by Sarah Sutton
“Not so quick now,” he spat, satisfied, as Tara thrashed underneath him.
He was too strong, his weight was too heavy, and Tara panicked as she realized she could not get free. He raised the knife over his head and Tara knew she had no escape.
But just before he could bring the knife down, a figure flew through the door. He didn’t even have a second to react before an object swung straight into his skull.
He spiraled over off of Tara as he fell to the floor beside her.
“You okay?” she heard.
She quickly got to her feet and then she saw who it was—the girl, who she had left in the barn untied.
Tara nodded, relieved and out of breath.
She was thankful to see her—she had saved her life—but this was also not the way her plan was supposed to go.
But Tara didn’t have a second to hesitate. She jumped toward the knife, which had slipped from the man’s grip. But just before she could grab it, he flung his hand toward it.
He sat up, swinging the knife in every direction at Tara. She staggered backward, avoiding each one of his movements, as the girl snuck up behind him again. This time, Tara could see what she held in her hand—it was a rock. She swung it at his head, but he had anticipated her this time, and he spun around, sending the knife straight into her leg.
The girl, whose name Tara remembered was Anna, staggered back, crying out in agonizing pain as the man pulled the knife from her wound. He was about to stab her again, but Tara jumped on his back, and he stumbled backward. He swayed in every which way, trying to throw Tara off of him, but she held on with all her might until he began swinging the knife aimlessly over his head. Tara dodged each slice of the air near her face, barely missing.
She couldn’t hold on any longer; he was going to stab her. She jumped off of him and snatched the rock that had fallen beside Anna. She held its cold weight in her hand, ready to whack him in the head once more. But just as she lifted it higher, he spun around, his knife cutting the air around her wildly. Each time, he missed her barely, but then Tara felt a sudden burn, and her eyes instinctively shot to the pain. Blood gushed from her forearm as the rock fell from her grip.
She reached for the rock with her uninjured hand, but he grabbed hold of her neck, pushing her to the ground. She thrashed about wildly, but she couldn’t free herself; he was too heavy. She struggled to breathe as he raised the knife once more, ready to plunge it into her chest. In a split second she thought of John, of the call he would receive.
But then…
A gunshot rang through the air, the sound of a body fell to the ground, and a painful grunt sounded in the room.
The man looked up, and so did Tara, to see the old woman standing on the other side of the kitchen, holding Tara’s gun in her hand, pointing it past Tara and her son, to a body in the mudroom, collapsed onto the floor—it was Warren.
Tara’s heart sank. He must’ve been trying to sneak in, but the woman saw him too soon. He stared at Tara defenselessly while a hole in his shoulder bled out onto the floor.
Tara didn’t have a second to check on him. She needed to finish it all. Warren’s gun had skidded to the nook of the doorframe. And in the split second of distraction, the man had loosened his grip around her neck. She moved ever so slightly, grabbing hold of the rock beside her, and then hurled it through the air. It cracked his face, sending him into excruciating pain as he slid off of her onto the tiled floor.
The old woman fired a shot, just missing Tara as she scrambled to reach Warren’s gun and was finally able to grab hold of it. And just before the woman let out another shot, Tara took aim, then two shots cracked the air, and both bodies fell to the floor.
Chapter Thirty Three
Tara sat on a stretcher as an EMT carefully bandaged up her arm. The youngest girl, Kelsey, had already been taken away to the hospital, but the other ambulances had arrived only moments ago, quickly attending to Warren and the older sister, Anna. Tara’s eyes couldn’t stop darting toward them to check that they were still okay. They were each being placed on a stretcher and Tara could hear their distinct voices as they spoke to the EMTs. Each time they spoke, a wave of relief washed over her.
Before the ambulances arrived, she had waited with them and attended to their wounds as best she could, wrapping them in whatever she could find, applying as much pressure as she could. Warren’s wound was the most serious. He had been shot in the shoulder, and it was keeping him talking that became most important in those moments. It was during those crucial moments that Tara learned he came as soon as he saw her text. He didn’t mention if he was still angry with her, didn’t scold her for her rash moves—Tara knew that was yet to come. Instead, he only asked her the details of her discovery, and as she explained, he nodded.
Keeping them talking was the only way she could truly be sure that they were going to be okay, and so, even though they were in safe hands now, their voices still filled that need of reassurance within her.
However, it was the younger sister that she was most concerned about. Tara had checked on her too before the ambulances arrived, but unlike Warren and Anna, Kelsey remained silent, her eyes stayed closed, and her pulse was weak—so weak that at times Tara didn’t know if she would make it before the ambulances could reach them.
But she had held on, and once the EMTs arrived, they immediately put her on a stretcher and were soon on their way to the hospital.
“Any word on the younger girl?” Tara asked the EMT who had just finished bandaging her arm.
“She’s stable,” the EMT replied. “She’ll pull through.”
Tara nodded in return as she hopped off of the stretcher, looked down at her bandaged arm, and thanked him. She would still need stitches, he informed her, but she was lucky. Even though she had been cut deep, she had been sliced close to the bend in her arm, where her forearm was meatier.
“If he cut you any closer to your wrist, he probably would’ve severed your tendon,” he told her, before expressing the severity of an injury like that—that she could’ve lost mobility of her hand.
Again, she thanked him as the thought of what that would mean to her career seeped into her mind. That would’ve meant her having to turn in her badge. There was no way she’d be able to be an FBI agent with only one useable hand. The thought stung for a moment, but it wasn’t just the thought of what could’ve happened that made her feel momentarily uneasy. It was the fact that after this entire ordeal, she came out of it with the least serious injuries. It was this odd guilt that weighed heavily on her conscience. It was the same feeling she had for years after her mother’s death—that even though she was just a child, she sat in a closet while her mother fought for her life.
Even though this situation was in no way identical, she still had that same feeling, because in a way she did feel responsible for Warren’s injury. She’d acted on instinct and saved those two girls, but maybe if she pushed a little harder on Warren, maybe if she worked harder at getting him to listen to her, he wouldn’t have had to go after her like he did. He wouldn’t have had to sneak in at such a dangerous moment. She wouldn’t have been fighting for her life. If they arrived together, like they were supposed to, they would’ve each had each other’s backs. She wondered if he blamed her too.
Warren and the girl were each loaded into their own ambulance, and Tara walked toward Warren’s. As she did, she could see cops in the distance, securing the area around the barn and bed and breakfast. A forensics investigator breezed past her, holding the box of compasses she had spotted in the barn hours earlier. They gleamed in the daylight, and she got a quick peek as he strode by. There were dozens inside the box and it reminded Tara of how many lives she had actually saved, because now there would be no more victims, no more missing persons. She had put an end all his future killings. She had saved hikers who didn’t even know what their fate could’ve held, and it made her guilt subside slightly.
She had done what needed to be done. She knew deep down that no
one would’ve listened to her, and if she spent the time trying to get them to, she may have been too late.
Tara peered into the ambulance. An EMT sat against the wall, while Warren held a phone to his ear. His head lifted slightly as Tara approached, and he said his goodbyes to the person on the other line.
“Is it all right if I ride with you?” Tara asked as she stepped inside the vehicle.
Both Warren and the EMT nodded, but didn’t speak as Tara sat down beside them.
“How are you feeling?” Tara asked as she met Warren’s eyes.
“I’ve been better, but I’ll survive.” He placed his phone down beside him as another EMT closed the doors of the ambulance. “I spoke to Sheriff Brady,” Warren added as the vehicle rumbled to a start. “I think this all rocked her confidence a bit. She couldn’t believe what happened.”
Tara agreed that she could see why it would, given that Brady was so sure they had already found the killer.
Warren took a deep breath. “And I’m sorry, Mills. I should’ve listened to you,” he finally said.
The EMT stared at the wall in front of him, as if feeling like he were intruding on a private moment.
“I’m sorry too,” Tara replied.
Warren shook his head. “Don’t apologize. You shouldn’t have gone off on your own but I really didn’t give you much of a choice.”
His words surprised Tara. She was sure he was going to reprimand her for what she did—for going off on her own—but it was clear now that he wasn’t planning on doing so.
“It was a valuable lesson to me,” he continued as he lay on the stretcher, staring at the ceiling above him.
Tara had never quite seen him so reflective. The events had clearly shaken him too. “You’re good at this, Mills. And I didn’t take your words seriously because you haven’t been in this job long, but that was foolish of me.”
Tara reassured him that it was okay, that she understood, but her words only breezed past him, as if they weren’t even heard.
“As your partner, I owe it to you to always hear you out.”
Tara nodded. “As do I,” she replied, feeling a sudden newfound respect from him.
The ambulance fell into silence as it bumped along the dirt road. But then Tara’s phone suddenly rang and Warren glanced over at her. Her palms began to sweat as she saw who it was.
“It’s Reinhardt,” she told Warren, whose eyes widened slightly at the mention of his name.
It was the first time Reinhardt was calling Tara directly. During this whole case, Warren had always been the point of contact, and she wasn’t sure if it was a good or bad that the tables had suddenly turned. She quickly picked up the call.
“Are you with Warren?” he asked abruptly after Tara said hello.
She affirmed that, yes, she was indeed with him.
“Everyone’s okay?” he asked.
“Yes, everyone seems to be doing fine,” Tara replied.
“Good, and you?”
It was the first time Tara fully thought about how she was. She was okay, but deep down, the events of today really had taken a toll on her. She was exhausted—mentally and physically—and the thought that she avoided death by fractions was a thought that she hadn’t quite fully grasped.
“I’ll be okay,” she finally said.
“Good, because I want to see you both when you’re back in D.C., right away.”
Tara didn’t dare ask why, and she didn’t know if it was to congratulate her or fire her for her rashness, but she agreed. And after hanging up, she contemplated each scenario in her mind as the ambulance turned on its sirens and made its way down the road.
Chapter Thirty Four
Tara reached for the handle, opened the door, and stepped out of the taxi, into the streets of Washington, D.C. It felt good to be home, to see the city again, and to be far away from the woods. As she walked around the taxi to meet Warren on the other side, she made note of her surroundings—roads, sidewalks, people—and her mind relaxed. She was now far away from the forest, from the Appalachian Trail, and it was the final confirmation she needed to feel that the case was completely finished, that she could move forward.
She was always someone who loved the outdoors—who found nature centering—but for the first time, as she looked around at bicycles whizzing by, pedestrians walking briskly in a hurry, it felt more like home than it ever had. All she wanted now was to see John, to be in her apartment, unwinding from this exhausting ordeal. But she knew she had one more thing left to do—they had to go see Reinhardt.
Tara followed behind Warren and forced a smile as they walked toward the entrance of the FBI headquarters. On the plane, Warren had tried to reassure her that there was no way she would lose her job, but she had seen a flicker of uncertainty in his eyes, which made her feel increasingly uneasy.
As much as Tara wanted to believe it, there was a part of her that knew Reinhardt wouldn’t take kindly to the rash decisions she made. After all, she defied him. She made a decision that could’ve gotten her killed, that could’ve gotten Warren killed, and she knew that even though it solved the case, it was unlikely that Reinhardt would be okay with all that led up to it.
Tara and Warren reached the elevator and stepped inside. The doors closed and Tara felt her palms sweat as she watched the elevator rise above each floor. One. Two. Three. Each time, the elevator made a ding noise as it moved past the floor. They were getting closer and they stood in silence until Warren looked over.
“Relax, Mills,” he said as he patted her on the back, clearly aware of her anxiety.
She didn’t even have a second to respond before the doors opened onto their floor and Warren walked ahead, soon reaching the large glass doors of their division and holding them open for her.
She could hear the hustle and bustle of the office before she even stepped through the doors—people talking, footsteps with purpose—but the second Tara and Warren entered, letting the office door shut behind them, it all stopped. The footsteps came to a halt, and the chatter lowered into gossiping whispers. Tara and Warren stood there a moment and Tara looked around her. All the faces that a second ago had other thoughts on their mind, now looked straight toward her.
Tara felt her face begin to blush. All eyes were on her and Warren, and she knew exactly why. She watched as the eyes around her stared at her bandaged arm and Warren’s sling before moving up to study their faces. Tara’s eyes shot to the floor.
But all of a sudden, she sensed movement and Tara lifted her head. An agent, who was sitting at his desk a moment ago, now stood with a smile on his face as he started clapping. The rest of the room looked toward him and Tara began to relax as one by one, each person at a desk stood up and began to clap too, while the others standing followed their lead. She felt a hand pat her on the back and she looked next to her to see Warren smiling.
“All right, settle down!”
The moment came and went quickly as eyes shot behind them to see Reinhardt standing at the end of the row of desks. Each person quickly turned back to what they were doing as Reinhardt locked eyes with Tara.
“You two, come to my office,” he said as he abruptly turned on his heels.
Warren and Tara quickly followed and were soon seated in front of Reinhardt’s desk. Reinhardt closed the door behind them before reaching for the blinds and letting them fall to cover the glass wall separating his office from the rest of the floor.
He took a seat.
“How was your flight?” he asked.
The anxious feeling Tara felt before suddenly dropped into the pit of her stomach again, as if it never left. Warren confirmed their flight was fine, and Tara nodded her head in agreement.
But Reinhardt remained silent. His mind had already moved onto something else as he reached for an envelope on his desk and pulled it toward him.
“Well, I got some reports back from forensics,” he said as he pulled out the papers in the envelope and shuffled through them. “There were seven bodies tot
al in the barn. Four of them were the victims we were searching for.” He looked up at them. “You both did excellent work.”
Tara began to relax slightly at his positive words, but her mind remained focused on the number of bodies he mentioned, that there were more than they anticipated to find.
“And the other three?” Tara asked.
Reinhardt smiled, closed his eyes briefly, and nodded his head.
“Well, I’ll tell you, you two solved more than one case.”
He pulled out two pictures in the envelope and placed them in front of Tara and Warren. One was a picture of a young woman with long brown hair, standing and smiling at the camera. The other was a selfie of a young couple. “These were the other three victims,” he said.
Tara stared at them, at their smiling faces. It was hard to imagine that these were the same faces of the decaying bodies, thrown into the barn like garbage.
A sadness swelled within her. It was the same sadness she had felt the many times she stared at her mother’s pictures after her death. They would bring forth a happy memory, but then another would flash in her mind—her mother lying in a pool of blood—and she would have to put the picture down. For months, she couldn’t bear to look at them.
“What do we know about them?” Warren asked as he reached for the pictures and looked at them as well.
“They were also hikers on the Appalachian Trail,” Reinhardt replied. “They were basically skeletons. They’ve been missing quite a while, about six months.”
Silence filled the room and both Tara and Warren stared at the pictures.
“You two did great work,” Reinhardt repeated. “But Mills—” he began, his voice falling to a sterner tone.