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“Keep moving, Grant!” she ordered. Dammit, she didn’t know if their pursuer was dead or had a flesh wound, and she wasn’t going to stop and find out.
“Move move move!”
He didn’t. He was standing in the ravine waiting for her.
“Did he hit you? Are you hurt?”
“I hithim. Now move, dammit!”
They ran together.
She picked a route from the intersection of Krumville and Lower Sahler Mill Road that mostly ran parallel to the road.
“He’s not following,” Grant said, winded.
“He’s not giving up.”
“He could be dead.”
“I don’t think so.”
She wondered if the police had been called. Charlie would have...if the message had gotten through. If not Charlie, then a neighbor?
Except this wasn’t New York City, this was rural New York, and maybe people here in the mountains didn’t think twice about gun fire. There were black bears and bobcats and other wild animals. A lot of farms here. Even in New York, farmers had a right to protect their horses and chickens and sheep from four-legged predators.
Her guess was that if the shooter was injured, he’d go back to his truck, patch himself up, and beat them to the house.
She needed to get to high ground and get a call out.
“We need backup,” she said.
“Do you have a signal?”
“Not here. I need to get back to the house. I can get a good signal from there. But that could also be where the asshole is headed.”
“If he’s alive.”
“We have to assume that he is,” she said.
They also had daybreak to contend with. Dawn was rapidly falling into the valley, and that meant real quick they wouldn’t have the cover of darkness.
“We’re going to cut through here.” She motioned to the forest and a path that was barely a path that wound through it.
“We’ll get lost.”
“I don’t get lost,” she snapped.
He didn’t say anything, just followed her.
Ten minutes later, she turned south again and then west ten minutes after that. She didn’t see anyone in the woods, didn’t hear anyone, didn’t even hear a vehicle—though they were pretty far from the road.
Soon, she stopped. “The house is through there,” she said.
Grant stared. “You were right.”
“I need to check it out—see if he doubled back. Stay here.”
He looked around. “If he’s following us—”
