The Bodies Left Behind

disoriented. She’d been so focused on Hart’s partner that she hadn’t paid enough attention to her route after she’d left the other woman to hide under the blanket of leaves.
    Had she gone to the rallying point?
    Brynn hoped not. The lake was farther than she’d thought and she didn’t want to have to make any detours. She was flagging as it was.
    Then she spotted a configuration of trees that looked familiar. She paused, glancing around for the pursuers. None in sight. She jogged down a short hill.
    Turning the corner behind a large rock, Brynn stopped suddenly.
    Startled, Michelle was reaching into her pocket to grab her knife. Her eyes were fierce, feral. Brynn stopped and blinked. The young woman sighed in relief. “Jesus, Brynn. You scared me.”
    “Shhh. They’re still around here someplace.”
    “What happened?” the young woman whispered. “Where’d you get that?” Looking at the rifle.
    “Come on. Quick. I hurt somebody.”
    “One of them?” Michelle’s eyes glowed.
    Brynn grimaced. “No.”
    “What?”
    “Somebody else. This way.”
    They climbed the hill back to the blackberry tangle, where the bearded man was sitting on the ground, head low between his legs, nursing his torn ear. He looked up at Michelle, blinked. Then nodded, wincing.
    Brynn explained that she’d beaned him with the billiard ball and was charging forward to spear him when he’d glanced back, having heard her footsteps.
    She’d stopped just before she stabbed him, seeing his bearded face, realizing her mistake. Not expecting to find anyone else out here, armed and stoked by adrenaline, Brynn had missed that he was carrying a deer rifle, not a shotgun, and that his build seemed different from Hart’s partner’s.
    Brynn had apologized profusely. Still, she was a law officer and, after showing her ID and badge, took control of the weapon and asked to see his driver’s license.
    His name was Charles Gandy, he, and his wife and some friends were camping in a Winnebago not far away.
    “Are you okay to walk?” she asked him. Brynn wanted to get to the camper as soon as they could.
    “Sure. It’s not bad.” He was holding the sock, from the bolo, against his injured ear. It seemed most of the bleeding had stopped.
    Which didn’t mean he wasn’t going to sue the department. But that was fine with Brynn. She’d insist that the county pay whatever he wanted. She couldn’tdescribe the reassurance she felt having found a way to escape from the park—and with a rifle in her hands.
    Control  . . .
    While Brynn kept guard, Michelle helped Gandy up.
    “You’re hurt too?” he asked, nodding at the pool cue.
    “It’s okay,” Michelle said absently, looking warily over the overwhelming tangle of branches, brush and trees.
    “We should get moving,” Brynn said. “Lead the way.”
    Charles Gandy knew the woods well, it seemed. He directed them past the dry streambed and along paths that Brynn hadn’t even seen. This was good, since they avoided entirely the noisy leaves and branches that could have given them away. They moved up an incline then he led them around a clearing, going steadily higher. The general direction was north. Michelle limped along as quickly as she could, now using the spear as her walking stick.
    Brynn, gripping the rifle, followed, looking behind more often than she looked forward.
    They paused, hiding behind a seven or eight-foot outcropping of granite. Gandy touched Brynn’s arm and pointed.
    Her heart jumped.
    Across a long ravine was a bare ridge. Hart and his partner, holding the shotgun, stood there, scanning the ground. Frustration seemed evident in their posture.
    “Is that the ones you were telling me about?” Gandy asked softly.
    She nodded.
    It was then that Michelle whispered, “Shoot them.”
    Brynn turned toward her.
    Wide-eyed, the young woman said, “Go ahead and shoot them.”
    Brynn looked down at the rifle in her hands. She said nothing, didn’t move.
    Michelle’s head turned toward Gandy. He said, “Hey, don’t look at me. I work in an organic grocery store for a living.”
    “I’ll do it,” Michelle said. “Give me the gun.”
    “No. You’re a civilian. If you killed one of them it’d be murder. You’d get off probably but you don’t want to go there.”
    Then Brynn leaned over a large rock. Set the rifle on it, the muzzle in the men’s direction.
    They were about one hundred yards away, and Gandy’s rifle didn’t have a telescopic sight. But