Each little bit of deepening gloom arriving torturously slow.
But while he sat there like a wounded animal, he had time to think and plan, looking at all the possibilities.
None of them good.
But one had to be selected.
He looked up at the sky, the last bit of light fading.
* * *
Now, night fallen, Jack made his way through the brambles, ignoring scratching thorn bushes and jagged branches.
He had expected someone to be at his car, guarding it.
But no.
They must have had confidence in Dunphy and how tied up Jack had been.
He crawled down to the car. This time when he opened up the back, he’d have to kill the interior light as quickly as possible. A switch on the roof. Still, it would glow for seconds. Someone could see.
He looked around, but in the gloom he couldn’t tell if anyone was watching.
Nothing to do but take a breath and open the door.
He unlocked a back door and as fast as possible he slid in and reached up to the ceiling switch. Bright light filled the Explorer’s cabin. And then it went dark.
A moment, waiting.
He shut the door quietly and moved to the back. He opened the rear door. Lifted the rug of the luggage area. Fiddled to get the key into the hole. Opened it. So practiced with that move by now.
No light, so he had to feel, pulling out his other guns—a .44, a Glock. His rifle was gone. Nothing he could do about that. He filled his pockets with shells, making them bulge.
No holster, so he stuck the .44 under the front of his belt, the Glock under his belt at the back.
Then—one other item. One of the explosive devices. A timed C4 charge, a doorbuster. He slipped one in his back pocket.
He shut the tailgate door and started making his way around the camp, through the woods.
* * *
A few times, he passed close to a guard. But he’d stop, let them move on, then continue on his way.
There was a narrow point where he’d have to walk out, exposed.
An open area leading from the woods on one side of the property near the lake to the woods behind the cabins.
Best just to stand up and walk.
People still here, maybe even some ordinary guests—like the Blairs were, or Jack’s family.
If Lowe felt confident he had things in hand, scaring Jack in the kitchen, all trussed up, then maybe Jack had time.
He stood up and walked from one piece of woods to another, stepping across a bit of camp road. Until he got close to the other wooded section, and then he moved into it.
And kept walking, deeper into the woods, until he stopped, crouched, waited.
No sign of having been discovered.
Crouching made the gun muzzles dig into him. Despite the pain, so good to know they were there.
He started circling around, to the open field, and farther … to Shana’s cabin with its split sections of wood laying outside.
* * *
Jack waited, watching the cabin as he saw Shana moving around. At one point, she came out and he thought she might leave.
But she simply stood in the open doorway, smoking, and then went back inside.
He moved from his secluded cover. Again, he’d have to cross an open stretch of ground. And the clock had to be ticking. Sooner or later, someone had to come to the kitchen and find the dead cooks.
At the end of the woods, he stood up, then ran up to her cabin as best he could. He pulled out the Glock, and threw open the door.
He didn’t see Shana. And then she came out of a back room. With luck, what she was smoking wasn’t just tobacco.
She looked up, confused.
“Stop right there,” Jack said.
She stopped moving.
“Thought you had … another engagement. All tied up.”
A laugh. She was stoned.
“Sit the fuck down.”
But even stoned, Shana turned and grabbed an arm weight off a back table and threw it awkwardly at Jack. He dodged it but she immediately leaped at him like an animal springing.
Her weight sent them both falling back. And too quickly she had landed on top and was able to grab her ax leaning near the front door.
Her right knee had pinned Jack’s arm holding the gun. She quickly smashed the butt of the ax into Jack’s jaw, once, then whipped it the other way for another hard smack.
Stoned or not, she had gotten the advantage quickly.
Who the hell trained her? She’d mentioned the army, but he’d never met a soldier who could be
“Want to play, Jack? Too bad it’s this—there are better games.”
She rammed the ax into his midsection. Knocking all the wind out, and then she changed the angle.
The gun useless. But Jack could slide his other arm free. Shana brought the ax back, her glassy eyes trained on him, perhaps picturing how she was about to split him like a tree trunk.
His right hand shot up and wrestled for control of the ax handle against her strong two-handed grasp.
He locked his arm, forcing her to twist the ax left and right in an attempt to free it.
Forgetting the important job her right leg did in holding down his left arm.
