Page 36 of Her Last Refuge

“Need to ask you something really quick,” the cop said.

“Oh,” Roy said, his hand gripping the knife in his coat pocket. He squeezed it so hard it hurt his fingers when he said, “What can I do for you?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Officer Barrett sent them the pin of Tremaine’s location within five minutes of his original call. Novak loaded it up while Rachel drove, finally off the God-forsaken backroads and back on the highway. The coordinates marked a park bordered by woodland on three sides and a two-lane street on the fourth. When they arrived, though, Rachel discovered that the cluster of trees she’d seen on the GPS map hadn’t quite nailed it down. The trees stood in a continuous dark wall around the open grass and the small parking area, their lower branches heavy enough to hold the late-afternoon shadows in place.

As Rachel turned the car in, she saw that another marked unit was already pulling up hard, lights still flashing and the last of the siren noise winding down across the open space in a ghoulish wail. It came to a shuddering stop behind another parked car that was already there, parked at the edge of what looked to be a former tennis court.

This alarmed her right away. Barrett hadn’t called since sending them the location. Had something happened? On the other hand, had things escalated to such a point that Barrett had ended up having to capture and subdue Alcott himself?

Both Rachel and Novak were out of the car as soon as the engine was off. They moved quickly; even Novak was moving faster than he had been earlier, the wound from the shed back at Alcott’s house now hastily bandaged up from the meager supplies in the first aid kit in the car. He’d put his jacket on to cover up the blood soaked shirt but he was still showing subtle signs of pain.

A slow and building chaos was still taking shape along that part of the park. Two officers from the new unit moved toward a figure sitting against the front tire of the other police car already parked there. A third officer stood a few yards away with one hand on his radio, looking out to the woods as if he were lost. A pair of civilians who had been near the trailhead were being waved back by a uniformed officer who kept one arm extended and his voice raised just enough to be heard over the radios.

When they came to the officer sitting on the ground against the car, Rachel noticed two things at once. First, there was a lot of blood. Second, the name on the tag over the man’s left breast read Barrett.

He sat with his legs stretched out and one hand pressed hard to the side of his head. Blood ran steadily between his fingers and down the side of his neck, soaking into the collar of his uniform shirt. His eyes were wide and alert but had a distant quality—the look of a man on the brink of going into shock. When Rachel dropped to a knee beside him he tried to focus. His breathing was shallow and uneven.

“Pocket knife,” he said. The word came out thick and slow. “Jabbed at me…with a knife. Caught me in the neck…just on the side, though.”

“That’s right,” the officer that had been watching over him said. “Two inches to the right, he’d be dead.”

Barrett swallowed and grimaced against the pain. “Maybe ten minutes ago. Man was heading into the woods same direction Tremaine went. I walked up to him. Next thing I knew I was on the ground. He just walked on in like nothing happened.”

Rachel looked where Barrett pointed. The main trail led straight from the edge of the parking area into the trees. The packed dirt showed recent disturbance near the entrance, then settled into the ordinary worn path that disappeared under the canopy.

She quickly looked to Novak. The color in his face had gone a shade lighter than it should have been. He looked steady on his feet, yet the blood loss was beginning to show in the set of his mouth and the careful way he held that side of his body. She wanted to tell him to stay with Barrett and the arriving units…to make sure Barrett got into the ambulance the moment it arrived.

But she knew better. Ordering him to remain behind would be the same as talking to a brick wall. He would follow whether she asked or not, even if it meant he might be hurting himself.

In the end, she figured she’d let him make that decision herself. She wasted no time, not even speaking another word. There were enough cops here already, and with an ambulance on the way, there was little she could do anyway.

Rachel turned and ran.

She crossed a small patch of thick grass between the old tennis court and the section of trail just before it entered into the thicker expanse of forest. She hit the trail at full speed, the kind of brutal, open-stride pace she hadn’t been forced to use in years. There had been a stretch of time, before the cancer diagnosis and the long recovery that followed, when she ran simply to clear her head and stay in shape. Early mornings on empty roads, the steady rhythm of her own breathing in the fog, the clean burn in her legs that had nothing to do with work. That habit had fallen away completely immediately before and after the tumor. But right now, she was relieved to find that the old speed returned without warning or invitation. Her shoes struck the packed dirt hard enough that the impact traveled straight up through her knees and into her hips. The trail unrolled in front of her in a straight line of muted brown and gray, bordered by tall grass that moved in short, dry whispers as she passed.

Somewhere behind her she heard Novak’s heavier footfalls but the gap between them remained wide. She had always been faster than him on open ground, and the injury to his shoulder was costing him length in every stride. But she didn’t look back. She trusted that he could handle himself and would pull it back before he pressed himself too hard.

The forest closed in on both sides within the first fifty yards. The light dropped in a single step from filtered shade to total cover. The air grew damper and carried the scent of leaf mold and pine.

The main trail bent left and then straightened again. Roots crossed the dirt in uneven ridges that forced small changes in her footfall. She adjusted without conscious thought, sidestepping and even leaping over a few, keeping her stride. The muscles in her thighs burned in a steady, rising line that felt almost clean compared to everything else the day had held. Her breathing settled into a hard, controlled rhythm that matched the strike of her shoes. In the back of her mind, she knew that because she hadn’t run with such intensity in nearly a year and a half, she’d feel this tomorrow. She also knew that when she did come to a stop and the adrenaline of the moment wore off, her chest was going to feel tight.

A brief thought about Paige crossed her mind while the trail held straight. She’d noticed as of late that Paige and Jack often crossed her mind during moments when she was throwing herself into potential danger. School would be out soon. Paige would be home, probably already at the kitchen table or in her room with the laptop open, already turning back to the material Eleanor had left in the lockbox. She had the same stubborn focus Rachel recognized in herself, the same refusal to leave a question alone once it had taken hold. Rachel could only wonder what her girl would think of her right now, rushing through this woodland trail after a man who had already taken three lives.

The thought lasted only a few strides before the path demanded everything again. Ahead, the trail grew narrower as it arced to the right. A new smell reached her nose, something almost metallic and moldy—which she recognized as still water after another few seconds.

With each step, the physical cost of the run was building. Her lungs worked harder. The burn in her legs moved higher into her hips. She ignored both and pushed the stride longer, sure that there was some of that old athletic prowess just waiting to pounce. Despite the slowly presenting pains, she didn’t slow. Low branches reached in from both sides. She ducked one and let another scrape across her shoulder without breaking rhythm.

She ran for perhaps another fifteen seconds when she heard something loud enough to register over the sound of her own running and heavy breathing.

She wasn’t sure what she was hearing, but it was coming from up ahead—a muffled commotion coming through the trees, low and urgent. This was followed by the distinct sound of water being disturbed with force, a heavy splash and a sort of wet dragging noise. Splashing. Heavy movement. The noise was close enough that it cut cleanly through the ordinary sounds of the woods and the soft strike of her own shoes.

Rachel put everything she had left into the final stretch. The footpath opened onto the edge of a small pond. The water sat shallow near the bank, dark and currently the scene of a violent act. It took Rachel a second or two to fully process what she was seeing as she still covered the distance.

There were two men in the shallows, maybe ten feet away from the trail. One held the other down with both hands, forcing him under the surface with deliberate, sustained pressure. The man on top had his weight fully committed, his hands placed at the other man’s throat, with one knees planted on the man’s torso underwater.

She figured it was a safe assumption that the man on top was Roy Alcott and the man currently being drowned was George Tremaine.