by Неизвестный
“Roger!” Denise called.
Kate swung her leg up without hesitation. She made contact with Denise’s hand at the same time the gun went off. The heat of the bullet brushed by her face.
She let her momentum take her around instead of fighting for her balance. She rolled out of the way a split second before a second gunshot came from down the hall.
She fired three times at Denise, then twice at the shadows in the hall. From the corner of her eye she saw Denise go down, blood coating her chest.
Gunfire rang out from the hall. Dammit, she hadn’t put Roger out of commission.
Who else was here? Where was Dillon? Where was Lucy?
Another gunshot, this time from the back of the cabin.
Dillon!
A man was naked and on top of Lucy.
Dillon heard himself cry out. The man looked up, startled and confused. He fumbled for a gun that was far beyond his reach, crawling off Lucy as he tried to stand.
Dillon strode over and kicked him in the face. The man grunted, rolled over, reached his gun in the corner.
Dillon aimed his gun and fired. Again. Again. He saw blood but didn’t make the connection.
The man screamed out and clutched his leg. “Fuck! Fuck!”
Dillon picked up the bastard’s gun and pocketed it, then brought out the knife Jack had given him before they’d split at the small airport. He slashed the ropes binding Lucy.
“Dillon, you’re here. You’re really here!”
“Lucy, we have to get out. Now.”
She nodded, silent tears running down her face.
Dillon pulled off his T-shirt and handed it to his sister. Shaking, she put it on. It hung to her thighs. She started for the door.
“No,” he said quietly. He picked up the camera and threw it against the wall, where it broke, pieces falling to the threadbare carpet.
He led Lucy to the window and eased her over the broken glass before following her out.
He didn’t want to think about the gunshots he’d heard moments before. He didn’t want to think that Kate was dead.
He had to get Lucy out.
He also had to find Kate.
Torn, he took one look at Lucy’s face and knew she couldn’t do it on her own. Kate was strong and trained. She was a survivor. He had to believe that.
Lucy was a terrified eighteen-year-old. He would get her to safety, then come back for Kate.
He helped Lucy over the deck railing. “I have a boat.”
She nodded, trusting him implicitly.
“You’re going to be okay, Luce. I promise.”
She nodded again, tears running down her face. Her entire body shook.
Dillon took her hand and they ran low through the trees. He heard no more guns. He heard no more shouts.
Each step was torture as he realized that he was running away from Kate. That she could be dead, dying, in need, and he was leaving her behind. Maybe she’d gone for the boat. She could run faster alone than he could with Lucy. She could be at the cliff already.
The thought propelled Dillon forward. Less than ten minutes later they reached the edge of the island.
Kate wasn’t there.
No time to go back. Dillon said to Lucy, “Trust me.”
Lucy only nodded, her large brown eyes looking left and right. Terrified.
He picked her up and tossed her into the water, away from the rocks at the base of the cliff. He followed. Together, they both swam to the boat and climbed in.
He scanned the cliff. Dammit, Kate! Where are you?
“Who are you looking for? Were they following us?”
“Someone who’s been helping me find you.”
Kate was nowhere.
Dillon cut the lead rope and started the motor. He’d get Lucy to the copter.
Then he’d go back for Kate.
Kate checked Denise’s pulse. Nothing. She was dead.
The man outside was dead.
Gunfire was coming from two places in the cabin. One down the hall where she’d heard breaking glass. The other from the nook that turned into a kitchen.
She was behind a heavy wood table. She’d heard the scream, the gunfire, the breaking glass.
Please, Dillon. Get Lucy out now!
“Where is she?”
A man she didn’t recognize came out of the kitchen.
She needed to take her time. She had half a clip left. She couldn’t afford to waste the bullets. The gun she’d taken from the dead man outside had already been emptied.
Where was Roger Morton?
Roger emerged from the hall. “Someone took the girl. I’m going after them.” He ran past Kate’s hiding place.
The other man called out, “Where’s that bitch who killed Denise?”
“Hell if I know, she probably escaped with the girl!”
Roger left through the sliding glass doors and the second man hesitated, then followed.
Kate immediately left her hiding place and went to the room down the hall where Lucy had been held captive. Déjà vu hit her again as she stared at the broken camera, the broken window. Paige.
A naked man, bleeding, crawled toward her in the doorway.
She shot him in the head, imagining that he was Trask and she’d been in time to save Paige.
She jumped out the window, saw movement in the trees. A naked chest. Heard the startled cry of a girl in a dark green shirt.
Dillon had given his sister his shirt.
She had to buy them time to get to the boat.
She ran around the deck making noise. She fired into the air, then ran into the second man.
He was young, couldn’t be more than twenty. The realization startled Kate. She’d been expecting Roger.
But being young didn’t make him less of a killer. He raised his gun.
She was faster. Three pumps into his chest. He didn’t get a round off.
“Richie?”
Roger’s voice came from around the cabin. He emerged from the direction Dillon and Lucy had run from.
He saw Kate. “You fucking bitch!” He raised his gun. “I should have known it was you.”
Kate dove for cover, off the deck and into bushes. Hot, burning pain hit her upper arm and she bit her tongue to keep from crying out.
She pulled her tank top over her head—she had the black one over a white one—and tied it around her arm where Roger’s bullet had sliced cleanly through her skin. She leaned against a tree to catch her breath.
“Where’s the girl?” Roger called. Close. Too close.
Kate stood, got her bearings, exposed herself, and fired once, twice.
She missed, but Roger fell to the ground, giving her enough time to run.
Away from Dillon and Lucy. To give them time to get the hell off the island.
She could swim. She didn’t want to think what the salt water would do to the bullet wound in her arm, but maybe she’d be lucky. Maybe she’d get to kill the bastard who’d raped Paige and Lucy and a half-dozen other women.
She counted the shots she’d fired in her head.
Dammit, she only had one bullet. She’d better make it count.
She ran.
Trask watched on the webcam as the man jumped through the window and kicked Frank in the face.
When he received the message that the outer perimeter had been breached, he’d tried to reach Roger. Nothing. What good was he if Trask couldn’t count on him when it mattered? Roger had used his silence twenty years ago to demand trust. “I never said anything about Trevor, did I? I never said anything about Monique. You can trust me, you know that, right?”
Fucking idiot.
Now his prize had been stolen. Frank was dying. For all he knew Roger and Denise were dead, too.
And Dillon Kincaid—the last man Trask thought would come after Lucy—had shot Frank and destroyed his show. He took his girl. Monique.
No, no, Lucy. Monique was already dead.
Trask slammed his hand on the dashboard of
the Hummer. He was at the docks at Anacortes, but he didn’t dare go out to the island now. Not with the feds this close.
That fucking Mick Mallory. He must have figured out where they were. Alerted someone.
Kate. She’d been in contact with the Kincaids. Her fingerprints were all over this travesty.
Damn, damn, damn! First his money gone. He’d lost more than half his wealth in minutes. Minutes! Then his people.
He should never have trusted anyone. Hadn’t he learned that before?
His father. The whores. His own mother turning her back on him after he was expelled. Roger and Paul, weak, needy fools.
No one had ever stood by him. He could only depend on himself. Everything he knew, everything he was, was due to his intelligence, his foresight, his vision. No one had seen the potential of the Internet until he had launched his online pornography company. No one saw the potential of fantasy role-playing until he did it first.
Because he understood the darkest fantasies of human nature. He harbored them. He’d harbored them his entire life.
Everything was crumbling, but Trask felt free for the first time in years. Everyone he had mistakenly trusted was dead. Now he could go after Kate Donovan on his own. No cameras, nothing but her and him and his hands on her neck.
He’d keep her alive for a long, long time. Long enough to crush her soul before he watched her blood flow.
But first he had a need. Lucy had been stolen from him. In nine hours she should have been dying underneath him.
Someone else would fill her role. An understudy.
He looked around the dock. The day was warm and bright, hundreds of people out in boats and walking along the dock, shopping, taking in the sun.
He spied a lone woman. A little old for him. But she had short blond hair like Kate. Tall and skinny. Walking toward her sporty little car.
He got behind the wheel of his Hummer and followed her. She would go home eventually, and he had backup recording equipment in his car. If she had a family, he’d kill them first. If she lived alone, all the better.
He hoped she lived in the country where her screams couldn’t be heard by neighbors.
* * *
TWENTY-FOUR
DILLON STEERED THE BOAT toward the island in the distance where help waited. He swallowed anger and a deep, intense protective rage he’d never felt before. He gently touched Lucy’s hair as she huddled in the bottom of the boat, under a damp wool blanket Kate had taken from the helicopter and stuffed under the seat. Lucy shook uncontrollably, her face buried in her hands.
“Lucy, you’re safe. I promise.”
“You know.” She looked up at him, blinking in the harsh sunlight. Her voice trembled, the pain and anguish evident in those two words.
“Yes.” He couldn’t lie to her.
Tears streamed down her face and she closed her eyes, burying her face again.
He gently, cautiously, touched her cheek. She was bruised, but her external injuries would heal. He remembered what Kate had said in her note when she had planned to leave without him.
“Luce,” he said, trying to keep his voice calm, “you’re the strongest, bravest woman I know. We’re going to get through this, okay?”
She nodded but wouldn’t look at him.
She was scared and hurting. He was trained to help people deal with tragedies, their fear, their overwhelming sense of hopelessness. Intellectually he understood what Lucy was feeling: the humiliation, the fury, the helplessness, the terror, the injustice. Wanting to live and die at the same time.
But he didn’t know how she felt. He’d never been a victim. He’d never been physically and emotionally terrorized by a sadistic killer.
He wanted to take and internalize her pain. Yet for the first time he felt ill-equipped to offer the right words or guidance. She was alive, and that meant everything to Dillon and the Kincaid family. But what did it mean to Lucy?
As he neared the island where the copter waited, he saw three men standing on the shore. As he came closer, he recognized Jack. Quinn Peterson. The pilot, Hank.
How could they, four men, possibly know how to help Lucy?
He tossed the rope to Jack, who tied it off. That’s when he saw a tall, lean woman standing with Quinn Peterson. Her long black hair was pulled into a high ponytail and her face was ruddy from being outdoors.
She stepped forward. “Miranda Peterson. May I?” She nodded toward Lucy.
“Please be careful.”
Miranda looked him square in the eye. “I know exactly what she went through.” Then she stepped into the boat.
“My wife,” Peterson explained. “Lucy is in good hands.”
Dillon didn’t need to ask questions to connect the dots.
Jack said, “Trask shot and left for dead an undercover agent. I dropped him at the hospital before coming here. Where’s Kate?”
“Back there. Where’s Trask?”
Jack paused. “I had to let him go. I didn’t know where Lucy was, and I didn’t want to risk exposing myself and having him call for her execution. He’s driving a yellow Hummer and I already gave the plates to Peterson.”
“I ran them,” Peterson said. “Registered to Denise Arno.”
Dillon started for the boat. “I’m going back.”
“Not alone,” Jack said.
“I’m going, too,” Quinn said. “Miranda will take Lucy to the hospital.”
“You go with her,” Jack ordered Dillon. “Peterson and I will go back to the island.”
Dillon slowly burned. He’d been the one who’d left Kate behind; he wasn’t going to just walk away. If she died, how could he live with himself? He’d made a choice, the only choice he could make, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t finish the job.
Miranda led Lucy from the boat. She wrapped her in a second wool blanket. “We’ll be at Bellingham General,” she said. “But Lucy wants to go home.”
Dillon felt all eyes on him.
Lucy was safe. Alive.
Kate was in trouble.
“We’ll get Kate, then regroup at the hospital,” Dillon said.
No one argued.
Kate ran.
She’d hidden on the far side of the island, but Roger had closed in on her and she’d had to run again.
Roger Morton was chasing her through the dense growth on the island. Her arms were cut, and the gunshot wound throbbed. Her makeshift tourniquet had slowed but not stopped the flow of blood. It didn’t help that she was running, pumping blood faster and faster through her veins. Her chest burned, but she had to escape.
Everyone else was dead.
She was covered in blood, but she couldn’t think about it. The blood came from killers and rapists; she must not feel remorse. Not for Denise, the woman who set her and Paige up for Trask. Not for the young man she’d killed, who would have killed her without remorse. Not for the man whose neck she’d broken.
Roger was unharmed, and she had one bullet.
Stupid, stupid, stupid! But her emotions were raw, on the surface, and walking into that cabin was like walking into Paige’s graveyard. She’d fired over and over, not thinking, not being smart.
Maybe she deserved to die.
No.
Dammit, she’d finally saved one. She had destroyed Trask’s operation. She had hope that he would be found and Paige could rest in peace.
That she could live in peace.
“Kate, I’m going to fuck your dead body. You know that, don’t you?”
Roger’s vicious words cut through the air. Close, so close.
He would do it, too.
“The island’s not that big, babe. The water’s cold. You’re losing blood. Come to me. You won’t survive in the water. You know it.”
Psychological manipulation. She would survive. She wouldn’t let Trask win. Or Roger.
One bullet. She wiped sweat from her brow. Her short hair fell in her face; she’d lost the small band that had held it back. With one arm, she pushed it back.
Five feet. One bullet. She’d better not miss.
She jumped up.
They came at the island from the dock. The fastest way to get to the cabin and to Kate.
Dillon led the way, having visually mapped the island when he and Lucy escaped.
“Kate!”
He heard another man calling for her. On the far side of the island, away from the cliff. She’d led them away from the boat so Dillon and Lucy could escape.
Dillon swallowed heavily, glanced at Jack and Peterson. They had the training, but now they considered him part of the team.
He nodded, led the way toward the voice, Connor’s gun in his hand.
“I’m going to fuck your dead body, you know that, don’t you?”
The voice was closer. Roger Morton by the sound of it. The cabin loomed in front of them. Jack put his finger to his lips and quietly ran up the porch stairs as Peterson and Dillon ran past.
“…you’re losing blood. You won’t survive…”
Kate had been shot. Dillon ran faster, his body and mind focused on one thing. Saving Kate.
He saw Roger Morton facing away from him. His attention focused on a small grove of trees.
Kate jumped up, gun in hand, only feet from Morton.
Morton aimed.
Dillon fired.
Morton and Kate fell.
Had he shot Kate? Please God, no.
Dillon ran to her.
Kate saw Dillon at the same time that Roger aimed his gun toward her. Instead of firing her own weapon, she collapsed, hugging the ground. She heard the shot at the same time, felt a thud as Roger Morton fell. She scurried to the other side of the tree, not knowing if Morton was faking it, dead, dying, or if it was just a flesh wound.
She peered around, saw Roger’s face.
“Fucking bitch!” he said.
Alive. Definitely alive.
“Kate!”
Dillon. Running toward her.
Roger still had his gun. He was so close she could almost touch him. Bleeding from the leg. He used the tree to brace his back, then stood.
Aimed his gun at Dillon.
Dillon dove and tackled Roger, whose gun fell into the dirt next to Kate. She grabbed it, aimed it toward the fighting men as they rolled in the dirt.