FORTY-TWO

From a distance he knew they were dead. He’d swung wide around Godfrey’s Hell and approached the old Babcock logging camp from the ridge above it. The battered dogtrot cabin looked like a hundred others, remnants from the last century. No smoke wisped from the chimney, and no dogs dozed beneath the porch. Even when he drew closer it seemed harmless, save for the broken floorboards and jagged windowpanes. Not until he scouted the area from the close perimeter of the trees did he see them. There, in the back, sprawled in the weeds, he found Mary and her friends, semi-clothed and motionless, like dolls abandoned by some careless child. His throat closed as Homer whimpered. Whitman had beaten him here.

First Billy, now Mary. Jonathan felt as if an Atagahi boulder had been suddenly heaved against his heart.

He tied Homer to a tree and clicked off the safety of his shotgun. With his hands sweating, he walked toward the three women.

They lay in the grass beneath the single tree that grew behind the cabin. The tall one wore a plaid shirt and ridiculously short jeans, and her face looked like a prizefighter’s the morning after the night before. The curly-haired one still wore her sweatshirt and Yankees cap, but her left foot was red and swollen with infection. Jonathan stared at her nose, unbelieving. When she’d been at the store she’d been a beauty. Now she was something else entirely.

Reluctantly, he looked at Mary. A filthy sweatshirt covered the upper part of her body, but her legs were bare. He could see no apparent wounds or injuries, although blood dotted the tops of her hiking boots like spatters of dark red paint and her legs were torn and scratched.

He frowned. It didn’t add up. Why would a man gut-shoot another man, batter two innocent women into hamburger, and then leave his intended victim virtually untouched? Why not line them up with their faces to a wall and simply execute them? And why did he see no bullet holes? If these women had been shot with the same gun as Billy, the wind should be whistling Dixie through the holes in their chests.

He glanced back at the cabin. It sat there still and sad, as if Babcock’s loggers had just picked up their axes and moved on. Even as he watched, a tiny brown wren began hopping through one of the broken windows. The cabin was empty, he realized. Whitman had gone. But where? Was he scurrying through the distant trees, trying to put as many mountains as possible between him and his victims? Or was he hiding just beyond the creek, waiting to see who might wander by?

Jonathan’s eyes narrowed. He scanned the forest that surrounded the cabin. He would be the proverbial sitting duck if Whitman was out there, watching. But he had to take care of Mary. He would just have to take his chances.

Keeping his gun pointed at the ground, he crept through the grass without a sound. When he reached Mary he extended two fingers, seeking a pulse in her throat.

Her eyes flew open the instant he touched her. He flinched at the look in them. She saw him, and yet she didn’t see him. She pressed herself against the earth, silent and wary.

“Mary, it’s me!” He spoke softly, not wanting to frighten her any further. “Jonathan. Jonathan Walkingstick.”

“What?” She blinked at the war paint smeared grotesquely across his face.

He rubbed Billy’s dried blood from his skin and touched her cheek. “It’s me,” he repeated. “I’ve been looking for you.”

For a moment she stared at him as if she’d never seen him before, then she said, “Jonathan?”

He nodded, and only then did she fling herself around his neck and cling to him, as if he might carry her out of some building that was burning inside her.

“I thought you were dead,” he said as he locked his arms around her. She trembled in his grasp. He held her tight and buried his face in her hair, once again losing himself in the softness of her skin.

“We were in so much trouble!” She pushed back and looked at him hard, as if to make certain he was not a dream. “I thought he killed you, too.”

“Why would anybody kill me?”

“He had this.” She held up the photo of Jodie Foster.

Jonathan stared at the picture. It made no sense. Mary had been tracked by a killer from Atlanta. A brain-fried mountain trapper had snitched his snapshot. He shook his head, baffled. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”

“Come with me.” She grabbed his hands. “I’ll show you.”

“What about your friends? Don’t they need help?”

She glanced at Joan and Alex. “They’re sleeping, thank God. Don’t wake them yet.”

He helped her up and pulled off his army jacket for her to wrap around her waist. She pressed herself tight against him, as if she were afraid he might disappear.

“Did you know this is Babcock’s old Wolfpen camp?” he asked. “The place they used to warn us about when we were kids.”

“I figured it might be when we started tracking along the railroad bed. They were right to keep us away from here. Just look at that.” She pointed as they passed a gaping black hole in the ground.

He peered into it, then he looked up at her in astonishment. “That thing’s ten feet deep. There must be a dozen rattlers at the bottom.”

“Come on.” She grabbed his arm and tugged him toward the cabin. “There’s more.”

They hurried on to the porch, their footsteps breaking the sunlit silence of the clearing. At the cabin door, Mary stopped.

“There’s a man in there. He attacked Joan and Alex at Atagahi. He raped Joan, stole all our clothes and supplies, then kidnapped Alex. Joan and I tracked them here.”

Jonathan said, “Yellow dots on the south side of the trees.”

Mary nodded. “That was us.”

“But what about Billy?” he asked.

“Billy?” Mary frowned. “You mean Billy Swimmer?”

“Yeah. Our old friend Billy. You tracked the guy who stole my picture and kidnapped your friend. Didn’t you ever see Billy?”

Mary shook her head. “I haven’t seen Billy since the day we drove up to Little Jump Off.” She pushed open the cabin door. “Just look. There’s a whole table of trophies from the people he’s murdered.”

He knew someone was dead long before his eyes adjusted to the dark. The smell of blood and shit poured from the cabin like a malevolent cloud. In the shadows he could hear the hum of busy flies. Mary took his hand and pulled him across the room.

She stopped well before they neared the corpse, watching motionless as Jonathan knelt beside it. With the tip of a Bowie knife still protruding from his chest, lay the man he’d last seen at Little Jump Off.

“Jesus Christ, Mary! When you ladies kill somebody, you don’t mess around.”

The man’s skin was mottled with death and blackened blood. A fly was dining on one open, unseeing eye. Mary knew nothing about Billy or Whitman, Jonathan realized. She had killed the man who’d attacked her friends. She was totally unaware that someone else was tracking her. He looked up at her.

“Mary,” he began, choosing his words carefully. “You may not have killed the right man.”

“But that’s exactly what Mary Crow does best.” A deep voice rang out behind them. “Or haven’t you figured that out yet?”