The Coffin Dancer (Lincoln Rhyme 2)

Bell said, "I saw a gun case in the living room. A couple of hunting rifles."

Sachs remembered it. She pointed. "There." They could just make it out in the dim light of dawn. Bell looked around him and hurried to it, crouching, while Sachs ran to Percey's room and looked in. The woman was asleep on the bed.

Sachs stepped back to the corridor, flicked her knife open, and crouched, squinting. Bell returned a moment later. "It's been broken into. All the rifles're gone. And no ammo for the sidearms."

"Let's get Percey and get out of here."

A footstep not far away. A click of a bolt-action rifle's safety going off.

She grabbed Bell's collar and pulled him to the floor.

The gunshot was deafening and the bullet broke the sound barrier directly over them. She smelled her own burning hair. Jodie must have had a sizable arsenal by now--all the sidearms of the marshals--but he was using the hunting rifle.

They sprinted for Percey's door. It opened just as they got there and she stepped out, saying, "My God, what's--"

The full body tackle from Roland Bell shoved Percey back into her room. Sachs tumbled in on top of them. She slammed the door shut, locked it, and ran to the window, flung it open. "Go, go, go, go . . . "

Bell lifted a stunned Percey Clay off the ground and dragged her toward the window as several high-powered deer slugs tore through the door around the lock.

None of them looked to see how successful the Coffin Dancer'd been. They rolled through the window into the dawn and ran and ran and ran through the dewy grass.

. . . Chapter Thirty-eight

Hour 44 of 45

Sachs stopped beside the lake. Mist, tinted red and pink, wafted in ghostly tatters over the still, gray water.

"Go on," she shouted to Bell and Percey. "Those trees."

She

was pointing to the nearest cover--a wide band of trees at the end of a field on the other side of the lake. It was more than a hundred yards away but was the closest cover.

Sachs glanced back at the cabin. There was no sign of Jodie. She dropped into a crouch over the body of one of the marshals. Their holsters were empty, of course, their clip cases too. She'd known Jodie had taken those weapons, but she hoped there was one thing he hadn't thought of.

He is human, Rhyme . . .

And frisking the cool body she found what she was looking for. Tugging up the marshal's pants cuff she pulled his backup weapon out of his ankle holster. A silly gun. A tiny five-shot Colt revolver with a two-inch barrel.

She glanced at the cabin just as Jodie's face appeared in the window. He lifted the hunting rifle. Sachs spun and squeezed off a round. Glass broke inches from his face and he stumbled backward into the room.

Sachs sprinted around the lake after Bell and Percey. They ran fast, weaving sideways, through the dewy grass.

They got nearly a hundred yards from the house before they heard the first shot. It was a rolling sound, echoing off the trees. It kicked up dirt near Percey's leg.

"Down," Sachs cried. "There." Pointing to a dip in the earth.

They rolled to the ground just as he fired again. If Bell had been upright the shot would have hit him directly between the shoulder blades.

They were still fifty feet from the nearest clump of trees that would give them protection. But to try for it now would be suicide. Jodie was apparently every bit the marksman that Stephen Kall had been.

Sachs lifted her head briefly.

She saw nothing but heard an explosion. An instant later the slug snapped through the air beside her. She felt the same draining terror as at the airport. She pressed her face into the cool spring grass, slick with dew and her sweat. Her hands shook.

Bell looked up fast and then down again.

Another shot. Dirt kicked up inches from his face.