by Cynthia Eden
She turned left. Took the turn too hard and the car bounced.
“I put the victims together. I paid a bribe to Bliss—dumb fucking Bliss. A little money went into his palm, and he gave me copies of the Death Angel case files.”
Wyatt had given him the case files?
“I pored over those files. I knew I could find a key in them, if I looked hard enough, and then . . . then I saw it.”
Her lips felt numb. “A pattern. With the victims.” Exactly as Sarah had said.
“Damn straight. I knew they meant something. I knew—”
Sarah was right. “We were all patients of Dr. Leigh’s.” That was what he’d discovered when he reviewed the files Wyatt had given him.
“Guilt complexes. Every single fucking one of you. So Leigh made his own experiment. Least, that’s what he told me. He put you in the most extreme situation. He gave you a chance . . . save yourself or save someone else.”
Help me! Please, help me!
“If you made the right choice, Leigh figured your guilt would finally end. And if that happened, he said he meant to let the victim go.”
Her whole body was shaking. It was so hard to steer. And tears tracked down her cheeks.
“If you saved yourself . . .” The muzzle of the gun shoved harder into her. “Then you didn’t deserve to live. The guilt was yours to bear, and death was all you’d get.”
The Death Angel. “No.” She didn’t want to believe it. Something else had happened. Someone had just . . . just stolen Leigh’s files. “He never . . . he never believed me about the other victim.”
The Death Angel died in the fire.
“You made the right choice, so I asked him why he still tried to kill you.” Now Spawn’s voice had turned musing.
“Why?” Her lips were numb. Can’t believe this. Can’t . . .
But why would Spawn lie now?
He plans to kill me. Why lie to someone you planned to kill?
“You saw his face. So he didn’t have a choice.” He laughed. “Funny thing about that . . . I think he felt guilty because he had to change his precious rules. His experiment failed, not because of a victim not making the wrong choice . . . but because his damn mask fell off.”
She remembered grabbing that mask. Yanking it hard. Looking up—
Her temples seemed to explode with pain.
“Good thing he was your shrink, right?” Spawn mused. “When you actually managed to survive, he was still safe because he could make sure that you remembered only what he wanted. He got to twist and turn the facts and make you remember the night the way he wanted you to see it.”
I grabbed the mask. I tried to scream. I looked up and saw—
“Turn right up ahead. We don’t have far to go now . . .”
Ana Young took one look at the men in the fancy black suits and knew the FBI agents had arrived. She barely contained an eye roll. Sure, Sarah got along with these guys pretty well, but Ana had never been on what she’d call friendly terms with them.
Mostly because when she’d been a kid, FBI agents had treated her brother like a criminal. They’d separated Ana from Asher. They’d questioned him, again and again.
She’d been the victim who’d been swarmed with hospital care, nurses, the one handled with kid gloves.
But Asher . . .
Because he’d only had one wound—that scar on his chin—they’d grilled him. For hours and hours. One dumb son of a bitch had even suggested that Asher might have been involved in the crimes.
I was the victim. He was the killer. She knew exactly what the agents had seen when they looked at her and her twin.
Her gaze swept around the station. Sarah was in there, huddled over some files and a big gray box. Viki was there, too. Talking on the phone with someone—maybe checking in with LOST? But Ana didn’t see Asher or Bailey.
She swung around, intending to head back out and face that crowd of reporters.
“He took her home,” Wyatt said.
He’d just come out of a nearby office.
“Your brother,” he continued with a faint nod. “He took Bailey home. Things got a little . . . intense here, and I think they needed that break.” His lips twisted. “Even if it was a break ordered by the Bureau.”
Her gaze sharpened on him. “Define intense.”
His hand rose and his fingers fiddled with his shiny sheriff’s star. “Carla Drake is dead. I have a deputy on the way to surgery, and I’ve pretty much been informed by the governor that my job is over.” He gave a mocking laugh. “Shortest time a sheriff ever served in this county. I broke the record.”
Her lips parted to respond, but then her phone rang, vibrating in her pocket. She knew that familiar blues beat. Asher loved blues, so she’d programmed that ringtone just for him. “Excuse me, would you?”
Wyatt took off his star and put it on the counter. “Sure. Why not?”
She pulled out her phone. “Asher? Where are you? And what in the hell happened to Carla—”
“Track my phone.”
“What?” She could barely hear him. The connection seemed so distorted.
“Spawn. Richard—” The line cut in, out. In. “Had a gun.”
Her hand tightened around the phone. “Who had a gun?”
Wyatt whirled toward her.
“Spawn. Got me—” Static crackled. “In trunk.”
What. The. Hell.
“He has a gun—” Once more, the line cut in. Out.
“Asher?”
“On Bailey.”
Static crackled.
“Come help—” And the line died.
For a moment, she just stared at Wyatt. He stared back. “What’s happening?” Wyatt asked, voice gentle, careful.
She looked at her phone. For an instant, the station vanished. She was back in that old, stinking warehouse. Her brother was in front of her. Staring at her with tears in his eyes.
Asher.
“Trace his phone.” Her words flew out. “That reporter—Spawn—he pulled a gun on Asher and Bailey. He’s got Asher in the trunk.” But I’m guessing the fool forgot to take Asher’s phone and that’s how he was able to call me. And if she knew her brother . . . he’d have at least one weapon hidden on his body.
Asher never went anywhere unprepared. Neither did she. “Get that trace!” They could triangulate the signal and find her brother. They’d lost the call but she knew he’d call back. She knew—
The phone rang.
Blues. Sweet, sweet blues.
Hell, yes.
Wyatt grabbed his star.
They pulled off the road and into one of the small parking lots that hikers used. The same lot that she and Asher had used when they came out for their first trip to the Death Angel’s cabin.
“Your boyfriend thought he was such a badass when he met me out here,” Spawn said. “I knew I should have run him down that first night. But he dodged too fast, and I didn’t want to risk going back then.”
She turned off the car. After all, there was no other place to go. “That was you . . . you were the one watching the house.” But she’d already known that—thanks to the camera Carla had brought to her.
The sun was setting, casting a red glow over the car. “I was always watching you.”
Carla was right.
“I mean, Dr. Leigh thought you should get to live. As long as you didn’t remember the truth, everything was fine. He even had you believing you had some sort of dissociative episode going on. Smart fuck made you think you were crazy. Used hypnosis and some other shit. Bragged about it to me. Said he could control you completely.”
I hate you, Spawn. “No, he didn’t have total control. That’s why I went to LOST.”
His twisted smile faded. “That’s when I knew I had to end you, sweet Bailey. Finish the chain. Dr. Leigh didn’t agree. He’d let you go. Let Carla go—hell, he had that woman so twisted and damaged that she didn’t even know which way was up.”
Bailey licked bone-dry lips. What can I use as a weapon?
How do we get away?
“I warned him that she was about to break, too. But the woman was like his fucking pet project. He said he was going to help her vanish. Didn’t realize what he meant by that, not until I heard about the fire at her shop. Guessing he helped her out with that . . .”
The man I saw upstairs. The shadow moving around . . . the man in the mask . . .
Dr. Leigh? Her temples pounded. She saw shadows where she should see a man’s face.
“I wanted to know how deep in the game she really was. Leigh would never tell me, not for certain. I think she was the first one, though.”
Game? It hadn’t been a game. It had been life. It had been death. It had been hell on earth.
“Because she’d let her lover get arrested . . .” The pieces were starting to fit.
“How the hell do you know about that?”
“Carla told me.”
He blinked, seemed actually surprised. “You’re lucky that crazy bitch didn’t kill you. She killed Leigh, you know. Sliced his throat right open. Figure it had to be her, after all. She and I . . . we were the only ones who knew what he’d done.”
The drumming of her heartbeat was too loud.
“Maybe she got tired of following his orders,” Spawn mused. “Or maybe she realized the only way she’d be free was if he died. Because I know he wasn’t going to let her go. He needed her, after all. Like the bastard told me, every successful experiment must have a control subject.”
Experiment. Game. Rage built within her.
“But it’s good that she eliminated Leigh. He was the old Death Angel. I am the new one. The guy was just lying low, not doing a damn thing. That doesn’t make news.”
Her heart raced so fast. Did he hear that desperate beat?
“I make news.”
And he was going to make news again. Going to have her and Asher become his latest victims.
“Get out of the car,” Spawn ordered her. “Loverboy is waiting.”
Bailey didn’t move. “You’ll just torture us. Kill us.”
He shrugged. “But maybe . . . maybe you’ll overpower me. I mean, isn’t that what you’ve been thinking all along? That you’ll overpower me? That you’ll somehow manage to get away? Save Asher?” He pointed the gun right between her eyes. “That you’ll be the hero again? Brave Bailey Jones. She did it once more. She escaped the Death Angel for a second time.”
“You aren’t the Death Angel.”
“And you aren’t brave. You’re just a lost little girl who’s about to go for another walk in the woods. And we’re going to see how loud you can scream this time.” He glared at her. “Open the door, Bailey. Get your ass out.”
She opened the door. Got out. Stood near the car. He followed her, moving slowly, crawling over the seat and maneuvering around the steering wheel. “Good girl,” he mocked and he yanked her close to his body. “We’re gonna check on the boyfriend now. I figure he’ll play ball. He has to, right? Bet he can’t bear the thought of watching another woman get tortured right before his eyes.”
I can’t let that happen. I can’t let Asher live through that hell again.
“He’ll kill you,” she told Spawn.
“Doubt it. Not with my finger so close to the trigger . . . and the gun so close to your pretty head.”
And it was close. Right under her chin. One wrong move, and it would blow.
But . . .
I can’t let him hurt Asher. Wasn’t that the reason she’d followed Spawn’s command the first time? Why she’d let herself be taken by him?
To protect Asher. To buy them a few more minutes so that they could try to think of a way to escape.
Spawn had been right, on that count. But he was wrong about so many other things.
I’m not lost and I’m not afraid. For Asher, she could face any pain. She was between him and Spawn, and she was going to stay between them.
You won’t hurt him. I won’t let you.
“Push the trunk button,” Spawn ordered. “Time to play.”
Bailey had the keys in her hand. She made a show of lifting her hand, aiming it at the back of the vehicle. She pushed the button to release the trunk.
The gun moved beneath her chin, just a bit, as Spawn repositioned himself to better view the back of the vehicle.
He thinks Asher might come out and attack. He wants to be ready.
But . . . Spawn was waiting for the attack to come from Asher.
I won’t make Asher face his nightmare. I can’t do that to him.
The trunk was almost open.
Bailey sucked in a deep breath, and then she slammed her elbow back—back as hard as she could into Spawn’s right side. She felt the give of skin and stitches beneath her hit and Spawn bellowed in pain.
That’s right, bastard. I remember exactly where Carla stabbed you.
She lurched forward, out of his grasp, running for the back of that trunk. “Asher, run! Get away!”
He fired.
The bullet slammed into her, and Bailey hit the ground.
Wyatt was driving hell fast, but that wasn’t good enough for Ana. She needed him to go faster.
“They’ve stopped.” It was Sarah’s voice, floating through the Bluetooth connection. “Signal is triangulated as best as we can get it. Straight ahead five miles. Turn right.”
“That leads to the Mills Hiking Trail.” Wyatt slammed his hand against the steering wheel. “Spawn is taking them right back to the Death Angel’s cabin.”
“You giving this intel to our FBI buddies?” Ana asked as she glanced back at the black SUV that trailed behind them.
She’d told everyone at the station what was happening—and now the cavalry was coming in force. The FBI had insisted on being part of that cavalry, and she hadn’t been able to refuse. I just need to get my brother back.
LOST had used its resources to track Asher. Because that little sheriff’s office? It hadn’t been equipped for a mission like this one—not with time being of the extreme essence.
So Sarah had gotten on the phone with LOST. The organization had pulled some powerful strings . . .
And my brother is five miles ahead.
“I’m giving them the intel,” Sarah promised. Then her voice hardened. “You be safe out there, Ana, understand?”
The only thing she understood was that her brother needed her. “It’s going to be too much like before,” Ana heard herself murmur. “If Spawn is threatening Bailey . . . I don’t know what Asher will do.”
“That’s why you’re going to be there for him. You guard his back.” Sarah was firm. “And watch your own.”
“I got her back,” Wyatt said. “Don’t worry about that.” His siren wasn’t on. They were going in silent, so as not to alert Spawn.
Spawn—the slimy reporter she’d seen skulking around the town? How had that guy gotten involved in this mess?
And could they stop him, before he hurt someone else?
When he heard the gunshot, Asher leapt out of the trunk with a roar. He raced around the back of the car, the knife gripped in his right fist, but he made sure to keep his hand behind his leg so Spawn wouldn’t see his weapon. He was going to get the drop on that bastard and—
Bailey was on the ground.
He froze.
His Bailey was on the ground.
For a moment, all Asher could do was stare at her. She seemed so still. So incredibly, terribly still. “Bailey?” Her name came from him, hoarse, painful.
“Ah!” Spawn screamed. “What did the bitch do? I told her . . . just open the trunk! She wasn’t the fucking hero! I told her that!”
Bailey was on the ground.
And he could see the blood on her back. “No . . .” Asher broke from his stupor and ran toward her.
“Stop!” Spawn yelled. “You fucking stop!”
Asher didn’t stop.
A bullet blasted into his left shoulder. He barely felt the burn.
“Get the fuck away from her!” Spawn yelled. “This
isn’t how it works! I’ll shoot you in the head! Right between your damn eyes if you take another step—”
Asher took another step. Another. He ran to Bailey and the bullets flew at him. Another hit his arm. One burned right past his cheek. He didn’t care. He didn’t stop until he was beside Bailey. He put his hand to her throat and his fingers were shaking.
Be alive. Be alive, sweetheart. You have to be alive for me.
His blood dripped onto her as his fingers pressed to her throat. Then he felt it. The lightest, faintest beat of her heart.
Then Spawn pushed the gun against his temple.
“You don’t listen well, do you?”
Asher looked up. Bailey was alive. She hadn’t stirred at all when he touched her and there was far too much blood.
She needs help. I have to get her help.
“Get away from Bailey. Stand up. Or die now.”
Asher stared into that sick fool’s eyes. “I don’t leave Bailey.”
“You will die!”
“I don’t leave Bailey.” Because this wasn’t a game. Wasn’t some choice—his life or hers. For him . . . there was only Bailey. She belonged to him, completely and totally, just as he belonged to her. And he would do anything for Bailey.
Even give up his life.
But I’d rather take his. Asher felt tension coil in his body as he prepared to attack.
“You don’t leave her?” Spawn spat. “What kind of crap line is that? Let me guess . . . because you love her.”
“Yes.” Simple. True. He did love Bailey Jones. Maybe he’d loved her from the first instant he’d looked into her green eyes. Love at first sight wasn’t supposed to be real, right?
But Bailey was real. What he felt for her was real.
And he didn’t care when it had happened. All that mattered to him was that it had happened. He’d fallen in love with Bailey Jones.
And he’d die for her in a heartbeat.
“I wanted to kill you both at the cabin. It was supposed to be at the cabin! I even started to dig a new grave for her last night, but I guess . . . I guess this can work just fine—”
Before Spawn could finish his threat, Asher leapt up. With one hand, he knocked away Spawn’s gun. With the other hand . . . he brought up his knife. And he drove that knife straight into Spawn’s throat. “Your turn,” Asher snarled at him.