Face of Murder

Zoe couldn’t afford to stop or slow down, but she caught a glimpse of the map as she ran past and then tried to examine it in her mind. She had just enough of an outline—just enough to know how the cemetery was laid out, paths squirming through graves like the branches of a tree.

And over to the left, the church.

Zoe thought quickly. At his current speed, he was outpacing her to the extent that he would be out of the graveyard before she caught up with him. Sticking on the current route, of chasing straight after him, was not a viable option.

Just like back at the campus, she was going to have to find a way to cut him off.

He was looking back over his shoulder every minute or so, continuing to find new bursts of speed every time that he saw she was still in pursuit. How he was doing it, she had no idea. Her own legs were beginning to tire, and she wasn’t sure how much she had left in the tank.

She was going to have to take a risk.

She was going to have to give it everything she had.

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

Now that they were both among the eerily tranquil atmosphere of the grave sites, Zoe knew that her timing was going to be the most important thing. The road path curved slightly ahead, and Matthias was running straight down the path. It was as though, even though he had so far proven himself to be an able and ruthless killer, he still felt squeamish about running over the homes of the dead.

Zoe had no such problem. The dead were dead and gone. They couldn’t feel her shoes disturbing their peace.

She waited, waited, wanting to time it perfectly. The window of opportunity was closing. He had to turn, had to turn now and—

Yes! There! He turned to check that she was following, and then looked ahead again. She had time now, maybe thirty seconds that she could guarantee before he would look for her. She darted to the left, just managing to make it down a crooked path that followed the side of the old church building, yanking off her jacket and throwing it over a slanted gravestone by the path as she went.

It was a small enough church, and that was the good news. If it had been some kind of gothic monster, sprawling and gigantic, she would have never made it in time. But it must have been built in a time when the church was short on funding, or else the community itself was still much smaller, and there was no need for a grand building.

She forced her feet to move faster along the twisted paving slabs, right along the side of the church and then a sharp right turn to cross the back of it. She was counting the seconds in her head, imagining him. Thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five—now she pictured him, swinging his head around to look. Not seeing her. Stumbling, faltering. Scanning the horizon, the paths off to the side. Confused. Seeing the jacket. Wondering if she had fallen. Squinting his eyes to try to make out if that was a body, or just a jacket.

Slow.

Zoe put all her faith and her belief into this one moment. It was a bitter irony to call on faith in a churchyard when she had never believed in God—not the kind of God that could abandon a small child with a mother like hers—but it was not that kind of faith she drew on.

This faith was in herself.

The final push had to be as she came around this next corner, swung around to the right again to bring herself back into full view of the graveyard. The meandering path that Matthias had chosen swung close to the church right at the exact moment that her path emerged from it, and this was her only chance. If she missed him now, it was over. She knew it. The burning in her lungs knew it. The strain in her calves knew it.

Zoe turned the corner, and he was gone.

She had been right in her calculations, both in the distance required and the pattern of his behavior. The speed he put on when he saw her had been matched by the speed that he lost when he could no longer see her. Out in the middle of the path, back there, the church would not have seemed like a threat. It was far away. Disconnected from the red herring clue she had left behind for him.

So where was he?

Zoe stopped dead, her momentum dissipating. She knew she had been right. From here, she could see across the graveyard and the paths they had followed. He was not there. He hadn’t gone back.

So, where?

She scanned the headstones, trying to think. There was only a certain radius of distance where he could be, where he could have gone while she was out of sight. Narrow the field down to that. Focus.

He was hiding—he had to be. He had worked out her gambit and tried to use it against her. He was moving slower, must have come almost to a stop when he realized. That narrowed it down more. Think, Zoe. Where?

Some of the grave markers were thin—crosses or single slabs of stone. Nothing to hide behind. There were three larger structures within the field of her view. Could he be lying down directly behind them?

None of this made sense. Not really. Why stop like that…?