Dead Too Soon: A Thriller (Val Ryker series Book 3)

by Ann Voss Peterson

  He was right. Val was so used to Hess lording his superiority over her that she’d believed his bluster. She’d taken his threat about the mine at face value, even after all she’d been through, even after all the times she’d heard him lie. And it was a mistake she couldn’t afford to make.

  At least she was still between him and the rope. And judging by how slowly he was moving, Harry had definitely injured him. If she could reach her rifle…

  She struggled to push herself up from the ground, to look over the edge of the path, locate her weapon. Her right arm was numb and useless. Her left skidded on ice.

  He reached the bottom of the stone steps. Circling Val, he mounted the remaining step and landed on the walkway behind her. His boots thundered on the wooden planks.

  No.

  Val willed her good arm to work, pushing herself up from the ground, the heels of her hands scraped and stinging. She forced her leg to support her weight. She couldn’t let him reach the rope.

  “Add that disappointment to the list.” Hess stopped ten feet from the opening to the drop shaft. Turning his back to the rope, he faced her. Watched her. “You and the firefighter, you put yourselves right where I wanted you, right where I planned. You made it all too easy.”

  She could see the barrel of her rifle, down the slope. About thirty feet away. A tree trunk keeping it from sliding all the way to the cliff and tumbling over the edge. Even without her bum leg, she’d never reach it.

  “But then, I suppose it hasn’t been easy, has it? Serving time in prison. Losing everything that mattered in this entire shitty world.”

  Everything that mattered.

  “I have your son, Hess,” Val said, her voice surprisingly steady despite how shaky she felt. She knew him, after all. She could play him at least as well as he played her. And as long as Hess was paying attention to her, he wasn’t paying attention to Lund and Grace. “You were so busy playing your games, you forgot about Ethan. And unless you back off, I’ll make sure you never see him again.”

  Hess’s face showed no emotion. “We’ve come this far, and you still haven’t learned?”

  “I’ve learned plenty.”

  “No, Valerie. You haven’t. I told you, if you tried to hurt me again, you’d better kill me. You’d better not miss. And yet, here I am. Still alive. Still in position to ruin you.”

  He twisted around. He raised the pistol. He fired.

  The rope anchored around the railing post split.

  Broke.

  And slithered down into the shaft.

  Chapter

  Forty

  Grace

  Grace screamed when she heard the gunshot. She couldn’t help it.

  “Release the rope, Grace!”

  She grabbed behind her back, trying to capture the rope. It swooshed past her from above. Falling. Falling.

  “Grace!”

  Grace’s hands were sluggish, cold, and swollen. But they didn’t hurt. She couldn’t feel anything at all.

  She located the loop, fumbled, found the end.

  The rope tightened, pulled, heavy, heavy, yanking them away from the wall.

  Grace jerked the end hard. Harder. On her third try, the rope pulled free and fell.

  For a second neither she nor David did anything but cling and breathe. When she finally spoke, her voice trembled more than it had ever before. “The gunshot. It was Hess, wasn’t it?”

  David didn’t answer.

  “Wasn’t it?”

  “We don’t know, Grace.”

  “But the rope. If it was Aunt Val who shot, why did the rope fall?”

  Again he didn’t answer. He just started climbing again. Climbing because their lives depended on it. And maybe Aunt Val’s did, too.

  Val

  Val struggled to get to her feet, her weak leg skidding, folding, failing. She couldn’t wrap her mind around what she’d seen, what Hess had just done. It couldn’t be true. Grace. Lund. This couldn’t be the end. She wouldn’t let it be the end.

  A scream scrambled up Val’s throat.

  Not fear.

  Rage.

  Grace was dead. Lund was dead. Val had no reason to go on. But she wasn’t about to die. Not yet. Not without killing Hess first.

  If she could get the rifle, it would only take one shot. It would only take… She focused down the steep slope again. There was no way she could do it. Not with a weak leg. Not with one arm she couldn’t even feel.

  She looked back to Hess, back to the .45 in his hand. If there was some way she could get close, some way she could take the gun…

  “You want this, Valerie?” Hess held up the pistol. “Or are you hoping I’ll shoot you with it? Put you out of your misery?”

  He slid the weapon into its holster and pulled out a Buck knife. Chhkk! The blade flicked open.

  In the dark vestibule behind Hess, a flutter of movement.

  At first Val wasn’t sure she saw anything at all. Just the blurred vision again. Or a trick of the darkness.

  “This is part of the deal. Remember? You get to feel what it’s like to lose everything you love. Your house. Your job. The fat receptionist. The firefighter. And finally your little Grace. I’m not going to put you out of your misery. Your misery is the entire point.”

  Val kept her eyes on Hess, not wanting to give anything away, not wanting what she thought she’d seen to be a mistake.

  But there it was again. From the mouth of the drop shaft. The top of a blond head.

  “Now you’re going to tell me what you did with my boy.” He held the knife up, turning the blade and grinning, the deep blue handle stark in his hand.

  She took a step toward him. Then another. Up the remaining stair. Onto the wood plank walkway. “Go to hell, Hess.”

  Hess laughed. “Coming to get me, Valerie? This just keeps getting better and better.”

  She closed the distance between them.

  He slashed at her.

  Val raised her right arm, her numb arm, blocking the strike. Blood bloomed on her skin and reddened his blade.

  Val didn’t feel a thing.

  She rushed him, using her numb right arm as a shield, punching at his injured ribs with her left, slamming into him, pushing him back. Closer to the vestibule. Closer to the spot where Lund was emerging from the drop shaft, Grace on his back, Harry’s tire iron clenched in his raised fist.

  Lund

  Lund brought the tire iron down on Hess’s skull as hard as he could. The force of the blow shuddered up his arm. He pulled back, hit again, and the asshole crumpled to the planks.

  Blood was everywhere.

  On Hess’s coat, his hands.

  On the wooden floor of the vestibule.

  On Val.

  She knelt on the floor next to Hess, the sleeve of her coat shredded. Red dripping from her right hand.

  Oh, God.

  Lund heaved himself over the lip of the drop shaft, Grace still clinging to his back. His arms had little strength left. His legs vibrated so hard it was all he could do to keep upright. He stumbled, lowered himself to his knees beside Val.

  Lund had seen her rush him, but it wasn’t until he saw all the blood that he realized how much damage the killer had done. “He cut you.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “The blood. You’re losing so much blood.” Lund stripped off his gloves. Fingers shaking, he struggled to untie the harness holding Grace, but the knots were too tight. He grabbed Hess’s Buck knife, a QuickFire with a blue handle, the one coated in Val’s blood, and sliced through the paracord.

  Grace slipped off his back. She crumpled to the planks, unable to stand, then crawled to Val’s side.

  “Get Grace to the truck,” Val said. “She needs to get warm.”

  Of course, Val was right. The girl was still shaking badly. The exertion of the climb had warmed Lund, but his body heat hadn’t been enough for Grace. She was weaker, had been in the water longer. But Val was forgetting about herself.

  “You’re bleedin
g, Val.”

  Val stared at her arm as if she hadn’t noticed until then.

  Using Hess’s knife, Lund cut off the tatters that had once been the sleeves of Val’s coat and blouse. Then he pulled off his sweatshirt and wrapped the damp fleece tightly around her wounds. Unraveling a good length of paracord, he wound it around Val’s arm, holding the shirt tightly in place.

  “Hess,” Val said. “Is he alive?”

  “Keep it elevated.”

  “Hess. Tie him first.”

  “Zip ties,” Grace said through chattering teeth. “He might have some in his pocket.”

  Lund checked the bastard’s coat. Sure enough, a wad of heavy plastic zip ties. A handy item that should be in every good serial killer’s tool kit. He encircled Hess’s wrists with one and pulled it tight. Then Lund shifted the killer to his side and felt for a pulse.

  Strong. Steady.

  Cold dread seeped into Lund’s bones.

  “He’s alive, isn’t he?” Val asked.

  Lund couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t speak.

  “You have to take Grace to the truck, Lund.”

  “I can stay… help…”

  “Lund? She can’t stand, and I can’t carry her.”

  “No, of course you can’t. But…”

  “But, Aunt Val…”

  Val gave Grace a quelling stare, then turned it on Lund. “Hess is my problem. My mistake caused this. It caused him. I have to end it.”

  By making another mistake?

  Lund didn’t say the words out loud. He wasn’t even sure he believed them. Surely letting Hess live would be the mistake. The monster had killed so many people, and he would kill again. This last time, even jail couldn’t stop him. Ending him was the only way.

  Lund believed that.

  But why did it have to be Val?

  “You can’t do this, Val. You can’t.”

  He could see in her eyes that she knew he was right. “There’s no other way.”

  “Val, don’t.”

  “Aunt Val?”

  “I’ll see you at the truck. I’ll be right behind you, honey. Now, please. Both of you. Go. Please.”

  Lund had never heard Val plead, not like this, not even in the train depot, when she’d been trying to protect him.

  When he’d promised…

  He stared into her eyes, this woman he loved, the woman he wanted to marry, the woman he would do anything for. Then he forced himself to turn away. Scooping Grace into fatigued arms, he trudged up the trail.

  Val

  Val pulled the Heckler and Koch .45 from Hess’s holster. The pistol was heavy. The steel was cold in her hands. Colder than the endless rain. She checked the chamber and found a bullet ready to fire.

  Hess looked small, lying on his side, his black coat spattered with her blood. A bruise reddened the side of his face. His own blood dribbled from where the skin had split under the tire iron’s blow.

  When Lund hit Hess, she’d hoped the blow had killed him, that she would never again look into those cold eyes and see him glaring back, lips pulled back in a cruel smile.

  She wasn’t that lucky.

  She watched him for a minute, two, detecting the slight rise and fall of his chest. Dixon Hess was a horrible person. A monster. He’d burned and cut a girl in Omaha. Terrorized Lake Loyal. Tortured and mutilated and killed so many.

  So many.

  He’d taken Val’s friends. Her family. He’d caused so many so much pain all in the name of justice… a concept he would never understand.

  But Val understood.

  Justice was about much more than an eye for an eye. That was vengeance. Revenge. Causing pain to those who had hurt you. Val would never believe in that. She wanted it—wanted it deep in her bones—but she believed in law.

  So what happened when the law failed? What happened when the people upholding it made mistakes? What happened when good people died and kept dying and there was no way to protect them?

  Val fitted the pistol into her good hand. She stood over Hess. Raised the weapon. Aimed the barrel straight at his temple.

  He had hurt so many people.

  No one would blame her.

  The world would be a better place.

  She moved her finger to the trigger. Ready. Just a squeeze and it would be over. Just a squeeze and Hess would kill no more.

  Val’s hand began to tremble.

  Her face grew wet with tears, with rain.

  The pistol was too heavy. The burden too much.

  She wanted to protect people. That was true. But she also wanted to hurt him. She wanted him to pay.

  She didn’t want justice. She wanted retribution. She wanted revenge.

  Val lowered the gun. She couldn’t do it. Not like this. Not in cold blood.

  Yet if she let him live…

  If he managed to get free again…

  Hess had set out to destroy her, and he’d chosen his targets well. Her family. Her purpose. The values that made her what she was. If she lost Grace and Lund, she couldn’t go on. And if she lost herself…

  Val pulled her phone from her pocket. She stared at the screen for a long while before tapping the flashlight app with her thumb and directing the beam through the spaces between planks.

  Hess hadn’t lied about the Claymore. It only took seconds for her to spot the olive drab box tucked under the walkway, right where Ethan had been hiding.

  She followed the wire snaking out from the mine. It slipped under the decking and joined with the string Hess had used to pull the step out from under her. Then both climbed the incline to the

  spot where Hess had been standing when he’d threatened her.

  Val pulled the wire, gently, slowly, finally reeling in a pedal switch like the one in the train depot. Her palm was sweating when she picked it up. She carried it to where Hess lay at the entrance to the drop shaft. Then she set it down right behind Hess’s spine and rolled him onto his back.

  His eyes opened, ice blue staring straight at her, through her. He said nothing, not for a long time, and Val was beginning to think he’d died when he finally spoke. “So this is it?”

  “You’re lying on the Claymore trigger, Hess.”

  “You think you’re the one who decides?”

  “Decides?”

  “Who dies… who’s killed on the battlefield.” He laughed a little, the sound a gurgle in his throat. “The Valkyrie.”

  “Don’t move, and you don’t have to die. The decision is yours.”

  “I suppose to you, this is justice.”

  “It’s self-preservation.”

  “You’re deluding yourself, Valerie. It’s revenge.”

  The taste of blood in her mouth, Val turned her back on him and started up the path. Slowly, so slowly.

  “That’s what you’re going to do? Just run away?”

  Blood had soaked through Lund’s sweatshirt, and it dripped down her fingertips and mixed with the rain. Fatigue narrowed her vision, made each step feel more impossible than the last.

  “You’re not going to make it out, Valerie. They’ll find you facedown in the forest, sniffed out by cadaver dogs.”

  Val willed herself to keep moving, up the stone steps, along the sandstone caves.

  “Valerie! You can’t just leave!” His voice cracked, his panic echoing off the sandstone bluffs.

  Val fought her way up the icy slope.

  “You can’t do this! You’re a cop! You’re a fucking cop!”

  She kept moving. Step. Drag. Step. Drag.

  “Valerie!”

  Hess’s voice faded behind her, or maybe he’d just stopped talking, finally realizing what he faced.

  She didn’t know.

  She didn’t care.

  Not about anything.

  She needed to rest.

  She needed to make it all stop.

  She slipped on the ice.

  She fell.

  She climbed to her feet. She couldn’t do this. Hess was right. She couldn’t leav
e him there. She couldn’t live with herself if she did.

  She turned around. The bluff loomed in front of her, the smelting house’s roof stabbing into the sky. She started walking back, over the ice.

  She fell.

  She fell again.

  The third time, she slid off the trail, and she didn’t have the willpower to push herself back up.

  Facedown, her cheek resting on a bed of pine needles, Val heard the roar of the explosion. Shock trembled through rock.

  So it was over then.

  All over.

  She closed her eyes as destruction rumbled, growing so loud it sounded like the end of the world.

  Chapter

  Forty-One

  Lund

  Lund had just started the truck’s engine and was cranking the heat when the blast shuddered through his chest and echoed off the river bluffs.

  Grace focused on him, huddled under the sleeping bag he kept in his truck during the cold months, her eyes wide.

  “I’ll find her. Promise.”

  “I can help.”

  “I know you want to, Grace. But you’re hurt. You can’t walk. You would only slow me down.”

  The girl nodded, and tears started spilling from her eyes.

  A second later, red and blue police lights came flashing through leafless trees and an SUV turned into the park’s utility parking lot. Olson took one look at Lund and fished an extra coat from his truck. After locking Grace safely in the pickup, Lund filled Olson in on the bare bones, and they raced up the bluff.

  Olson ran ahead, his legs fresher, faster. Lund lumbered behind. It took forever to reach the split in the trail. Too damn long. The smelting house still sat on the crest, but the wooden portion of the drop shaft was ripped away.

  This couldn’t be happening.

  Lund took the other trail, the one that wound down the side of the bluff. He reached the section of path that was lined with caves and almost ran into Olson, standing stock-still on the trail.

  From that point on, everything was gone, the smelting house, the wooden portion of the drop shaft, the walkway—all of it—had careened down the hill and fallen into the swollen river.