Cold Vengeance - Lincoln Child [7]
Seizing his own rifle from the ground, Esterhazy aimed and fired. The round caught Pendergast in the chest, slamming him backward into the pool. Esterhazy aimed, preparing to fire again, then paused. A second shot, a second bullet, would be impossible to explain—if the body was found.
He lowered the rifle. Pendergast was struggling, held fast now in the mire, his strength already ebbing. A dark stain was spreading across his chest. The shot had struck him off center but was sufficient to do catastrophic damage. The man looked a sight: clothing torn and bloody, pale hair streaked with mud and darkened by rain. He coughed, and blood came burbling from his lips.
That was it: as a doctor, Esterhazy knew the shot was fatal. It had punctured a lung, creating a sucking wound, and its placement left a good possibility it had torn up the left subclavian artery, which was rapidly filling the lungs with blood. Even if he wasn’t sinking irretrievably into quicksand, Pendergast would be a dead man in a few minutes.
Already up to his waist in the quaking bog, Pendergast stopped struggling and stared up at his assassin. The icy glitter in the pale gray eyes spoke more eloquently of his hatred and despair than any words he might have spoken, and it shook Esterhazy to the core.
“You want an answer to your question?” Esterhazy asked. “Here it is. I never did murder Helen. She’s still alive.”
He couldn’t bear to wait for the end. He turned and walked away.
CHAPTER 5
THE LODGE LOOMED UP, THE WINDOWS CASTING a blurry yellow light into the driving rain. Judson Esterhazy grasped the heavy iron door ring, heaved it open, and staggered into the entry hall, lined with suits of armor and huge racks of antlers.
“Help!” he cried. “Help me!”
The guests were standing around a roaring fire in the great hall, drinking noontime coffee, tea, and small glasses of malt. They turned and looked at him, astonished.
“My friend’s been shot!”
A boom of thunder temporarily drowned him out, rattling the leaded windows.
“Shot!” Esterhazy repeated, collapsing to the floor. “I need help!”
After a moment of frozen horror, several people rushed over. On the floor, his eyes closed, Esterhazy felt them crowding around, heard the low babble of voices.
“Step back,” came the stern Scottish voice of Cromarty, the lodgekeeper. “Give him air. Step back, please.”
A glass of whisky was pressed to his mouth. He took a swallow, opened his eyes, struggled to sit up.
“What happened? What are you saying?”
Cromarty’s face loomed over him: neatly trimmed beard, wire spectacles, sandy hair, angular jaw. The deception was easy enough; Esterhazy was genuinely horror-struck, chilled to the bone, barely able to walk. He took another swallow of whisky, the peaty malt like a fire in his throat, reviving him.
“My brother-in-law… we were stalking a stag in the Mire—”
“The Mire?” said Cromarty, his voice suddenly sharp.
“A real giant…” Esterhazy swallowed, tried to pull himself together.
“Come to the fire.” Taking his arm, Cromarty helped him up. Robbie Grant, the old gamekeeper, bustled into the room and took Esterhazy’s other arm. Together they helped him shuck off his saturated camouflage jacket and led him to an armchair by the hearth.
Esterhazy sank down.
“Speak,” said Cromarty. The other guests stood around, faces white with shock.
“Up on Beinn Dearg,” he said. “We spotted a stag. Down in the Foulmire.”
“But you know the rules!”
Esterhazy shook his head. “I know, but he was a monster. Thirteen points. My brother-in-law insisted. We tracked him deep into the Mire. Down to the marshes. Then we split up—”
“Are you bloody daft, man?” It was the gamekeeper, Robbie Grant, speaking in a shrill tenor. “You split up?”
“We had to corner him. Drive him against the marshes. The fogs were coming in, visibility was