High Country Nocturne (David Mapstone Mystery 8)

“He’s going to kill us all!” Mann’s voice came behind me.

“Nobody’s going to die,” Cartwright said. “Mann, you’re a disgrace. Me, I’ve got obligations that matter. The diamonds are a means to an end.”

My fear fell away and an icy calm descended. I can’t explain exactly why.

“The fucking diamonds,” I said. “There’s got to be another way.”

“No.” His eyes were black behind the heavy lids.

“They’re right here,” I said. I slowly stooped and picked up the socks, then stood and held one in each hand. “The rough is inside these.”

He briefly studied them. “Step away from the door, David!”

I stepped aside.

Suddenly somebody spat behind Cartwright. That was the sound, at least. His eyes registered surprise and then the pupils went wide as he fell forward, the front of his shirt filling with blood, and he crashed face-first into the floor.

Amy Russell stood at the bottom of the porch steps, another H&K semiautomatic in her hands. She was dressed in black, the only color being her pale face and the halo of strawberry blond hair in a tight bun.

“Down!” I yelled as I dropped the diamonds. I heard a crash as Mann forced his chair to tilt and fall. My holster snapped as I pulled out the Python and went prone on the floor beside Cartwright. Another spit and a bullet sped over my head, fracturing the wall behind me.

I fired. The big Colt made its explosive sound. Peralta shot at the same time, three quick concussions.

I looked into the snow and she was gone.

Chapter Forty-four

Peralta yelled for me to stay put but I was already crossing the porch in two long strides and leaping down the wooden steps, looking for a body on the ground.

She was gone.

A dark shape disrupted the blackness ahead, moving across road.

My ears still ringing from the gunshots, I was already moving, taking one tree, then another, for cover. But no shots came. Snowflakes hit my face and melted.

The road, in my memory from daylight, was a good thirty feet wide. I ducked behind the nearest pine, but only for a few seconds before I advanced in an infantryman’s crouch, adrenalin bearing me forward. The gravel crunched under my boots, then the surface turned to dirt and I dropped and rolled across the broken ground. It was the right move. I heard a snap behind me as a bullet meant for my head hit a tree branch. I saw the muted flash of her suppressor and fired at it.

As the echo of the Python subsided, I didn’t hear any moaning of a wounded woman. So I propelled myself ahead with elbows, forearms, and knees, crawling across pine needles and hard-packed dirt. I carefully held aside a branch so it wouldn’t make noise and shimmied to a fallen tree trunk. I hoped that I wasn’t lying on a nest of hibernating rattlesnakes. For all I knew, the Mogollon Monster was beside me.

Another shot went over my head. How could she be ranging me in this darkness? I hadn’t seen a night-sight on her pistol and she didn’t have a backpack that might be holding one. Yet I had only seen her for a second. The one constant about Amy Russell and me was that I underestimated her.

Then I saw the white cloud of frozen air coming out of my mouth. I stifled a curse and made myself breathe through my nose. That lessened the mist. I stayed behind the log and slowed my breathing with difficulty.

There was a real monster in the woods. To defeat her, I had four rounds left in the revolver and two Speedloaders in my belt. I didn’t have night-vision goggles. I didn’t have the Maglite. I had no gloves and my hands were getting numb with the cold. This would have to do.

“Amy!”

Silence.

“Amy Russell!”

“Come get me!” Her voice sounded maybe twenty yards away and all the Southern was gone from her accent.

I looked toward her and saw nothing but empty night. I could make out six feet ahead, no more. It was the blackest darkness I had ever seen. If it weren’t for

the sound of the river and the snow hitting me like icy leaves, I might as well have been in the bottom of a well.

For all I knew, she was trying to circle back to the cabin. That would have been the smart move. But I stood and descended a rocky slope. Then my feet gave way and I slid ten feet, too loud, and landed at the edge of running water.