Blue Smoke and Murder

88

SEPTEMBER 17

6:40 P.M.

Pain was a living, wild creature clawing at Jill.

She accepted it and kept running, long legs driving hard, as wild and alive as the pain itself.

The blood flowing down her right arm made the briefcase handle slippery and sticky at the same time. She switched hands. She thought about the gun in her belly bag.

Not now.

Later.

If I’m trapped again.

The first thing her great-aunt had taught Jill was not to waste bullets on a target she couldn’t hit. Sprinting flat out the way she was, her right hand bloody from a wicked cut, she would be lucky not to shoot herself.

Don’t look over my shoulder.

He’s either behind me or he isn’t.

A shot screamed off a nearby boulder. She flinched at the spray of rock chips.

He’s behind me.

She kept running, turning unpredictably every few steps, like a rabbit chased by a coyote. Pain was a whip forcing her body to hold the sprint that was her best chance of saving her own life.

She’d hoped that the other shots she’d heard had been St. Kilda arriving and taking down Ski Mask. She’d hoped, but she hadn’t expected. Even though it felt like she’d been running forever, she knew it had been only a few minutes. Three at most. Quite probably only two.

St. Kilda hadn’t had time to arrive.

You’re on your own.

Keep running.

Her heart felt like it was going to hammer out of her chest, her breath was starting to burn, but she didn’t slow down her headlong sprint. She didn’t take her concentration off the dusk-shrouded desert in front of her and the shoulder-high, brittle brush.

The lay of the land told her there was a ravine ahead. She didn’t know where or how far.

She only knew that that ravine was her best chance of survival.