Dead Aim Read Free

around her shoulders. He said, “Are you feeling well enough to walk yet?”
    She nodded. “I’m okay now. Thanks for helping me. But you shouldn’t—”
    “Good,” he interrupted. “Come on.” He put on his pack, grippedboth her arms firmly, and tugged her to her feet. He kept his tone even and businesslike, trying to hold on to the quickly evaporating authority he had assumed in saving her, the emergency voice. “There’s a set of steps that lead to the road about a half mile this way.”
    “I know. That’s the way I came.”
    “Is your car up there?” he asked.
    “No,” she said. “I walked from town.”
    He clenched his jaw. He had never before seen any sense in driving somewhere to go for a walk. Now he did, and he could also see that never bringing a telephone with him had been stupid. He didn’t tell her he had no car with him, because he was afraid to upset the fragile hold he still had on her.
    He kept walking, moving steadily to get to the stairway. He had a very strong intuition that if he got her off the beach, she would be out of immediate danger and his responsibility would end.
    At last they reached the wider stretch of beach, where the cliffs were lower and the steps zigzagged upward to street level. He stood by the first of the wooden railroad ties that had been set into the cliff. Trying to keep his hands from shaking, he took his walking shoes out of his pack, slipped them on, and waited for her to go ahead of him. He knew he had to get her up and away from the ocean, but he also sensed that if he rushed her, she would resist. Finally, she stepped on the first railroad tie, and he quickly moved in behind her. When she stepped to the second, he followed. She climbed slowly, not as though she was physically tired but as though she was reluctant to leave the ocean. She would climb a dozen steps, then turn and look over her shoulder at it with a silent resignation.
    When they were at the top, he set off across the grass to the road without hesitating to give her a chance to resist or even think about where he was leading her. They walked silently until they were at the long, curving road that led between two dry hills toward the part of town he wanted to reach.
    She said, “You don’t have a car?”
    He smiled. “Sure I do. It’s just not where I’d like it to be at the moment. I always walk here.”
    “What for?”
    “I’m an old guy. I need the exercise.”
    “You didn’t have any trouble swimming out there and dragging me out of the ocean,” she said. “You must be okay.”
    “You’re not very heavy,” he said, but he allowed himself to feel good about the faint compliment. She was right. He had saved a drowning person’s life. That was not a minor thing. He judged its value by looking at the girl, her small, appealing face wreathed in stringy wet hair, her trim, small body: yes, he noted, even now, in this circumstance, he couldn’t help it. He imagined how he would have felt to see her dead, and made the comparison. No, saving her had not been a negligible accomplishment. If she used her life well, saving her might be the most important thing he had ever done. Certainly this extra chance was the best thing he had ever given anyone.
    He had to preserve it by never letting his attention flag, had to be sure that everything he did now was exactly right, because he could feel that it was like a puzzle solved in the dark, with answers that would help her live, and others that would kill her. He knew he needed to keep the means of suicide away from her. He constructed a mental image of the area ahead and designed a course, so they could walk the two miles to town on streets that never came within sight of the ocean. He sensed in himself the human compulsion to say things, but he resisted. There were too many chances to make a mistake, trigger a painful memory, or offend her. He also had an exact destination in mind, and as it drew nearer, he wanted to avoid the charge that he