by Lexie Ray
“I’m not going to shoot you, and you’re not going to shoot me,” said Grizzly. “You’re going to go back to Hunter and help her, I just want to have a little talk first, and I’m sure you want the same since you stopped by.”
Ash shifted his gaze, darting between Grizzly and the monitors behind him. The shadowy figures of Hunter and Blair on the screens moved in odd starts until they were both out of frame. It unnerved Ash that he could no longer see Hunter there. He knew something had gone wrong. He had seen her glistening shoulder and her hand darkened by blood.
“Hunter’s a killer, and you’re a killer,” he went on. “Why don’t you both come home?”
Ash only glared at him.
“Well, I had to ask,” said Grizzly, before turning to the monitors. “Blair’s an effective killer. I was betting Hunter would take her out if faced with the reality that Blair won’t hesitate to kill her, but she didn’t. It’s disappointing.”
“Hunter isn’t that kind of killer,” said Ash. “And neither am I. You’ve known that from the start.”
“I’m going to let you in on a little secret,” he said. “The secret about how this is going to end.”
“Her mother found us,” said Ash, interrupting him.
Grizzly immediately turned back, locking eyes with him.
It was the look of a shocked man. He was unmoving except for the blood that drained from his face, turning him white.
“You’re right,” Ash continued. “I’m not going to shoot you. I’m going to leave you. Hunter wants you dead, but I don’t even want that. I trust Sarah. I trust she can put you behind bars for everything you’ve done. The world will know who you really are. I’m certain that’s a punishment worse than death.”
* * *
Blair was a hell of a lot heavier than she looked. Hunter had her younger sister slung over her shoulder, as she walked back across the field towards the tree line.
“Hey!”
It was Ash, running up behind her, his voice a strong whisper through the night.
Hunter eased Blair off her shoulder, resting the girl’s limp body on the damp grass.
“I can’t carry her any further,” said Hunter. “Take her to the car. I have to find Grizzly and finish this.”
“He isn’t here,” said Ash, the lie stinging his mouth. “I searched everywhere.” He had been truthful in the woodshed. He didn’t want Grizzly dead, much less Hunter risking her life to kill him. They had all the girls. They had Blair. It was time to quit while they were ahead, regroup with Sarah, and do this thing right.
“Are you sure?”
“Positive,” he said unable to look her in the eye. He bent over and wrestled Blair into his arms. When he had her in a good grip, Ash began walking, crossing through the tree line into the woods. Hunter was right behind him.
“Did you get through to Sarah?” she asked, out of breath.
“No, but I sent several texts,” he said. That wasn’t a lie. It had been a very confusing, panic inducing effort. The woman had provided a cell but didn’t answer when he used it.
“It’s late,” said Hunter, providing an excuse while suppressing a smile. She was pleased Sarah hadn’t been involved. She wanted to keep it that way.
“Where do you think he is?” she asked.
“Who?”
“Grizzly. You don’t think he left for good, do you? I expected him to come to the barn, he baited me well enough with Blair. It doesn’t make sense that he never showed.”
“We need to worry about Twitch,” said Ash. “He wasn’t there, anywhere. We need to find him.”
Hunter and Ash reached the dark sedan parked in the thick of the woods. It was packed to the brim with girls, and Hunter had no idea how she and Blair would fit.
“Open the trunk,” she said abruptly, as soon as the idea struck her.
Ash’s eyebrows raised, questioning if it would be humane.
“Just do it. Trust me. She’s a trouble maker,” said Hunter.
He did.
Hunter watched the back lid of the car slowly float open until it was wide enough for Ash to gently rest Blair in its bed.
She slammed the trunk shut and locked it.
“Where are we going to go?” she asked, looking at Ash.
Ash threw his arms around her, scooping her up in a tight embrace, ignoring the sticky, drying blood covering her arm.
Hunter squeezed him in return, allowing him to hold and sway her.
Finally, he pulled back, releasing her just enough to kiss her.
“I have an idea,” he said finally.
“Where?”
“My place.”
* * *
Sarah walked slowly, gun poised, through the dark field. The farmhouse lay yards ahead. It was eerily quiet.
Sarah got a strange feeling when she ascended the porch steps to find a man with his throat slit, dead on a chair.
“What took you so long?”
Sarah whipped around to find her ex-husband, Lorne Mann, standing on the lawn just beyond the porch steps.
She looked at him a long moment then answered, “Is that a joke?”
Chapter Seven
Deep in the woods—at the end of a long, winding, dead-end dirt road—was the cabin, hidden from prying eyes.
The sun was dawning through the mountains, casting a golden glow across the dashboard. Ash pulled the sedan to a stop along a patch of gravel that Hunter could only assume was the perimeter of a parking spot.
“This is it,” he said, as he turned the key, killing the engine. “It’s bigger than it looks.”
Hunter and Ash helped the girls inside and set them up with blankets and couch cushions. In no time they were asleep, exhausted from the long, adrenaline-filled escape.
“We should keep Blair tied until I have a chance to talk to her in the morning,” said Hunter quietly, as they carried Blair over to a cot in the laundry room away from the other girls. “Do you still have those plastic ties?”
“Yeah,” said Ash. Without another word, he began securing Blair’s wrists together and then affixed them around the hollow leg of the cot, tethering Blair to her bed. “If she wants to go anywhere, she’ll have to drag the whole cot with her.”
“Good, that way we’ll hear her coming,” said Hunter, stroking the wispy spirals of blond hair off Blair’s sleeping face. “She’s been brainwashed. It could take awhile to get through to her.”
“Come on,” he said, as he led her from the small laundry room through the back of the cabin to his bedroom.
His room was small, as well, but not cluttered. It was stuffy, smelling faintly of dust and laundry detergent, ironically a scent Hunter hadn’t noticed in the laundry room. There was something wholly boyish about Ash’s bedroom. Everything from the dark blue sheets to the minimalist furnishings to the rolling log walls that screamed teenaged boy, loner, and hermit. It was as though Ash hadn’t changed a thing in all the years he’s lived here. Hunter could picture him here as a sixteen year old, on his own, falling into the narrow bed, pulling that blue sheet over his shoulder.
“I know it’s small, but we’ll fit,” he said. “We need to make sure your shoulder is ok, though.”
He left Hunter for the bathroom and returned a moment later with alcohol, bandages, a kit of needles, thread for stitching, and antibiotics.
“Where did you get all this?” she asked, impressed and somewhat scared he might have to sew her back up.
“I’m close with one of the veterinarians in town,” he said. “Have a seat.”
Hunter sat on the bed, which sighed as it sagged under her weight. Ash pulled up a chair, facing her. He helped her pull her shirt up and over her head carefully, peeling the sticky, blood soaked fabric from her skin. It was as though the drying blood had adhered the cloth to her. Getting the shirt peeled away from the wound itself was especially painful. Hunter winced, sucking in air through her teeth until they got it over the wound.
“It looks pretty bad,” said Ash, ex
amining the gaping wound. “Like she twisted the knife.”
“God,” she said, looking down at it. “If she hadn’t stabbed me, I probably wouldn’t have gotten out alive. She did me a favor.”
“Were you triggered?” he asked, lifting his gaze from assessing the gash to meet hers.
“Even worse than I had been when Grizzly left me with that knife to kill you,” she said. “She said something specific to me that caused me to shift immediately...” she added trailing off, chasing the thought to its correlating memory in hopes of finding the words Blair had said.
“What was it?” he asked.
“I can’t remember exactly. Something about weakness, how I’m weak,” she said. “But I don’t remember Grizzly using the same phrase when he wanted me to hurt you in my apartment. I don’t know.” Hunter snapped back to the present at the white-hot sting of alcohol in her flesh.
“Sorry,” he said. “We don’t know how dirty her blade was. I can’t let you get an infection.”
He held the alcohol soaked cotton wad firmly against her shoulder. Eventually the sting subsided and evened out, or Hunter had simply gotten used to it. It was hard to tell.
Ash examined the wound once again.
“You know what, lie down on your back. It’ll be easier for you to hold still while I sew you up.”
Hunter did as she was told.
Looking up at Ash, watching him carefully blot her shoulder with iodine, hydrogen peroxide, and alcohol, preparing the site for stitches, Hunter sensed the deep truth that he truly was her partner. There was something about being in his home, in his bedroom, and knowing she was back in New Hampshire that felt so right to Hunter. If felt so totally meant to be that it made her want to cry—not in sadness—but in the warmth and relief. It felt like she had finally gotten home. There was so much to figure out, and Grizzly was still out there somewhere. This would be no time to relax or lower her guard, but it didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy the moment and wish it would last forever.
“I’m going to start sewing you up,” he said. His voice was so smooth and deep Hunter almost forgot to brace herself.
“I’ve had stitches before,” she said quietly.
“Not without anesthesia,” he said, though it should have been a question. “Here,” he placed her hand on his leg. “Just squeeze me when it starts to hurt.”
The first prick of the needle was the worst. A flare of pain seared straight through her, striking nerves she didn’t even know were there, but Ash was efficient and managed a tolerable balance between piercing her flesh and giving her seconds of rest as he knotted the threat.
By the time he was threading and knotting off the last stitch, Hunter had gotten used to it, as though a sort of numbness had taken hold.
“All done,” he said. He lowered the needle and supplies back into the kit. “Just need to cover it up with a bandage.”
“Thanks,” she said, as her eyelids grew heavy.
Ash wrapped her shoulder in a long white bandage, lifting her shoulder from the bed with each lap he wound around her.
When he was all done, he slid in the bed beside her, scooping her into him, careful not to brush against her shoulder.
Hunter responded by shaping herself around him, as though it was second nature. She rested her head on the crux of his shoulder where it met his chest and neck, settling into the gradual curve of his strong body. She felt enveloped in Ash—his arms, his home, and his world. She could feel herself drifting, like she was floating on water, towards sleep, but every time she almost slipped below the warm surface, she stirred, refusing to leave Ash for the dark dreams awaiting her.
“I didn’t get a chance to tell you,” she said, groggily. “I remembered something. Something about you...”
Ash’s eyes were closed, as well. The warmth of her body was so soothing, sleep could claim him at any moment. “What?” he asked, nearly asleep.
“When I was really young, just after Grizzly had taken me, when I had just started living at the farm,” said Hunter, floating in and out of sleep. “Before the girls, and the torture, and the barn,” she went on, drifting, lulling Ash in and out of sleep as well. “There was this little boy who used to come into my bed at night,” she said.
In an instant, Ash’s eyes popped open. He was wide awake.
“And I remembered he was you.”
Chapter Eight
Twitch awoke—his head popping up from the rickety interrogation room table it had been resting on—when a stack of files slammed down mere inches from his nose.
For some reason, he felt embarrassed to have been sleeping—despite the fact that it didn’t make sense. They were going to hold him the full 72 hours. They had left him to sit here the remainder of the night—to wait and worry. Of course¸ he fell asleep. He reminded himself that the old adage about a sleeping man’s guilt was nothing but total bullshit.
He looked up to see if it was the fat detective that had rudely woken him or someone new.
It was the fat guy.
“Good morning,” said the detective, cheerfully. What had he said his name was? Linden? The man looked smug, forcefully so, as though he was trying to hide exhaustion. Twitch knew he had gotten no more sleep than Twitch had. The man looked delirious beneath his plastered grin.
Twitch folded his arms, sitting back in his chair. He was half asleep. Good, he thought, it’ll keep him from saying more than he already has.
“You a coffee guy?” asked Linden.
Twitch shook his head.
“Didn’t think so,” said the detective, as he set a cold can of Coke on the table.
Twitch eyed the beverage. He really wanted it. What was the catch?
“Have it, would ya?” asked Linden. “I got doughnuts, too.”
Twitch didn’t see any doughnuts.
“In my office across the hall,” Linden explained. “We’re not allowed to starve you guys.”
“That’s nice,” said Twitch under the loud pop and hiss of opening the can. He took a long chug, then cradled the can in his lap. “What’s all that?” asked Twitch, referring to the mass of file folders that rested on the table.
“These are missing person files,” he said. “Little girls that have gone missing over the past decade. Cases went cold. These girls were never found.”
Twitch looked up from the files, meeting Linden’s gaze.
“I want you to tell me if you know any of them,” he said.
For the first time in a really long time, maybe ever, Twitch felt like he was looking into the eyes of someone who cared, someone who was in a real position to help.
“Hang on,” Linden said, eyeing his cell phone. “I gotta take this. Sit tight. I’ll be back in a jiffy. I’ll bring those doughnuts.”
Linden closed the door to the interrogation room.
It was quiet. Twitch sucked down more soda. Then, he eyed a mirror that spanned the length of the sidewall. He felt watched. It was the only thing keeping him from opening the top file.
Suddenly, the door swung open, but it wasn’t Linden who stepped in the room. It was a woman. Twitch was tired, still groggy, but after a split second recognized her as the woman from Hunter’s apartment that night the cops had come.
The frizzy-haired woman didn’t acknowledge Twitch at first but crossed to the far side of the room and reached up feeling for a switch on the side of the video camera there. The red light atop the camera went out. Then, she fumbled along the side of an audio recorder that sat at the edge of the table, eventually locating a switch to flip as well.
“Who are you?” asked Twitch.
“I’m the person who’s going to save you from being arrested. I’m working with Hunter and Ash, protecting them, as well. When Linden comes back, you cannot tell him you know or have ever seen any of the girls in these files. Do you understand? Your freedom and safety depend on it. Can you do that for me?”
Chapter Nine
Hunter watched the bright amber late afternoon sun inch across
the ceiling, like the long arms of a clock ticking seamlessly towards dusk. Ash lay asleep in her arms. Or was she in his? They were a tangled mess of coziness. It was so enjoyable she didn’t want to move, go to the bathroom, check on the girls, make sure her sister hadn’t done anything foolish, or any of the things she should do, considering how late in the day it had become. However, she couldn’t leave Ash. She didn’t want to.
Her shoulder was throbbing but not as badly as it had before. It was more of a dull ache now—a feeling she could overlook if she tried. The pain wasn’t the problem. It was the range of motion that worried her. If she couldn’t lift her arm, then she would be vulnerable to anyone’s attack. Grizzly was on her mind.
Hate’s a strange thing. It’s all consuming. It requires a great deal of energy and yet that energy is produced almost without effort, a paradox indeed. Hate is dangerously close to love. So close that it’s hazardous. Hunter wasn’t sure a person could hate someone they didn’t love or hadn’t loved at one point. True, unrelenting hate was almost romantic. It envelops you in a mystical air, blurs your vision, jumbles your thoughts, and takes control of you. Hunter wondered if she hated her father too much. Would the hate blind her, trip her up, and foil her plans?
Plus, now her shoulder was seriously injured. She was weakened outside and weak inside, physically and emotionally. What a terrible thing to be, she thought. The magnitude of its terribleness weighed on Hunter suddenly like a ton of bricks. The statement was more true to her than the sunspot inching across the ceiling.
That was the trigger, the accusation of weakness. Blair had only needed to say the word and Hunter had collapsed into an almost catatonic state. What would have happened if she had passed through, going all the way down into the darkness? Would she have risen up after, killing her sister? Or would she have fallen deeper, becoming even easier to kill?
