Lancel Graham is lying in wait. He's taken a classic ambush predator approach. Watching him, I remember the calm, offhand way that Melvin talked about his process in an interview a few years back: he'd crouch in just that spot by a car and wait for the woman to approach, then attack like a praying mantis in an overwhelming rush. It almost always worked.
Graham is a real fanboy. He knows my ex-husband's habits, his moves, his strategies.
But he doesn't know me. I survived Melvin.
I'm going to survive this asshole, too.
I'm not far from the original trail we took up the hill, and I work my way carefully around to it. I position myself exactly right.
I hit my mark, and then I hesitate. I'm cold. I'm slow. I'm confused from the head wound. What if this doesn't work? What if he just shoots me?
No. He's been hunting me to capture me, not just dispose of a problem. With the night vision he was wearing, he could have cut me in half already. He wants me.
He likes games.
All right, Lance. Let's play a game.
I come around a tree, limping, moving slowly; I make sure I look just as miserable and ill as I feel, and as I come into the opening right at the trail head, I brace myself and slide down to my knees. Weak. Beaten.
In just the right place.
I don't look up to see where he is. I just wait, breathing heavily. I try to get up, but not very hard, and then I let myself fall over, left side down in the mud. The pistol's beneath me, concealed where I've rolled forward enough to shade it. It looks like I'm trying to find the strength to rise.
I wait.
I can't hear him coming over the steady, slowing drum of the rain, but I sense him, almost like a heat source on the edge of my awareness. He's careful. He circles at a distance. I can dimly see him through my eyelashes, smeared by the rain. He's got the shotgun. He circles closer. Closer.
And then he's there.
I see the muddy toes of his boots edge in closer and the hem of his mud-caked jeans. The barrel of the shotgun is aimed not at me but at the ground between the two of us. He can still kill me. It's a small movement to bring the muzzle up and fire, but he's enjoying this. He likes seeing me beaten.
"Stupid, stupid woman," he tells me. "He said you'd fall for this shit." Graham's voice hardens. Sharpens. "Get your worthless ass up, and I'll take you to your kids."
Random thought: I wonder where Graham's wife is. I feel an overwhelming surge of pity for his sons, raised by this man. But it's all fleeting, because underneath that, I feel as cold and hard as the barrel of that shotgun. As much of a weapon.
Because I'm not dying here.
I'm not.
I don't move much, and I make myself look weak, flailing, like I'm trying to obey him. I move my right hand and lift myself up to my knees, and as I come up I smoothly, calmly raise the gun.
He sees his mistake just before I fire.
It's precise, where I put the bullet. I don't go for the head shot, or even for center mass. I go for the nerve plexus in Graham's right shoulder. He's a right-hander, like me.
The bullet--a hollow point--goes in exactly where I want it. I can almost see the way it opens up on impact into a flesh-cutting scythe of destruction. It'll destroy his shoulder, sever nerves, break bones. A shoulder wound isn't the clean, simple thing they show in the movies and on television; you don't walk it off. Done right, a shoulder wound can take away use of that arm forever.
And I've done it right.
Graham's cry is short and sharp. He staggers back and tries to bring up the shotgun, and shock would have allowed for that except that I'd destroyed nerve and muscle necessary to make the physics work. He drops it instead and blindly fumbles for it with fingers that are no longer capable of picking it up. He's hurt, and hurt bad, but one thing about shoulder wounds that the silver screen gets right: it's probably not fatal.
Not immediately, anyway.
I roll to my feet. I feel warm now. Loose and calm, the way I do at the range. Graham keeps trying to pick up the shotgun until I pull it away, and then he gives me a weird, tired grin. "You fucking bitch," he says. "You were supposed to be easy."
"Gina Royal was easy," I tell him. "Tell me where they are."
"Fuck you."
"I let your boy go. I could have killed him."
That registers a little. I see something move in his expression. It's just a twitch, but it's real.
"I'll let you live if you tell me where my kids are. I don't want you dead."
"Fuck. You. They aren't yours. They're his. And he wants them back. He needs them. This isn't about you, Gina."
"Okay," I tell him. I take a step to my right, and he takes a wary step the same direction, keeping in front of me. I do it again, and again, until I'm the one with my back to the ridge, and he's got his back to the trail. "We do this the hard way."
He doesn't expect it when I step forward and push him, and he's clumsy with shock, slow to react. I'd never have tried it if he weren't already wounded, but it works perfectly. Graham staggers backward, and he screams. His feet go out from under him, and his weight falls back, and I see the bloody, sharp point of the branch I'd nearly impaled myself on earlier punch through him, at just about the level of his liver. Not an immediately fatal wound, but serious. Very serious. He flails and breaks the branch off. The mud doesn't do him any favors. He falls. He tries to grab the wood and pull it out, but there isn't much that's sticking out, and his right hand won't work properly.
"Get it out! Get it out!" His voice has gone high and desperate. "Jesus Christ!"
The rain's almost stopped now. He's writhing in the mud, fingers brushing that ugly, sharp point that's soaked with his blood, and I crouch down and put my gun to his head.
"Jesus doesn't like it when you take his name in vain," I tell him. "And that didn't sound like a prayer. Tell me where my children are, and I'll get you help. If you don't, I'll leave you here. These woods have black bear, cougars, wild hogs. Won't take them long to find you."
My arm hurts so bad now. It feels like it's been set on fire. I keep it steady despite that, because I must. Any show of weakness will be fatal.
His face has gone starkly pale, luminous in the dark. I take the truck keys from his pocket. He has a hunting knife in a case, and I take it, too. I search in his pockets for his phone. It needs a thumbprint to unlock, and I take his wildly shaking right hand to press it in place. It doesn't work the first two tries as he tries to jerk away, but finally it's ready to use.
"Last chance," I tell him as I pick up the shotgun. "Tell me where they are and I'll save your life."
His mouth opens, and I think for a second that he is going to tell me. He's scared, suddenly. Vulnerable. But he closes it again without speaking and just looks at me, and I wonder what has made him so afraid. Me? No.
Melvin.
"Mel doesn't care if you live or die," I tell him. I mean it almost compassionately. "Tell me. I can save you."
I see the moment he breaks. The moment his fantasy disappears and the cold truth of his situation really hits him. Melvin Royal won't be coming for him. No one will. If I leave him here, he'll die of blood loss, and the animals will tear him apart--or, if he's not lucky, the order of that could be reversed. Nature's brutal.
So am I, when I have to be.
"There's a hunting cabin," he tells me. "Up mountain. Belonged to my grandfather. They're in it." He licks very pale lips. "My boys are watching them."
"You son of a bitch. They're all just children."
He doesn't answer that. I feel a surge of rage and weariness, and I just want this to be done. I turn away and make my way through the clinging mud toward the truck. He tries to get up, of course, but between the shoulder wound and that stab through the liver, he isn't going anywhere. The cold will help keep him alive for now; it'll slow blood loss. But as I climb into the truck and start it up, I scroll through the call list, looking for Kezia Claremont's number.
I stop on the A list of nam
es, because right there at the top is one I recognize. It isn't common. I've never seen it before, except in the Bible.
Absalom.
It sinks in on me, then, the magnitude of the deception. The game. Absalom, the troll who'd become my constant ally. Absalom, who took my money and made my new identities. Who could locate me at a moment's notice, anywhere I ran. Could direct me where he wanted me to go.
It explained why we'd been looking the wrong way. Lancel Graham's family had been here for generations. His Stillhouse Lake home was a family heirloom, and Kezia and I had marked him off the list immediately as not a suspect. Hell. I'd even sent Absalom names to check out. He must have found it hilarious.
He's never been helping me. He's been helping Melvin all this time, moving me like a chess piece, setting me up, knocking me down.
Putting me in the backyard of his copycat fanboy.
I have to close my eyes for a moment to contain the incandescent rage that burns through me, but then I keep scrolling. I find Kezia's phone number, and I dial.
There are only two bars of connection, but the call completes. She's in a car. I can hear the engine noise just before she says, carefully, "Lance? Lance, I know. You need to let that woman go, right now, and tell me where you are. Lance, listen to me, okay? We can make this right. You know that needs to happen. Talk to me."
I'd been afraid that she was part of it, too, but I hear the tense anger in her voice, though she's trying to hold it back. She's trying to talk him down.
She's trying to save me.
"It's me," I say. "It's Gwen."
"Jesus!" I hear a confusion of noise, like she's nearly dropped the phone. I also hear another voice, male, but I can't make out what he's saying. "Jesus, Gwen, where are you? Where the hell are you?"
"Up on the ridge past Graham's house. We need an ambulance up here," I tell her. "He's shot, and he has a stab wound in his side. I need police. He told me my kids are up in his grandfather's cabin. Do you know where it is?"
I'm shivering so hard my teeth are clacking together. The truck's engine has warmed a little, and the blast of the heater feels fantastic. I drag Kyle's down jacket over and put it over my shoulders. My left arm still burns, but when I look at it in the overhead light, I find the pellets haven't gone deep enough to do real damage. The wound to my head, though . . . I feel sick and weak and dizzy. The bleeding hasn't stopped. I reach up and feel the pulse of warm, watery blood coming from the slash in my scalp, and fumble for tissues to press against it. I almost miss Kezia's reply.
No, it isn't Kezia. It's Sam. He's in the car with her. "Gwen, are you all right? Gwen?"
"I'm okay," I lie. "My kids. Graham's boys are at that cabin, too. I don't know if they're armed, but--"
"Don't you worry about that. We're coming to you right now, okay?"
"Graham needs an ambulance."
"Fuck Graham," he says, and I hear the vicious edge in his voice. "What about you?"
The tissues I've pressed to my wound are already a sodden mess. "I might need stitches," I say. "Sam?"
"I'm here."
"Please. Please help me get the kids."
"They're going to be okay. We'll get them. You just stay there. Hang on. Kez has the location of the cabin. We're coming to you. It's all coming straight to you."
Kezia's driving, and I've been in the car with her; she's using police tactics, driving with controlled wildness and tremendous speed. I look in the rearview mirror. I can see the headlights of a police cruiser swerving and speeding down the main road. I see them turn at the Johansens' cutoff.
Sam's still talking, but I'm tired. The phone rests on my leg, though I'm not sure when I put it down. My aching, pulsing head is leaning against the window glass. I'm not shivering anymore.
I say, Get my kids, or at least I think it, before everything goes very, very dark.
14
"Gwen? My God."
I open my eyes. Sam is crouched beside me, and he looks . . . odd. He turns and says, "I need that first-aid kit!"
Kezia is right behind him, and she dumps a large red bag beside him. He rips open the Velcro top and searches inside.
"What are you doing?" I ask him. I'm not clear. I'm definitely not, but I've stopped hurting, mostly. Amazing what a little sleep will do. "I'm okay."
"No, you're not. Quiet." He takes a thick pad of bandages and presses them tight to my head, and the pain comes back in a sullen roar. "Can you hold that for me? Hold it." He presses my hand to the pad, and I manage to do as he says while he breaks out more bandages and wraps everything in place. "How much blood did you lose?"
"Lots," I tell him. "Doesn't matter. Where's the cabin?"
"You are not going to the cabin." I fumble for my gun. He effortlessly takes it away, empties the chamber and strips the mag in one move, then tosses the pieces in the back seat of the SUV. "You are not going anywhere but to the hospital. You need x-rays on that skull. I don't like the look of that. You could have a depressed fracture."
"I don't care. I'm going." And I will, in a minute. It seems a monumental effort to get out of the truck right now. "Did you get my text?"
He gives me an odd look. "When?"
"Never mind." Graham was successful in that. He'd managed to break my phone before the text got sent. "How did you figure out he was bad?"
"He didn't show up for the search," Sam tells me. He's busy checking my eyes with a penlight, which is annoying and painful, and I try to bat him away. "Kez did a little digging. Turns out he'd been gone a full day off work during the time of each abduction, and again on the days we figure he disposed of the bodies. She'd been having a feeling about him for a while. When we found out he showed up at the station and gave you a ride--"
"Thanks," I tell him. He looks set and grimly angry.
"Yeah, not like we got here in time to do much good rescuing you."
I still one of his hands that's probing my neck for injuries and hang on to it. "Sam. Thank you."
We look at each other for a few seconds, and then he nods and continues his evaluation.
Kezia's gone to check on Graham. She comes back and takes the first-aid kit, and soon after that I see the flashing signals of the ambulance. Out here in the sticks, the ambulance comes with four-wheel drive, which allows it to pull up past the truck and toward the trail head, where I see Kezia tending to Graham in the wash of the headlights.
"Do you know where the cabin is?" I ask Sam. He's found the pellets in my left arm. "Please. I need to know. I'm fine, Sam, leave it."
"You're not."
"Sam!"
He sighs and sits back, hands on his thighs. "It's a long hike up, and you aren't up to it."
"I told you. I'm all right. Look." I force myself into high gear, and I step out of the truck. I'm steady. I hold my hands out. No shakes. "See?"
I'm a little shocked when he pulls me into a hug, but it feels good. It feels safe. I've trusted all the wrong people, and I've pushed away all the right ones, and this upends everything I thought I knew about myself.
"You're not okay, but I know you have to do this," he says. "I know you'll do it without me."
"Damn right I will," I tell him. "Give me back my gun."
He doesn't like it. He kisses me on the forehead, just below where the bandages are wrapped, and checks to make sure they're secure. Then he ducks in the back, puts the spare bullet in the mag, slaps my Sig together, and hands it to me. I slide it in the pocket.
The paramedics are working on Lancel Graham, but Kezia has left them to it, and she comes back to us. She has on her uniform under a thick coat, and her gun strapped to her hip. She passes us and heads to her cruiser, where she opens up the trunk and takes out two bulletproof vests. She puts one over her head and carries the other over to us. She hands it to Sam.
Sam puts it on me. When I start to protest, he shakes his head. "No. Just no." I let it pass. He and Kez get shotguns from the cruiser, and she has a supply kit that she slings over her head bandolier-style. S
tuffed, I would bet, with survival supplies and ammunition.
Kezia goes back to talk to the paramedics, then takes out her phone and makes a call. When she returns to us, she says, "Prester's got backup coming, but it'll be a while for all the search parties to come back in and get over to us."
"He said to go ahead?" Sam asks.
She gives him arched eyebrows. "Hell no, he didn't. He said wait. You want to wait?"
He shakes his head.
I say, "Which way is it?"
Sam's right, I'm not up to it, but that doesn't matter. I don't let my increasing dizziness slow me down, though Sam keeps a watchful eye on me. I feel smothered under the weight of the bulletproof vest strapped on under the down jacket; it's hot, and I'm sweating freely now. The night is still cold. My body's running at redline levels just to keep me moving up the hill.
Kezia is as surefooted as a cougar as she leads us up the trail--not the one I'd taken earlier, but the one I'd come slipping down. We pass the rock where I hit my head, and her flashlight shines on the wet, red glisten of my blood. There's a lot of it. She doesn't say anything. Neither does Sam, but he moves a step closer as we hike up.
The trail breaks off to the northwest, still wandering upward. The lightning has stopped now, and the rain, too, but there's a wind kicking up through the trees that sways the pines overhead in a whispering dance. I find myself wanting to look behind me, in case Lancel Graham is creeping up. Graham's in the hospital. He'll be lucky if they can save his damn liver. But that doesn't stop me from imagining the horror show. Once, I see him.
I'm starting to hallucinate. I can hear someone crying. Lanny. I can hear my daughter crying, and it makes me thin and raw inside, and I turn to Sam. The question is almost on my lips, do you hear that, but I know he doesn't.
I'm losing control.
We come out half an hour later on a thin, slender shelf clear of trees. There's a tiny shack of a cabin squatting in the overhang of a rock ridge. It'd be almost invisible from overhead. You had to know this thing was here to find it at all, and it's old. Repairs have been made, but there's something old-time country about the construction.