Life Expectancy

man, falling into those waters, would be swiftly swept into the valley below, tumbled and battered en route.
        The banks did not slope down to Goldmine Run but were concave, a pair of bracketing parentheses. An embedded web of tree roots prevented the overhang from collapsing.
        Ten feet upstream from where I'd fallen, I sheltered under that earthen cowl, knee deep in a wind-deposited pile of decaying leaves and evergreen needles like the mound into which I'd fallen. I pressed my back to the bank, with my feet buried in mulch, confident that I could not be seen from above.
        Even in this frigid night, here the crisp air had a faint scent of moldering vegetation, thin threads of foul odor that would be much riper in spring and early summer.
        I longed for my work kitchen, the aroma of baking pie crusts, the comfort of meringue.
        I didn't try to quiet my breathing. The splash and chuckle of the rampant water would mask those sounds.
        No sooner had I taken cover than immediately to my right, a foot from my face, a drizzle of dirt, small stones, and dead leaves fell past me.
        The rifleman must have dislodged them as he stepped to the brink above.
        I hoped that he would see the force of the tumbling water and assume that, badly wounded, I had fallen into Goldmine Run and been swept downstream, either to bleed to death or to drown, or to die of exposure.
        If he descended into the water-carved channel to search the narrow shore, I would be as exposed as a single decorative cherry perched atop a chocolate cake.
        Another dribble of soil and pebbles suggested that he either had shifted his weight or might be on the move.
        In truth, I doubted that he would clamber down the bank for a closer inspection of the channel. From his higher perspective, he probably wouldn't realize that under his feet lay a concavity just sufficiently deep to shelter a man, and he would figure that he could see well enough from his superior position.
        At this point, I did expect him to produce a flashlight and sweep the channel, but the seconds ticked past with no disturbance of the darkness. This seemed peculiar to me. Even from down here, when I studied the plunging torrents, I could see pale rock formations along the shore and others midstream that might have been the slumped form of a wounded man, or a corpse. You would think that such a determined gunman would want to know for certain whether his target had been eliminated or merely wounded.
        My sense of time might have been distorted. Terror plays havoc with your inner clock. I hadn't been counting the seconds, but I felt as though I had been hiding there for a minute, perhaps longer.
        I quickly grew impatient. Maybe I was not a genuine, certified man of action, but I wasn't a man of inertia, either.
        If I came out of hiding too soon and discovered him gazing down at me, I'd be shot in the face. Although a certain stubbornness is in my lineage, I'm not as obstinate as Grandma Rowena. In my case, there was no chance whatsoever that, meeting at high velocity, a bullet would fare worse than my skull.
        On the other hand, if I waited too long, the gunman might get too much of a head start for the Explorer. Lorrie hadn't been with me, so if he knew that she was pregnant, he would expect to find her in the SUV.
        Call it a premonition or just a hunch, but I suspected that I was of peripheral interest to him, an annoying fly to be swatted, and Lorrie was the primary object of his interest. I didn't know why. I just knew.
        When I stepped away from the bank, out of the knee-high compost and from under the overhang, I half expected a sudden light, a cruel laugh, a shot.
        Rush of water, brush of wind, shrouds of darkness, deep forest waiting … No shadowy form stood at the brink above.
        Cautious because I feared stumbling and falling into the violent current so near at hand, I moved downslope along the bank, searching anxiously for an easy way up, preferably an escalator.
        My left leg had taken a lot of punishment. The implanted steel seemed to throb. I limped.
        Like gray bones, knobs of bedrock thrust from a Section of the bank, entangled by the exposed roots of a tree. Even with my aching leg, ropes and a ladder could not have served me better.
        At the top, I crouched, scanned the murky woods. No deer, no owls, no sociopathic