His hand had found the Ruger, and he was aiming it toward the bridge that carried the short stretch of elevated highway over the invading sea where he’d seen the hidden gunman.
But Carrie was quicker. Her little .22 was snapping away, at a range where it was unlikely to do much serious harm but might be enough to make the assassin get his head down.
Jim opened fire, pulling the trigger three times. Careful, aimed, spaced shots. He saw a tiny puff of concrete from one of the bridge supports.
Sly was rocking backward and forward, hugging himself, tears coursing down his plump cheeks.
“Dad! Get the fuck out of there!”
Jim Hilton had been about to squeeze the trigger for a fourth time when he froze. Heather was peering at him over the side of the rowboat, her face drenched in seawater, her hair dripping wet.
“You aren’t…” he said, aware of the stupidity of it. Of course she wasn’t dead. There she was.
“Missed me, Dad. Close, though. Come on. Before the shooting starts again.”
“Right. Carrie, take Sly and head—” he looked around him, “—head that way.” He was pointing north where the land seemed to be cut and seamed with valleys and would give them better cover. “Grab everything and go, all of you!”
The clouds had lowered around them, bringing sheets of mist and a more persistent drizzle. It cut visibility right down, and the highway bridge had completely vanished into the murk when Jim next looked.
He’d hastily reloaded the Ruger, keeping it fully charged, though his fingers were cold and the full-metal-jacket rounds were slick in the rain.
Sly, still weeping, was dragged bodily out of the boat by Heather and Carrie, along with whatever supplies they could grab. Jim heard the muffled crack of another rifle shot, but it went hissing wide, digging a neat round hole in the sea only a few yards beyond them.
Jim stood up and blazed away half the rounds from the Ruger, then jumped out into the muddy earth, boots sinking in over the ankles. It was impossible to make any sort of speed, and he stopped and fired the last three bullets up to where he thought the bridge was.
Sly fell down twice in the first few yards, babbling in panic, making a string of formless, meaningless sounds. Carrie had an arm around him on one side, Heather, her clothes sodden, was helping out on the other.
Jim didn’t try to reload again, but concentrated on getting them all into some sort of cover. Though he’d never been combat trained, he guessed that the person on the hillside above them was alone. Otherwise, there’d have been more shooting, a volley of fire, raking the boat and slaughtering them all. Also, if they could just get some dead ground between themselves and the rifle, then the fact that they had two guns might be enough to deter the would-be killer from following them.
Even as they covered the hundred yards or so to safety, the rain turned to snow.
While they all crouched, panting, in the lee of a steep hillside, it thickened into a full-blown blizzard.
“What now?” Carrie asked.
“Shelter and a fire,” he replied. “Best move on north for a mile or so, if we can all make it. Then a shelter and a fire. Dry out or we get to be dead. ‘Specially you, Heather.”
Jim was filled with the sudden realization that his beloved daughter had come within an inch or so of being killed, and he knelt by her and threw his arms around her slender, soaking body. “Christ, I love you,” he said, finding himself on the brink of tears. “I love you so much.”
HENDERSON MCGILL burst out from the companionway of the Eureka Belle, a dark fear driving him blindly forward through the wet flakes of snow drifting down onto the timbers of the beached ship, turning it instantly into a Christmas-card scene.
“Get your head down,” snapped Nanci Simms, who was kneeling near the bow with Paul and Jeanne. The two younger girls were huddled together by the mast. Dazedly Mac noticed that they were both crying.