Acadia spotted three lights through the trees and soon saw that they were mounted on the roof of North Dorm, aiming down at the rear lawn.
Damon’s window was at the far end of the building.
Sticking to the dark shad
ows right next to the woods, she was soon opposite his room, which was dark. To her delight, she could see that his window was raised several inches above the sash.
A spotlight shone down brightly from above the window, revealing a metal pipe jutting out of the ground beside the dorm wall. She could climb up onto that pipe and be almost at chest height to the window sash. She’d push the window up, climb through, and rock that boy’s…
Intoxicated by the idea now, Acadia was nevertheless aware that she would be exposed as she moved across the lawn and when climbing through the window. She would have to be quick and precise. Noticing clouds smothering the moon, she took one last look around before bursting from her hiding place and racing across the lit-up lawn in less than ten seconds.
Acadia reached the pipe below Damon’s window and stepped up onto it, so focused on keeping her balance as she reached for the window sash that she didn’t notice the flashlight beam in the distance.
A man far to her left yelled, “Hey! What do you think you’re doing?”
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Acadia spun at the shout, launched herself off the pipe, and hit the ground running. She used fear as a whip that drove her across the lawn, into the shadows, sprinting toward that two-track path she’d come in on.
Ten yards shy of where she figured the path would be, she glanced over her shoulder and saw to her astonishment that the security guard was racing right down the middle of the lawn, holding the flashlight like some goddamned Olympic track star’s baton and gaining ground on her by the second.
Terrified that she might get caught, she felt adrenaline spike through her. She dodged onto the two-track, found a higher gear, and accelerated into the woods.
But without the moon, the forest was much darker than before. Roots grabbed at her shoes and threw her off-balance several times in the first hundred yards. Behind her she heard a stick crack and heard the guard yell, “Hey, lady, stop!”
Acadia wasn’t stopping for anything or anybody. But she was a very, very smart woman, with a keen sense of logic and strategy; and it was instantly apparent to her that the guard was going to run her down. She flashed on the image of the hunting cat she’d carried in her mind earlier.
She felt the jaguar come up in her the same way it had the first time, when she was sixteen and her father had come out of the house through the door of the screened porch, his wife’s blood on his knuckles as he stumbled toward the bayou and the fenced-in pool where he kept his gators.
In the woods behind Damon’s dorm, Acadia spotted the looming shape of the huge spruce tree on the two-track and remembered that the way bent left beneath it, not far from where she’d left the deep woods.
Acting instinctually, before she’d even consciously devised her plan, Acadia sprinted around the tight curve in the road and cut hard left toward the dim shape of the stacked logs and limbs.
She snatched up a stout chunk of tree branch about six inches around and two feet long. It felt familiar and weighty in her hands when she darted behind the spruce tree and jammed her back against the trunk, already hearing the pounding of the guard’s footfalls, already seeing the slashing of his flashlight.
Seeing that cutting beam, Acadia remembered the lightning that long-ago night when she snuck up behind her father as he aimed his flashlight down the bank into the pool, calling his reptiles by name and laughing drunkenly. The hatchet she’d carried that night was almost the same weight as the chunk of wood in her hands now.
The guard had slowed to a trot. Acadia heard the patter of the first raindrops falling and tightened her grip when the flashlight beam played on the track right in front of her.
Acadia coiled her muscles, became the jaguar. The guard was walking and gasping for air now.
He took a step into her field of view and was swinging the light her way when Acadia uncoiled and whipped the primitive club as if it had a steel cutting edge. There was a dull cracking noise when it hit the guard square on his forehead. His went down in a heap, dropping his light.
Her heart pounding wildly, Acadia picked the light up and shined it on the guard. She’d opened up a nasty gash that gushed blood. His eyes were partly closed and rolled up in his head. He was wracked with twitches and spasms.
She crouched over him a few moments and watched, as fascinated as she’d been when she’d seen the first alligator attack her father and heard how he screamed for help and found none.
The skies opened up over the Berkshires. Rain poured down on the woods. Acadia stood and set off with the flashlight and her club, not giving the guard another look. He’d been in the way. He’d had to be removed. And for a few moments there, she’d been treated to those death throes. They’d made her legs grow weak and spawned a warm feeling that traveled in her lower tummy.
Acadia got out her phone, checked the compass heading, and turned into the deep forest. Even in the pouring rain, she’d be at her car in ten minutes.
In twenty, she’d be at the motel, gathering her things.
With luck she’d be back in bed with Marcus Sunday by dawn.
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