Shaw reached the others and they ran as fast and as far as they could. Shaw half-carried Katie as they slipped and slid and rolled across ground that, at best, should have been traveled over at a measured, cautious pace.
Two miles later they collapsed, flat on the ground, their breaths coming so hard that it sounded like they were sucking on their last bits of oxygen.
“How?” Whit finally said as he sat up, his chest still heaving.
“I don’t know how,” answered Shaw. “He outmaneuvered us.”
Reggie slowly sat up. “We have to keep going. If we have to jump in the Belle Strait and swim to a boat, that’s what we have to do. We stay here we die.”
Whit punched his knife into the dirt. “Get a clue. We are dead. It’ll be the dogs on us next. We’ve got no chance, Reggie.”
Shaw stood, helping Katie up with him. “Reggie’s right. We have to keep moving.”
Whit looked up at him. “You really think that will make any difference?”
“No, but I’m going to make that son of a bitch work a little bit more for it. How about you?”
Reinvigorated, Whit slipped the knife in his pocket and jumped to his feet. They ran as hard as they could to the water.
CHAPTER
98
WHAT WAS LEFT of Alan Rice was swept into plastic trash bags and carried off. The gorged dogs, blood running down their jowls, were corralled with the long metal control poles and their muzzles were once more attached. Sitting on his haunches, his rifle lying across his thighs, Kuchin watched this work even as he muddled over his next maneuver.
He looked off into the distance. Water. It was a requirement of life. They would be heading there now. It was logical. Indeed, it was their only option. He could kill them all easily right now, but that wasn’t the point. Kuchin could have shot Shaw when he went to Rice’s aid or after Shaw fled the dogs. Yet again, it wasn’t when they were going to die. It was how. And he would dictate those terms. And they had done one thing that he assumed they would. He rose, and as he did so he smiled. They would not understand the significance of their action now, of course. But he intended to point it out moments before it was all going to end.
One down, three to go. Well, two down if he counted the man back at the house, but Kuchin didn’t really care about that. He already had the order of deaths planned out. The woman would go last. Kuchin had not forgotten his earlier desire. He would possess her and then finish her. He could think of no better revenge. And her death would be by far the most painful of any of them. In his backpack he had his skin peeler. He would see if he could beat his record of under one hour. He felt that he could. He could already hear her screams in his mind.
“Pascal?” he said, and the small man appeared next to him almost immediately.
“Yes, Mr. Waller?”
“It is time to move on, I think.” He looked to the sky. The darkest moment of night had come and gone. Above him now was the very earliest appearance of the tipping point of night passing to dawn. “They will be heading to the strait. The ships.”
Pascal nodded in agreement. “The channel is wider than they probably think. And there was an ice floe reported there yesterday, hugging the Labrador side. All the ships will stay well to the south of that. They will see no ships.”
“I believe they will realize that when they arrive there. It will be lighter then. They will wait and they will try to signal in the hope that there is something out there. The gun safe was intact?”
“Yes sir. We checked after they left. We’d emptied it of all the weapons and ammo just in case
they were successful in breaking into it. They only took knives. The big man used his on one of the dogs, but he seems fine.”
Kuchin stroked the barrel of his custom-built rifle. “A knife. A poor weapon against this.”
“I can take the shortcut and turn them back towards you. Tactically, they will have nowhere else to go except into the strait.”
“Do that, Pascal. Drive them to me.” He pulled out a pocket map and Pascal shone a light on it. “Drive them there.” He indicated a spot on the map.
“It’s a good choice,” said Pascal, nodding his head approvingly. He looked back at one of the trucks where they were loading the trash bags with the remains of Alan Rice.
“He was a stupid man.”
“He was actually a very smart man, which can make someone do very stupid things. In intelligence there is ambition. And in ambition there is peril.”
“If you say so, Mr. Waller.”
“Drive them to me, Pascal.”