Thirty-two

Margaret was gone.

She’d disappeared into the desert. More afraid of what lay behind her then what lay in wait for her in the dark. She charged into the open, stumbling across loose dirt and rocks. Her breath escaping her lungs in panicked little bleats. Crying and flailing into the desert, bound hands outstretched in front of her, she disappeared.

He let her go. Let her run. Instead of chasing blindly, he followed patiently. There was no need to hurry. No need to worry. Where could she go? There was nowhere to hide. Not out here.

He stopped for a moment and listened, remembering what his mentor had told him once about why he liked to chase his prey. Why he turned them loose and ran them down.

It gives ’em hope. It ain’t fun if they don’t have hope.

He hadn’t understood what Wade had meant at the time, but he did now. He could feel it—exhilaration. Anticipation coupled with an almost crippling sense of inevitability. He would find her and he would kill her. Nothing she did would stop that now. The power of it was intoxicating. A drug he could quickly come to crave if every step he took didn’t cause him pain.

Fun, ain’t it, boy?

“Margaret?” he called out to her, his voice calm and steady while he clipped the bolt gun he carried to the belt on his pants. “I know you’re out here,” he said loudly, dangling hope and then ripping it away. “There’s nowhere for you to go. No one out here to help you.”

He fell quiet. Listening. Waiting.

Around him, the desert was a living thing. Moving and breathing. Skittering and crawling. The flap of wings. A rustling burrow. But that was it. The frantic bleat had gone silent. The desperate scramble of bare feet across sharp rocks had stopped.

She’d gone to ground. Margaret was listening and waiting too.

Visualizing the wide, flat expanse of land that surrounded him, he could see it—a shallow ravine about fifty yards to the west. Carved into the desert by flash floods, lined by palo verde and brittlebush. To someone who didn’t know better, it would seem like the perfect place to hide.

He stooped, running his hand over the ground, sifting dirt between his fingers, quickly finding what he was looking for. A rock—roughly the size of an orange. Standing, he walked toward the ravine, making no attempt to hide his approach. Each footfall sent smaller desert creatures scurrying for safety.

Fight or flight. All animals possessed it. The instinct to either run or stand their ground. It was in their nature—who they were. A preprogrammed response they were unable to deny. Uncontrollable. Unstoppable. Marking them as predator or prey from the moment they were born.

He’d known what Margaret would do—what she was—even before she did.

Stopping a few feet from the edge of the ravine, he scuffed his shoes in the dirt, sending loose rocks and clumps of dead grass tumbling into the chasm. It had been a raging torrent of water only hours ago, a flash flood, fed by the storm cell that’d ripped across the desert. A few inches of water slowly soaking into the bottom of the ravine was all that was left of it, but the rain left the earth soft and unpredictable beneath his feet.

There she is. In the bush, right in front of you.

“I see you,” he whispered loudly and like he’d fired a starting pistol, she popped up from the bush she’d been crouching behind, no more than six feet below him. She tumbled down the slope of the ravine, terror knotting her feet together, making it impossible for her to find them until she reached the bottom. Rolling herself up onto her hands and knees she forced them beneath her, those panicked bleats pumping out of her lungs with every scrambling footstep. He was close enough to hear the words they formed, over and over.

“Please, God, please …”

He let her run. Let her think she was going to get away. Let her believe that her prayers would be answered. That miracles were real.

He gave her hope. Then he took it away.

Lifting the rock to chest level, he held it tight, splitting his fingers around it while he curved his thumb around its base. Taking aim, he lifted his knee, letting it kiss his elbow for just a moment before he lowered it, planting it firmly in the dirt. His shoulder snapped forward, turning his arm into a rocket as it exploded away from his chest. The rock left his grip, missiling toward its target in a blur of speed and accuracy.

It struck her just where he knew it would, where he meant it to: in the space where her ear joined her head. She fell instantly. Face down in the mud, hands still bound and pinned awkwardly beneath her.

He waited. Watched her crumpled frame from the edge of the ravine. She didn’t move. Didn’t try to get up. He wanted to leave her there. It could be days—possibly weeks—before someone found her and that would be after the coyotes made a meal of her corpse. They were at least two miles from where they’d started. He could leave her here without fear of leading the authorities to their secret place.

Don’t get sloppy now, boy. That ain’t how I taught you.

The voice in his head came through loud and clear. He ground his teeth together to keep from arguing. “Yes, sir,” he said instead, even though the mere thought of it made his knee ache. He stepped off the lip of the ravine to pick his way down its crumbling side. The moon was high and bright. Full enough to show him the dark splotch of blood matted against her hair, its glossy fingers sliding along her cheek, the rock he’d thrown now at his feet like it was waiting for him. He bent and picked it up, jamming it into his front pocket. A few inches from his shoe, Margaret’s hands clenched in the mud, her fingers digging in it like she was trying to push herself up.

You ain’t got all night, boy. Get to work.

Unclipping the bolt gun from his belt he crouched down, brushing his hand over the back of her head, moving her tangled hair to the side, exposing the base of her skull. She turned her head under his hand, trying to shake him loose. Knotting his fingers in her hair, he yanked, forcing her face into the mud. Her hands were no longer scrambling in the mud; they were shoving against it. Trying to push herself up. He stepped on them, flattening them until they sunk into the sodden dirt beneath them.

“Robert is dead.” He pulled back on the bolt, pressing the barrel of it to the back of her head. “You failed to save him, Margaret,” he whispered, his voice carried on the warm desert air that surrounded them. “You aren’t at all what I’d hoped.”

She was trying to talk, her mouth open and full of mud. Eyes squeezed shut against the sight of him. He used his free hand to grip her chin and turn her head to the side. “I tried.” The words were muddled and sluggish, her brain clearly not fully present. “I did what you said. I did everything …”

“Shhh.” The hand on her face went gentle, stroking her cheek softly. “Yes, you did. That’s why I’m willing to make you a deal. Tell me the truth and I’ll let you live.” He pushed the barrel of the bolt gun against the base of her skull. “Can you do that, Margaret? Can you tell me the truth?”

She nodded blindly, the blood from where he’d struck her with the rock skating around his fingers, pulled by gravity along the curve of her jaw. “Yes.”

“Do you still believe in miracles?” He brushed his fingertips against her mouth, staining it red. “Do you think you’re worthy of what He gave you?”

Margaret shook her head. “No.” Her tongue peeked out, brushing against her lower lip, and she recoiled slightly at the taste of her own blood.

“Do you still think God saved you for a reason?”

She shook her head again, too frightened to say the word out loud.

“Good,” he told her, fisting the hand he’d used to soothe her in the bloody thatch of hair at her crown so he could reposition the bolt gun he still held against her skull.

Forcing her face back into the mud, he cut off the cry she let loose at his word. He pulled the trigger, releasing the bolt. The force of it made a loud snapping sound, punching a quarter-sized hole in the base of her skull.

Beneath his shoe, her hands stopped digging in the mud.

“Now what?” he said, watching blood and tissue ooze from the hole in Margaret’s head. The heat of the hunt and the kill that followed had cooled in his veins. He knew Wade was right. His DNA was all over her. He couldn’t just leave her here.

The voice inside his head chuckled softly.

Don’t worry, just trust me, boy. I’ll take care of everything.