Now, some bizarre set of coincidences were cracking open the locks, forcing her to look down into that fathomless abyss of her past again.
Her eyes burned. Her muscles wound wire tight. Fuck this.
That’s all it was—coincidences. Had to be. Because he was dead.
The Watt Lake Killer was ash.
The Province journalist was sensation-mongering by mining any similarities. The murder on the Birkenhead had nothing to do with Sebastian George. It was just not possible. And if there were any echoes in the signature display of the body, it was a copycat. Some sicko who’d gotten the idea from a serial murderer who’d gone before him and made national headlines.
Those boot prints paralleling her track this morning? Simply an angler or hunter or hiker setting out for the day. The Arizona scarf found atop her own tracks could have blown there after having been dropped by a woman on a dawn walk. That basket of wild blueberries outside her door? She still had to ask Nella about those. Probably Nella’s thank-you token for helping with her homework last week.
Her mind was just drawing stupid parallels. Wind gusted, clattering another rain of small dead leaves down onto her and Ace. She sucked in a deep, shaky breath as she negotiated the path that narrowed and twisted deeper into the trees. It was just this time of year. The strong scents of autumn, the coming snow, the sounds of the geese flying south, the echoes of gunshots, deer season, the sense of winter closing its fist around the wilderness—it was always a tricky time.
Scents, images could trigger flashbacks. The therapist had told her so.
It’s time . . . time for the hunt, Sarah . . .
She fisted the paper tighter, trying to block out his voice.
The Predator . . . it’s a fine name . . .
So why had someone left a duplicate of that very same fly tucked inside a story referencing the Watt Lake killings? In a newspaper with her name on it? Terror surged afresh in her chest. Her throat tightened. She moved faster.
Behind her she heard the thud of footfalls. Coming fast. Someone running—chasing her.
Panic was instant. The urge to flee overrode her brain. She was back in the forest, racing blindly, not along any path, but deep into the trees, weaving through branches, stumbling wildly over roots, breath rasping in her throat. In the distance of her mind she registered a dog barking furiously. Branches, twigs cracked. The footfalls came closer. Hard breathing behind her . . .
She had to hide, find the bear den. Sweat dampened her skin. The thudding behind grew louder, faster. He attacked, grabbing her arm, spinning her around. She jerked free, and in a heartbeat, she’d dropped the newspaper, and her hunting knife was unsheathed. She gripped the hilt, blade up, primed for an upward thrust into the liver, under ribs. She went into a crouch, swayed the knife slowly, menacing him back. Sweat dripped into her eyes. Her heart beat so loud she couldn’t hear anything else now but her blood against her eardrums.
Sebastian’s eyes lasered hers. He was smiling. His shining black curls ruffled in the wind. He came closer, closer . . .
. . . It’s not a game until everyone knows they are playing, Sarah, my sweet . . . the prey must be aware of the hunter . . .
“Don’t. Move,” she growled through her teeth. “Not another goddamn foot forward or I’ll rip your throat out.”
He stopped advancing. Slowly he put both hands up. Palms out. “Olivia?” he said quietly. “Focus. It’s me. Cole. Cole McDonough. Myron’s son. You’re safe, fine. It’s all fine. Olivia? Can you hear me?”
Olivia.
Her name.
New name.
Not Sarah.
“It’s okay,” he said. “Come back to me.”
Her vision returned, slowly spiraling outward from tiny pinpricks, taking in reality, the bigger picture. Shock slammed through her as she stared at Cole. Ace growled at his heels, confused. Like she was. She started to shake violently, the kind of great big palsied shudders that come from being transported from one reality to another.
“Here,” he said, holding out his hand. “Give me that knife.”
Still uneasy, she swallowed and took a step backward, sheathed it herself. She took another step back, wiped her upper lip with the back of her hand, and bumped hard up against the trunk of a tree. Panic slammed. Her brain went black. She fought with all her might against the compulsion to flee again, fought to remain present. But a fresh kind of terror licked through her stomach—she was losing her mind again. Like before.
“Focus.” His voice was low, gravelly. His stormy gray eyes were intense, filled with concern.
He came closer. Her heart beat even faster, the drive to escape almost blinding. She couldn’t breathe.
He reached out, placed a hand firmly on each of her shoulders. Large, steadying hands. He held her still. Somewhere in the distance of her mind Olivia registered warmth. Solidity. Safety. A sense of being protected.
He slid his hands down her arms and took her fingers in his. Slowly he drew her toward him. Wrapping his arms around her, he held her shuddering body tightly against his. So tight she couldn’t move. So tight she couldn’t fight.
He stroked her hair. Her eyes burned with emotion. The scent of him filled her senses. The hardness, the heat of his body, his rough stubble against her stirred things inside her she thought long dead. She tried to resist this need, tried to go numb. But his care, his physical comforting, exploded a fierce desperation in her chest—a need to be held, cherished by another human. Loved. Just accepted.
She fought these new feelings because they brought a whole other set of fears. But she couldn’t. A coal had been ignited, and it burned down deep.
He held her until her breathing slowed and became regular. Until the rigidity in her muscles softened. Then he cupped her face and made her look up into his eyes. His mouth was so close. His pulse thrummed in his neck.
She stared up at him. This handsome man. This man of wild places. He was making her feel again, and she didn’t know which was more terrifying.
“You were having a flashback or something,” he said softly. “Tell me what’s going on, Olivia.”
Her gaze darted around, seeking a way to escape the questions. To escape everything. She swallowed.
“I know PTSD, Olivia.” He paused. “There’s no shame in it. That’s one thing they tell soldiers. No shame. No need to try and hide it.”
Shame.
How could he ever know the tricky depths of the shame she felt because she’d been Sebastian’s rape victim? Because she’d attracted him. Because she’d fallen for his tricks. Because she’d thought he was handsome, charming. Nice.
Embarrassment washed through her. How could he know how sullied and dirtied and utterly humiliated she’d been made to feel by her own husband? Her own father and mother. Her community. She’d become the “other.” Tainted. Something that people hid in a closet or cast away rather than confront the darkness of humanity, their own weaknesses and fears.
He bent down, picked up the newspaper and lure she must have dropped when she pulled her knife.
He handed them back to her. She took the paper and packet from him, mouth dry.
“You going to tell me what’s going on?”
She glanced away again, then flashed back to meet his gaze. Barbed wire crawled around her as her resolve firmed. He’d cut too close to her bone. He knew and had seen too much. And she could not open further. She could not be Sarah Baker in his eyes, anyone’s eyes.
“I’ll tell you what’s going on.” She pointed in the direction of the lodge house. “Your father is throwing me into combat with you and your sister, and as much as I care for that old badger, as much as I want for him to die in peace, I don’t want this. I refuse to have anything to do with his inheritance crap.”
“Olivia,” he said quietly, pinning her with his gaze, using her name to bring her down. And she h
ated it. Him. For making her want things again that she couldn’t have without exposing her truth. Without unveiling her scars, her past, her humiliation. Without having to be that victim again.
“I apologize for what I said. It was dumb-ass. You can’t stop Myron McDonough when he gets a burr under his saddle. You just need to ride it out. And believe me, I speak from a lifetime of experience. Trust me on this.”
Trust.
She didn’t even know how to trust. Not anymore.
“Besides, this isn’t about the will. Are you going to tell me what really happened? Was it that news story? That lure?”
She flattened her mouth, looked away, heart slamming so hard against her ribs she thought it would bust free. “It’s nothing.” The words were lame. But she had no energy to find better ones. She just needed to get out of this guy’s orbit, which was sucking her in. “I’m fine.”
She turned woodenly and picked her way through the trees and back up to the path, clutching the newspaper. Ace followed.
“Don’t treat me like a fool, Olivia!” he called after her. “You’re just confusing the issue here.”
She kept walking.
“Don’t you dare write me off like this. Who do you think I am? Some worthless piece of shit? Some asshole who couldn’t hold on to his own family? What did you call me—a narcissistic fool?”
She stalled, her back to him.
“That murder upset you.” He came up through the trees toward her. “It triggered some PTSD thing. What can we do to help? Are you in some kind of trouble?”
“No,” she said, refusing to turn around. “I’m not in trouble.”
He’s dead. I’m going to be fine.
“Olivia.”
Wind rustled.
He waited.
She moistened her lips. She’d rather leave Broken Bar than expose her past. Before the media came storming again, on the back of rumblings of a new Watt Lake Killer. Before people started looking at her in that old way. Like some freak of survival. Before Ethan and her family could find her. She would not—could not—come clean about this. It would undermine everything she’d built. And if it meant shutting this man out, so be it.
“I’m fine.” She resumed her march down the narrow path, Ace following loyally behind her. “And don’t bother to come after me again,” she called out over her shoulder. “Because there’s nothing in it for you, understand? If your father goes through with this, my bags are as good as packed, and I’m outta here.”
He stayed where he was, thank God.
She walked faster, leaves crunching under her boots, and she was shocked by the sudden wetness on her face as tears washed hot down her cheeks. She hadn’t cried in years. She’d dried up and died inside, becoming a hollow husk. But Cole had cracked something open in her. Emotion. Need. Desire for human contact. And it was killing her because it hurt. It hurt like all hell. And she couldn’t have it.
Cole stormed back into the library. His father was near the fire, nursing a tumbler of scotch. The pill container was on the table at his side, the whisky bottle next to it.
“Needed something stiffer than Carrick’s tea,” he said as he swallowed another two pills and chased them down with a heavy gulp of spirits.
Cole stared at the booze bottle. He could do with a shot himself. Instead he went to the buffet, poured a cup of tea, helped himself to a sandwich. He took a seat by the fire, opposite his dad.
“You need to tell me about her.” Cole took a bite, wolfing down half the sandwich in one go.
“Nothing much to tell, son.”
A knee-jerk spasm of irritation chased down all-too-familiar neural pathways that had been forged over time. He delivered the other half of his sandwich to his mouth, swallowed, and took a gulp of tea. “You leave her this ranch, this McDonough legacy that has been in the family since the mid-1800s, and you have nothing to tell about the person you’re leaving it to?”
“You and Jane abandoned this legacy. I have no obligation to you—”
“Oh, spare me. This isn’t about me or Jane, and you know it. This conversation is about that woman and your relationship with her. Where is she from? What do you know about her?”
His father looked away, stared at the fire.
Cole washed down the last of his tea, set his cup down. He leaned forward, arms resting on his knees. “That’s rough stuff, that murder. A woman, disemboweled, eyes gouged out.”
Myron nodded.
“You believe Olivia tried to kill herself shortly before arriving here?”
His father took another deep gulp of scotch, nodded, his eyes going watery from the drink, drugs. Or something sneakier.
“You’ve seen the scar around her neck, too?”
Myron’s eyes flashed up suddenly.
“You haven’t? It’s like a choker right around her neck.” Cole paused. “As if she was rubbed raw by a rope, or a collar that cut deep and long.”
Myron stared. Several beats of silence swelled between them. “She always wears a bandana,” he said finally. “Or a turtleneck. I never knew.”
“She’s hiding it. I only saw because I took off her bandana to help ease her breathing when she fainted.”
“Shit,” Myron said softly. He took another deep sip.
“What do you remember about the Watt Lake Killer?” Cole said. “All I recall is that he was some sexual sadist who’d preyed on women up north, abducting and confining them over a winter, before setting them out for a spring hunt. The whole thing was just breaking when I was in the army, leaving for a peacekeeping tour in Sierra Leone.”
Myron pursed his lips. “After he hunted and shot them dead, he hung his victims like deer meat to bleed out. He carved out their eyes. Kept body parts in a freezer. Consumed some.”
“Like the Birkenhead victim was hung by the neck,” Cole said. “Eyes also missing.”
“But they got the Watt Lake Killer,” Myron said. “They arrested and charged a man. The trial was big news. He died in prison some years back. That was in the news, too.”
Cole sat back, inhaled deeply, exhaustion suddenly pressing down on him again. He closed his eyes for a moment and the sensation of Olivia in his arms immediately filled him—the way she’d resisted his embrace, then slowly melted into his body as if she needed him. It felt good to hold her. To be needed. To feel as though he could protect someone. Not let them down, like he’d let Holly and Ty down.
Shit.
Maybe it was him who’d needed that embrace, not the other way around.
“Well, whatever it was about the Birkenhead murder story and that fishing lure,” he said quietly, “it triggered something in Olivia, catapulted her right into some kind of a flashback out there. She went for me with her knife—thought I was someone else. My guess is she’s suffering from severe PTSD.”
“I know she’s got issues, Cole, but I’ve never seen her have a flashback. Nothing like you describe. Not in all the time she’s been here.”
Cole leaned forward again. “But you were worried she’d try to hurt herself again. What has she told you about her past, and where she’s from?”
His father regarded him intently, something inscrutable entering his eyes. “You like her,” he said quietly.
Oh, Jesus.
“I’m curious.”
“That all?”
“Yeah, that’s all. I’m curious because you’re leaving this ranch to some whackjob who flips into flashbacks and threatens to kill me with a mean-ass hunting knife. What do you think?” Cole came to his feet. He set his cup and plate back on the buffet. “She has searchable references up until eight years ago. Before that she’s a blank slate, like she didn’t exist at all.”
“You checked?”
“Yes, I checked. Some strange woman calls my cell phone at midnight in Florida, tells me my father is dying? Of course I�
�m going to try and find out who she is.” He hesitated. “Besides, Jane asked me to follow it up. Like I said, she’s worried Olivia is playing you.”
Myron snorted. “Where in the hell did Jane get that idea anyway?”
“Forbes.”
“And Forbes got it from where, exactly? He’s full of shit.”
“Seems Forbes was on the money—you are leaving her the estate. I’m guessing this news is going to get right up both his and Jane’s noses, because if Olivia stays, this place is not for sale.”
Myron ran his tongue over his teeth. “She’ll stay.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure.”
His father’s eyes flickered. He drained the last of his scotch, setting his glass down with the careful concentration of a man on the fringes of inebriation and not wanting to show it. A state Cole knew all too well. His dad turned to look at the flames again. Silence shimmered into the library. The shutter banged in the wind. When his father spoke again, his voice was thick and distant, his words slightly slurred.
“When she first came here, I saw in Olivia a love for this wilderness, the fishing, the rivers, mountains, all echoes of Grace’s passion for this place. Olivia blossomed here, Cole,” he said, uncharacteristically gently, talking to the fire. “Like a desiccated flower on the vine she was when she arrived. This place healed her. Those scars on her wrists that were so red and angry, they began to fade.”
Cole’s stomach tightened. He was unused to this. He was programmed to lash back at his dad’s bellicose belligerence. He didn’t know how to deal with this evidence of compassion, or the fact his father had earlier admitted a role in destroying their family. It put Cole on the back foot, like he had to make the next move.
Myron looked up at his son with distant, clouded eyes. “She began to laugh. Her and that dog . . . they wormed their way right into this place. Into my goddamn heart. She became my friend. My only friend. And I . . .” He faltered. “Last night I thought that if I could do right by her, I would also do right by Grace.”
The specter of his mother again.
A Dark Lure Page 15