Chapter 59
CHAPTER
As gary soneji came around, he heard the rear screen door slam shut.
He forced himself over onto his hands and knees, cutting his palms on the shattered glass of the snow globe. More blood dripped from a gash on his left cheek.
His head was pounding, a sound like waves crashing.
“Help!” he heard Bunny scream outside. “Help me!”
The inner voice that had always guided Soneji returned with a vengeance. He’d been sloppy. He’d been an idiot to think he could control her with words alone.
And now all his plans and dreams were threatened.
Rage tried to seize him. But he’d already made too many mistakes to go off half-cocked. Not now. Not when his freedom and his future were at stake.
Soneji lurched to his feet, felt like he was going to vomit, but swallowed against it and went to the broom closet in the corner. He pulled out his uncle’s old loaded .308, ran the bolt action on the rifle, and went outside onto the porch.
It was hunting season. No one would question hearing a shot or two this deep into the Pine Barrens.
“Please!” he heard Bunny shriek from the woods beyond the van. “Help me!”
Realizing she’d mistaken the old logging two-track for the drive out to the county road, Soneji went cold. He’d planned to play with Bunny for several days at least before things came to a head.
But he had no choice now. Feeling clearer, as he hurried past the van he reached up and felt the tender raised bruise where the glass globe had hit him.
“Help!” Bunny yelled, sounding farther away.
Soneji broke into a jog. He wasn’t worried about her screams. She would have to go more than two miles before she’d cross another road, and it was another half mile beyond that to the nearest cabins, summer places on a small lake that were most likely closed up for winter.
It occurred to him that he could cut her off if he was willing to gamble. The two-track trail she was on headed northeast through the state forest for a mile then jogged back to the northwest another solid mile before meeting a gravel road.
He left the trail and bushwhacked through the woods straight north.
It began to drizzle as he dodged trees, jumped over logs, and forced his way through thorns and bracken. Every fifty yards he paused to listen, hearing Bunny off to his right, three, maybe four hundred yards out, still calling.
It made her easy to track and goaded him into an all-out sprint through stands of beech and scrub pine.
The drizzle became a steady rain, which deadened sound, including Bunny’s calls for aid. Soneji was soaked when he finally reached the base of the forested ridge he’d been navigating toward. He didn’t care. He’d rest and dry off later.
He charged up the back of the ridge, ignoring the cuts on his hands, grabbing saplings and brush to keep from falling into the slick dead leaves. None of it mattered.
He at last reached the rim of a forested bowl on the back of the ridge and looked down through the trees to where the two-track crossed a flat about one hundred and fifty yards below.
Soneji went over to a tree stump about three feet tall, lay the .308 across the top, hunched down, and practiced aiming through the gun’s ancient peep sight. He kept both eyes open as he did, catching movement to his right, close to where the two-track left a pine thicket.
He lifted his head, looked to where he thought he’d seen the movement, and caught a flicker of motion, then another. Two deer had broken from the pines and were stiff-legging across his line of sight.
Bunny had to be pushing them ahead of her. He adjusted his position and pointed the gun toward the two-track where it exited the pines.
“Help!” Soneji heard her calling faintly over the drumming of the rain. “Please!”
He pushed the rifle’s safety forward. He had no choice. He had to protect himself. Nothing else mattered.
And here was Bunny, running out from the pines, checking behind her a second, then forging on, looking anguished, wiping at the rain on her face.
There’s nothing wrong with her knees, Soneji thought as he swung the .308 along with her stride. Cheek tight to the stock, head down, both eyes open, he kept pace with her, seeing the peep and the front bead in his right eye track across the back of her jean jacket, her left shoulder, the front of…
He squeezed the trigger.
The rifle barked. Bunny hunched and fell to her hands and knees.
Soneji sprinted down the hill through the trees to the two-track. Bunny was moaning, trying to crawl down the trail, still calling for help.
She glanced over her shoulder when she heard him coming and was instantly terrified. Seeing how close he was, she stopped crawling and began sobbing.
“Please, Gary! I never did anything to you! I’m engaged! I’m gonna be married. And I have a son! You remember, I have a little boy!”
“Face it, Bunny, you were never much of a mom,” he said. “And you’re not exactly marriage material. Plus you lied to me. You said you wouldn’t run. Too bad. We could have had fun, you and me.”
Before she could reply, he threw the .308 to his shoulder and shot her dead.