Moving again.
North along the curvy shore.
No geographer or Google Earther knew this bit of shore as well as them. The rocks, the little bushes, the tide pools, the dried-up river estuaries. The bays that curved in, the headlands that jutted out. The swamp, the drowned mangrove trees, each gully, each rock, each— “Look! Over there—what’s that in the sand?” Owen said.
“What do you see?” Heather asked.
“It’s something. What is that?” he said, running to a bit of the beach she couldn’t see. He picked up the object and showed it to her. “What do you think? This will come in handy, yeah?”
He gave it to her. It was a knife. A big knife. No—a machete, with a cracked wooden handle and a rusted blade about nine inches long.
“Yes, well done, Owen, this will help.”
She balanced it in her left hand and then her right. It was a rusty old thing that looked like it had been lying on the beach for a hundred years.
At least I’ll go down swinging, Heather thought. “Let’s take a water break,” she said. She handed their penultimate bottle to Owen and Olivia. “Ration it, just one sip each,” she said.
After that, she held it out to Petra, who shook her head.
The ferry had landed. They could hear the dogs and the motorcycles but it was hard to tell where exactly they were. Olivia climbed a tree to look.
“They have motorbikes and a horse and cars. It’s all of them. There are two groups. They seem to know that we were over there on the beach. They’re coming from there.” She pointed.
“The north?” Heather asked, alarmed.
“Yes. And up from the ferry dock.”
“From the south too?”
“If that’s the south, yes.”
“How far away are they?” Heather asked.
“I don’t know. Not far.”
The dogs must have tracked her scent from the prison. And that made sense because they had spent the night not too far from the dock or where they had picked up Hans. The O’Neills would figure out that, realistically, they couldn’t have traveled very far in the heat.
“They must have realized now that they just missed us yesterday,” Petra said.
“They’ll find us today. They’ll make sure. They’ll search this whole beach until they find us,” Heather said.
Petra shook her head and smiled. “Not necessarily,” she said.
“There are no rocks to hide behind today, and we can’t—”
“Do you see that gully ahead of us? It is a dried-up river. It must have dried up a long time ago.”
Heather looked where Petra was pointing. It was what on Goose Island they called a hollow way—a portion of land, an old pathway or a river, that was lower than the rest of the terrain. “What about it?”
“It leads deep into the heathland. Perhaps a kilometer. If we’re lucky,” Petra said.
“That won’t fool the dogs,” Heather said. “They’ll sniff us right out.”
Petra nodded. “That is what I am counting on,” she began. “Listen to me. This is what we must do. I will run down the gully and keep going until I reach the end. And I will make a lot of noise so that I will attract their attention. The dogs will hear, and both groups will converge on me. I will go east as far as I can before they catch me. And you will go north along the shore as far as you can. At the very least, I will buy you some time. Perhaps a few hours.”
“Are you crazy? They’ll kill you. Forget it. Come on, let’s go!” Heather said.
Petra shook her head. “No. I am not coming with you. You are going to go north along the beach. I am going this way. You will look after the children and I will draw them away as best I can.”
“Why?”
“Because, Heather, this is the only way. It’s simple mathematics. Four of us or one of us.”
Heather opened her mouth and closed it.
She could see the look in Petra’s dark brown eyes. Steadfast. Determined. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Heather nodded and the two women hugged.
“We should swap T-shirts,” Petra said. “If the dogs are tracking you, it might help.”
Heather put on Petra’s gray Leiden University T-shirt and Petra put on her plain black Target one.
“Thank you,” Heather said.
“Good luck,” Petra said.
And each woman knew she wouldn’t see the other alive again.
27
Petra ran down the gully fast. Certainly faster than she’d been going with the Americans. She’d always been fast. Even in Holland, where everyone biked, everyone was skinny, everyone ran. She’d been a sprinter and she was good—although not quite good enough to make a career of it.