2 - The Hunt

by Allison Brennan

  She’d been too numb to cry, too tired to argue. She mapped out the location as best she could remember, but the search team couldn’t find Sharon.

  Miranda couldn’t bear the thought of her friend’s body exposed for yet another night. Leaving her to the grizzlies and cougars and vultures. So the following morning she withstood the pain in her legs and led the search team and law enforcement back to where Sharon lay. She had to see her one last time.

  She might have been in shock; that’s what the doctors said. But she walked with help. She knew where Sharon had fallen, would never forget it. She brought them to the spot, and there Sharon lay. Exactly how she’d fallen when the killer shot her.

  Silence filled the air, birds and animals mourning with the humans. Even the spring wind held its breath; not one leaf rustled as everyone finally grasped exactly what had happened to Miranda and Sharon.

  The sudden cry of a hawk split the stillness, and the wind gently blew.

  The medic covered Sharon’s body with a bright green plastic tarp while the sheriff’s team started searching for evidence. Miranda couldn’t stop staring at the tarp. Sharon was dead underneath it, reduced to a lump under a sheet of plastic. So wrong, so inhuman!

  It was then that Miranda had first broken down and cried.

  An FBI agent carried her the three miles back to the road. His name was Quincy Peterson.

  CHAPTER

  2

  When he saw Miranda, Quinn stopped in his tracks. His breath hitched in his chest and he sidestepped behind a thicker shelter of trees so she wouldn’t spot him.

  Ten years had passed since he’d last seen her, but the impact was the same. First, a mixture of awe and respect—he had yet to meet a person with greater resolve than Miranda. Next came love and pride, followed quickly by anger and frustration. So entwined. He couldn’t turn off his emotions like a faucet; how could she have shut him out so easily? How could she have walked away from their relationship without giving him a chance to explain?

  He still had hope she would be able to put aside her blinding obsession with the Butcher and come back. But that hope had diminished with the passage of time. Now, he feared she would kill herself through neglect of her own needs.

  Her back was to Nick; only Quinn could see the agony etched on her face.

  As he watched, Miranda closed her eyes and shook her head, as if to rid herself of a nightmare. Or a memory. She pushed herself up from the ground, wiped her eyes with her forearm, and walked around to the dead woman’s feet. She stared at Rebecca’s covered body for a good minute before bending down and lifting the corner of the tarp.

  Quinn didn’t have to be standing at her side to know what Miranda was staring at. Rebecca’s feet and legs, caked in mud from running. The broken leg. The evidence of her flight.

  “How long?”

  Even from his vantage point fifty feet away, Quinn heard the anger and pain in her voice. She whirled around and glared at Nick. Her jaw tightened as she struggled to control the pain.

  Always, the control. It was a miracle she hadn’t had a nervous breakdown with the weight of the world carried on her shoulders.

  “Eight, ten hours?”

  Quinn didn’t hear Nick’s response, but Miranda’s guess was probably accurate.

  “Dammit, Nick! He had her for eight days. She almost got free. We’re only a few miles from the damn road. Four miles and she broke her leg. And, and he, he—” She stopped and turned away from Nick.

  Watching Miranda wrestle with her control, Quinn felt uncomfortably like a voyeur. He yearned to go to her, take her in his arms as he’d done before, to just hold her. He hadn’t told her everything would be all right. He’d never told her the pain would be bearable. Quinn was just there. And for two years, just being by her side helped her regain her life and her strength. He knew it had.

  But it hadn’t been enough.

  “Doc Abrams is on his way,” Nick said. “He’ll be able to tell us more.”

  “You promised, Nick.” She peeled off her latex gloves and shoved them into a pocket. Pinching the bridge of her nose, she approached the sheriff.

  Quinn couldn’t avoid Miranda any longer, but he dreaded the meeting.

  “Don’t try to protect me, Nick,” she said as Quinn came up behind her.

  “Don’t blame Nick, Miranda. I told him not to call you.”

  Miranda heard the familiar voice: low, warm, as smooth as melting butter.

  Miranda’s heart doubled, tripled its beat. For a moment, for much too long a moment, she couldn’t say a word. She had dreamt of that voice and the man who possessed it. She spun around.

  Quinn Peterson.

  For a second, a brief moment, she forgot everything that had happened between them ten years ago and felt the ghost of his arms wrapped around her, the soothing murmurings he’d whispered in her ear.

  The only time she’d felt truly safe since the attack had been in Quinn’s embrace.

  He had changed—and yet he’d stayed the same. A few random strands of silver shot through his sandy hair. It fell just a little too long across the top, partly covering a bandage above his eye. His dark eyes still saw everything, but now faint lines fanned their edges. He was still physically fit, dressed too well for the Montana woods, and she could still taste his lips on hers, though they hadn’t seen each other for a decade.

  She hated the memories that rained down on her, hated even more that seeing Quinn Peterson reminded her of her worst failings at a time when she needed all her strength and courage.

  “How dare you!” She berated herself for the quiver in her voice.

  “I know you enjoy torturing yourself, Miranda, but I didn’t want to witness it.” Quinn came closer, standing a mere foot from her. She resisted the urge to step back. She would not back down. Not this time.

  A tic pulsed in Quinn’s jaw. She remembered it well from when he was angry. Or worried.

  “What are you doing here?” Her voice was stronger, but she didn’t trust herself to say more.

  “I called him,” Nick said.

  She turned to face her best friend. “You?”

  Nick straightened enough to show he was uncomfortable. “I’ve been keeping Quinn informed since I became sheriff,” Nick said. “I need him and his resources.”

  “You’ve been working with him for—” She thought back to when Nick had first been elected sheriff and threw her hands up in the air. “Three years! And didn’t let me know? How could you? I thought you of all people understood.”

  “Miranda, I want this bastard almost as much as you do.”

  Quinn interrupted. “I’m here to catch a killer. I shouldn’t have to tell you the FBI’s resources are greater than Nick’s department’s. If you have a problem with that, you can leave.”

  Quinn’s intense dark eyes cut through her defenses with the precision of a laser. She grew uneasy from the scrutiny. Cataloging her fear, her insecurities. Waiting for her to crack, to break. She would not let him see her weak. Could not let him see her fall apart. Too many times in the past she’d gone to him for strength, support. She’d cried in his arms, told him everything she thought and felt and believed.

  He’d used it all against her when he kicked her out of the Academy.

  She had plenty of time to break down later. Tonight. When she was alone.

  “I know this area better than every deputy in the department,” Miranda said, her voice cracking as she fought to keep her temper and emotions in check. With one deep, probing look, Quinn had reduced her to raw nerves.

  She turned her attention back to Nick, gathered her strength. “You’re going to be searching for evidence and bringing in volunteers. You need me, and I need to be here. I need to look. I’ll see things no one else will see. I’ll—”

  “Stop.” Quinn closed the short distance between them, putting a hand on her shoulder. She stared at it, wanting both to slap it away and fall into his arms.

  She glared at him and he dropped his hand
.

  “You need sleep,” he continued, his voice softer. “You’ve been searching for Rebecca all week. How many hours have you taken for yourself? You’re living on coffee and junk food. Go home.”

  “No. No!” She turned from him, fearing the tears she’d been fighting all morning would escape.

  Not now. Not in front of Quinn.

  “Miranda, I’m calling in a team,” Nick said. “We won’t be ready for at least two hours. Doc Abrams needs to claim the body. Come back later.”

  “Nick, I don’t think—” Quinn began.

  Miranda interrupted him.

  “I’m going to tell the volunteers. Two hours, I’ll be here.” She couldn’t look at Quinn, not now when her feelings raw and exposed.

  She walked past Nick, touched his arm. “I’m okay.” She didn’t know if she said it for his benefit, hers, or Quinn’s, but saying the words out loud helped her swallow the fear that had crept to the surface. Quinn’s presence had rattled her almost as much as the Butcher’s latest kill.

  Quinn watched Miranda drive off in her Jeep. He’d handled her wrong. It didn’t used to be like that. Back before she decided becoming an FBI agent would somehow fix her problems, Quinn had known exactly what to say, when to touch her, when to give her space.

  But once she landed at Quantico, her obsession with the Butcher took over her life. Or maybe it had been there from the beginning and Quinn just hadn’t seen it.

  Why couldn’t she see it?

  “Why’d you do that?” Quinn asked Nick. “She’s in no condition to search for evidence. Did you see her when she was looking at the body? She’s going to lose it.”

  His gut had twisted at the pain he’d seen on Miranda’s beautiful, gaunt face. As if she were reliving Rebecca Douglas’s final minutes.

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Quinn. Miranda’s stronger than you think.”

  “She’s punishing herself for surviving.”

  “I don’t know about that—” Nick began.

  “I do. Miranda has a huge case of survivor’s guilt and it’s grown over time. Every time another girl is abducted, she takes on her death as if she were to blame.”

  “I know she’s personally involved, but she’s an asset to the team.”

  “Miranda doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘team.’ ”

  “You haven’t worked with her for the past ten years. She won’t break, she’d solid.”

  “You’re letting your personal relationship interfere with common sense.” Quinn cringed. He sounded jealous. Dammit, he was jealous. When he’d first learned of Miranda and Nick’s relationship, it hurt more than he wanted to admit. You’d think that after all the years they’d been apart Quinn would have gotten over her. Yet, since Miranda walked out of his life, the few relationships he’d developed had been superficial and short-term. In Quinn’s heart, Miranda would always be the only woman.

  Nick shot him a look. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” The sheriff started walking toward his truck.

  “Don’t play coy with me, Nick. You’ve been involved with Miranda too long not to know better. She’s playing you. She’s good at that.”

  Nick turned back to Quinn. “Miranda and I broke up two years ago.”

  Nick’s face told Quinn he wasn’t happy about the arrangement, and his voice sounded almost accusatory. Quinn was both surprised and pleased that Nick and Miranda were no longer a couple. Then he chastised himself for caring. After all, Miranda wouldn’t have anything to do with him.

  “You never told me.”

  “Why would I? I’d take her back in a heartbeat. Not that I have a chance now.” He looked down the path Miranda’s Jeep had taken. “Not with you in town.”

  “She hates me.” Hate might be too nice a word. Loathe, despise, or abhor might be more fitting.

  “She should,” Nick said glancing at him. “If you’d had me booted from the FBI Academy the day before graduation, I’d hate you. But she doesn’t.”

  Quinn didn’t know about that, but remained silent.

  Nick added, “If she hated you, she’d already be my wife.”

  CHAPTER

  3

  Miranda broke every traffic law on the books driving back to Montana State University in Bozeman . She dreaded telling the search volunteers that Rebecca was dead.

  Nick was right: they needed the resources of the FBI if they were going to catch the Butcher. But out of all the agents in the country, why Quinn Peterson?

  She thought she’d gotten over his betrayal years ago. She loved her job, had a good home, family who loved her, and loyal friends.

  Then she saw him; now she realized deep down, in the farthest recesses of her heart, in the corner she’d thought long hardened against love, she still ached for him.

  Why couldn’t she be as nonchalant and formal as he had been? Miranda very much wanted it to appear that she didn’t care in the least that Quinn had both ruined her career and broken her heart.

  Miranda pulled into one of the many parking lots on campus, gripping the steering wheel so hard her knuckles were white with the strain. She slammed the gear shift into park and shut off the engine. She tried to shove Quinn back into the mental compartment in which he’d been stuffed for years, but he didn’t go willingly.

  She took a deep breath and watched a group of girls walk toward search headquarters in the Student Union Building. Then a pair of girls. Then a group of professors.

  No one walked alone. Not when they were reminded about the Butcher. But how long would it take before they grew complacent again? A month? Two? A year? Miranda never forgot. The Butcher lived with her every minute of every day, taunting and tormenting.

  The dean of students had allowed search volunteers to take over one of the large rooms in the Student Union to coordinate activities. Although Miranda worked for the Sheriff’s Department in the small Search and Rescue division, they didn’t have the space to bring in people to phone, copy flyers, distribute maps. Like the other times girls disappeared, the University provided the space they needed—anything to help. In times of tragedy, students and teachers united.

  Why did it take death for people to see the value of life?

  It had been three years since the last murder. Last known murder.

  Miranda couldn’t forget the other girls who’d disappeared. This time last year it was Corinne Atwell. No one had seen her since her car was found in a ditch on Route 191 outside Gallatin Gateway. Was she a victim of the Butcher? Of another killer? Or had she run away? The very real possibility that Corinne had been the Butcher’s victim, her body decomposing in the wilderness somewhere in the millions of acres between Bozeman and Yellowstone where the Butcher hunted, haunted Miranda.

  Thoughts like these creeping across her brain gave her insomnia.

  Whack! Whack!

  The whip came down once, twice, stinging her raw flesh and she tried to scream, but her voice had long since deserted her. She was left to her silent tears, and the echo of Sharon’s pleas.

  Their pleas meant nothing to the faceless monster who tortured them. Their relief when he left soon turned to horror. They’d become dependent on him. He fed them, gave them water. If he left forever, they’d die, naked and chained to the floor in the middle of nowhere.

  But he did return. To release them. So they could play the part of prey in his sick game. The hunter and the hunted.

  Finding the Butcher meant more than justice. Only he could tell them who he had killed. That he had so much control over the grief of the living ate at Miranda constantly.

  Rebecca had survived eight days in the hands of that madman, that murdering bastard. She had almost escaped. Almost.

  As with Sharon, “almost” meant shit when you were dead.

  Sitting in her car in the parking lot, Miranda took a deep breath. Closing her eyes, she buried her head in her arms, using the steering wheel as an armrest.

  The tears came fast, anger and frustration boiling over in hot, salt
y rivulets down her cheeks. Her body, already sore from days of backbreaking searches, ached from the tension of facing Quinn again. She sobbed and shook, no sound escaping except the harsh intake of ragged breaths. It took her several minutes to control her grief. Even once she’d composed herself, it was hard to stay calm: when she looked at her face in the rearview mirror she saw death.

  Seven times she had seen the dead girls. But there were nine young women still missing, their remains nothing but bones scattered in the wilderness. Bears and mountain lions didn’t care much for human dignity, didn’t adhere to Judeo-Christian burial rites.

  Why me?

  Why had she survived when so many others hadn’t? Why had he picked her in the first place? Why Rebecca Douglas or the Croft sisters? It made no sense. It hadn’t then, and it still didn’t now that she’d had twelve years to examine and reexamine everything leading up to her kidnapping, everything she’d endured in that godforsaken one-room torture shack, everything that had happened since she escaped.

  She owed her father, that much she knew. If her father hadn’t taken her on the hunting trips she loathed as a child, she would never have known how to cover her tracks, how to deceive the hunter. She was the prey, but unlike the deer or bear her father hunted, she was an intelligent human being. She could outthink her pursuer, hide and run, run and hide, until she dove into the river . . . even if she had died in the icy water, she still would have won.

  He would not have killed her. She would have escaped, stealing from him his trophy, his prize.

  She’d not only won, but lived.

  If Rebecca hadn’t fallen and broken her leg, would she have survived? Would she have made it to the road? Though not from Montana, Rebecca had been born and raised in the small, mountain community of Quincy, California. Similar terrain and—Miranda’s thoughts detoured from Rebecca.

  Quincy . Damn, she couldn’t escape him.

  Wiping the tears from her face, she glanced once more in the rearview mirror. No wonder Quinn thought she couldn’t handle the search. She looked horrible. She’d lost weight she couldn’t afford to lose. She hadn’t bothered with makeup and her dark hair, though clean, was limp.