On flat ground he would have rolled once and stopped. On this slope—easily forty-five degrees—he simply tumbled, gaining speed. Below him, the pines were coming up fast. If he smacked his head against one of them, he would wake up handcuffed in that car trunk—if he woke up at all.

But he made no attempt to slow or control the tumble. The risk was necessary; he had to get under the trees as fast as possible. Had to get out of the gunman’s sightline.

Dryden passed into the shade beneath the pines maybe three seconds after first landing on the slope. He threw his hands and feet outward, made himself flat. His body flipped one last time, still sliding wildly on the dry ground and the carpet of needles—

He hit. The collision—his right thigh against a tree trunk, with the impact force of a swung baseball bat—jarred his body and made the world seem to skip like a bad frame on a videotape. High up on his right leg, just below the hip joint, something cracked loudly.

In the stillness that came, his hands and knees pressing into the loose soil, he waited for the pain. Waited for it to flare out from the hip like a sheet of flame.

Nothing.

He lifted his right hand and felt for the injury, and understood. In its own strange way, the news was even worse than he’d thought.

He slid his hand into his jeans pocket and withdrew his phone: the screen was shattered, the unit itself snapped like a wafer right across the middle.

No injury to his body, but no way to call for help, either. No way to make the safest move: hide and wait for the cops to arrive in force.

He pocketed the phone again and got his bearings. He was braced sideways against the trunk he’d collided with, twenty feet inside the shadow of the pine grove. Above this shaded area, the exposed portion of the slope lay in sunlight all the way up to the stone wall.

From his position, Dryden couldn’t see the top of the wall—the canopy of pine boughs blocked the view. He couldn’t see the motorcourt, or either vehicle up there, or the gaunt man with the pistol. Presumably the guy couldn’t see him, either.

No telling how long it would stay that way.

Dryden made a quick scan of his surroundings. The ground here under the trees was as steep as the stretch above, and the soil was even less stable; the carpet of pine needles had killed any grass that might have firmed it up. Walking on this terrain would be impossible.

The pine trunks offered the only way to move around under control. Spaced every five or six feet, they would serve as handholds, each just within reach of the next.