FIFTY-TWO

The world tilted and spun as Monk opened his eyes, his brain fighting to make some sense of where he was.

In a tree, he realized … in the same tree he’d hit when he’d fallen out of the sky. And then it all came back to him. Bethany’s treachery … his instinctive leap after her when she left him to die … the horrendous explosion … Dear God, Monk thought, as he remembered the rest of it, but he shook the thought out of his mind.

Bethany was lying. Lisa wasn’t in that chopper when it exploded. He tried to form a mental picture of her sitting at her desk back at WFO, but for some reason he couldn’t. It was shock, he realized … he was in shock. Lisa was safe, he absolutely refused to believe otherwise. She would be at the loft when he got back, and he could put her out of his mind until then.

He looked over his right shoulder for any sign of Bethany, but didn’t see her. He struggled to lift his head and check the other side, then as far below him as he could see through the dense foliage that had slowed his fall enough to save his life. Nothing.

Next he checked his physical condition.

He was battered, bloodied, bruised, and in shock, quivering like a banjo string, with a nose so broken he could hardly use it to breathe. Its steady throbbing matched his heartbeat, and grew even worse when he looked down at the ground that seemed a hundred miles away. He reached up and touched his nose very carefully, tracing its new profile, lumpy now, and pointing a bit sideways. Painful as hell but not enough to disable him. He groaned as he tried to move, then decided he shouldn’t until he’d checked for broken bones.

He lifted his shirt first, looked down at his side, relieved to see that the bullet wound was hardly more than a deep scratch. Plenty of blood, but already drying and crusting over. His crash into the tree had done him worse, much worse. Thank God for the thick canopy of foliage, or he’d be dead. He breathed deeply and exhaled. Good. None of the stabbing pain that would indicate a broken rib. Lots of blood on his arms and hands, but bright red, not the kind to worry about. He felt along his face—careful to avoid his nose—and came away with even more blood, again none of it the seriously dark color of blood from somewhere deep inside his body. He wriggled his toes, then his feet, before deciding he was ready to get started.

Unfortunately, that didn’t mean much.

Ready or not, he was still stuck in the top of a very tall tree.

A black oak, he realized, as he looked at the serrated edges of the leaves. He was wedged between a massive limb and a smaller branch shooting up and to the left. He used his arms to dislodge himself from the crotch he was stuck in, to pull away slowly, groaning and sweating as he made his way to a limb big enough to hold his weight.

Monk sat for a moment, pushing aside the foliage and staring down, trying to guess how far off the ground he was. Seventy feet, maybe more. This was old growth, the trees as tall as buildings. To fall from here would be nearly as bad as tumbling out of the sky.

He gave himself five minutes to regain enough strength for his descent, then lowered one leg in the direction of the branch below him. Eight or ten feet away, and that was a big problem. In his condition a steep flight of stairs would be a challenge, trying to swing from limb to limb on the way out of this tree was crazy. But so was staying here. Unless he could figure out a way to fly to Battle Valley Farm, he had to get to the ground. Had to use the deeply furrowed bark of the trunk for hand and foot holds, until he was down.

And that’s what he did.

Clutching the bark, kicking his feet into the furrows, he shinnied downward, through the leaves, past the branches, until after what felt like an hour he reached the bottom branch, where he sat for a few moments, staring at the ground. Christ. It was still ten feet away. Ten feet didn’t sound like much, but right now it looked like a mile. He took a deep breath through his mouth, then lowered himself until he was hanging from the bottom branch for an instant before letting go. The last four feet felt like an endless plunge. Monk rolled as he hit the layer of leaves and soft forest soil, but lay stunned and breathless anyway, gasping like a fish in the bottom of a boat.

A full minute later he rolled onto his back and stared at the dense forest around him, the towering black oaks and sycamores, the sparse undergrowth. He lay there and tried to think, then found himself reaching to his pocket for his cell phone to call Lisa before remembering once again that he’d left it in the Ferrari.

Bethany had to be close.

They’d been falling together until just seconds before he hit the tree. She must be somewhere in this tree with him. Then he realized he was forgetting something … that he’d been unconscious, that she could easily be miles away by now. Through the headset in the chopper, he’d heard her telling Franklin to expect her in an hour. It was best to admit that she had a huge head start and that he wasn’t going to catch her sitting here.

Monk pulled himself to his knees, then stood, his head spinning for a moment before his equilibrium returned. Gradually his mind began to focus. He had to make his way to the nearest road, then hope to find someone willing to drive him the rest of the way to the farm. He was out in the country. Country people were good about helping out. Then he looked down at himself and realized it might not be that easy.

His slacks were torn—one knee shredded—and there was blood all over them. One shoe was gone, somewhere up in the tree, he guessed, and that made limping around on the other one useless. He kicked it off. His socks wouldn’t last long, but they’d be better than nothing until they fell apart. Even worse, his sports jacket was still in what was left of the helicopter, along with his credentials and badge. He was too exhausted to curse. Without his ID and badge, he was just another injured man who looked more like a homeless bum than an FBI agent. No one would pick up a man his size, looking like this. He could claim he’d been in an accident, but they’d insist on taking him to a hospital, not to Battle Valley Farm.

In the next instant, Monk realized he was getting ahead of himself.

He didn’t have to worry about hitchhiking until he found a road, and he didn’t even know which way to begin looking.

What he did know was that Bethany had none of his problems.

She was expected at Franklin’s farm shortly, which meant she had transportation nearby, a vehicle stashed in the woods or a car and driver waiting for her. He’d seen a road from the sky, northwest of their heading, just before he heard Bethany’s voice through his headset, and she would have planned to come down near one. She wouldn’t have put herself in the position of having to hike for miles to get to her transportation.

He had to get his bearings before doing anything else. The forest was so dense he couldn’t see the sun. He tried to remember his Boy Scout training, to recall other ways to determine which way was north. He looked around for moss on the trees, but realized he couldn’t remember for sure what that meant.

The sound of a horn brought his head around.

A car horn.

No … more like a truck horn … one of those air horns the diesel trucks used.

But where? From which direction?

The sound had come from his right, Monk guessed, but he had to hear it again to make sure. He strained to listen, but heard nothing. He remained motionless for two minutes, but still heard nothing. Not good, but at least he now knew the road was nearby. Now all he had to do was find it. He would have to guess, then take his chances. To his right, that’s where the sound had come from. That was the first direction he’d try.

He slogged through the underbrush, shoving aside the occasional low-hanging tree limb, trying to keep moving in a straight line. A dozen steps later he tripped and fell, crashing to the ground, but managed to protect his nose from the worst of it. He lay there for a moment, then heard another noise. A car passing, it sounded like … a car close by.

He struggled to his feet, staggered a few paces, then fell again when the ground suddenly sloped away sharply. He seemed to shoot through the last of the brush, then downward into a shallow ditch. He lifted himself to his knees and felt a rush of adrenaline as he saw the road.