Stranded

than Jack and was about two times his size. He could easily pick up Jack and snap him in two, yet the giant fidgeted around him like a boy, looking to please a mentor.
    “What’s that you’re always saying?” Otis continued. “Bullets ruin the meat.”
    She noticed the hunting knife in a sheath attached to Jack’s belt and Maggie’s pulse started to race. Meat? Then she remembered that the bodies had been cut. Several decapitated. Ethan’s dismembered.Zach Lester’s intestines pulled out and strung across the branches of the tree above him.
    “He better be able to walk,” Jack said, gesturing to Tully. Then to Otis, he said, “Get his gun out of his jacket.”
    Jack’s eyes met Maggie’s and this time he was smiling like he suddenly found the situation amusing.
    “Actually doubles are much more interesting,” he told her. “Maybe I’ll just cut him off of you, piece by piece.”

CHAPTER 58

    Maggie could hear the storm growing closer. Back inside the forest the tall pines provided her only a sliver of a view. The sun had been playing hide and seek all afternoon. Now it was gone, replaced by a bruise-colored sky.
    She had struggled to get Tully up on his feet. Jack wouldn’t allow her to check his wound. Although Tully stayed conscious he seemed to slide in and out at different levels. She had handcuffed her left wrist to his right. In order to help him walk she had to loop his right arm up over her shoulder and neck, then keep her left wrist held up to his at her right shoulder.
    It was awkward. Maggie had to walk with her left arm stretched across her body. Since Tully was about six inches taller he had to lean down onto her. It felt like walking with a straitjacket and a backpack on at the same time. Every time Tully lifted or jerked his arm, he also wrenched hers. The handcuff bit into her flesh and her arm felt like it’d be yanked out of its socket.
    And Jack, of course, found all of this amusing.
    They hadn’t walked far when the river appeared. A fog hung over it like a displaced cloud had fallen out of the storm-brewing sky. A rowboat had been dragged halfway up the beach. Tall reedsmade up the rest of the bank and they waved in the breeze, further indication of the change in weather.
    Maggie knew if she got in the boat it would mean leaving behind anything and everything that was familiar. She remembered Trooper Campos saying this forest was over two hundred thousand acres, most of it isolated this time of year. And Jack looked like he knew the terrain quite well. She wondered if there was even a dumping ground. Or had Otis simply made it up as part of the game to deliver her to Jack.
    Earlier he’d had Otis pat her down after he finished with Tully, and immediately he found the Taser. Jack made a
tsk-tsk
sound and gave a slow shake of his head to scold her, but again he smiled, and this time he actually looked pleased.
    He’d also taken both hers and Tully’s cell phones. But neither of them had thought to feel around her ankles. Not like the ASR spray would do much good. She couldn’t act quickly enough with Tully shackled to her. And she would have seconds, not minutes, to take down both men while trying to strong-arm one of their weapons away. But Otis had stayed back after Jack had told him “to take care of business.” This might be her only opportunity with only one of them.
    “Get in,” Jack told her, throwing one of his legs over the side of the rowboat and holding it steady.
    “And if I refuse?”
    “Have you ever cut into human flesh? I mean really cut. Deep down. Maybe right at a joint? Snaps just like butchering a hog.”
    She didn’t flinch. Didn’t look away. She’d seen plenty.
    “So why not cut me here instead of taking me somewhere?”
    “Oh, I’m not talking about you.”
    He pointed to Tully and the implication felt like a punch.
    “He’s an asshole,” Tully mumbled.
    “Get in the boat.”
    She could shove Jack while she pretended to help Tully in. But what if it didn’t work? She was playing with Tully’s life, too, not just her own. Maybe if she got into the boat, then sprayed Jack with the ASR canister and shoved him out. Could she row far enough down the river that Otis couldn’t come running after them?
    She eased Tully up and over into the rowboat. It started rocking and nearly yanked her off balance and into the river. The handcuff sliced into her wrist and Tully let out a groan, but he caught her. He conjured up enough strength to hold