from twisting my arm behind me to returning to that rawhide-handcuff grip on my upper arm and stuck the barrel of the gun in my ribs.

“Want to take a chance on whether it’s loaded?” she asked with chilling playfulness.

Well, no.

“Are-are you going to shoot me right here?”

She was still eying the carton of bullets as if she’d like to grow a third hand to grab it. But then she said briskly, “No, I think you’ll suffer an unfortunate accident out in the woods. Unknown hunter, transient wandering through, something like that.”

“In that case, the authorities will be looking for a killer.”

“With a little luck, your body won’t even be discovered for weeks.” With her hand on my upper arm, she turned me toward the door.

“What if we get out there, and
then
you discover the gun isn’t loaded?”

This was obviously a very real possibility. She yanked me to a halt, eyebrows scrunched in a frown.

An interesting situation here. Natalie threatening me that the gun might be loaded. Me threatening her that it might not be loaded.

Natalie again chose an alternative that hadn’t occurred to me. She kept the rawhide grip on my arm but took the gun out of my ribs and aimed it at the open closet.

Click.

No bang. No bullet. The gun wasn’t loaded.

Hallelujah, Lord, thank you!

Kicking her in the shins hadn’t worked before, but it was the only weapon I had. I picked up my foot and whammed it against the side of her leg. Fortunately the bad leg was closest, and this time the distraction of the unloaded gun apparently helped.

She
oofed
and her hand loosened. I ran.

33

I tore down the hallway, around the corner, across the kitchen. My hands trembled so badly that it took several seconds of fumbling with the knob to get the door open. I hesitated a moment. I needed something for protection.

I grabbed the only item available. The paintball gun sitting there by the door.

I didn’t know how long it would take Natalie to get the Saturday night special loaded. Or maybe she’d run me down first and then load the gun.

But for the moment I was free . . . and running!

I thundered across the deck and parking area. I dodged around the motor home, putting it between the house and me for protection as I raced for the shelter of the sheds and then into the woods.

A hundred feet into the trees and brush I paused to catch my breath and listen. No pounding feet behind me. Nothing at all from the direction of the house. Which didn’t mean she wouldn’t be coming in a few more seconds.

Keep Abilene away
, I prayed breathlessly. Because Natalie would kill her too. I had no doubt about that.
Send her far, far
away on her emu hunt!

Then a rustle and crunch . . . I whirled. Had Natalie already sneaked into the woods without my seeing her?

A long neck and inquisitive eyes poked through the brush. An emu. Great. Just what I needed.

Was there any way to use an emu to my advantage? I couldn’t think of any. I waved an arm. “Go away. Go back to your pen.” The emu regarded me with interested curiosity.

Okay, the thing to do was put as many miles as possible, as fast as possible, between me and Natalie and the gun.

Except if I did that, Abilene might come back and walk right into a bullet. Somehow I first had to find Abilene, and then we’d both run.

Except the stupid bird apparently had had enough of liberty and now wanted human companionship. It shoved its thick body through the brush toward me, wings lifted as if in greeting. I raised both arms and waved the paintball gun at it. What I did not need was a big bird making noise in the brush, Natalie thinking it was me, and the bird noises leading her straight to me.

“Shoo! Go away!” I whispered with as much force as you can put into a whisper.

I may as well have been whispering endearments. The bird kept coming. Okay, drastic measures were called for. I raised the paintball gun, took general aim, and fired. Whoosh! A pink blob appeared on the emu’s chest. The bird reared its head up to full height, a surprised expression in those big eyes.

“Sorry,” I muttered, feeling guilty for shooting at it even though I knew the paintball couldn’t really have hurt the creature through that thick barrier of feathers.

Then, through the brush, I spotted a streak of red crossing the clearing, headed this way. Natalie’s red blouse! The knee didn’t seem to be slowing her down now. I forgot the emu and headed deeper into the brush. But after fifty feet I stopped. I must be making as much noise as a whole herd of emus crashing around in the woods. Would I be better off if I just made myself small and invisible in one spot? Yes. That way, Natalie would find me only if she accidentally blundered onto me.

But where? I looked around frantically. Brush that seemed so thick and impenetrable when I was trying to claw through it now looked dangerously skimpy and open-aired. Maybe back by the swampy area, I decided. The vegetation was even thicker there.

Carefully, as quietly as possible, I worked my way toward the swamp. Only to realize the emu was following. And it was making no effort to be quiet.

I didn’t make it to the swamp. I edged out from behind an old rotten stump, and there we were, Natalie and me, practically face to face. She didn’t waste time with small talk. I ducked back behind the stump just as she shot.

The gun was definitely loaded now. The shot slogged into the edge of the stump, rotten splinters flying.

Okay, she’d missed this first time. But she had
bullets
to shoot with. And what did I have? I looked at my gun. I had pink paintballs.

My chances of splattering her into surrender looked considerably more doubtful than her chance of blasting me into
dead
.

I heard her feet crunching on dry leaves as she moved forward. She wasn’t bothering to be quiet. I didn’t dare peek around the stump to see how close she was getting. I crouched and zigzagged for the protection of a thick tree trunk off to the side. Many times in my life I’ve felt invisible. This was not one of them. Two shots, close enough to
zing
, chased me.

I kept running, but I didn’t reach the tree. A tangle of roots flipped me like the gymnast I wasn’t. I landed face down in the dirt and curled there. Waiting, every muscle rigid. What did a bullet feel like? Or would I even know I’d been hit before—

“Hey, get away from me!”

Puzzled, I lifted my head. Me? Get away from her?

No, not me. The emu was buddying up to her now. Curious as always, it pecked at the gun in her hand. It jabbed at the watch on her wrist.

“Stop it! Get away!” She slapped at the emu with one hand, then lifted the gun. Hey, she was going to shoot it!

I grabbed the paintball gun that had fallen beside me and from a sitting position got off three quick shots. One added a second blob to the emu’s feathers, another pink-blobbed the front of Natalie’s red shirt. This diverted her attention from shooting the emu, and she shot at me again. The bullet kicked up dirt a foot away from my feet. But my third shot at her . . .

Natalie screamed, dropped the gun, and grabbed her face. “I can’t see!” She dipped her head, frantically shaking it and swiping at her face.

The emu, apparently deciding this was not a friendly environment after all, took off through the brush.

“I can’t see!” Natalie shrieked again. “You’ve blinded me!”

I’d hit her in the
eye
? The only spot on the body really vulnerable to a paintball, the only place it could do real damage?

Pink goo covered her face now. All
that
in one little paintball? She jumped around, hands covering both eyes, repeating her one line. “I can’t see!” The dripping pink stuff had gotten into her mouth too, and she gagged and spit.

My first horrified instinct, because I didn’t want to blind anyone, not even Natalie, was to run to her and wipe the pink stuff out of her eye.

Which I did.

But not before I grabbed the little Saturday night special where it had fallen on the ground. I kept the gun in one hand while I dabbed a tissue at her eye with the other. It was not an easy target, the way she was hopping around.

When she finally lifted her head, squinting and blinking, I stepped back, but I kept the gun targeted squarely midcenter on her.

“Are you okay?”

She was still blinking, and the eye did not look good. It was puffy and reddened from all the rubbing, and teary streaks ran past her nose through the pink goo. She was going to have one big, bad black eye, if not worse. She wiped her mouth, grimacing and spitting again.

“The stuff isn’t poisonous or anything. I think Frank said you could even eat it, and it wouldn’t hurt you.” Although I hadn’t seen any recipes that began, “Take two cups of paintballs . . .”

Frank also hadn’t specified what a paintball might do when shot directly into an eye, which I’d apparently hit dead on. Could the impact of the paintball hitting her eye actually blind her? Or that pink stuff inside the outer shell do permanent damage?

She gave up trying to keep the eye open and covered it with her hand again. Her nose was now running too. Her other eye regarded me balefully. She could apparently see the gun in my hand clearly enough, but I could also see her measuring me. Calculating if I’d actually shoot, or if she could overpower me before I did.

We regarded each other warily. I had a finger on the trigger, but I didn’t know if you had to do something else to actually shoot. Cock it or something? So I wasn’t too sure of my status here.

But I
was
the one in possession of the gun now, and she obviously wasn’t certain I wouldn’t just plug her broadside. She suddenly took a new tactic so unexpected that my mouth dropped open.

“We could split the diamonds. There’s plenty for both of us.”

She wanted to play
Let’s Make a Deal
? I was so astonished that the barrel of the gun actually dipped off target. She took a step toward me, apparently ready to call off the deal if she could slam me to the ground. I lifted the barrel of the little gun back to direct aim on her midsection.

She stopped. “It could be a good deal for both of us,” she coaxed.

I suddenly became aware of a noise farther back in the woods. A voice screaming.

“Ivy! Ivy, what’s going on? Where are you?”

Natalie jumped, startled. “Who’s that?”

“Over here!” I yelled back to Abilene.

“I thought you were alone.” Natalie looked at me accusingly, as if I hadn’t played fair.

“So sue me,” I muttered.

Abilene burst through the brush a minute later, rope still coiled around her arm. “What’s going on? I heard shots.” She spotted the gun in my hand. “You’re shooting at someone?” she asked in astonishment. Then she saw Natalie, with her eye injured and her blouse pink-blobbed, and her astonishment expanded. “Who’s she?”

I gave Natalie an identity. Natalie just stood there glowering, injured eye continuing to drip tears through her fingers and down her cheek. “I wasn’t shooting at her. She was shooting at me. And then I shot at her with the paintball gun.” I motioned to the bigger gun on the ground. “I hit her in the eye.”

“I see,” said Abilene, although the situation was apparently as clear as swamp water to her.

I gave her a quick update on murder, blond hairs on the sofa, bullet in the deer head, gold and diamonds. “Natalie suggested we split the diamonds,” I added.

Natalie wasn’t one to give up easily. “Three ways,” she bargained quickly, looking at Abilene. “All we have to do is find the combination to the safe.”

“Why should we divide anything with you?” I challenged. “I’ve got the gun. And now we both know it’s loaded.”

34

Natalie’s good eye widened, as if she believed the threat. Probably because it’s what she would do if she were in my position. She took a faltering step backward, her eye on the gun in my hand. “You . . . you wouldn’t—”

“No,” I agreed, albeit a bit regretfully. “I wouldn’t.”

Abilene tossed a loop around Natalie’s body and efficiently bound her wrists behind her. We took her to the house, kept her tied, me offering a helpful (although not particularly appreciated) dab with a tissue on her eye or nose now and then until Sgt. Dole and Deputy Hamilton arrived some forty-five minutes later. I told them what I knew, while Natalie continually protested that she knew nothing about murder or gold or diamonds, that I’d tricked her into coming out to the woods and then shot her in the eye with some strange weapon, bottom line being that I was stark raving crazy, a major menace to society. Her eye continued to swell and water, some bruising obvious now.