by Nika Dixon
A heavy hand slammed down onto the top of her head. Crying out against the tearing pain in her scalp, she was hauled to her feet.
“Emmaline, Emmaline, Emmaline,” Alan ground out, spinning her around to face him.
He was completely soaked, his expensively tailored suit ruined and his perfectly coiffed hair a disheveled mop.
He looked ridiculous—so unlike the put-together businessman she was so afraid of.
She almost laughed.
Then Alan inched his face closer to hers. His rage radiated off him like an aura. “You’re going to pay for this, Emmaline. And I swear to you, this time there will be no way out.”
Chapter Fifty-Eight
The glow of the barn fire turned night to day and filled Marshall’s veins with ice. As soon as they were past the trees, he urged Castor into a gallop and raced across the open field.
The entire barn was engulfed in flames. They licked up between the slats and out the shattered windows. Black smoke billowed through the open door, curling and lifting into the night. Not even the rain could dent the power of the inferno. The trees, the grass, the back of the farmhouse—everything was shining in sheets of orange-colored rain.
Beside the barn, Alexander’s SUV was fully engulfed, a blackened shell of its former luxury. As Marshall rode closer, the side wall of the barn collapsed, crushing the vehicle. Smoke and sparks shot high into the air.
A wave of heat hit him full in the face.
Danny flew from his saddle and ran toward the fire, calling for Lucy.
Marshall wrestled him back. “We don’t even know if she’s in there!” he shouted, the words just as much for his benefit as it was for Danny.
If the car was still there—then the others were, too. But where?
He spun to face the farmhouse, hoping to hell they’d just moved locations.
A sharp bark carried across the open ground.
Through the smoke and sparks, Drift ran with a stumbling gait. Tripping along beside him, her hands twisted in the fur of the dog’s neck, was Lucy.
Danny sprinted toward her. “Lucy!”
She launched herself into her father’s arms, sobbing.
He dropped to his knees and clung to her. “You’re okay, nugget. I’ve got you.”
She continued to cry, her words half sobs, half sniffles. “I ran, Daddy. Just like Emma said. She said I had to find Sam because Drift was there so Sam would be, too. I tried to make her come, but he took her, Daddy. You have to go get her! You have to rescue Emma!”
Marshall knelt beside them. “Who took her, Luce?”
“The one in the fancy suit. The big bald man called him Mr. A.”
“Did the bald man go with them?” Danny asked.
Lucy scrunched her eyes closed. “He burned up. He was trying to throw me into the fire, but Drift knocked him down and he burned up.”
At the sound of his name, Drift scooted closer and licked Lucy’s face.
Marshall faced the fire in satisfaction, knowing that Victor Styles was nothing more than a pile of ash.
Burn in hell, you bastard.
He rubbed Drift’s head. “Good job, buddy.”
Danny stood up, lifting Lucy with him. “Did you see which way he took Emma?”
Lucy pointed back the way she came, into the smoke-filled space between the house and the collapsed barn.
Sam gave Danny a prod toward the horses. “Go. Get her to Doc. We got this.”
Lucy squirmed and tried to get down. “No, Daddy! We have to get Emma!”
Danny squeezed her tightly. “Sam’s got this, Luce. And your uncle Marsh. No one is leaving Emma behind.”
Sam hooked a lock of her wet, straggled hair and gave it a gentle tug. “You sayin’ you don’t think I can find her?”
Her eyes widened, and her tears started falling anew. “She didn’t leave me. I don’t want to leave her.”
“You’re not leaving her,” Danny soothed, rubbing her back. “You’re getting somewhere safe. Isn’t that what she told you to do? Go find Sam?”
“Yeah. I guess so…”
“Well, you found Sam. And now Sam is going to go find her.”
“And Uncle Marsh, too?”
Marshall placed his hand on his niece’s shoulder. “Damn right.”
“And Drift?”
Sam made a face and looked around. Drift was nowhere to be seen. “Pretty sure he’s way ahead of us.”
“See? Three against one.” Danny lifted her higher and turned toward the horses.
Lucy stuck her hand out, snagging Marshall’s sleeve. “Uncle Marsh?”
“Yeah, kiddo?”
“Emma was really brave. You would be proud of her.”
He leaned down and kissed her forehead. “I am, Luce. You bet I am.”
“Make sure you bring her home, okay?”
“I promise.”
Satisfied, she lowered her head to Danny’s shoulder and let him carry her back to his horse.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Emma clamped her good hand around Alan’s wrist, struggling to find a way to stop him from tearing her hair out. She stumbled over the rough, rocky ground, stubbing her toes and bashing her heels on the rocks and roots.
The glow from the burning barn had long been lost behind them, leaving them battling the wind, the rain, and the darkness. She tried to pay attention to where she was going, but the waterlogged branches made it impossible to tell one direction from the other. Everything looked the same no matter which way she looked—trees, trees, and more trees.
Alan didn’t care if she was on her feet or her knees—he dragged her forward regardless. Her head was throbbing with as much fury as her broken wrist. She licked the dripping water from the side of her mouth, using the tiny drops to soothe her dry throat and whisk away the acrid taste of ash that still coated her tongue.
She could no longer feel her feet. It was the only bonus to the icy-cold mud. It froze away the stinging burn of the cuts and scrapes. Stubbing her toes on tree roots or bashing her ankles off rocks barely registered. She wished her wrist would give her the same peace, but every movement sent fire and pain up her arm.
She nearly cried with relief when Alan finally let go of her.
She fell to her knees and had to blink several times to focus on his face.
He cursed the weather, the trees, the country while he fished his cell phone out of his wet pocket. The screen lit up like a beacon, adding an evil glow to his wet face and hair. He held the phone up in the air and spun around.
“You will pay for this, Emmaline. That stupid sheriff will pay for this. The deputy. The cowboy. Everyone is going to pay for this!”
Warm, salty tears crossed her cheeks, mixing with the cold drops of the rain. He wasn’t lying. If he found a signal, if he made a call, then everyone he owned would descend on Absolution in a wave of blood and death.
Beneath the sounds of the storm that thrashed overhead, she swore she heard a bark.
A spark of hope ignited within her, and she straightened her spine. She kept her eyes on Alan. She needed a new sound. A distraction. Something to keep him from hearing it, too. He would surely kill her if she started screaming, but she didn’t need to be deafening, just loud enough to cover the sounds coming from the forest.
“You didn’t let me finish,” she whispered, her chattering teeth cutting off her words. Pressing her trembling fingers to her throat, she tried again. “You didn’t let me finish,” she repeated, louder, stronger.
“What?” Alan stopped staring at his phone and turned his frustration to her.
“The pictures. You didn’t let me finish.”
He jammed his phone back into his pocket then reached beneath his jacket. He pulled out a gun and wriggled it in her face as though pointing out her individual features. “I don’t need you to finish, you stupid child! I don’t need you at all.”
Frozen, she stared at the deadly weapon. It didn’t surprise her to see it—he always had a gun. But what did sho
ck her was seeing it here. Now. She had no idea if her death was part of the picture, but she prayed that whatever demon or angel had given her the power to do what she did had a higher plan for her that didn’t include being shot in the face in the middle of a deserted forest.
Clutching to that sliver of hope, she kept talking. “For fifteen years,” she said, “I have only ever requested one thing—always to let me finish. You didn’t let me finish.”
Alan yanked her sketches out of his pocket. The paper was soaked and soggy, bending as he waggled it in front of her face. “Don’t try and play me, Emmaline. Your pictures don’t lie! Money. Respect. Victory. They’re all here!”
“What if there’s more? You didn’t let me finish.”
“You don’t have to finish!”
Stepping back, he crumpled the mushy papers in his fist and waved his arms at the trees. For an agonizing, fearful second, she panicked that he’d figured out what she was doing. That he had heard the noise, too. Using a tree for support, she pulled herself to her feet. Her heart raced in time with the shivers that rocked through her, but he lost interest in her and started stomping about in a circle, waving the gun about distractedly.
“Stalling won’t save you, Emmaline. There’s no one coming. No one is here to help you. David made sure of it. As soon as he’s done taking care of the sheriff and his band of merry fools, we’ll get out of this hellish mudhole.”
“You know how it works, Alan. The images need to be whole. You have to let me finish. You didn’t let me finish.”
“Stop saying that!” He whirled around and pointed the gun at her chest.
She clung to the tree and prayed for the seconds to pass by with more speed. She was sure of what she had drawn—what she was supposed to have finished drawing—but it was what could have followed on the rest of the pages that worried her. She didn’t know if there was more to the premonition, and that, coupled with the gun pointed at her, was terrifying.
He lowered his gun with an exasperated sigh. Holding his arms wide, he bowed slightly. “Fine. Then do tell me, my dear Emmaline. What could you possibly have needed to finish? There was a fourth drawing? Something else you saw? What? What did you see?”
Free of the weapon’s aim, she sagged against the trunk. She had his attention, but now what? She had nothing to give him, no way to draw another picture—truth or otherwise.
He lurched closer, grabbing her injured wrist and tugging her into the open. “Answer me!”
She cried out at the crush of pain. Her stomach vaulted up into her throat, and the trees above twirled dizzily. She dropped to her knees.
He released her with a scoff of disgust.
She toppled sideways onto the wet ground. Stars danced across her eyes, and she prayed she wouldn’t pass out.
“I’ll take that as a no.” He raised the gun and pointed it at her head. “Goodbye, Emmaline.”
The vibration started small, nothing more than a rumbling shuffle she could feel in her cheek. She pressed the side of her face closer to the muck. The tremor grew in frequency and speed.
“You didn’t let me finish,” she whispered, smiling up at Alan. Her smile turned into a grin, which turned into a sobbing laugh. The shaking jiggled her arm, sending a throbbing pain across her chest. But she couldn’t stop laughing.
He was here.
The final piece of the picture.
The drawing of the money sitting on the table wasn’t of the rich future of a powerful man, but the collection of a federal investigation, lined up on the table for a media opportunity of a crime kingpin taken off the streets. The men in the second sketch weren’t kneeling out of respect—they were lined up in a raid, their clasped hands joined with handcuffs. And the image of Alan with his arms raised wasn’t a picture of victory, but a picture of his death.
Alan spun around, searching the darkness for the coming storm.
“You didn’t let me finish!” she shouted.
A flash of lightning shone its spotlight around them as Devil burst from the shadows.
Before Alan could utter a sound, the horse ran over him like he was nothing more than a bump in the earth.
Dirt and rocks flew from his hooves. He twisted around and rose up on his hindquarters with an ear-piercing whinny. He dropped down, slamming his front hooves into the muck beside Alan’s chest.
He didn’t flinch.
She wobbled to her feet and stumbled forward, obeying the morbid desire to match the scene in front of her with the dark shadowed picture in her mind. The picture she would have drawn for him if he’d let her finish.
He did, indeed, look like he had his arms raised in victory, but only if you were standing over his body. And she hadn’t drawn his face in the picture because he had no face to draw—what was there was a shattered mess, crushed when Devil took him down.
She should have been sick. She should have been horrified. Maybe she was. Maybe her arm and body were too far gone to let her. Or maybe she had already lived the image in her mind, so she wasn’t surprised by the disgusting cavity of Alan’s crushed and bloody face.
She brushed her fingers across Devil’s wet neck, following the lines she would have drawn if Alan had let her finish. The horse turned his head, bumping her back from the man who couldn’t hurt her or anyone she loved or cared about ever again.
The urge to finish the picture faded.
She was finally free.
Chapter Sixty
Strangling Castor’s reins, Marshall stood in the pouring rain beside Sam, staring in a panic at the dumb-ass, sopping wet, so-called police dog who was sitting in the mud, pleased as punch, wagging his tail at nothing.
As soon as Sam had given the command to find Emma, Drift had gone absolutely crackers—barking and racing back and forth through the trees. He would dash ahead, then run back to the horses, then head back out again, leading them farther into the woods.
Then, just as suddenly as he’d started, he stopped.
Stopped barking. Stopped running. Stopped everything.
He just sat himself down as though waiting for Sam to throw him a stick.
Marshall was about tell Sam he wasn’t putting any more faith in the stupid mutt when the definitive crack of a branch spurred him to silence.
Drift popped to his feet and faced the forest. His ears perked up, and he let out a soft bark.
Butting his shoulder up against a wide trunk, Marshall raised his rifle and tracked the sound.
The colorless shape coming through the forest was too big to be a person. As the black horse came into view, he cursed under his breath.
Damn horse!
He half considered shooting the stupid beast just out of frustration but lowered the rifle and waved Sam off. “Just Devil,” he muttered.
A flash of pale color against Devil’s back drew his eye. It took him all of a second to recognize the shape as a body.
Someone was riding him?
There was only one person on the planet with that kind of power.
With hope fueling his limbs, Marshall dashed through the trees.
Emma lay flopped forward over Devil’s back, her arms dangling down either side of his great neck. He grabbed her and rolled her off. She dropped into his arms like a rag doll. He twisted away from the horse and lowered to his knees, resting her against his chest.
Sam squatted beside him. He pulled out a flashlight and aimed the beam over her.
Marshall’s heart nearly stopped. Her skin was ice-cold and as pale as the death. But she was alive and breathing, and that was all that mattered.
Sam gently lifted her arm and placed across her stomach. “Damn it. That’s broken. We need to wrap it before we ride.”
While Sam ran back to his horse for the first-aid kit, Marshall wrestled himself free of his jacket. The cold rain soaked his back before he could suck in a shocked breath. He flipped his coat over Emma and carefully tucked it around her, keeping her upper body against his chest and her head beneath his chin.
Sam carefully untucked her arm. “Sorry. I need to wrap that arm before we ride.”
Emma whimpered.
“Shh, Em. It’s okay,” Marshall said softly, willing Sam to work faster. “I’ve got you.”
Her shoulder rose and fell, and she wriggled her good hand free of the folds of his jacket. She lifted her hand, laid her palm against the side of his jaw, and smiled. “You came.”
As soon as the words left her lips, he existed in two places at once—kneeling in mud of the forest floor in the middle of a thunderstorm, and kneeling in the muck of the creek beneath the sunny sunset on the day he’d first met the green-eyed beauty in the yellow sundress.
The same hand on his cheek.
The same smile.
The same words.
You came.
And just as then, her fingers slipped lower then fell from his chin, and her eyes fluttered closed.
He snapped back to the present when Sam patted his shoulder.
“Get her out of here,” Sam ordered. “I’ll keep looking for Alexander.”
Marshall hated having to hand her over to Sam even for the brief time it took him to get into the saddle. As soon as he was up on Castor, Sam gave his precious bundle back.
With Devil on his heels, he carried her home.
Chapter Sixty-One
Three weeks had passed since Emma was taken away. Three weeks of a soul-deep ache that left Marshall wondering if he was even alive. He had no desire to eat. Wasn’t able to sleep. And couldn’t function with anything other a strange desire to feed Devil apples. The only one able to comprehend his predicament seemed to be the horse, who was happily snacking on the fruit slices from his open palm.
His father offered platitudes.
His brother offered excuses.
Everyone else had nothing to contribute, so he avoided them all.
He should have been used to feeling such loss. This wasn’t his first rodeo. After Michelle, he’d believed the black hole of misery would permanently be his life—then along came a green-eyed girl who’d given him the light back. And just as he’d thought he would be able to feel the sun on his face once more, she was gone. But this time, the loss was much, much worse, because Emma wasn’t dead…she just wasn’t here.
