For an instant, she started toward Dustin. She was horrified but did not blame him yet; her initial response was to think that he had done what he believed was right, acting out of fear of Kimble, acting in self-defense, even in defense of her. It was Dustin’s response to the man’s death that brought her to a stunned halt.
He showed no outward emotion, neither fear nor horror, as he knelt on the edge of the trestle and looked down to where the chief deputy had fallen into the same black water and jagged rocks that had claimed Audrey’s husband, and though he surely knew she was there from her scream, he paid her no mind.
Not at first.
At first he simply stared into the darkness, then nodded his head and, as he straightened, lifted his right hand and snapped off a crisp salute.
Audrey felt the first creeping knowledge then, tendrils of memory and understanding seeping through, too fast and too vague to be grasped firmly, but strong enough for her brain to accept them and merge them into one central, critical point: Dustin was dangerous.
Even to her.
He brushed dirt and snow from his jeans casually, in no rush, and then finally pivoted toward her, searching for the place where he’d heard the scream. He found her, and then, still at a calm, measured pace, began to walk off the trestle and through the snow. Coming for her.
It was his pace and his silence that extinguished any remaining doubt, and she began to back away, not running yet, because she didn’t want to turn her back on him, didn’t want to lose sight of him even for an instant. It was only when she began to move that he broke the silence.
“Audrey, come down here.”
His voice did not belong to the competent but socially awkward young man who’d helped her handle the cats for so long. It seemed to come from another man entirely, the voice dark and demanding and with a quality of patient threat to it, like an interrogator who wanted to make it clear that he would play the game but for only a while, and then God help you if you hadn’t satisfied his questions.
She continued to backpedal. The rocks were slick with snow and she slipped once and almost went down, and for the first time she looked away from him, conscious of how close to the edge of the ridge she was, how treacherous the footing. The trees were just ten paces away, and beyond them the fences, and in the moonlight and snow she could make out only the white tigers and the eyes of a handful of others. Kimble had fallen from the bridge with her car keys and her cell phone in his pockets; it was now just her and the night woods and Dustin Hall.
And the cats.
“Audrey,” he said again, and the threat in his voice was clearer now, his stride widening. “Come down here now.”
“You shot Kino,” she said. The thought had just entered her mind, and with it some shred of hope that she was making a mistake, that he was not really menacing, because Dustin would never have killed one of the cats.
“To be fair,” he said, “I was aiming at Wes.”
“Why?”
“Because I had to kill someone, and he was handy. Just like you are.”
Now she did run.
As soon as she turned her back and began to flee, she heard his boots slapping off the planks of the trestle and then a rattle as he pushed through the fencing and she knew that he was pursuing—fast.
She was faster, though. She’d run cross-country in high school, had pounded out many road miles in the days before David’s death, the days when there was time for such things, and she knew she could stay ahead of him, could keep going until she made the trailer, and then she could lock herself inside and find a knife and…
But she wasn’t faster than he was. When she glanced back over her shoulder she was astonished and terrified to see how quickly he was closing the gap, and how craftily. Instead of running directly after her, he was angling to his left, understanding exactly where she was headed and determined to head her off.
He could, too. He could beat her to the trailer.
With her first option removed, she did what panicked quarry generally does and redirected without purpose, simply heading in the opposite direction.
She reached the fences, heard a roar from one of the lions—fast-moving animals excited the cats, always, they incited the predatory response—and kept angling to the right.
Behind her, Dustin called, “Stop running, Audrey. Stop it, now.”
He was nearing the trailer, and once he saw that he’d succeeded in flushing her away from it, he would begin direct pursuit. Understanding that she could neither find protection nor outrun him, she made the final decision of panicked quarry: she had to hide.
She stumbled along between the enclosures, ducking and moving slower now, watching as Dustin turned away from the trailer and followed. For the first time she paused, knowing that the next choice would be critical, critical in the way a choice can be only when it might be your last.