It was a bloody mess. The hole punched through it a deep, weeping well of blood. Twisting her shirt around itself, she wound it around her leg, high above the wound, tying the sleeves together in a tight knot in an effort to, if not stop the bleeding, slow it down. Yanking her pants back in place, she tried to think about what came next.
A weapon. She needed a weapon. She raised herself on her haunches, felt the binding around her thigh squeeze tight. She leaned to the side, taking pressure off her injured leg and began scrounging in the dirt for a stick, a rock … anything that would serve as a mean to hurt him.
Her fingers closed on something small and hard, but smooth. Too smooth to be a rock. She picked it up, examined it—and knew almost immediately what it was.
It was a bone.
A vertebra—from the size and shape she knew that it was human. That it belonged to a young girl who used to have blue eyes. She looked into the surrounding trees and felt ill. They were here. This is where all those girls disappeared to. Left in the open, exposed to the elements and the wild animals she was sure inhabited these woods. Grief and panic came for her, but she was ready. She broke away—detached herself from what she held in her hand. There would be time for grieving, but not now.
Placing it gently on the ground, she scrounged, found more bones, and placed them in a growing pile until she found what she was looking for.
Eighty-three
Wade wound his way through the dense cover of trees and brush—zigzagging through the woods. There was no pattern—some distances were covered for a few feet, others for several yards, but they always changed direction. He had no idea where she had gone.
Truth was, his neighbors were more like fifty miles away. But if he’d told her that—that there was no possible way she’d ever find help—it would’ve ruined everything. He’d learned over the years that it was when he gave them hope that he had the most fun.
Finding a fallen tree, Wade hopped over the bulk of it, ignoring the twinge in his injured knee. He crouched, took a few seconds to look the spot over. Bent foliage, tacky smudges of blood congealed on them. She’d taken brief refuge here. The small pile of bones was interesting—she’d found one of his toys. The terror she must have felt when she realized what she held in her hand was almost palpable.
He imagined her binding her wound, resting the frantic gallop of her heart as she lamented over the futility of it all; and he smiled, taking a deep breath, drawing in her scent. He ran his fingers along the leaves that bore her blood and brought them to his lips. His tongue slipped from his mouth of its own volition, needing a taste.
The power that zinged through his veins lit him up like a bucket of fireworks. Stars exploded in front of his eyes. Every fiber, every synapse, every molecule of his being was electrified, set on fire. He stood slowly, feet shifting themselves, pointing in the right direction.
Pointing toward her.
He moved with purpose, weaving through the trees, as sure of where he was going as he was of the blood that pulled him along—and that the woman he was being pulled toward belonged to him and him alone.
Eighty-four
Michael cranked the wheel, took the turn fast. The road was little more than a footpath, narrow and caged in by trees. The Hummer ate the terrain, slinging rocks and debris out of its way. A few miles in was a fork in the road, forcing him to slow to a crawl.
They’d split up. He’d sent Tom home to his family, and Shaw and Lark had taken Carson to the hospital while he went after Sabrina. The coordinates Carson had given him, fed into the Hummer’s GPS, said to take a left. The road was supposed take him around the back and bring him in behind the cabin that sat on the property. He began to wonder and worry that Carson was playing him. He hesitated, but only for a second. She was here. She had to be. He cranked the wheel to the left and punched the gas.
After a few miles he checked his progress. Carson had told him that the cabin sat pretty snug against the surrounding foothills. He could see the craggy outcropping of rock dotted with scrub brush. He braked and killed the engine.
He geared up quietly and thought for the hundredth time that this whole thing could be a setup—that maybe Carson and Wade were in this together. He dropped the Kimber into his holster, tucked a few just in case items in various pockets. It didn’t matter. Wade was going to die bloody, and if he was involved, so was Carson. He’d make sure of it.
It was an easy walk and he made it silently, his head on a constant swivel. The cabin came into view. It was little more than a run-down shack with boarded-up windows, a dilapidated back porch, and a sagging roof.
Weapon in hand, he approached the porch. Taking the steps quickly, he studied the back door. On rusty hinges, it looked surprisingly sturdy. So did the industrial-size padlock that bolted it closed.
Shooting off padlocks looked cool in the movies, but it didn’t always work. And it would alert whoever might be nearby that he was there. He pulled out his lock-pick set and had the padlock free within a minute.
Hand on the knob, he gave it a testing turn. It rolled in his hand without protest. Waiting a few seconds, he rushed in, gun raised. It took a moment to see that the cabin was deserted. Then he lowered his gun and took in the horrors around him.
From the outside, the cabin was old, rotted wood, but it was a clever deception. The interior walls had been covered in cinder block, including the boarded-up windows, and the floor was a thick pad of concrete. He stared at it. Stains bloomed across almost every square inch, overlapping in variegated shades of rust, some years old. Some newer.
He recognized them instantly for what they were: bloodstains. He surveyed the room. There were surveillance cameras mounted in every corner, all of them pointed directly at the large stainless-steel table bolted to the floor in the middle of the room. There were lengths of chain also bolted to the floor. At the end of each was an iron manacle, some big enough to fit a person’s neck, others the size of the average ankle.
On the opposite wall stood a sink and hot plate, and on the short length of worn countertop were tools. Pliers and knives. Lengths of wire and straight edge razors. A blow torch. On the shelf above the sink were jelly jars full of cloudy liquid. In each were floating masses he recognized as human eyes. Inside one of those jars were eyes belonging to his baby sister.
This is where Frankie had been taken. Where she’d been kept and killed. Her blood was here, seeped into the rough concrete floor.
Just another stain in the countless layers beneath his feet.
He felt grief and anger well up inside him, as it always did when he thought of his sister, but he pushed it down. He couldn’t do what needed to be done if he allowed himself to be pulled under by the riptide of emotion that tugged at him. Frankie was gone; he couldn’t help her. Sabrina was alive; she needed him. In order to save Sabrina, he’d have to let Frankie go.
He turned away from the jars and tools and noted that none of the blood on the floor was new. Any blood that was Sabrina’s would’ve been fresh. That and the fine layer of dust settled on the table said that wherever she was, she hadn’t been brought into the cabin.
She wasn’t here, had never been here, and he felt a homicidal rage coming on. He’d been played, lied to. Sabrina was fighting for her life somewhere, and he’d let her down. Why he allowed himself to hope that this time, this woman, would be any different, he’d never understand.
He found his phone, about to call Ben and have him kill Carson for lying when it came to him: the woods.
She was in the woods.
Eighty-five
The first thing Michael saw was Lucy’s car, parked haphazardly in a clearing just on the other side of the cabin. He ran for it, hating the hope that pushed him forward. He reached through the shattered window and popped the trunk before heading toward it. He saw the gun resting on the lid and picked it up. It wasn’t the Super Colt he’d given Sabrina. It was a 9
mm, exactly like Carson’s. Wade’s service weapon.
It felt light. He ejected the clip and saw that it was empty. He racked the slide back and checked the chamber. Empty.
He tucked the empty 9mm into his waistband and lifted the lid of the trunk. Saw the balled-up wad of duct tape. Thought about Sabrina, bound and trapped in the dark.
Hunkering down, he surveyed the ground in front of him. This time the blood he found was freshly spilled, soaked into the soft dirt of the clearing. Two shell casings and several unspent bullets littered the ground. He scooped a few out of the dirt and jiggled them in his hand while he studied the casing. Wade had shot her. If it’d been the other way around, he’d be crouched over Wade’s corpse rather than a patch of fresh blood. Why he shot her was something he couldn’t figure out. But why didn’t matter.
What mattered was that Sabrina was wounded and on the run. Wade’s absence told him that he wasn’t far behind her. It was the only logical explanation. He studied the blood, tried to make sense of what he was seeing and what he held in his hand. Why the bullets were on the ground and not in the gun was something else he couldn’t figure out. He surveyed the clearing, saw the JPD blazer parked a few yards away. He stood to check it out and wasn’t at all surprised to see that the radio inside it had been gutted.
Michael gazed into the trees for a moment—tried to listen for her. He wanted to yell her name, let her know he’d come for her, but he held his tongue. He had no idea where she was or how long she’d been running. Wade’s whereabouts were unknown. Calling out to her could put her in danger. If she was injured, she’d know that making a run for it wouldn’t be possible. She’d do her best to double back to the clearing, try for either the radio in Wade’s truck or the gun he’d left behind. Only, if she did manage to make it back, all she’d find was a broken radio and an empty gun. She’d need at least one of them is she was going to survive.
He couldn’t do anything about the radio. The gun was a different story.
He pulled Carson’s 9mm from the small of his back. After depositing it onto the trunk lid of Lucy’s car, he headed into the woods.
It’d been nearly an hour and Wade hadn’t seen hide nor hair of his quarry and quite frankly, he was getting pissed. Rage rose up, drowned out everything else. This was wrong. All wrong. The rage grew, burned in his blood.
Blood …
He came to an abrupt standstill and closed his eyes. He was forgetting he was connected to her. He could feel her, find her, if he let her blood lead him. Taking a few deep, cleansing breaths, he felt the connection grab hold, clutch him tight in a desperate fist that kicked his pulse up to a rapid hammering against his temple. He could feel her.
She was close.
He snapped his eyes open. Piloted by the whiplash turn of his neck, he caught a flash of movement to the left. A bare arm pumping frantically as his prey ran through the trees some distance away, going much faster than she should’ve been able to with a hole in her leg. Another deep breath brought him her scent, that sweet smell he missed so much. She was making a run for it, hoping to make the clearing and the gun he left there in time to kill him.
He smiled. Clipped his knife closed and dropped it into his pocket
She was never going to make it.
Eighty-six
Fueled by an adrenaline she knew couldn’t last, Sabrina ran full speed. Nothing more than an easy jog for her, pre-GSW, but it was fast enough to put distance between her and Wade. At least for the time being.
She’d circled around, followed him at a safe distance, watched him amble through the woods, knife in hand, following the trail she left for him.
The element of surprise was an important advantage, one she would have to seize when the opportunity presented itself. He was frustrated. Angry. Things were not happening the way he envisioned. Disbelief rolled off of him in waves and she knew that if she was going to attack, it would have to be soon. Staring at the huge blade gripped in his fist, she ignored the throbbing in her leg and the tingling sensation that snaked its way from boot to hip.
She was about ten minutes from passing out and maybe another fifteen from dying. Too much blood had been lost for her to wait much longer.
He stopped midstride, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. Driven by pure instinct, she ran, the pain in her thigh fading beneath the pounding surge of adrenaline.
Stomping the urge to look behind her, she ran past him, not more than twenty yards away. The sound of snapping twigs and crunching leaves fell heavily upon the silent wood, amplified by her instincts but also muffled by the rush of blood in her ears. She knew the instant he spotted her, and she pushed even harder for the break in the trees.
If she’d planned correctly, she’d emerge from the east, behind the car and the gun. She could hear him behind her. His footfalls fast and heavy beneath the sounds of her own terrified scramble.
He was close. Too close.
Her plan was falling apart. It was too soon. She tried to force another burst of speed from her battered leg, but there was nothing left. She faltered. Her leg buckled, turned to pudding, and she knew it was over. The hairs on the back of her neck started to prickle mere moments before she felt the painful yank of his hand as it fisted in her hair, pulling her off her feet and tossing her face down in the dirt.
“I told you, Melissa, you’re never gonna get away from me.” He gripped her shoulder, rolled her toward him, a sadistic glimmer in his eye. “I own you—you’re mine,” he said.
He didn’t see the strike—didn’t see her bring the broken length of bone up. She drove it forward, aimed for his gut but struck too low. Its jagged tip punctured his khakis and skin, made a quarter-sized hole in his groin. His eyes widened in surprise, his mouth went slack as all the clever words he had for her tumbled away on a low moan that was both pained and stunned.
His hand shot out, gripping her wrist like an iron clamp. Holding her and the bone in place, Wade closed his other hand into a fist and swung heavily into her face. Stars exploded in her eyes, fusing together into a solid field of white that seared away her vision.
She held onto consciousness, ripping herself from his grip with a snarl that sounded more animal than human. Crabbing back on her hands, she was unable to take her eyes off of him. Blood poured from her ruined mouth and nose, soaked her chest and hair. Even though she needed to run, she watched, horrified, as he lifted his bloodied fist to his mouth, running his tongue along his knuckles, lapping at the blood that coated them.
“That all you’ve got?” he said.
Revulsion tried to root her in place, but she kept moving backward. At a safe distance she flipped over and crawled, trying to find her feet.
The clearing, some fifty yards away, shone like a beacon she might never reach.
Eighty-seven
The moment he entered the woods, years of training and instinct took over. Michael honed in on Sabrina’s trail, following it swiftly.
He stopped, planted a hand, and vaulted a fallen tree, coming to rest in a crouch on the other side. She’d hunkered down here for a few minutes. Regrouped, probably dressed her wound. He touched the leaves of a nearby bush, holding them up to see. Blood.
He saw what looked like a pile of debris—nothing more that rocks and sticks. They puzzled him for a moment, and then he realized what they were.
Bones.
He stood, fought back the rising tide of rage that threatened to sweep him away. He looked away from the pile.
He reminded himself that she was a fighter. Tried to convince himself that she would survive. He wanted to believe it—needed to—but couldn’t.
Find her … that was his focus, was all he cared about. He picked up her trail without a moment’s hesitation, started to detect a subtle arc. She was doubling back on Wade, trying to get behind him. He lifted his field glasses, surveyed the woods slowly. He did a full sweep, caught mov
ement almost directly behind him.
Sabrina was running—making a break for the clearing.
Wade was only a few steps behind.
Eighty-eight
Sabrina managed to get her legs beneath her again, took a few lurching steps before she was able to find a staggering rhythm that moved her forward. She bounced off of trees, stumbled over feet that were slow to respond to the frantic commands her brain was sending them.
It seemed to take years, but she finally burst into the clearing, nearly blinded by the explosion of light brought by the high afternoon sun. Wade was behind her; she’d wounded him, but it hadn’t been enough.
He was coming at her fast. The knowledge spurred her to move faster, but her leg was slow to respond. It was over. She wasn’t running another step.
She fell, those last few feet covered in a frantic stumble that had her throwing herself at the trunk of Lucy’s car. She saw it. Couldn’t believe it.
The gun was there.
She palmed it, kept a bracing hand planted on the lid of the trunk as she rounded on him. He stood at the hood, the knife in his fist held casually at his side.
“I gotta say, Wade, you don’t look so hot.” She pushed herself up, stood as tall as she could, and tried to raise the gun, which weighed heavy in her hand. Too heavy. It took every bit of strength she had just to hold on to it.
“You should talk. Awful pale, Melissa … whadd’ya think? Another minute or two before you pass out and this is all over?” He looked at the gun in her hand and seemed unconcerned that she held it. He smirked at her. “I think I’ll wait.”
The unsteady sway of the ground beneath her said he wasn’t far from wrong. She could feel the darkness—see it from the corner of her eye. It was waiting … but it wouldn’t wait forever. She had seconds, a minute at best, before it came for her.
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