They’d found him. He had to get out of there right away.
He took one final, pitying glance at the woman’s body. Ultimately, not even her spells and incantations had saved her from a far more powerful curse than any of the imaginary ones she had feared throughout her life.
If he was sure of one thing, it was that this was not the work of a ghost or some folk demon but of a person made of flesh and blood. Someone who was still out there, on the prowl, taking advantage of the chaos that had been unleashed on the island. Perhaps even the someone who was at the wheel of the SUV.
Without bothering to close the door, he ran off in search of somewhere safe to hide and to watch from.
Immediately, he realized it hadn’t been the best idea. In the dark, he hadn’t calculated the distance accurately, and the SUV was much closer than he had imagined. He raised his hand instinctively to protect his eyes from being dazzled by the headlights.
“There he is!” roared a man’s voice. “It’s him! In front of the house!”
The SUV accelerated toward him, its wheels churning up mud. He only just managed to throw himself to one side of the path to avoid being run over. His clothes were caught in brambles, and he struggled to stand up as the vehicle came to a halt a few yards away and executed a three-point turn.
“Don’t let him get away!” the voice shouted again. “We’ve got him!”
“Luis!” shouted Roberto, as he staggered to his feet. “Luis Docampo! Have you all gone mad? What the hell are you doing here?”
The answer came in the form of a hail of shots that, fortunately for him, had been unleashed blindly. Roberto sensed the lead pellets whizzing past him and thunking harmlessly into the branches and leaves behind him.
“Turn the car around!” Luis shouted to the driver. “Point the lights at him!”
That was all Roberto needed to know. Not wasting another second, he rushed madly up the hill, pushing his way through the vegetation. The branches caught at his clothes and scratched his face, and he was soon bleeding from a thousand tiny cuts and scratches, but none of that mattered.
If he stayed there, he was a dead man.
The vehicle’s headlights were finally pointing in his direction, and for a moment he could see clearly what lay ahead: a sea of low vegetation and a few twisted trees. His shadow stretched out ahead of him, shaky and blurred by the rain.
Another shot, this time closer, clipped the branches to his right. Panicking, he understood that—out here on the hill, in the glare of the headlights—he was like a sitting duck at a fairground shooting booth, and it was only a matter of time before his pursuers hit their target.
“Don’t shoot!” he croaked. “I haven’t done anything to you!”
As if that were going to help. Run for your life, Lobeira. Run.
His feet caught on something hidden among the undergrowth, and he fell flat just as a well-aimed bullet whizzed over his head.
Hunched over, he scrambled the last few yards to the summit of the hill, shielded by the scrub. His lungs were pumping like a blacksmith’s bellows, and his vision was blurry. Suddenly, the earth beneath him gave way, and he rolled forward. He had reached the top of the hill, and the path now began to slope downward. Even more important, it put a protective screen between him and the shooters.
He scrambled to his feet and set off again, stumbling ahead at top speed. The terrifying possibility that he might be running headlong toward a precipice suddenly occurred to him, and he slowed down. The last thing he needed was to accidentally fall over a cliff in the middle of the night.
Just then, he felt some clear, level ground beneath his feet. He had hit another path. He looked in both directions, uncertain. From the other side of the hill came the muffled sound of the SUV engine revving. His pursuers hadn’t given up the chase.
He had to get off the track as soon as he could. The going might be easier, but using it also meant staying somewhere the vehicle could reach him. His only chance was to seek refuge among the bushes and pray that they didn’t find him.
One question echoed, unanswered, in his head:Why?Why were they after him? Ramón Docampo had sworn that nothing would happen to him, since he was their guarantee of getting off the hook. Perhaps they had discovered that the money was no longer in its hiding place, but who knew. These people were unpredictable.
That thought led to another, one far more worrying and more pressing.
How did they find me?
Nobody had known he was going to the old witch’s hovel. Even he hadn’t known until he’d taken the last-minute decision to flee.
And yet they had found him easily. There must be something he was missing ... and that something could be the difference between life and death.
He had no way of knowing where he was. He tried to re-create a mental map of the island, but he was simply too tired. All he knew was that if he went west, he’d reach the cliffs that looked out onto the open sea. And if he followed the coast, he could work his way around the island until he came to the inhabited part. To El Cucorno.
Begging the Freires for protection was a long shot, but it was surely better than wandering around in the storm until somebody—a party of Docampos or theTangaraño—got to him.
He had no compass, but he could use something else: the noise of the waves breaking against the cliffs.
