“Just like Rose,” he whispered.
I stared into his eyes, willing back the tears that threatened to blur my vision. I had thought it was the startling blue of his eyes that made it difficult to hold his gaze. Now, though, I realized it was the utter lack of emotion in his eyes. They were completely flat, like the glass of a doll’s eyes that reflected my own image back at me.
“She didn’t keep her promises either.”
I swallowed. “Who was she?”
“My other half.”
“Why did you kill her?” I whispered.
His mouth tightened, and I gripped the handle of the shovel.
“Was she repulsed by you?”
Something moved in his face. Something ugly and warped and twisted that lurked beneath that breathtakingly handsome facade. “Shut up.” He stood and paced away from me.
“Did she laugh at you?”
His fists clenched. “I said shut up.”
“She laughed at you,” I said. And then I did the same. My laugh felt sharp like a knife, so sharp and forced it hurt my throat.
It garnered exactly the reaction I was aiming for. Jeff took a lunging step toward me, and I stood and swung the shovel. I put all of my strength into the swing, and when the flat side of the shovel connected with the side of his head, the blow reverberated through me.
He met my gaze for a split second, eyes wide with shock, and then he fell.
I was running before he even hit the ground. I tossed the shovel aside, leapt over the bench, and bolted. I could not find the stone path. The greenhouse was a labyrinth in my blindness and in the dimness. I forded into the roses, and the vines snagged around my legs. It seemed as if they reached out and clung to me beseechingly with skeletal hands, begging me not to leave them in this harrowing grave.
A sob caught in my throat as I fought through them, but their grip was tenacious and I tripped and fell. Thorns latched onto my skin and sliced at my face, throat, and hands as I struggled to disentangle myself. The barbs pierced my hands as I fought their grip, and my blood spilled into the dirt.
I heard a groan, a shuffle of movement behind me. I wrenched free, scrambled to my feet, and shoved through the thicket of floral tombs. I put my hands up before my face to try to fend off the lancing barbs that struck me. I staggered when I tore through the grip of roses and they shoved me onto the stone path.
“Come now, Evelyn,” Jeff called suddenly. “You know it’s pointless to resist what’s between us.”
I pressed my hands to my mouth to hold back a whimper as I spun, squinting and trying to discern where his voice was coming from. Come out, come out, wherever you are.
“Rose tried to resist. She learned the futility.” His voice turned low and coaxing. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
I spotted the blurry recess of the entrance to the greenhouse and raced toward it. My coat was a beacon. I yanked it off the peg and thrust my hand into my pocket, but my skin was slick with blood. My palm slid over the grip of the pistol.
My fingers slipped over the handle of the door. I could hear Jeff behind me, steps stumbling, breathing erratic.
Come out, come out, wherever you are.
The handle turned, and I flung the door open. I felt a snag at the back of my blouse, but I jerked away.
I scrambled up the steps and ran, not slowing when my ankle rolled under me and pain shot up my leg. My feet had wings, even in the deepening snow, and I made it to where the trees seemed to form a tunnel over the drive before he was on me.
He tackled me from behind, driving me face-first into the snow. I put my hands out to stop my fall and felt a sickening snap in my left wrist when I hit the ground.
I thought I would suffocate, pressed into the blanket of snow with his weight crushing me and my wrist screaming as it broke. But then his weight was gone and he was yanking me over onto my back.
He crouched over me. Even without my glasses, vision swimming with pain, I could see the wildness in his face. He jerked me up, fist clenched in the front of my blouse, until we were face to face.
My coat. The gun in the pocket. It had fallen just out of reach.
“You don’t run from me!” He screamed the words, spittle flying to land against my cheeks. He shook me so hard my neck cracked. I scrambled to reach the hem of my coat. My fingertips brushed the fabric, but it was too far out of reach. “You do not run from me.”
His hands slid up and wrapped around my throat. When I fought him, he drove me flat on my back in the snow. I punched at him with my left hand, my vision going dark with the pain, as he scrabbled to lock his fingers around my neck.
I struggled, managing to shift enough to draw my knee up between us. I had little leverage and space, but I kicked him as hard as I could in the groin. He fell back with a shriek, and I lunged the last few inches of distance to my coat.
Then he was over me again, but the distraction had given me all the opportunity I needed. I squeezed the trigger.
The gun bucked in my pocket as it fired. Jeff flinched back, and I squeezed the trigger again. And again and again. After six times, there was a click. The gun fell hot and silent in the confines of my pocket.
Jeff and I stared at one another. I thought I had hit him, but he stood frozen above me. After a long moment, he swayed and crashed to his knees. I scurried backward, and he pitched forward to sprawl in the snow.
My breath left me on a sob. I realized the soft, animal-like whimpers I heard were my own. I rolled to my hands and knees. The pressure on my left wrist made me vomit.
When my stomach was empty, I tucked my left arm against my chest, the pain a sharp drumbeat radiating through me. I gulped the frigid air and struggled to slow my breathing. I trembled violently, from the pain, the cold, and the aftermath of the adrenalin. A glance back at the hulking darkness of the ruins sent a deeper chill through me. I struggled to gain my feet.
I threaded my right arm into my coat, but a wave of nausea swamped me again when I tried to insert my left arm into the sleeve. I gave up and clutched the lapels together as I stumbled down the drive.
The cover of the trees eased when I reached the narrow lane and revealed the snow storm that had settled over the mountains. The snow fell in sheets, as heavy as a downpour, softer than rain and far more foreboding. When I glanced back down the serpentine lane into the shadow of the trees, I was spurred to keep moving.
I headed back in the direction Jeff had brought me. The road had to lead somewhere.
My hair was soon soaked from the snow, and my teeth chattered so hard it had set the pounding in my head to cacophony proportions. My arm was a constant throb. My face stung so badly from the cold that it felt like any movement would crack my skin wide open. I could no longer see the lane before me through the fall of snow.
I realized I had ventured from the old track when I floundered into snow knee-deep, but no matter which direction I turned, I could not find the road again. Frustration and fear tore at me. I threw my head back and screamed. The snow was like a blanket, though, muffling the cry even as it left my mouth. It dampened all sound until all I could hear was the fall of flakes past my ears, the strumming of my heart, and my sawing breath.
The realization was loud, though. So loud it was deafening and so heavy I staggered at its weight. It did not matter that I had escaped the grave I had been digging. It did not matter that I had killed Jeff before he had managed to kill me. I was going to die tonight. I laughed, and it sounded like a sob.
“That is pretty fucking unfair,” I whispered. Then I laughed again, because I had long known life was a far cry from fair.
I slogged through the snow with my head down, pressing on against the storm and the despair. There was no sensation of falling. I was upright one instant, stumbling through the snow, and the next I was face down in the powder.
I managed to gather the energy to roll onto my back, but the snow was a deep, soft cradle. I sighed as I settled deeply into i
ts embrace. I was not shivering any longer. A sliver of concern pierced me, and then it slipped away with the drowsiness that weighed me down. I could not feel my hands or feet, but at least the jagged edge of cold that bit down to the bone had subsided.
I took a breath and inhaled the fine layer of snow that had settled on my face. I coughed, and the sound jolted me. I struggled to my knees and then floundered unsteadily to my feet.
When I fell again, I could not get back up. The most movement I could make was rolling to my back to stare at the endless expanse of sky above me. There was a break in the snow, I realized belatedly. The last light of the sun winked over the mountains and extinguished, leaving behind a stained, cold winter’s sky that would soon be black.
I did not realize I cried until the tears froze and the track of skin between the corners of my eyes and my ears began to burn. The grip of sleep was too strong to resist, and soon I did not even feel the snow that was burying me.
Thirty-Six
In 2017, there were 260,977 cases of missing
females under the age of 21 and 61,888
of missing females over the age of 21.
HECTOR
The ancient red car had crashed in almost the exact spot where my wife’s vehicle had been found on the empty, snow-skirted road fifteen years ago.
There were black marks on the road from burnt rubber, and the little Civic had plowed straight down the embankment into a snow drift. Both the driver’s side and the passenger’s doors were flung open. The battery had long-since died. There was blood against the glass of the passenger’s side window, and the airbag on the driver’s side had exploded.
“What the fuck happened here?” I asked Ashton and Cooper.
“Someone called dispatch about an abandoned car,” Ashton said.
The front left tire was ragged and shorn from a blowout. “Where are the occupants?”
“Good question,” Cooper said.
A groan of brakes brought my attention to the road. Ed hopped down from his rusty tow truck and picked his way carefully down the embankment. “This is Ev’lyn’s car,” he said. “She alright?”
“I don’t know.”
Something in my voice brought all three men’s gaze to me. I fished my phone out of my pocket and pulled up the tracking app. I tapped on the tracker attached to Jeff’s vehicle, and the emblem on the screen pinpointed a location right in the heart of Raven’s Gap.
I dialed Book Ends. Susan answered after several rings.
“Susan, it’s Hector,” I said. “Is Jeff there?”
“No, he was supposed to be working the front today while I hosted the book club meeting, but he never showed and didn’t answer his phone when I called. Is something wrong?”
“Call me back if he shows up,” I said, and hung up the phone.
I knelt beside the front left tire. The blowout had ripped the rubber to shreds. I reached under the car, feeling for the tracking device, but it was gone. I climbed the embankment, and the other three men trailed after me.
“Hector?” Ed asked, but I held up a hand.
I searched the road and the shoulder, but the device was nowhere to be found. I pulled the app back up on my phone and selected the tracker linked to Evelyn’s vehicle. The pin dropped on the screen some ten miles northeast of where we stood.
“Ashton, call Peters. I want the car processed as if it were a crime scene. Cooper, you’re coming with me.”
“What the fuck is going on?” Cooper asked.
I met Ed’s concerned gaze. The sacrificial lamb. William’s words rang in my head. “We need to find Evelyn.”
The snow fell in torrents, and my range of vision narrowed to just a few feet in front of my hood. Fifteen years and now he was in my grasp. I just had to find him in time.
The ping on the map in the tracking application led me past Gardiner to a spot where the Yellowstone River curved north in an oxbow. An old track angled off of the state road and crossed the curve of the river over a narrow single-lane bridge that was frequently washed out in the spring thaw. The bridge and lane were rarely used any longer. When they were, the traffic was mainly on foot.
Cooper flashed his lights behind me as he followed me into the pull-out. I parked, and through the blinding snow, I saw a dark shape leave the vehicle behind me and jog toward my truck. I unlocked the door.
“This is madness,” Cooper said, as he threw himself into the truck. “We’re way out of jurisdiction.”
“Call the sheriff’s department. They can meet us out here.”
“What do you think we’re going to find?”
I grabbed the remote and lowered the plow on the front of my truck. Justice. That’s what I wanted to find. I glanced at the app on my phone. The tracker that should have been on Evelyn’s vehicle was about five miles down the track. It was stationary now.
I squinted through the windshield and crept across the rickety bridge slowly. Cooper gripped the oh shit handle and let out a relieved breath when we reached the far side of the river.
I passed my phone to Cooper. “Tell me when we’re approaching the location marked here.”
It was slow going, but the plow cleared the way. By the time Cooper signaled that we should be closing in on the location, the whiteout had abated from a swirling blizzard to a steady fall of snow.
I pulled to the side of the track. The snow was no longer blinding, but it deafened the landscape into muffled silence.
Cooper passed my phone back to me and I studied the dot on the screen before trekking farther down the lane. I had not gone fifty yards before a drive branched off into the woods. I followed it and heard the crunch of Cooper’s steps behind me and his heavy breathing.
Anticipation tightened like a noose around my throat.
“I think this is the old LaBelle Hot Springs Resort,” Cooper said when we rounded a curve in the drive and the dark shadow of derelict timber buildings could be seen through the snow. “We used to come out here when—”
He would have tripped over the mound in the snow had I not reached out and grabbed his shoulder. Guilt and hope were the double edge of the knife in my gut as I knelt and brushed the snow aside.
“Shit,” Cooper breathed, and cued the radio to connect with dispatch.
I had expected to find Evelyn dead at Jeff’s hands. I had counted on it. A woman’s murder would not sit easily on my conscience, but on the other side of the scale was finally bringing my wife and daughter’s killer to justice. The need for vengeance outweighed the guilt. I had made a promise to my girls, and I intended to keep it.
But it was Jeff who lay sprawled facedown, blood pooled in the snow beneath him. I stripped off my gloves and pressed my fingers to his throat. No pulse.
I sat back on my heels and rubbed a hand over my jaw. Not even relief made it through my shock. “Well, Evelyn, I’ll be damned,” I whispered.
I stood and scuffed my foot through the snow surrounding Jeff’s body until I kicked something small and plastic. I slipped the tracking device into my pocket.
“Hector!” Cooper called. He lifted a hand and gestured for me to join him around the fallen ruins of the old turn of the century resort. “You’re going to want to see this.”
I followed him around the remains into a sunken greenhouse filled with roses and the gray light of twilight. He led me along a stone path to the center of the greenhouse where a single bush with a single rose in bloom stood out from the others. A trench was laid through the center of the greenhouse. In the middle of the trench, a hole had been dug. I glanced around and spotted a shovel lying beside a nearby bench. A smear of blood stained the metal.
“What the hell happened here?”
“There’s more,” Cooper said. He knelt by the solitary rose bush and pointed into the dirt.
I crouched beside him and brushed away the layer of dirt to expose the bones of a human hand. “If Yates hasn’t called the FBI yet, he needs to.”
; Frank found her three hours into our search.
I stripped off my gloves and swept the snow away. Frank paced around us, whining, and Cooper radioed in our location. I pressed my fingers against her throat. Her lips were blue, her face completely devoid of color save for the livid scratches on her face and throat. There was no flicker of movement, no signs of life or movement of her chest, but I felt a faint tremor of a pulse.
I stripped off my coat and wrapped it around Evelyn. She was limp, and her skin was icy to the touch. I yanked off my cap and pulled it over her head. Her hair was stiff and frozen, the strands crusted with snow. My eyes dropped to her bare hands, and my stomach sank. I gingerly slipped my gloves over her fingers before bundling her into my arms.
“Evelyn, I have you.” I thought I saw her eyelashes flutter. “You’re safe now.”
I left Frank with Cooper with instructions for him to take the poodle to Maggie. I rode in the Medevac chopper they landed on the old mining road to fly her to Bozeman and paced the hallways as they worked to stabilize her. A nurse found me several hours later.
“You can come sit with her now,” she said. “She’s not out of the woods yet, but the doctors are feeling more confident than they did when she was brought in.”
She led me into the Intensive Care Unit and directed me into the second room. Evelyn was swaddled in blankets. Even her head was covered. Only her face, neck, and one arm were exposed. A nasal tube oxygen line was hooked around her still face, and her right arm was riddled with IV lines and monitors. Two lines had been placed in her neck. My stomach lurched at the sight of the machine pulling her blood from one line and pumping it back into her body through the other.
“Her kidneys have shut down?” I asked.
“No, no,” the nurse assured me. “We use the hemodialysis machine to warm the blood in extreme cases of hypothermia like this one. She has this vascular catheter along with a pleural and peritoneal catheter.” At my blank look, she said, “In addition to warming her blood, we’re doing warm saltwater solutions around her lungs and in her abdominal cavity to warm up her body.”
Hunting Ground Page 24
