to return to the crime scene, he took little comfort. Fiona was not answering her phone. This fact alone drove him toward the Engleton place at a dangerous pace, nearly keeping up with Beatrice, and by doing so, encouraging the dog ahead at a full run. He pushed her faster; she pulled him along. But he was no match for her. She took his pursuit of her as some kind of game and quickly outpaced him.
Two minutes passed, Walt charging down the descending path. Five. Beatrice’s absence—her failure to return to him—began to weigh on him. Had the sense of game won out over her obligation to follow the scent? Had he confused her with his running? He couldn’t be sure, the woods unfamiliar to him, but it felt as if he would arrive at the estate any minute.
Beatrice yipped. It was a cry. A painful cry, and it set into him a sense of panic and dread as if one of his daughters had called out. Beware when the hunter becomes the hunted. His first and only conclusion was that the killer had somehow known the dog was trailing him, that Walt, by challenging the dog, had driven her headlong into a trap—that that yip had been Beatrice’s final moment, one last desperate attempt to warn Walt.
His response visceral and immediate, his foot speed increased exponentially, running blindly now, all out. It was more than a connection between them, it was a bond, Walt to her and her to him. It was something in his blood. The kind of something that couldn’t be explained to another human being without sounding foolish, even childish. The love of family. The love of forever.
Her yip rang in his ears. Burned. A baby’s cry in the night. A call for help. His eyes blurred, watery from the run, or from tears, or from both. He wiped them away but all was a blurry, darkened landscape, the path’s lighter shade swirling and shifting, suddenly a river beneath his feet.
A geometric shape among it all: the Engleton roof.
And then the pain.
It ripped through both legs at the shins. He hadn’t seen a log across the path, but he went down face-first, losing the gun as he reached out to break the fall, his head flirting with unconsciousness in an effort to escape the pain. It seared from his broken shins, up through his knees, his groin, his stomach and exploded into his head as he cried out a sickening, agonized shriek.
Blackness loomed at the edges of his consciousness as he rolled over and drew his knees into his chest, writhing and gasping for air. Breathe through it! he told himself, as impossible as it was. He could ill afford to pass out. From somewhere through the fog of pain, Fiona appeared on her knees, a baseball bat in hand. Even with the evidence so blatant, it took Walt several seconds to connect the bat with the excruciating pain in his legs, and only then in what amounted to total disbelief. She was mouthing, “I’m sorry . . .” beneath the intense ringing in his ears and the waves of his own internal groaning.
Then, from behind her, came the mountain man like a specter. He emerged through the darkness, drawn by Walt’s shriek or out of some sixth sense that made him aware of Fiona’s presence. Whether a lunatic or a calculating murderer who understood the value of a hostage, he moved straight for Fiona, who was herself too absorbed in her own mishap to have any awareness of him. But it wasn’t Fiona he wanted.
She screamed and rolled away, releasing the bat as the man seized hold of it. It hung at his side like the bat of a hitter stepping up to home plate staring down the pitcher—Walt.
Whether traumatized or demonized, vengeful, or drugged and demented, both men knew what the mountain man intended to do with the bat as he took another step closer. Fiona, who had scooted away on her back, thrusting herself along the forest floor by digging in her heels, who had moved a good five yards away, also saw the future—where the next ten seconds were headed. Whether to protect him, or herself—Walt couldn’t fathom such thoughts, still gripped in his pain—she rolled to her knees and began sweeping her arms through the pine straw, in what at first appeared such a lame and odd behavior. The gun, he realized in a flash of lucidity. She was going for