Shaw moved through the dark forest. Without a flashlight the going was slow. Because he was making as little noise as possible, doubly so. His normal footfall was very quiet, but in the woods he could hear every pebble that shifted under his soles.
His weren’t the only sensitive ears. A crunch of moving brush came from the trees far to his left. Blacktail deer, or raccoon, or something else with enough heft to broadcast its hasty exit from his presence. Shaw stopped and listened until the patter of the rain on the branches was once again the only sound.
He’d tamped down the instinctive urge to rush through the trees, reach his boat, and get gone. Short of offshore the woods were the safest place he could be. Even if the cops never showed, he could hide in the dense brambled acres for hours or even days.
Tucker and Hargreaves and the two shooters with their sniper rifles. Those were the remaining hostiles. Maybe Pollan, the female member of Kilbane’s team. No one seemed to know what had happened to Pollan.
Five left, then, to be safe. Some of them maybe fleeing. Maybe under arrest.
Maybe hunting him through the woods, right this minute.
He kept going. The scents of fresh pine sap and decaying bark suffused his nose. The alpha and omega of forest life. He came across a trail, or at least a line through the trees a little wider and clearer of vegetation than the woods around it. Shaw followed its path west.
A piece of wood snapped, somewhere behind him.
Shaw ducked low and froze.
Breaking wood was not an animal noise. Not of the light-footed beasts of the San Juans.
He waited. The snapping sound didn’t repeat. He moved off the trail, very carefully, feeling with his foot before each step to be sure there was nothing beneath his boot but moss and sodden leaves.
Ten feet from the trail, he crouched behind the rotted shell of what had once been the trunk of a massive hemlock. Shaw’s eyes had long since adjusted as much as they would to the deep black under the forest canopy. He could make out the trees and the larger bushes. Looking upward from his crouch, he could see individual branches outlined against patches of overcast sky. Rain was still falling. More heard than felt, an arrhythmic tapping on leaves and in puddles.
Over the raindrops Shaw caught another noise from down the trail. Closer this time. Within half a minute, the new sound had divided in two: the repeated beat of footsteps and the soft rasp of waterproof fabric moving against itself.
Someone coming. Along the same path Shaw had found. Moving faster and consequently less quietly.
The person neared. A large man, hooded and holding a long rifle, its barrel down and to the left. The man’s breath hissed through his nose. In and out, a quicker rhythm than his steps. He was pumped up and alert.
One of Hargreaves’s hitters. The bigger of the two, the bearded Viking. Not searching for Shaw. His attitude and attention were focused on covering ground through the dark with speed. Heading for whatever extraction point he and his partner had arranged.
Without conscious thought Shaw raised and aimed the Browning. One less enemy. He didn’t even have to kill the man; putting a round through the killer’s leg at this range would be as easy as through his heart, even in the gloom.
But the shot would be heard by every person on the island. The rest of the Paragon team might be in the forest, or on the shore to either side. Giving away his position would be giving away his primary advantage.
Hargreaves’s people could scatter. They could run as far as they chose, pick new names, new faces, even. If the law didn’t find them, he would. Shaw made that promise to himself as he let the man pass. In order to let the man pass. Feeling his teeth clench tighter with every fading step.
After a count of fifty, he carried on. The map in his head told him the forest extended another quarter mile before the steep bluff and the shore beneath, where he’d concealed the Zodiac in the rocks.
A hundred yards along, he heard a drum’s low beat far off to his eleven o’clock. Seconds later the same thump. And again. A familiar sound. The hull of a lightweight boat bumping against land.
That must be their escape route. A boat not far from his own. Had someone found the Zodiac in its hiding place?
He should hang back until he heard their boat leave. There was nothing to be served but his own ego from going after Hargreaves’s hired killers now. Pride could get him killed, and quickly.
Better to let them escape. Absolutely.
Shaw turned off the path and headed toward the sound.