The Killing Moon: A Novel

Ripsbaugh had to overcommit. Shielding his face with his arm, he came staggering at Maddox over the wet stones. Maddox closed him up with a rock to the midsection, then lunged as hard as his bad leg permitted, shoving Ripsbaugh off balance.

Ripsbaugh went over sideways, holding on to the shovel with one hand. Maddox started kicking that hand with his boot heel, from a squatting position so that the thrusting strength came from his arms braced against the stones behind him, not his other leg.

Ripsbaugh, unable to rise, could not protect his shovel hand. Maddox battered and crushed his knuckles until his fingers gave up the grip. The shovel clacked off a few stones, the blade dipping into the water, tasting it like a steel tongue. Ripsbaugh grabbed after it, but too late. The current seized the tool by the blade, snatching it away from his reach, rushing it out to the edge and over.

Maddox got one more good kick in, to Ripsbaugh's ribs, before Ripsbaugh caught his boot, twisting his leg and throwing Maddox backward against submerged river rocks. Maddox tried to right himself but could not get any traction on the slippery stones. So he crabbed backward, dragging his own bad leg as Ripsbaugh pursued him on his, hunched over, furious and determined.

Maddox felt something through the ground. A thumping, a vibration. Like the pounding bass beat of distant music.

A helicopter crested over the precipice of the falls. The State Police Air Wing search-and-rescue unit. Ripsbaugh stiffened, hearing the bird but not daring to turn around. Wet wig hair hung over the latex peeling off his face, his eyes flaring.

He knew. There was no getting away now.

"Give up, Kane," yelled Maddox over the noise.

Ripsbaugh stared at his empty, shredded hands, hope gone like the shovel over the edge of the falls. He had nothing left to lose.

He curled his tattered hands into fists and came hard after Maddox. Maddox kicked, but Ripsbaugh caught him by the ankle and, with great strength, began dragging him over the lumpy stones, into the river.

Maddox felt the current start to pull. Delirious pain as his bad leg bumped over the stones, water whipping into his face from the approaching Air Wing's rotor wash.

He saw land behind Ripsbaugh brighten as the helicopter swung around, its searchlight a cone of immaculate brightness.

Thirty-million candlepower. That was what Cullen had said. Chased the coyotes out of the Borderlands.

Maddox grabbed the last stone before the open water and held on, hugging it close. Ripsbaugh kept hauling on him, lashed by river spray as the spinning helicopter righted itself overhead.

Maddox shut his eyes, turning away just as the searchlight hit.

69

RIPSBAUGH

RIPSBAUGH WAS ABOUT TO pull him loose when Maddox closed his eyes.

Closed them like he understood. Like he accepted his fate. Like he would let go of that last rock and they would both wash away together.

The thought of leaving Val alone in this world emptied him.

Then the searchlight hit, and everything went white.

Ripsbaugh blinked. He blinked again but there was no black to go with it, no alteration in the white. The searchlight had burned right through his eyes. He raised his hurt hand to cover his face, but much too late.

Maddox kicked hard, shaking loose of Ripsbaugh's grip. Ripsbaugh started to fall, the river already pulling on his legs. The bad one gave way, and he grabbed blindly after Maddox, at where Maddox had been.

He caught hold of something. Something smooth. The toe of Maddox's boot.

The current sucked at his lower half. The river wanted him. It wanted them both. Hungrily, the water whisked away Sinclair's sneakers from Ripsbaugh's feet. With his other, busted hand he made a lunge for Maddox's ankle, getting a two-handed grip. It was Maddox's bad leg. He could feel Maddox's agony.

Ripsbaugh lifted his face out of the water, blindly trying to see how close he was to pulling Maddox in with him. That was when the blow struck. A boot tread, crushing him full in the face. His hands released at once, and the water took him fast, sweeping him along like he was nothing, running him out to the edge and over, flushing him away.

Oh Valerie.

70

MADDOX

CLINGING TO THE RIVER ROCK, Maddox remembered what Dill Sinclair had once said at this same overlook, about people staying back from the edge, not because they were afraid of falling, but because they were afraid of the temptation to leap.

Ripsbaugh screamed all the way down the falls until the clash and spray pulled him into the pit churning below, the mashing vortex devouring him whole.

71

HESS

THE CRAMPED OFFICE-GARAGE of Cold River Septic was a small, cluttered building set on the edge of Ripsbaugh's property, fed by a dirt lane off the driveway, carved away from the house and yard by a short chain-link fence.