In The Forest Of Harm by Sallie Bissell Page A

scream filled the universe, ricocheted through his head. He had half a second to get his shots off before those fangs sank into his throat. Mad, mad, she was so mad—he had killed her so many years before. Now he was going to kill her again. With shaking hands he aimed at her broad breast. He drew a bead on where he guessed her heart would be, then sucked in his breath and pulled both triggers.
    The gun bucked as it never had before. The double recoil knocked him against the chimney. Brank’s head snapped back into the sunbaked rocks, sending grit and dirt stinging into his face and eyes. For a moment he couldn’t see, then when he’d wiped away the dirt, he opened his eyes. Trudy should be stretched out and bleeding like a sieve, her pink tongue protruding from those nasty black lips, but the ground was empty. The clearing was as vacant as it had been when he’d arrived.
    â€œWhat the hell?” He jumped up and walked to the spot where Trudy had been. Surely he had wounded her. Surely there would be a path of blood leading to wherever she’d fled. He’d fired two loads of triple-aught buckshot from point-blank range. But there was nothing. A slight indentation in the long grass was the only sign that Trudy had ever been there at all.
    Brank’s gun sagged downward as he stared at the ground. All these years of tracking. All those nights that awful unearthly cry had pierced the darkness and pulled him from the edge of sleep, twisting his stomach and turning his bowels to brown soup. Always, he’d gotten up and hurried out with his gun, only to come back empty-handed. Today she’d practically presented herself as a gift and still he couldn’t kill her. He felt sour inside, as if something within him were spoiling. He looked over at the tree. The buzzards stared back at him, their wings seeming to droop with disappointment.
    â€œWhat the hell are you looking at?” he cried, rage boiling up inside him. “Miss your damn meal ticket?”
    The buzzards did not move.
    â€œHere.” Brank shoved another shell in the gun and raised it to his shoulder. “See if you like this.” He aimed at the smaller vulture and fired. The elm branch shattered as the bird exploded in a mist of blood and feathers. The other bird leaped into the air, spreading its broad wings and lifting over the trees before Brank had time to shoot again.
    â€œStupid sons of bitches,” he screamed, stamping back over to the chimney and gathering up his sack. “Stupid motherfucking sons of bitches!”
    He picked up his gear and strode off into the woods. Trudy would be ahead of him now, slipping through the trees, watching and waiting for the next time he let his guard down. He would just have to try twice as hard, Brank told himself as his legs began to shake and sweat rolled down his face to cling like raindrops to the end of his beard.
    â€œI’ll get you before I leave here,” he vowed to Trudy as he pushed through a laurel thicket. “By God, I will.”

EIGHT
    Mary stared out the window as Alex drove to the trailhead. So that’s what Little Jump Off looks like now, she thought as the woods sped by the car in a dark blur. The same fireplace, the same bait cooler, the same knotty-pine floor where your mother died. Only now your ex-lover is the proprietor,
and you want him just as
badly as you ever did
. The words swept through her brain like wind through parched grass. As much as she longed to sit still and sort it all out, she would have to do that later. She’d promised Alex that she would devote herself to having fun after Little Jump Off, and she never welshed on her deals with Alex.
    â€œThere’s our turn.” She pulled herself out of Jonathan’s grasp and pointed at a battered sign that read War Woman Road.
    Alex turned left onto a gravel path that led to a small unpaved overlook, where she braked beside a tangle of wild honeysuckle. Thirty