by Dana Marton
A murderous fury coursed through Derek. How long ago had Crane taken her clothes away?
Kaylee hadn’t said anything about that, so maybe after Jess had run? Or maybe Kaylee was too rattled to think of and report every detail.
Jess was covered in dust and blood. Her underwear . . . His heart stopped. Her panties were torn and bloody.
How long had the bastard had her? Rage shook Derek from the inside out. He was going to kill Crane. No matter what happened next, no matter what Derek had to do, Crane was not going to see morning.
The piece of shit stood around twenty feet from Jess, his head swiveling back and forth between Jess and Derek. Shooting at the grate hadn’t been the height of stealth. Derek needed a weapon, and he didn’t have any. Crane did, and he began shooting. Pop. Pop. Pop.
Derek dropped flat on his stomach, slivers of rocks flying up around him where the bullets hit. The gut-tearing fear that he might not be able to save Jess slammed into him. How in hell had they ended up in this situation?
How in hell was he unable to protect her once again, dammit?
Run! he wanted to shout. Run while Crane isn’t looking. But if Derek called out, he’d draw Crane’s attention back to Jess. And, really, where was there to run on top of the cliff? She didn’t have her rappelling kit this time, didn’t have anything. She couldn’t even jump for the tall pines. The tall pines were next to Derek. She had nothing but sheer cliffs.
Derek glanced around with a desperation he hadn’t known before. He had to find a way to save her.
Except, she wasn’t going to wait for him. She squared her shoulders into a movie-hero pose, legs braced, her entire demeanor calm and centered as she faced Crane.
She looked as if she was preparing herself.
For what?
She stepped forward and turned a couple of degrees as if positioning herself for something specific.
Moonlight fell on her hands. They were tied in front of her. Derek growled with impotent fury. Shit. What in hell chance did she have?
Crane abandoned shooting at Derek and stepped toward Jess. He called out, and even over the rushing of the river below, Derek caught the words.
“That’s right. Come to me!” The man’s voice was thick with self-satisfaction.
Jess shifted again. Derek recognized that stance. He’d seen it with spec-ops soldiers all the time. He probably looked like that himself when he was about to make his move. Her body subtly rearranged, her muscles readying themselves for a burst. Still utterly calm, collected, and focused, she didn’t take her attention off Crane for a second.
She was going to attack. And it finally dawned on Derek that this was a long-planned attack. She was prepared. She had imagined this before. Many times. Maybe many different scenarios.
She was ready to take out the man who’d hurt her.
Oh hell.
Derek scrambled to his feet, a wild theory springing to life in his brain. While he’d written Dark Woods to draw out the masked man . . . Jess had exploded on video for Maxwell to do the same thing. Losing her cool like that was completely out of character for her. Especially while being recorded. She’d done it on purpose.
They’d both used themselves as bait.
Derek wanted to shout at her, fury pounding in his brain. No! If you get hurt . . .
Of course, he was damn proud of her too. Freaking impressed. And then scared out of his ever-loving mind when she lunged into action.
Whatever he’d imagined would happen wasn’t this. She ran full force toward Crane. Crane raised his gun, but Jess flew through the air, a body slam that took them both over the edge.
“Jess!”
Crane dropped like a rock, but Jess managed to manipulate her body—she’d kicked against him at the last second, using him as a fulcrum—so that she flew in a graceful arc, away from the rocks below. Into the rushing river. She hit with a loud splash, and before Derek could so much as draw a breath, the water closed over her head.
He was already jumping for the trees. The same stunt he’d pulled in front of Eliot— made more difficult by the dark, the frozen muscles in his left leg, and the fact that for the first time in his life, he could barely breathe from panic.
He slammed into the branches, lost some skin from his cheek, grabbed on, dipped toward the ground with the treetop, waited for the return snap, and let go, leaping for the next lower tree. Then one more dip and snap and jump down to the rocks that either dislocated his ankle or broke it, he didn’t care. He ignored the shooting pain completely and lunged for the water.
“Jess!” He couldn’t see her in the dark.
Where was she? He swam toward the spot where she’d hit, accounting for the current, looking to spot her head above the churn. Nothing.
Then, an eternity later, “Derek!”
He caught a glimpse of her blonde hair for a moment, but then she disappeared again.
Swim like someone shoved a torpedo up your ass, one of the officers in SEAL training used to scream at the recruits. And that was exactly how Derek swam.
She kept going under.
Her hands were tied, and her limbs had to be stiff from the cold. She had to have been chilled half to death before she’d ever jumped. Hypothermia slowed a body down. At this temperature, just minutes in water could mean death. Derek’s own teeth chattered.
She hated water stunts, was all he could think. She’d almost drowned once. How cold she must be, and how trapped she must feel with her hands tied. He hoped she knew that he was coming for her.
He saw her head again, but once again she almost immediately disappeared under the water. Derek plowed forward.
He caught her shoulder underwater and brought her back up, relieved when she coughed. He angled his body toward shore, but the current was too strong. They were nearly at the river bend by the time he succeeded, working with the river to let the current carry them to shore.
He carried her out of the water in his arms, grateful that he could stand. His ankle wasn’t broken, after all, and the ice-cold water had done it good. Pain shot up his leg, but at least he could walk.
She was too damn limp.
He held her tighter against his chest. “We made it. You hear me?”
Since she was barefoot, he didn’t want to set her down. She’d kicked her shoes off in the river. Derek had kept on his military boots, the soles made of a buoyant material that wouldn’t drag him down, meant for situations just like this.
“I have you, Jess.” He carried her off the rocks, and they collapsed in a heap on the first patch of dry ground. She rolled onto her back and kept coughing. He cut the plastic tie from her hands, then checked his radio and his cell phone, both still miraculously in his pockets. His good luck ended there. They were both dead. The swim in the river had done the electronics no favor.
He pushed to his knees and began rubbing Jess’s bare limbs for heat. Rescue might be a while yet. “Come on. Say something.”
“Kaylee?” The word left her near-purple mouth in a weak whisper.
“Should be with the cops by now.” He told Jess about the Versquatchers and how he’d found the girl. Then he pushed to his feet and began swinging his arms. He was freezing too. “If you can move, it’d be better to move. Try.”
“You’re a freaking drill sergeant.” But she sat up.
He reached out his hand. She let him pull her to her feet.
His gaze fell to the wound on her lower stomach and waist, a deep scratch, but not a serious cut. He didn’t think she’d need stitches. His gaze fell lower. The river had washed the blood out of her torn panties.
“How long did he have you?” he asked gently, when he wanted to roar and rage. “Did he . . . hurt you?”
She followed his gaze, then looked up. “Not like that. The grate fell in and scratched me.”
He could breathe again. The blood haze cleared from his eyes.
“I’m fine,” she told him. “I swear.” But even as she said the words, she shivered.
“I’d offer my coat, but I don’t think it’d be an improvement.”
“You just like seeing me in my underwear.”
“That too. But I’d like to see you even more out of it. Come on.”
They moved back from the river, to the edge of the woods where they sat in the shelter of a fallen log. The log was at least three feet in diameter and blocked most of the cold breeze coming off the water.
Derek collected all the fallen branches within reach. Without having to be told, Jess scooped some of last fall’s dry leaves from under the log. Derek found a suitable pair of sticks and began rubbing them together.
“Learn that in SEAL training?” she asked.
He grinned at her. “Boy Scouts.”
She watched him, shivering. “What are you so happy about?”
“Happy that you’re alive. I could break out in song and dance.”
Her teeth chattered as she said, “Let’s not scare the wildlife.”
How could any man not fall in love with a woman who could keep a sense of humor in a situation like this? Derek wanted to draw her into his arms, but he needed to see to the fire first.
The bottom stick began to glow. Jess touched the tip of a dry leaf to the spot until the brown maple leaf caught on fire. She set the burning leaf in the nest of a handful of others. In five minutes, they had the beginning of some much-needed heat.
Derek drove half a dozen sticks into the ground around the fire and stripped, hanging his clothes to dry. He left nothing on his body. No sense having wet cloth against his skin.
He flashed Jess an expectant look.
She was half turned away from him, but watching him from the corner of her eye. Considering how little she had on, she might as well be naked.
“Your turn,” he said, his throat suddenly dry.
“I’m fine.”
“Need help?” His body quickly warmed to the idea.
“Listen, perv . . .” But then, after much rolling of the eyes, she stripped out of her bra first, then her panties, and hung them the same way he had. “Happy?”
“I could be happier.”
“Don’t even think about it.”
“Too late.”
Her lips twitched. She sucked them in and tried to make a sour face he wasn’t buying. Not when her eyes danced.
“How bad does your elbow hurt?” Now that the flames were higher, he could see the wound better.
“Can’t tell right now. It’s numb with cold.”
“Last tetanus shot?” he asked. “The river’s probably too cold for any nasty bacteria, but it never hurts to be careful.”
“I get my shots regularly. There are always bumps and scrapes at work.”
“I hate the idea of you getting bumped and scraped.”
“I do stunts for a living.”
And damn well too. So he was going to accept that this was a part of her life. “That jump was really something.”
Instead of smiling at his praise, her expression turned somber. “Is he dead?”
“All the way and then some. From that height and onto rocks? The only way he could be deader is if a sasquatch ate him.”
“Don’t even joke about that. This time, I want to see a body. I want to be there when they put him in the ground. No more disappearing corpses that pop up later.”
“He’s dead.”
“I can’t believe it was Principal Crane. It just makes everything even creepier.” She squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed her forehead. But after a couple of seconds, her eyes popped open. “Oh my God. I think I knew. Subconsciously. I’d recognized the bastard.” She stared at Derek, grappling with whatever thoughts were circling in her head.
“What are you talking about?”
“Every time I saw him, I had this visceral reaction to him. Like something inside me was screaming No! I thought the reaction had to do with him hooking up with my mother. Each time, I couldn’t get away from him fast enough.”
“I wish I recognized the bastard sooner. I would have snapped his freaking neck.”
Jess shuddered. Then, long seconds later, she asked, “How do you think he picked his victims?”
Derek thought for a couple of seconds. “At games? Like when a girls’ soccer team comes to Taylorville High to play? He had access to kids from other schools.”
“He was obsessed with prime numbers and some other weird number stuff.” She stilled, paled. “He took us on the third of March, remember? Three of three. And three times three is nine. Nine is a special number to him.”
“An ennead.”
She raised an eyebrow in a silent question.
He shrugged. “Used it in a book once.”
She rubbed the bridge of her nose. “I always wondered why he took you too. At first, he was mad that you were there.”
Derek remembered. “He adjusted on the fly.” Fine. You’ll be the audience, then, Crane had said. “He wanted the third day of the third month. He didn’t take us because we were at the cabin. He would have taken you no matter where you were. He only needed a moment to catch you alone.”
She stared at him as she processed that. “My birthday is the ninth of September. My date of birth was in my school records. The ninth day of the ninth month.” She groaned. “Didn’t he used to be a math teacher?”
“You never had him?”
She shook her head.
“He came in as a substitute a couple of times in algebra.” Derek racked his brain to see if he remembered anything from back in high school, something that hinted at the man’s evil core, but he couldn’t.
The fire crackled between them.
A couple of seconds passed before Jess said, “Thank you for saving me.”
He watched her as she huddled near the flames, her arms folded over her pulled-up knees. He’d seen grown-ass soldiers cry after an attack. But she was holding it all together. She had an incredible core of strength—solid steel.
“I’d walk into the burning fires of hell for you. You know that, right?”
When she didn’t comment, he said, “Why did you jump? You could have died.”
More silence before she responded at last. “I was OK with dying. I thought if he was no longer in the world, no longer able to hurt anyone, and if getting hurt was the price, I was OK with that.”
Her voice was steady and determined.
“You didn’t think that up, on the cliff. You had ideas about something like this when you came home.”
Tension stiffened her bare shoulders. At least a full minute ticked by before she said, “I’d thought about it. For years, I struggled with nightmares. I would dream about being back in the camper in the woods, then wake up screaming, drenched in sweat. To fall back asleep, I would think about getting stronger, good at fighting, coming back, finding him . . .”
“Killing him?”
She looked into the flames. “Sometimes. Yes.”
“Did you come home for this?”
She turned her gaze back to him. “I came back because my mother broke her hip.”
“But you would have come back eventually? To try to draw him out?”
She hugged her knees tighter. “I don’t know. I wanted to, at first. Then life got better. He no longer ruled my every waking moment, and every nightmare.”
Derek waited her out.
Eventually, she said, “When you found Hannah’s bones, I knew he was still here, and he wasn’t going to stop unless somebody stopped him. Nobody even believed that the disappearances were connected.”
“You didn’t lose your cool in front of Maxwell. That video was no accident.”
She shot him a dark look. “I was mad at you for that book.”
“Was?”
She held his gaze. “Time to let go of the past.”
A decadelong tension left his chest. His lungs expanded. Possibilities opened up. New plotlines formed, paths to the story of their future, a shared future he’d barely dared hope for.
He held her gaze, despite how dis
tracted he was by the way the light from the flames played on her breasts.
“So, how friendly are you with this Lorelei chick from the bookstore?” she asked out of the blue.
He had trouble refocusing. “What?” A couple of seconds passed before he remembered the woman. “She’s nice. She always schedules me for a book signing.”
“That’s it?”
“Jess, I can’t think,” he pleaded.
That must have been the right response, because a soft smile came onto her face.
God, that smile. In spite of the cold, Derek was growing downright warm in certain places.
She shivered.
“I can think of ways to generate some heat,” he suggested.
“Learned in SEAL training?”
“Not exactly.”
Her lips curved into a reluctant smile, but she didn’t jump at his offer.
So he said, “At the very least, we should share body heat.”
“You’re unrepentant.”
“The preservation of life is always the first priority in an emergency situation. I did learn that from the navy.”
She still didn’t move. “How long are we staying here?”
“Until our clothes dry or until we’re found, whichever happens sooner.”
She shivered again. “I’m good in the front, but my back’s cold.”
“You could sit between my legs. Then you’d have the fire in front of you and me at your back.”
“I think I’m cold because the ground is so cold.”
“Sit on my lap.”
Slowly, she got up and straddled him instead.
He lost his breath, and nearly all ability to think, but managed to get out, “Good thinking.”
“We’re in an emergency.”
“Definitely an emergency.” He’d agree to anything that would keep her where she was right now. He put his arm around her waist, careful of the cut from the grate.
Her knees rested on the ground on either side of his thighs, her inner thighs cradling his waist. “Keeping our body heat up is crucial to our survival.”
“Absolutely.” But he frowned at her.
“What?”
“Your nipples look cold.” He allowed the frown to ease. “I think I have a solution.” He drew the nearest nipple into his mouth.