Cole crept silently through the snow along the forest fringe. His aim was to try and circle through the trees along the edge of the clearing, and come up in the gully behind the cabin. He stilled for a moment, breath misting in front of his face. He studied the building. The orange glow of a small fire flickered faintly through cracks. He could smell the smoke, but couldn’t see it through the shroud of swirling flakes. It looked like a simple one-roomed structure. His bet was there was only the one door out the front. The windows appeared boarded up. Adrenaline crackled through his veins as he was besieged by a reckless urge to just run down there into the open clearing, and barge in headfirst.
If he did that, he’d be as good as dead.
Him being dead wasn’t going to help her.
Controlling the ferocity of his impulse, he crawled back into the cover of trees, and made his way quietly toward the bank knotted with deciduous trees.
Once hidden in the gully among the tangled, dry aspen, willow, alder, he studied the back of the dilapidated building through the snowy gloom. He could make out one boarded-up window along the back wall. He judged himself to be almost two hundred meters out from the building. Still a big, open expanse between him and that cabin.
Ace threw up another plaintive howl on the opposite end of the clearing. It echoed through the forest like the voice of wolves. Cole tensed as he heard a rough creak. The front door was being opened? He couldn’t see, or be sure from here.
He crawled a little closer to the edge of the clearing, lying flat in snow.
If things were going to plan, Burton would be waiting in a little hollow at the opposite edge of the clearing, not far below the forest fringe that hid Ace, who was tied to a tree. The intent was for the sound of the dog to draw Olivia’s assailant out of the shed and into the clearing where Burton could get a clear shot. Cole had given Burton the shotgun and slugs. He himself carried the pistols.
The instant Cole heard Burton’s shot, he was to race across to the cabin and try and come around from the back to free Olivia.
It was a crapshoot. But it was all they had. Sweat prickled across his lip, every muscle in his body coiled wire-tight as he waited for the signal shot.
Seconds seemed to tick by. Snow fell silently. It melted on his face, dripping into his eyes. More seconds passed. Then more. Fear licked through Cole. He heard no gunshot.
The dog cried again. Hairs rose on the back of his neck. Something was off.
Using her good hand for balance, Olivia crawled on her knees until the rope at her neck drew her up short. Still, straining against her noose, she had just enough line to reach a small hole in the siding. She peered through it. Eugene’s shadow hunkered slowly through the snow toward the howling dog. A dog who sounded like her Ace. But it wasn’t possible. Was it? How could it be?
She narrowed her eyes, trying to keep track of Eugene’s shadow as he was absorbed by the silent shroud of swirling flakes.
He disappeared from sight.
All fell silent. Just snow, lots of snow.
Time stretched.
She tried to swallow, shivering, her bare skin tight with goose bumps. He’d be back before long. She had to do something—find some weapon before he returned.
Her gaze darted around the cabin interior. It settled on the lone rifle still propped near the door. With her right hand she yanked hard in frustration on the rope that secured her by the neck to an iron rod in the back corner of the room. It was tied fast. Shit—she’d never reach the gun tied up like this. Panting, Olivia scrabbled back into her corner. She grasped the length of rod, trying to jerk it loose from its moorings. But it was fixed solid into a slab of concrete. It cut her hand. That’s when she noted how rusted and rough the iron was along the edges. Frantically she picked up the rope slack and started to work the rope against the sharp iron.
Very slowly, tiny strands of rope began to pop and fray. A gunshot boomed through the night. She froze, heart stuttering. Dust fell from the ceiling.
Quickly, she crawled back to the hole in the siding, peered through, trying to see what had happened. Had he shot the dog, or wolf? All she could see was soft, swirling snow.
Then suddenly his shadow materialized in the falling snow, a black, hobbling, injured shape.
Adrenaline, fear, exploded in her. She knew with every fiber of her being that if he didn’t kill her tonight, he’d set her out to be hunted come first light. He was out of time for anything else, out of his comfort zone.
She scrabbled back into her corner, grabbed the fraying rope, and began rubbing with all her might against rusted iron, burning her fingers, blood from the cut on her palm wetting the rope. Sweat dribbled between her naked breasts.
A few more strands popped. Perspiration leaked into her eyes. Breath rasped in her throat. She could hear him now—the squeak of his boots in dry snow, the crunch of dead leaves beneath. She rubbed harder. Faster. Pain in her body was consuming. She panted, working even more frantically as the noise outside drew closer. Almost free. She tugged. It still held. Fuck. Almost blind with panic, she sawed the rope some more, and finally cut through.
Scrabbling on knees with one hand, dragging the frayed end of rope behind her, she made for the rifle at the door.
She grasped the weapon and crawled to the half-open door. She peered around the opening. He was almost at the cabin.
Heart in her throat, Olivia leaned her left side with her broken arm against the doorjamb for balance. She put the rifle stock to her shoulder, and, pressing her cheek against the butt, she curled her finger through the trigger guard and around the trigger. Careful now. You have one shot. One good arm. Part of her feared that even if she did hit him, he wouldn’t die. He’d just keep coming like some monster in a nightmare movie.
On her exhale, Eugene’s black shadow firmly in her sights, she aimed for center mass and carefully squeezed the trigger.
Click.
Her heart bottomed out in her belly.
It wasn’t loaded.
In desperation, she squeezed again, and again.
Nothing.
Panic licked a hot flame through her stomach. No wonder he’d left the gun. It held no ammunition. Her mind raced.
If she tried to bolt out of the door in front of him and race for the forest, he’d shoot. If he missed, she might be able to outpace him in his injured state, but he was unlikely to miss at this range. He was a veteran hunter with an accurate eye. And he had 12-gauge slugs—enough to stop a charging grizz in its tracks. He’d blow a hole clean through her lungs before she took two steps.
For a moment, panic almost swallowed her brain, and blackness swamped in from the fringes of her mind. She felt her body going faint.
No! Think of Tori. You can’t let her down. Not now . . .
She forced herself to focus. Slowly she edged up onto her feet as his shadow loomed into the quavering gold light spilling into the darkness from the doorway. She inched her back up the wall so that she was in a standing position almost behind the door.
Using both her good arm and broken one, she clenched her teeth against pain and raised the rifle high above her head. Mouth bone dry, limbs trembling, she waited.
As soon as Cole heard the shotgun blast, relief punched through his chest. He lurched to his feet and began to race across the clearing toward the boarded-up rear of the building.
He crouched down against the wall, heart thumping as he tried to peep through a crack. He needed to ensure Eugene had indeed been shot by Gage and was not still in the cabin. But from this angle, he couldn’t see much of the inside other than the small fire in the center of the room. He heard a few noises. A scraping sound.
He was about to creep farther along the wall when he heard something else in the muffled night. A faint cough. He stilled, listening, breath misting around his face. His pulse quickened at another cough—it sounded like it had come from
outside the front of the cabin.
Then he heard the crunch of leaves under the thin cover of snow.
Footfalls. His stomach clenched.
Burton?
But suddenly he had a bad feeling.
Quietly he crept around to the back corner of the cabin, his pistol held ready.
Eugene’s body snapped wire-tight the instant he noticed Olivia was not in her corner. But as he took a step forward into the cabin, she brought the rifle down with a sharp crack on his skull.
The jolt of impact reverberated up her arms, and jackhammered into her shoulders, neck, teeth. She felt it in her broken nose.
Eugene went dead still, as if shocked by an electrical current. Then slowly he turned to face her.
Olivia caught her breath as pale amber eyes met hers.
Everything turned to elasticky slow motion. In the flickering firelight she could read every detail, every nuance of Eugene’s features as the killer’s eyes held hers. And Olivia was suddenly suspended in time, everything looping back on itself, taking her all the way back to the Bear Claw shed where he’d held her, raped her, all those years ago.
A quiet despair rose in her chest.
It was all over. All lost.
He opened his mouth, smiled, then suddenly stumbled sideways. In that blinding instant Olivia whipped the gun out to her side like a baseball bat. She swung with every ounce of might, with every inch of her desire to live, and cracked the weapon in a sideswipe across his cheekbone. She heard, felt, bone break, crush.
Bile lurched bitter into the back of her throat as Eugene staggered, a bemused look in his eyes, and he tripped backward. He landed hard on the floor, hand reaching out behind him to brace his fall. His hand went into the fire.
A roar of pain exploded from his chest, as he lurched back up onto his feet and came in a full frontal lunge for her. He bashed his body into hers, crushing her hard against the wall. Pain sparked through her brain, her ribs. He wrapped his big hands like a vise around her throat, lifting her feet off the ground as he squeezed. She couldn’t breathe. Her eyes bulged. Her first wild impulse was to grab at his iron-like fingers and try to pry them away from her crushing windpipe, but instead she held her focus, and groped madly for the knife that she knew had been resheathed at his hip.
He pressed his body against hers and squeezed her neck harder. Her vision went red. Her consciousness slipping. On some distant level she registered his penis was rock hard, pushing against her hips where her fly was still open. A memory washed through her, the sensation of his sweaty, naked body atop hers, him driving his cock deep into her. Her mind suddenly sharpened with rage. Her fingers met the familiar hilt of her knife at his hip. She yanked it out of the sheath, and plunged it deep into his side, this time angling upward under his ribs toward the liver. He stilled. His fingers loosened slightly. Her vision flooded back. She ripped out the blade and plunged it in again. And again. And again.
He gasped. His hands dropped to his side. He staggered back, his lion eyes holding hers, his features twisting with disbelief.
As his hands went to the blood coming from his side, she lunged at him with the knife held high in her fist. Driven by a feral kind of madness to survive at all cost, to beat him down forever, she brought the blade down hard into his chest.
Steel met bone and sent a judder up her arm. She yanked the knife out, the shaft gleaming with blood. He crumpled to the ground, his skull cracking against stones around the fire. The ends of his hair met coals. The acrid scent of burning human hair filled the cabin as Olivia dropped down on top of him, and with small grunts, her mind black and unthinking, she plunged her hunting blade into his chest, his neck, his belly, his face. She was vaguely aware of blood. Everywhere. Hot and slippery. On her hands, face, her naked torso. In her hair. She could taste his blood in her mouth.
Those vile yellow eyes stared blankly up at her now. His body was limp, his head lolling with each ferocious stab of her knife. Somewhere, far away, she heard her name.
Olivia! Olivia—stop!
Vaguely she registered big hands on her shoulders, someone grasping her wrist that held the knife. Someone trying to stop her, yank her off the bastard.
She fought it. A gunshot cracked the air.
She stilled.
Shaking.
And for a moment she couldn’t quite register what she was seeing, what she’d just done. She turned and looked up.
CHAPTER 26
Cole stared at the vignette in front of him—a scene from a horror movie.
Olivia, naked from the jeans up, her fly open, straddled a bloodied mess of a man lying dead on the floor, his wet hair singeing in a dying fire. She was splattered in blood, her eyes wild, unrecognizable, a mother of a hunting knife clutched in her fist.
“Livia,” he whispered, holding her eyes, crouching down beside her, as he stuck the pistol he’d just fired into the waistband of his jeans. The smell of blood, burned hair, filled his nostrils. And something worse—guts. She’d nicked through to the bowel of this monster, and the stink was vile. He looked deep into her eyes as he reached gently for her shoulders.
“You can stop now,” he whispered. “Look at me. Focus. He’s dead. Gone. Long gone.”
She looked blankly at him, mouth open, panting.
His heart wrenched. “Come, come to me, Liv.”
He lifted her off her assailant and gathered her wet, bloodied body up into his arms. He held her tight, rocking slightly as he stroked her matted hair. “It’s okay,” he murmured against her hair. “It’s over. You did it. You got him.”
He cupped the side of her face, looked into her eyes. “Can you hear me, Liv?”
Her mouth opened, but she seemed unable to speak, great big shudders taking hold of her body. Her ear was ripped. Bleeding. Her nose looked broken. Her face was cut and swelling. He quickly shed his down jacket, started to put it on her.
But she gasped in pain as he attempted to slide the sleeve over her arm. The pain seemed to refocus her a little.
“Where are you hurt?”
“Arm,” she whispered. “Broken, I think.”
He tried again, more carefully, conscious of her left arm. He edged the sleeve of his jacket onto her hand, moved it up until he could wrap the jacket around her and she could get her right arm into the other sleeve.
He zipped it up to her neck. Her gaze dropped to the massacred body on the floor.
“I . . . I . . . killed him.”
Cole cupped the side of her face, forcing her to look at him, not the mess on the floor.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “Don’t think about it now. Don’t look at him. He’s in the past. Come here.” He led her away from the body, into the corner of the cabin. He helped lower her into a sitting position. She leaned against the wall, going limp. Spent.
“I want you to tell me where you hurt.”
She looked blank.
“Your arm,” he prompted. “Your nose.” He touched it gently. She winced. He dug in his pocket for his father’s handkerchief, which was still there. Ever so gently he wiped the blood from her face. Most of it was her assailant’s, by the looks of things, apart from the dried blood around her torn ear. His heart clutched. He smiled softly, relief, love, washing through his chest. “You’re going to be fine, Liv,” he whispered. “You’re going to be just fine. You hear me?”
She nodded, swallowed.
Then she blinked. “How . . . how did you find me?” She frowned, her mind reaching back. “The plane—it was you?”
He nodded.
Heat crackled sharply into her eyes, and she grabbed his wrist. “Ace? Was that Ace? I heard gunfire. Did he shoot Ace?” She was suddenly sheet-white and shaking all over again.
“No,” Cole lied. Because he didn’t know. Yet. And he wasn’t going to upset her into thinking otherwise. But he intended to find out,
because right now, more than anything, this woman needed her dog. He was also worried about Burton. He shot a glance at the body, then scanned the rest of the cabin. An old rotting canvas tarp was bunched in the corner.
“Wait here.”
Cole lurched to his feet, gathered up the canvas. Dust and debris fell from the folds as he draped it over the body. He dragged the covered body by the boots away from the fire. Quickly he fed more bits of wood onto the embers, stoking them to life.
He went back to Olivia. “I’m going to check on things outside, okay? Will you be all right alone, just for a moment?”
She swallowed. Her gaze locked onto his. He knew she was thinking about Ace. His heart and stomach were so tight with worry it stopped his breath. He took her cold hands in his. “I’ll just be a minute. Don’t look at him, okay? Don’t even think about it.”
She nodded.
Cole exited the door. It was still snowing heavily. Anxiously, he moved into the clearing, making his way toward the ditch where Burton was supposed to have been lying in ambush for the killer. As he neared, as his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he saw a black shape about twenty meters out, lying in the snow. He rushed forward. A chill washed over his skin.
“Burton?”
Nothing moved. No sound came. Snow was settling over him.
Cole reached for his shoulder, turned him over, and his heart clean stopped as the man’s head flopped back, blood leaking from the corner of his mouth. And from a gaping hole in his chest.
Cole felt for a pulse, knowing full well it was useless. The cop was dead. His gaze flashed up. Olivia’s attacker must have second-guessed them. The dog, while drawing him out, must have also piqued the suspicion of a cunning hunter. Expecting an ambush, he must have approached Burton from behind.
Shit.
He dragged his hand over his wet hair. Then fear suddenly lanced through Cole. Ace?
A Dark Lure Page 38