Chapter 14
14
JACOB
T he gunshot startles me out of a dream. The scream that comes afterward guarantees I won’t sleep until Catherine’s back.
I don’t know that I’ve fallen asleep until the crack echoes through the clearing. It’s a punch to the chest. I sit bolt upright in the chair by the window, adrenaline hitting like a lightning strike.
She’s not there.
She’s not in the clearing.
I get my face closer to the window. She’s not pounding on the door. Not calling my name.
I’m on my feet before I remember how ungodly fucking tired I am. Leaning against the window frame feels like a pathetic way to stay standing, but?—
“Better than nothing.”
Catherine’s not here to laugh at our terrible joke, and…
It’s sunny out.
Sunny. What the hell happened to the rain? I didn’t notice it stopping. It got lighter a few times, but it still felt like it would come down forever, and now—sunlight.
I blink hard. Am I dreaming? Is this a nightmare? My vision clears when I rub my eyes.
Awake, then.
Was the gunshot a dream? Did I only imagine someone screaming? If I’ve learned anything in these past months, it’s that my mind isn’t always reliable.
There are no dead people in the clearing. No Bettencourt. No James Hill. My alive-and-in-prison father hasn’t made an appearance. I’m seeing things accurately, at least for the moment.
Every heartbeat is so powerful it makes me want to be sick. I can’t afford that. I’m lightheaded already. My balance is off. I’m almost certain I could float away.
Not an option. I need to be here for Catherine.
I’ll race the sunrise.
I know that wasn’t a promise Catherine could count on keeping. She knew it, too. We couldn’t be sure of the distance from the cabin to the radio tower. I hope to fucking God it’s a radio tower. I’ll raze heaven and turn it into a rundown strip mall if it’s not.
Regardless, we couldn’t be sure of the terrain, either.
It’s at least an hour past sunrise now. Maybe later.
Jesus. How long was I asleep? I wasn’t going to fall asleep at all. That was never part of this plan.
I sit back down and force myself to breathe until the worst of the lightheadedness has faded. Nothing’s changed in the clearing. The only difference is that the rain stopped.
That’s—
That’s good. Catherine needed the rain to stop. Radio towers work better when the weather is good.
A headache collects at my temples. I need to get my pulse fully under control. Catherine will be furious if she returns and I’m sprawled on the floor in a dead faint. She’ll be twice as furious if she returns and I can’t open the door for her.
In that case, I might get to watch her break it down. There’s no doubt she has the strength.
I breathe and breathe and breathe.
When I think the waiting itself might kill me, I get out of my chair and go into the bathroom. Cool water on my face clears my head. Brushing my teeth makes me feel like a human with a working, reliable brain who is able to think.
I put on a T-shirt. Boxers. Socks. Jeans. The jeans are stiffly clean. Catherine washed them and dried them over the back of a chair in the light of the window before it started to rain.
She did that for me, and she didn’t have to.
She didn’t have to go to the radio tower, either.
I know I couldn’t stop her, but fuck , I wish I’d followed her. I wish I’d insisted on going, too. I wish I’d said something about sickness and health.
But washing up and getting dressed means I have to sit down and catch my breath. That doesn’t bode well for a hike of any distance.
I give myself two minutes and get back up.
The first-aid kit is back in the cabinet where Catherine found it. I sit on the floor like a human iPhone intent on conserving my battery and pull out the kit. Everything inside the metal box is arranged neatly, with no wasted space. I go through the contents quickly, reading labels and tossing them down in no particular order.
I just need?—
All I need?—
Wedged between a packet of
I just need?—
All I need?—
Wedged between a pack of iodide tablets and a packet of electrolyte tablets, I find a miracle.
A package of caffeine pills.
Should I be taking caffeine pills in my current state?
No.
But if I have to go after Catherine—and there is no question, I have to go after her, even if it’s only to meet her on her way back—then I need some help. The cabin has not helpfully provided a Starbucks, so this is it.
My body does not want to swallow a couple of caffeine pills with water. I do it anyway. Then I find our second steak knife and glance out the window one more time.
Nothing.
It’s simple enough to unlock the door, and even simpler to open it. Not quite as simple to walk outside into the bright, humid air. I start by bracing my hand on the doorframe and lean out for another scan of the clearing.
Nothing.
No animals. No Raymond Harris. No Catherine.
I’m caught there on the threshold, torn between wanting to make her happy by staying safely locked inside the cabin and making myself happy by unsafely leaving the clearing and going to wherever Catherine is. If the gunshot wasn’t a figment of my imagination, then I need to get to her.
The scream didn’t sound like Catherine.
At least—I don’t think it sounded like Catherine.
That makes up my mind. Maybe she only screams like that when she’s been shot. I am not resting if she’s bleeding out in the mud with Raymond Harris looming over her and cackling.
I pull the door closed behind me and go.
I haven’t gone three steps when a second scream tears through the air. It knocks the wind out of me.
That’s Catherine screaming. That’s her.
I’m not aware of crossing the clearing to the nearest tree trunk. She’s in agony, howling, incoherent. The only word I understand is my name.
She stops.
My body tries to run, but I can’t. It came from—Catherine, Jesus, fuck—it came from my left. From what I can see of the sun in these tall trees, that’s west. A path isn’t immediately obvious, so I tear the camouflage netting down from between the trees. There’s a spot in the mud that’s a little deeper than the rest.
Catherine’s footprints from earlier?
I take a chance and follow them through some gaps in the trees.
From here, the clearing is invisible. I can’t see the waterfall from this path, but I can hear it. The water is no louder than a whisper when something catches my eye.
What was it? Black soil, sodden enough to have turned to mud. Tree trunks in vibrant browns. Green leaves.
White.
Something white.
There are grains of rice down near the roots of the tree.
Ten steps later—more rice.
Catherine left a map for me.
I would do anything for her.
Anything. Anything. Anything.
This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.
The hardest thing physically, I mean. The hardest and most foolish thing I ever did emotionally was try to leave Catherine behind in that hotel room.
Emotionally, this hike is the right decision. It’s the only decision. My wife is in distress. She’s hurt. I’m going to find her. No amount of pain is going to stop me.
And there is a lot of pain.
The thought of putting food in my mouth has made me ill for hours upon hours. Days, if I’m honest. Weeks. Perhaps even months.
That means I’m badly in need of calories. I have no reserves to draw on. I’m weak from whatever that infection was and from the antibiotics in the kit. I looked at the bottle. They seemed like a good option in an emergency, and an emergency is what it was.
The first-aid kit did not include any heavy duty painkillers, which is unfortunate.
I am left with my determination and my love for Catherine.
Oh—and the caffeine pills.
They hit me like a recreational drug. I couldn’t close my eyes if I wanted to, and I don’t want to. Every muscle in my body aches and burns. Climbing is torture. Dragging my feet through the mud? Torture.
None of it matters.
I climb and climb and climb, following the grains of rice.
I climb for hours, but the sun drags across the sky. Not hours, then, but it certainly fucking feels like it. I climb until my vision goes gray, and then I lean on the nearest tree. Sitting down means stopping forever.
I’m leaning against one such tree in the dappled shade of the canopy when I see the blood.
It’s only saturated with color when the leaves part just so and the sun hits it directly.
The gap between trees is half as wide as my hand. My first thought is Catherine . My second thought is no . My third thought is spots.
Spotted fur. Some kind of wild cat, I think.
That would explain the gunshot. It would also explain the scratching at the cabin door.
It doesn’t explain Catherine’s scream.
I have no idea where I am in relation to the cabin now, except that I’m above it, so I can’t be sure if this is where the shot came from, or the scream. I can only keep climbing.
Finally, with both of my legs shaking like they’re about to fall off, I climb over a boulder and stop.
There’s a fork in the path. One of the splits goes up and to the northeast. One side goes straight ahead, to the north. It doesn’t look so steep on the lefthand side.
This would be easier if I could yell for Catherine. I can’t. Raymond Harris might hear, and then we’d be screwed.
Which way did she go?
I spy a few grains of rice at the base of a tree on the righthand path—the one that goes northeast—but just as I’m about to take the first step, something else catches my eye.
Something small and black and outdoorsy.
I’m almost on top of it when I understand what it is.
Catherine’s compass. She found it in the bag with the radio.
I pick it up out of the mud and wipe it off. It occurs to me slowly, through a kind of sick, indignant rage—why didn’t I go with her in the first place?—that this path is…rough. The mud is churned up twice as much as the righthand fork.
I have a sudden vision of Catherine, fighting.
This is where she might’ve dug in her heels. This is where a man might’ve dragged her through the mud.
This is where Raymond Harris might’ve dragged her.
The pain in my legs and my torso and my head gets worse, then separates from me completely. It’s irrelevant. It belongs to someone else. It’s not mine, and I won’t stop for it.
I charge through the trees, gripping the knife in my right hand. The land slopes down. Down again. Trees whirr by without making an impression.
The forest ends before I’m ready for it, and I burst out onto the beach with the worst side stitch I’ve ever had in my entire fucking life, my vision going gray.
I hate that I have to stop and breathe.
I only stop hating it when I catch sight of Raymond Harris.
He stomps around on the sand, dragging driftwood into a pile.
Where the fuck is Catherine?
Harris is saying something, his face contorted with frustration, but the wind off the ocean blows the words away.
He hasn’t seen me yet.
I stay close to the trees. My heart can’t withstand this much longer. It’s desperate for me to run to Catherine. The caffeine pills and adrenaline are on the same side.
I can’t run to her. If I do, I’ll probably collapse before I can save her. This could only get worse if she had to watch Raymond fucking Harris kill me on the beach.
It’s hell to move slowly, stopping whenever it seems like he’s going to look in my direction. It’s torture beyond torture. I don’t know how I’m going to hold myself back until I get to his pile of driftwood.
The wind changes, and Raymond Harris’s voice rises.
I hear bitch .
I hear pay.
I hear slowly.
He disappears from view for a few seconds and reappears with his hand on Catherine’s arm.
When his other hand comes up in a fist, something snaps in my head. I think it’s my sense of humility. Whatever it is, everything that made me a civil member of society breaks with it.
My body forgets that it can’t run. It forgets that it can’t breathe. It forgets that it’s in pain.
I sprint across the sand and rocks, gaining speed until it feels superhuman. Until it feels impossible. Until I have to have become someone else.
Raymond Harris sees me over Catherine’s head.
His eyes go wide, and then they get dark. He drops her arm, lets out an unhinged scream, and attacks.
I’ve never seen red before. Frankly, I thought it was only a metaphor.
It isn’t. The rocks and the ocean and the skyline disappear. Everything funnels down to Raymond Harris.
Everything funnels down to a haze of red.
And it’s through that red haze that I see every step of Raymond Harris’s approach. He has the gun. Of course he does. It didn’t blow up with the plane after all, and he shot at something not long ago. He aims, fires, but the shot goes wide. He keeps running. Everything about him is clear and sharp and vivid. Dried blood at his hairline. Bloodshot eyes. The remains of his pilot’s uniform.
He’s steps away from me when the gun falls out of his hand.
Harris doesn’t stop. He doesn’t seem to notice it’s gone, or care. He comes for me with his fingers bent like claws, straight for my neck.
I put one arm up as we collide. Harris’s grip goes around my neck, but he can’t make the full circle with my left arm blocking him. He growls, throwing himself closer, and I let him.
I let him because I deserve it. Because he’s wanted me dead since I knocked on his door. That reasoning flutters away, into the bloodthirsty haze, and is neatly replaced with another one.
I let Raymond Harris keep trying to strangle me because I need his focus elsewhere while I put my arm around his waist in some fucked-up imitation of a hug and shove the knife in hard.
His mouth drops open in an expression of surprise that would be funny in almost any other context.
“Huh?” His breath whistles. He tries again, mouth opening and closing. His arms fall to my shoulders. This is officially the most twisted parody of a hug ever to grace the earth. “Ow.”
And I am officially the most twisted parody of a man ever to grace the earth, because as more of Raymond Harris’s weight balances on mine, I use my free hand to steady him.
I pat his shoulder.
He makes a high, confused sound.
“Shh.” I give his shoulder a gentler pat and look steadily into his eyes. “I’m sorry, Raymond. It’s almost over.”
His knees buckle. The appropriate thing to do to a man who wanted to murder my wife—and me—is to drop him on the sand and perhaps kick him once he’s there, but having thrust a steak knife into his back and through God knows what internal organs?—
That’s enough.
Jesus.
Enough cruelty. Enough bloodshed. Enough suffering.
I lower him down carefully. Raymond lets out a sob when the knife makes contact, so dig a space out underneath him big enough to fit the handle.
And then I’m on the ground with him, his head cradled in my arm.
I can’t just drop him. What kind of person would that make me?
What kind of person does any of this make me?
My vision grays again, the last of the red disappearing. The rage I felt seeps into the sand and onto my clothes. It’s beginning to show through Raymond’s previously white shirt.
Raymond looks at me, his forehead creased. He lifts one hand, weak and trembling, and rests it on my arm as if I might be able to carry him to safety if he only holds on.
“You can close your eyes. That’s all right.”
He nods. Mouths okay .
And then he closes his eyes.
The last breath he’ll ever take rattles out of him, wet with blood.
I don’t move.
I’m not sure what happens if I move.
Then Catherine knocks into me, going to her knees on the sand. She throws her arms around my neck.
“Oh my God,” she says. “Oh my God. Are you okay? Are you—Jacob, please tell me you’re okay.”
“I killed him.”
“I know. Are you hurt?”
“I killed him.” I meet Catherine’s eyes, and the relief there is just too much. “I’m just like my father. I’m just like your father. I killed him, Catherine. I’m just like them.”