James Patterson When the Wind Blows

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remembered that not so long ago I'd had a good life.
There had been someone I loved, and who loved me.
I kicked off the jumble of blankets. An image came to me and shocked me a
little. The dream, the nightmare fantasy, was starting to break up, and though
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I was losing the pictures, I felt steeped in shame.
I saw a man with blond hair in a denim shirt. He was wearing a smile as bright
as the sun. I saw myself turning toward him.
I got up quickly from the mess of covers that was my bed, Why should I feel so
ashamed?
I blinked away the unbidden image of Kit Harrison, and walked to the window
that faced back into the woods. I threw it open and breathed deeply. I could
almost taste the pines and grass.
A faint morning breeze brushed across my damp skin. I began to feel better. I
had started to turn away from the window when I heard it. A horrifying sound
that chilled me to the bone.
Chapter 31
THE LONG, WAILING SCREECH that I heard coming from the nearby woods was
ghastly. It took me only a minute to throw on jeans, workboots, the same
T-shirt I'd worn the day before.
I stopped in the minilab long enough to fill a syringe with ketamine, and I
put the anesthetic in my knapsack. Pip was barking loudly for breakfast, but
he would have to wait. I couldn't take the time.
"I'll be back," I shouted as I bolted for the door and burst outside.
The continuing sound of shrill screaming pierced my eardrums. The dew soaked
my shoes and I slipped a couple of times but I kept on running as fast as I
could.
I followed the pitiful sound, almost certain that I knew where it was coming
from and what had happened.
The woods behind my clinic slope down toward a deep stream, almost a small
river. Winter runoff had cut deep gullies into the woods. In summer the
gullies are dry and partially filled with woodland debris. Choice places for
predators to hunt for rodents.
Choice, too, for trappers to set illegal traps.
The high-pitched yipping got louder and then stopped abruptly as the animal
panted for breath. When it started up again, the sound nearly broke my heart.
I made my way across the top of a gully and finally saw the fox. The
beautiful, reddish-brown animal was dangling down in the gorge by one foreleg,
scrabbling futilely with the other. It was a terrible, wrenching sight.
I saw what had happened.
A trap had slammed shut on the fox. It tried to pull itself free and had
backed up over the edge of the chasm. The leg was gripped by the teeth and
chain of the trap, and the fox's body banged and scraped against the gully's
wall.
My stomach balled up. This was such needless, gruesome torture. For what?
Somebody's expensive coat in Aspen or Denver? The female was in agony; she was
going mad, and why shouldn't she?
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"Hang on," I said to the fox, in a low, unthreatening voice. "I'm coming."
Oh, God, I'm not going to hurt you, littlefoxie.
The trap chain was double-looped and locked around the tree. I rattled the
lock hard, but it wouldn't release.
"Damn it!"
I thought of trying to haul the fox up by the chain, but she'd bite me.
Besides, I had forgotten to take my gloves, and there was the possibility she
might be rabid.
I hurriedly looked for a place to climb down. The gorge wall was lined with
loose shale. I found what I thought was a good safe spot and decided to chance
it. No good. The shale gave way and I made the ten-foot descent on my butt.
My noisy approach sent the fox into increased fear and frenzy. She was
terrified, snapping her jaws and drooling from the mouth. I saw that the leg
was completely engloved. The trap's teeth were gripping bare bone.
"It's okay, girl."
I stood below the fox and looked for some way to inject her with the ketamine.
There was a nearby ledge on a level with my shoulders, but it was obviously
too thin and too narrow. I didn't trust myself to hang on to it and get the
needle into her leg at the same time.
The fox's continual high-pitched whine was driving me crazy. Soon she'd go
into shock, and very soon after that she'd die.
I knew I couldn't save her by myself.
Chapter 32
KIT WAS SLUGGING a long, arcing home run high over the famed "Green Monster"
wall in Boston's Fenway Park. His two boys were watching from seats along the
first-base line. Suddenly he was torn from his baseball heroics, the remnants
of sleep.
There was a loud, insistent banging at the cabin door. He placed his hand on
the rifle he kept under the bed, slid it along the floorboards.
"Yeah? Who is it?" he called. He pushed himself to a sitting position so that
he could see through the window.
He parted the curtain and saw Frannie O'Neill with the serious frown she
usually wore for his benefit. She always managed to look good to him.
What now? What did she want?
He stepped into his jeans, zipped his fly, buttoned up. More impatient banging
on the door. Where was a clean shirt? To hell with a shirt.
"I'm coming."
He opened the door, but before he could ask what crime he'd committed Frannie
started to speak a blue streak of fast, barely intelligible words.
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"I need your help," she said. "Please. I really need you to help, Mr.
Harrison."
Mr. Harrison? "Sure. No problem. Shoes," he said, and ducked inside to grab
his sneaks.
He followed her, bare-chested, as she sprinted ahead of him to a rocky gorge a
few hundred yards back into the woods. He could hardly keep up with her. She
could really move on those long legs of hers. Mr. Harrison was it now?
"What the -" He stopped in mid-sentence.
It took him only a second or two to recognize what it was that was hanging
from nasty metal jaws and jangling chains.
"Oh, Jesus, Frannie."
The fox was a sickening sight, and he finally understood why she hated hunters
so much, why she had been so mad at him since he arrived with a gun.
The poor animal's reddish-brown coat was soaked and spattered with fresh
blood. The fur and flesh on its foreleg had been stripped forward from elbow
to paw by the teeth of the leg hold trap. Its breath was coming hard. Its
intermittent barking was hoarse and weak.
"I can't reach her," Frannie panted. She was out of breath. "I tried it by
myself. No use."
She looked as if she were going to break down, and Kit felt choked up with the
same emotion. What had happened to the young fox was cruel and heartbreaking,
and it made him angry, too. How could anybody do this to an animal?
"What do you want me to do? How can I help?"
She held a syringe clasped tightly in her hand. "I have to get this into her
leg."
"Okay. I got you."
Kit skittered down the steep, muddy slope. He surveyed the gorge from top to
bottom. Then he climbed back up.
He squatted above the fox that was suspended about three feet below the edge.
He measured and weighed the animal with his eyes. Then he quickly scanned the
underbrush for a fallen branch. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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