Hunting Ground

by Meghan Holloway

  On nights like this, when the darkness was at its deepest and the predator restlessly paced its confines within me, I felt more animal than human. And like an animal, I knew the wisdom of having more than a single den. There were plenty to choose from in these mountains. Caves and defunct mines, old hunting shacks and long-abandoned homesteads.

  I approached the latter now, the cluster of buildings listing on their crumbling foundations. I ducked through the low entrance into the pitch black interior. I found the electric lantern just inside the door and turned it on. It was barren. The floor was dirt, cold, and littered with the debris of the woods. In the corner were the skeletal remains of some animal a mountain lion had dragged within last spring.

  The woman lay covered with a thick wool blanket, inert on the floor where I had left her. I tossed the blanket aside as I knelt next to her. The chill in the air had cooled my arousal, but now it bubbled to the surface once more at seeing her bound and helpless. This woman lying in the refuse of the forest was not the one that I wanted, though, and my movements were brusque. I took less care than usual as I yanked off the cuffs.

  Perhaps had I not been so consumed with the throbbing in my pants, I would have recognized the signs of her wakefulness before she reared up and swung at me. Caught off guard, I could not defend myself against the first blow. How she was conscious, let alone able to function after the pills I had forced down her throat, I did not know.

  That first blow knocked me back, and in those moments while I was stunned, she scrambled to her feet and ran. I caught her at the edge of the meadow, and her head thumped against the frozen ground like a melon when I tackled her. A scream burst out of her, piercing in the quiet of the night, ringing in my ears.

  She struggled frantically, wriggling under me like a squealing, mewling pig trying to escape slaughter. I felt myself stir to life again against her.

  She felt it, too, for she froze. She turned her face to the side and took a deep, quavering breath. “Please don’t hurt me,” she whispered, voice breaking. “I…I’ll do anything.” She moved against me, and this time her movements were as sinuous as a snake rather than frantic. “I’ll do a-anything you want. Just p-please, don’t hurt me.”

  I dug my groin into the fat swell of her ass. I heard her breath catch in a sob before she pushed back against me. I reared back, revulsion bringing bile rising to the back of my throat, and I gagged.

  I did not realize my hand was on the rock until my fingers closed around it. I did not realize I had raised it until I brought the edge down on the side of her skull in a swift, violent blow. I raised the rock again, and this time, I did not bother to quell my rage. I let it boil over unchecked.

  Twenty-Nine

  The Center for Disease Control and Prevention

  has reported that murder is the third-leading cause of death

  among American Indian and Alaska Native women.

  EVELYN

  The glint of gold against the hollow of my throat winked in the light as I drew my sweater over my head. I froze, arms stretched above me, hair still caught in the garment, and stared at my reflection in the bathroom mirror. A fine filigree gold chain lay against my skin with a heart-shaped locket nestled against my breast bone.

  I let my sweater fall to the floor and scrabbled to find the clasp of the necklace. My fingers shook too badly to work the clasp free. I gave up struggling with the clasp, caught the chain in my fist, and yanked.

  The necklace dug into my throat for a moment, grating and burning against my skin, and then with a snap, it broke. I dropped it as if it had singed me, and it landed on the tiles of the bathroom floor with a soft chime.

  My heart began a heavy, laden thud again as I stared down at the necklace. I knelt and reached slowly for the piece of jewelry. It was small and delicate, and I plucked it off the tiles and straightened. There were no photographs within the locket, but an elegantly scripted R was engraved on the front.

  I placed it on the counter and backed away until my shoulders thumped against the wall. Come out, come out, wherever you are. I closed my eyes and sucked in an uneven breath.

  In the basement of the museum in Atlanta, I had been lucky. I thought being locked in was an accident at first. When the lights had gone out, I assured myself there was nothing to be concerned about. But as soon as I heard that soft, steady footfall, I had known. I had known before I heard his voice that seemed to come from all directions in the dark. We’re going to play a game, Evelyn. You like playing games, don’t you?

  What game are you playing at, Evelyn? a coworker had asked me after I made the first complaint about him. Chad is the nicest guy.

  He certainly gave that appearance. Clean cut, handsome, personable. He had a beautiful wife and two young daughters. As a security guard, he instilled trust in others.

  But he had also stopped by my desk several weeks after he began working at the museum, and as he exchanged pleasantries with me, he reached out and caught a lock of my hair. You have beautiful hair, he said, rubbing my hair between his thumb and forefinger. When I tried to move away, his fingers tightened. When I told him to take his hands out of my hair, he held my gaze and pulled until I felt the tear at my scalp.

  He had walked away with strands of my hair tangled around his fingers. As he had walked away, I had known I was dealing with someone who was not what he seemed on the surface. It was only the beginning.

  I knew my way around the basement of the museum. It was the only thing that saved me. In the dark, struggling to be silent, I fled through the labyrinth. His voice and footsteps trailed after me. In one of the storage rooms filled with old office furniture, I crawled beneath a desk. My cell phone had no service in the depths of the museum. I was alone and helpless, and the man who had terrorized me for a year was whispering my name in the darkness.

  Now, locked safely in my room at the inn with Chad Kilgore dead and buried in the wilderness two thousand miles away, I moved to the toilet and vomited. Being grabbed tonight had been exactly what I expected to happen at any moment hiding under the desk in the museum’s basement.

  I averted my eyes from the necklace as I brushed my teeth. My thumb where the rose’s thorn had pierced me was red and warm to the touch. My throat was sore, my neck stiff. A bruise was developing on my chin to match the one on my cheek. I needed to act. It was no longer merely about me and about the fear of how far Jeff would escalate.

  I had recognized the little white dog Hector carried in the crook of one arm. I had seen photos of him on her desk at work.

  “Rachel is missing, isn’t she?” I had asked. He met my gaze, and it was all the answer I needed.

  Another woman was missing. Unease gripped Raven’s Gap.

  Hector believed me. I was not certain he was truly an ally, but he knew what kind of predator lurked in his town.

  I slept in fits and starts, and by morning, I had a plan. A simple plan is best, my grandfather had said.

  I called Annette and asked for the day off.

  “Of course,” she said. “Take all the time you need, and please let me know if I can do anything for you.”

  “Any plans for the day?” Faye asked when I came into the kitchen.

  “I’d like to purchase a gun,” I said, voice hoarse. My throat was swollen and tender today, but the warm shower and the pain reliever I had taken were already easing the ache.

  She placed a mug on the table before me. “Hot water with honey, lemon, cinnamon, and whiskey.” She studied me for a long moment. “Do you want to obtain one legally or…?” She let the sentence hang.

  It was my turn to study her. Her words reminded me of the easy, confident skill with which she had handled the pistol the other night, how calm she had been at the prospect of someone hiding somewhere in the inn. Her words reminded me of the hidden saferoom in her closet, the numerous locks on the door.

  I needed a paper trail. “Legally.”

  “There’s a place in Livingston with a
range as well. If you don’t mind company, I could go with you after breakfast. I just need to run Sam to school first.”

  “I don’t mind company at all.”

  The hot toddy went a long way toward easing the soreness in my throat, and the cream of wheat Faye made for breakfast was warm and easy to swallow.

  After helping her clean up the breakfast dishes, I changed into jeans and a sweatshirt and met her back downstairs after she returned from taking Sam to school.

  “Is he feeling better?” I asked.

  “He hasn’t been himself for a few days now. He keeps insisting on sleeping with me, which isn’t normal behavior for him. I’ve woken up several times in the middle night to find him wide awake sitting up in bed. I don’t know what has triggered this, and he can’t tell me.” She sighed. “Or won’t.”

  “Is…” I did not know how to phrase the question. “Has he always not spoken?”

  Her smile was sad when she turned from the door. “He was like a little magpie as a toddler. Always talking, always asking questions. He stopped speaking five years ago.”

  The guarded look in her face, the protective way she held herself, and the closed off tone of voice forestalled any questions about what had spurred his mutism.

  “We can take my car,” I said. The drive to Livingston rolled by quickly, and in an hour and a half we were pulling into the parking lot of our destination.

  One of the men behind the counter at the gun range readily answered my questions and had a recommendation for me.

  He reached into the case to retrieve a pistol and placed it on the counter before me. “This is a Heckler & Koch VP9. I consistently recommend this handgun to women.”

  “Why?”

  “The slide pull. This is one of the easiest I’ve found, easy on the hands. It’s a reliable piece. But my advice is to test out a few before deciding for yourself. Check for comfort, weight, how the grip feels in your hand.”

  “I’d like to test this one. And maybe something smaller.”

  “You can try my Glock 43,” Faye said.

  Within twenty minutes, we had rented a lane and purchased paper targets. We donned the hard plastic ear muffs. My own glasses would suffice for eye protection.

  Faye fastened a target to the carrier system and used the automated pulley system to position it at the ten-yard mark. “You don’t want to let someone too close to you. If they are within arm’s reach, they can overpower you. But you also want them close enough that your shots are true, because believe me, your aim is not going to be as good in a tense situation as it is standing here shooting at a paper target.”

  She moved around our small corner of the range with ease and familiarity. She did not even flinch at the loud reports of nearby gunfire.

  “How long have you been doing this?”

  “Shooting? Five years now.”

  Five years since she had learned how to handle a gun. Five years since her son had stopped talking. The same son who crawled into a hidden safe room in their home as if it was something he had done any number of times before. I wondered what had sparked the fear and silence that governed the two of them.

  She must have mistaken my own silence, for when she glanced at me, she paused in drawing a gun case from her bag. “It’s all about knowing the gun and learning how to handle it safely. Even Sam knows how to shoot. I would never leave him alone with access to a gun. But in an emergency, he knows how to use one.”

  “My grandfather taught me how to shoot,” I admitted. Though not when I was a young girl. As a child, I had not even known about the old Browning hidden on the top shelf of his closet. We had gone to a nearby shooting range the first time I had opened my curtains one morning and found cigarette butts on the exterior windowsill and footprints amidst my grandmother’s azaleas. My grandfather had insisted on me sleeping with the old Browning on my bedside table after that. I had not known about the German pistol his uncle brought home from World War II until he retrieved it from a shoebox tucked at the back of a drawer and told me the plan.

  I fed ammo into the magazines and remembered my grandfather’s instructions. The way he had shown me how to hold the gun, firmly but not squeezing, pushing with my right hand, pulling with my left. Straight arms, but no locked elbows. Relaxed shoulders. Balanced stance. Do not pull the trigger; squeeze it.

  After we had buried Chad Kilgore, neither of us had gone to the range again. I had not touched a gun since that day.

  I pushed the loaded magazine into the butt of the Heckler & Koch and took a deep breath as I pulled the slide until it lurched forward and locked into place. I placed the pistol on the high table with the barrel facing downrange and took a step back.

  “Want me to go first?” Faye asked.

  She could not know what made me hesitate. She did not remember the way Chad Kilgore’s head had been thrown back with the blow from the bullet. She did not recall the fine mist of blood, how heavy he had been, or how long it had taken to dig his grave. She had not felt the horror. Or the relief.

  I swallowed. “Sure.”

  She stepped forward, stance like a boxer’s, shoulders squared, and fired at the paper target in quick succession until the magazine was empty. She held the pistol with such ease, it seemed like an extension of her arms, natural and deadly.

  This shy, reserved woman was shockingly and composedly lethal. I stared as she ejected the magazine and laid it and the pistol aside. She hit a button beside the booth, and the target carrier system whined into motion and towed the paper toward us in a ghostly waft. Faye pulled down her target, placed another on the carrier, and sent it back across the room.

  I gaped at the target she had used, a traditional bull’s eye. The pockmarks from the bullets were not all dead center, but the ones that were not were a tight cluster around it.

  We traded places, and I flexed my fingers before I picked up the HK. I fit my hands around the butt as my grandfather had once instructed and sighted down the barrel.

  I closed my left eye so I could see the sights better, adjusted my aim to the center of the target and fired. The noise and jump in my hands startled me, and the shot went wide, not even touching the target. I focused on the target once again. I took a deep breath and, as I let it out, I forced my shoulders to fall and loosen. When I fired this time, I hit the center of the silhouette. Aim for the center of mass, my grandfather had told me.

  After shooting through several magazines with the HK and with Faye’s Glock, my shoulders burned and my arms felt weighty. The HK was my preference, but the subcompact Glock would fit in my pocket. I needed something small and easily concealed.

  I purchased a Glock 43 when we finished in the range. The process was disconcertingly easy and swift, and soon I was walking out of the place with a gun in a hard plastic case and a box of 9mm hollow-point ammunition.

  It was midday, and we stopped at a nearby restaurant for lunch. After we ordered, I glanced at the chain supercenter across the street.

  I leaned across the table. “Do you mind if I run across the street really quickly while we wait for our food? It’s getting to be that time of month.”

  “No, not at all,” Faye said.

  “I won’t be but a minute.”

  In the store, I swung through the pharmacy section and grabbed a pack of sanitary napkins and a box of gloves and then headed straight to the electronics. I found a slim, pocket-sized digital camera. I grabbed an extra memory card, duct tape, and a remote shutter release as well.

  After paying, I stopped into the bathroom and opened the pack of sanitary pads, tucking the camera box, memory card, and remote within, hidden from sight. I had paid with cash, and I flushed the receipt down the toilet.

  Back at the restaurant, I slid into the booth just as the waitress arrived with our food. The meal was hot and filling, and once we polished off our plates, we headed back to Raven’s Gap.

  School was letting out as we drove through Gardiner, and upon Faye�
�s request, I pulled into the carline. Sam was all quiet smiles when he climbed into the backseat.

  When we arrived back at the inn, I was the first to spot her. It was the ruffle of the wind in the hem of her floral print dress that caught my attention. She sat slumped on the front porch swing.

  I put my car into reverse and quickly backed out of the drive. Faye glanced at me, startled, and then her gaze swept the area and locked on the woman on the porch. “Oh Christ.”

  I pulled down the street and parked out of sight from the inn. “Just stay in the car. Sam can’t see this.”

  I ran back to the inn, slowing when I reached the front walk. My eyes went automatically to the woods on either side of the inn. Someone was watching. I could feel it with absolute certainty. Not even a magpie cackled in the trees.

  “Miss?” She did not respond to my call, and I hesitated with my foot on the bottom step of the porch. “Miss, are you alright?” I swallowed and climbed the remaining steps as dread grew heavier and heavier in my chest.

  Her dress was sleeveless. Her feet were bare. And her face was gone.

  My stomach lurched into my throat, and I rushed to lean over the railing before I lost my lunch. I vomited until there was nothing left and I was reduced to dry heaves. Once I had stopped gagging, I straightened and shakily wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. I forced myself to turn back to her.

  Her face and one side of her head were completely caved in, reduced to a matted pulp of shards of bones, blackened blood, and exposed brain matter. The violence was like nothing I had ever seen before, and a tremor worked its way through me. Had her head not been attached to her body, I would not have known I was looking at the remnants of a woman, of someone who had once been capable of smiling and laughing.

  My stomach heaved again, and I clamped a hand over my mouth. With my free hand, I fumbled into my pocket. I almost dropped my phone several times before I managed to dial 911.