LITMIR.BIZ

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Louis’s partner? Or were they one and the same? And what about Gareth? Where did he fit in?

      I waited a few more minutes in the silence, then grabbed the sack, scrambled out of the trench and headed back the way I’d come, away from the gunman. Using the sack as a shield against sharp branches, I felt more than saw my way through the deer tunnel. Although the dying day still managed to outline the top branches, at ground level everything blended into opaque night.

      Afraid of betraying my presence, I trod as silently as I could over the needle packed ground. Instead of smashing branches aside, I gently pushed them away. At one point a twig snapped and sent a shattering message through the listening forest. I held my breath and waited. Empty silence. I continued.

      Gradually, very gradually, branches began to take shape against a brightening background of grey light. I was reaching the end of the spruce. Next moment, I stepped with relief into the more visible expanse of the sugar bush. Although this wasn’t where I’d entered the spruce forest, I knew my location. The light flickering through the trees had to be coming from my cottage.

      I walked towards the light, stopping frequently to listen to the night noises. But other than a startled bird, which sent my heart racing, stillness reigned. I could feel the tension slowly easing as I neared home. Soon I’d be safe inside, locked behind solid doors with the police on their way.

      A dog began barking angrily. Sergei! Thank God. He was alive. And then he stopped. My telephone rang. It too abruptly stopped. The gunman was in my house, waiting, waiting for me to return with his money.

      I inched slowly forward, trying to decide what to do. Escape via truck was out. Stupidly, I’d forgotten my keys in the pocket of my red jacket now lying abandoned in the spruce forest, and the spare was inside the house. That left me the option of either walking the half mile to the main road in hope of flagging one of the few passing cars, or of taking my motor boat and fleeing to the Fishing Camp, a short ten minute ride away. I opted for my boat.

      However, once made, the decision didn’t remove me completely from danger. I still had to pass close to the house in order to get to the safety of my boat. Unfortunately, the path to the lake stairs would take me into the glare of the floodlights at the front of the house. I decided instead to skirt behind the woodshed at the back of the house where there was less light. I would then use the cover of the pine forest to reach the stairs.

      I continued walking towards the cottage, trying to keep the sound of my passage through the wet leaves to a whisper. Within minutes, I was standing in the shadow of a large maple, looking onto the side yard drenched in yellow light. Beyond the brilliance loomed the darkened house. He’d extinguished all the indoor lights.

      How dumb! If he were trying to ambush me, he should have kept everything the way it was. On the other hand, maybe the blackened house was intended to provide a better view of my arrival. And then again, maybe it was intended to hide his actual position.

      I peered into the darkness beyond the light’s perimeter, searching for a faint movement or the black outline of a waiting presence. I strained to hear unusual sounds above my nervous breathing. Leaves rustled. An owl hooted. The distant putt-putt of a boat’s motor sharpened the air.

      Willing myself to silence, I walked towards the woodshed. Staying well outside the circle of light, I inched my way slowly towards the back wall. When a twig snapped underfoot, I stopped and let the silence erase the sound, then inched forward again.

      Cigarette smoke! He was close by! I stopped with one foot in mid-step. Another whiff of smoke. I held my breath and waited.

      A chair scraped against the wooden floor of the verandah. He was waiting for me around the corner, out of sight. I slowly let out my breath, picked up my pace and reached the woodshed with little more than a whisper’s disturbance of air.

      Taking the stairs to my boat had suddenly become too dangerous. I would be in full view of the waiting gunman on the verandah. Instead I would have to take the longer, more precarious route that skirted the shoreline beneath the cliffs of Three Deer Point.

      Anxious to reach my boat before his patience ran out, I hurried towards the little-used track that would take me away from the cliffs to a more accessible part of the shoreline. In the growing night I felt more than saw the darker outline of the trail. And when I stubbed my toe on a large rock, I cursed myself once again for not bringing a flashlight.

      I was within earshot of the restless lake when I stumbled across a large inert hump on the path. It gave with a soft, all too familiar pliancy that I recognized with dread. I knew because Marie’s body had felt the same way.

      My immediate fear was for Sergei. But it couldn’t be him. I’d just heard his bark. No. This killing had been caused by those last gunshots fired after the gunman had failed to find me in the spruce forest.

      Dreading that it was some poor person who’d got in the killer’s way, I gingerly reached towards the dark mass and touched something that felt like stone, but wasn’t. I stretched my fingers and felt fur, then brushed over the sinewy hardness of a slender leg.

      He’d killed a deer, probably the deer that had saved my life by showing me the trail through the spruce forest. I sadly patted the still-warm fur. I could even detect a faint murmur. And then with one final shudder, the body relaxed as blood dribbled onto my fingers. I whispered a brief homage to kije manido, praying that this useless death would be avenged, like the other two deaths.

      From this point, it was a short descent to the shoreline. Any faint hope I had of finding rescue from a passing boat was quickly dashed by the silence of the dark empty lake.

      I continued along the shore towards the rising cliffs at the end of the point. Fortunately, numerous rock falls had provided a narrow, boulder-strewn passage between the rock wall and the edge of the water. With one hand clutching the sack of money and the other the wall, I picked my way carefully over the slippery granite.

      Partway along, my head knocked against an object jutting from a break in the rock. Thinking it was a piece of deadfall, I reached up to remove it and discovered, much to my amazement, the painting I’d jettisoned in the final act of ridding myself of Gareth. I smiled. Perhaps I should keep it as a reminder of my newfound courage. I tucked it behind a large rock for later retrieval and continued on.

      After another hundred yards of scrambling, I finally rounded the point. Before me stretched the dock and the way to safety. Unfortunately, I’d have to walk the entire unprotected length of the dock to where my motor boat was tied up at the end.

      For several tense minutes I stood in the shelter of the cliff wall, listening for sounds to tell me if the gunman was watching. But above the cliff edge, only silence and darkness prevailed. I waited until convinced he remained on the verandah. However, a last upward glance before heading to my boat saved me. A sudden flare from a match lit up the railing at the top of the stairs and then went out. He was there!

      I squashed myself against the cliff wall, knowing safety lay in its shadow. I was prepared to wait there all night. But it took only a few minutes before I heard his footsteps retreat towards the house. I waited a few minutes longer, then crept along the wooden dock to my boat.

      Fearful the least noise would bring him back, I silently lowered the sack and myself into the old wooden boat. I untied the boat, gave it a forceful shove to let it drift as far as possible from land before I signalled my escape with the start of the engine. It moved sluggishly with the current as the aura from the cottage lights rose behind the black cliff face.

      Without warning, the boat’s hull suddenly scraped over a sunken rock with a teeth grinding noise. It came to a sickening halt. Feet clattered down wooden stairs. I frantically stabbed the oar into the water and shoved as hard as I could. With a last shattering screech, the boat sprang free. I yanked the engine cord. Nothing! Not again! I yanked again. I heard a rifle bolt hammer home. Engine, if ever there was a time to behave, now was it. I yanked again. With a husky roar, it caught.

      I aimed the boat towards the Fishing Camp. With an alarming thud, a bullet slammed into the side of the boat. I ducked. I twisted the throttle completely open. But the fifteen horsepower motor

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