Sherri cocked her ear toward the path ahead, every muscle primed to rush into action. The sound of the river’s rushing water. Songbirds welcoming the day. There it was again. Definitely a baby’s cry. She jogged ahead a few paces and the sound shifted. Coming from the riverbank. She peered down at the tangled vegetation hiding the river’s edge from view. “Hello, is someone there? Do you need help?”
An image of baby Moses, floating downriver in a little boat sprang to mind, only this river was no gentle stream and with the snow still melting off the mountain peaks, it was frigid. If the child’s parent had fallen in... The cries grew louder. More desperate.
She scrambled down the riverbank, slipping and sliding on the precarious slope. “It’s okay, baby, I’m coming.” She clawed through the brambles at the bottom, landing her first step out the other side right into icy water. She jerked back, clinging to the prickly bushes to keep from teetering off the edge.
The cries rose up to her right. Very close.
“Shh, now, it’s okay.” Sherri dropped to her knees and crawled toward the inconsolable whimpers. She swept aside rotted leaves and twigs, exposing a small animal’s den cut into the bank. Her stomach flip-flopped. Had it been a baby fox or other wild animal she’d heard?
The cries sounded again.
Very human.
What kind of monster would leave a child in a fox’s den? She clawed at the dirt to reach the poor dear. “It’s okay. It’s okay. I’ve got you.” She stretched her arm inside. Her fingers grazed fabric. She stretched farther, caught the edge of the fabric between her fingertips. The baby kicked, tugging the fabric from her clasp. She tunneled the opening wider and tried again.
A twig snapped behind her.
“Shush, shush, shush,” she cooed to the infant, her fingers closing around a tiny foot.
Something smashed into the back of her knee.
“Ouch!” Releasing her grip, she jerked her arm out of the hole and rolled to her back. She shrank from the stranger looming over her, her hands grappling for a stick, a rock, something. “Who are you? What do you want?”
The man thumbed up the brim of his cowboy hat, his unnaturally blue eyes laughing at her, his mouth curving into a smile as broad as his hat. “Don’t you recognize me, darlin’?” The question oozed from his lips in a sickeningly sweet drawl.
She squinted at him. There was something familiar about his voice, but she couldn’t place—
Her heart jolted. Bald, blue eyes, goatee, paunch belly. “You’re...you’re Eddie’s friend.”
He threw his head back and laughed. “I wouldn’t call us friends.”
She flipped onto her belly to push to her feet.
He yanked her hair and snapped back her head, silencing her scream with a slash of duct tape. “Just like I wouldn’t call you and I friends.”
He’d dropped the drawl, and her veins iced at the familiar voice. Joe. She reared to her knees to ease the pain screaming through her scalp and hoofed back a foot.
He deflected it with his shin.
Screaming uselessly, she lifted a hand to rip the tape from her mouth.
He yanked her head back farther, and something cold dug into her neck. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
She didn’t listen to him and as she yanked on the tape, electricity jolted through her body.
She fell to her back, and Joe’s meaty hand, sheathed in a latex glove, silenced her cry of agony. Her muscles spasmed uncontrollably.
Grinning wickedly, he twisted the stun gun in front of her face and then pushed it back into her neck. “You going to be a good girl or do we need another lesson?”
She recoiled from the pressure.
He chuckled. “I thought you’d see it my way. It’s a shame, though. I do enjoy hearing you scream.” He bared his teeth in a sick leer.
“I’m sorry I cost you your job, Joe. Really I am.”
“Yeah, just like my wife’ll be sorry. You women are so predictable. I watched you go for a run last night after your boyfriend left,” he rambled. “You’d think someone was chasing you from the way you flew.”
Her skin crawled at the thought of him watching her. Stalking her. Cole had warned her not to run alone, but after finding Eddie in her car, she hadn’t been able to shut the images out of her brain.
Joe’s hot breath whispered over her ears. “Your inner demons chasing you? You can’t escape them, you know.” His voice lifted to a sympathetic falsetto. “Letting Luke die. Driving Eddie to suicide. Those’ll haunt you until the day you die.” He grabbed her upper arm and yanked her to her feet. “So really...I’m doing you a favor.” He shoved her toward the river.
He was going to kill her. Drown her.
Her mind scrambled for a plan. Cole had said it would take him seven minutes to get to the parking lot. Maybe another five to reach her here...if he headed the right direction on the path and didn’t race right past. If she could stall Joe, keep him talking so Cole would hear them. Joe couldn’t have heard her phone call. If he’d known Cole was on his way, he wouldn’t have risked showing himself here.
She started to ask about the baby, but then thought better of it. If he was focused on her, he wouldn’t be hurting the baby and Cole would find the infant in time if...he was still crying.
The baby wailed, and Joe flashed a caustic glance toward the foxhole. “Shut up, kid. Be happy I saved you from that no good whore of a mother.”
Sherri gasped. He’d kidnapped the baby? From his ex-wife? “You set up the attack in the mall?” Sherri blurted to distract him from the infant’s cry.
“You sound surprised.” He slanted her an oily smile. “But you had to suspect. The police came to see me, after all. Seemed to think I might still be sore at you. Sore enough to hurt you.”
“I didn’t send them. I swear. I didn’t think—” Her voice broke. How’d he know how to scuttle the security? Let alone convince all those teens to risk their necks?
“You didn’t think I’d still hate you?” he asked snidely. They broke through the bushes to the river’s edge and, wrenching her arm behind her back, he pressed her to her knees.
She resisted the impulse to fight him, knowing another zap of the stun gun would end any chance of stalling him long enough for Cole to get to her. “I thought...I thought you were happy now.”
“You of all people should know appearances are deceptive.”
“Me? Why?” She strained to listen over the sound of rushing water. Was that a car door? She needed to stall him. “I...I don’t know what you mean.”
He chuckled. “Acting like nothing bothers you. Acting like everything that’s happened to you doesn’t scare you to death. Kind of hypocritical, don’t you think? Telling me I need help but refusing it yourself.”
“Is that what this is about? You wanted to see me break?”
He cackled. “No. My ex-wife I wanted to break. You—” he shoved her face under the water “—I wanted to kill.”
She clawed at his hand with her only free hand, flailed her head wildly to try and escape his grip. Her lungs burned. And just when she thought she’d black out, he yanked her out. She gasped, inhaled the air in hungry gulps.
He trailed his finger along her jaw and tipped up her chin. “But tormenting you proved to be way more fun than I’d ever imagined.” His maniacal gaze held hers in a chilling grip.
She swallowed hard. Somehow she needed to keep him talking. “The dispatcher. How’d you get her to help you?”
He threw his head back and laughed. “Your boyfriend figured that much out, did he? But not that she’s an addict?”
“You supplied her with drugs?”
He clucked victoriously. “An addict’ll do anything for a fix. And seeing your face when Atkins ranted at you at Luke’s funeral was priceless.”
She slipped her hand into the water. “You’re sick.”
“It’s called justice, honey. Only right you should experience firsthand what it feels like to have someone screw around with your life.” He wrenched her arm higher behind her back. “This is what you get for turning me down for that date. If you hadn’t, I would’ve put you out of your misery that night.” He shoved her face back into the water. “Instead, you gave me plenty of time to think of better ways to make you pay.”
Fighting not to panic, she grappled for a rock she could pull free from the riverbed. But they were big. They were all too big. Black dots bounced in front of her eyes as the oxygen seeped from her lungs. She lurched forward and her fingers closed around a football-sized rock. Blackness crept along the edges of her vision. She levered the rock over her shoulder.
His grip broke. He fell back, clutching his head and cursing.
She scrambled downriver. But the baby’s cry stopped her. She couldn’t leave him alone with the baby.
“Sherri!” Cole’s faint shout filtered through trees. “Where are you?”
She clambered up the riverbank. “Cole! Over here!”
Joe grabbed her foot, and she went down hard. He shoved something into her side and excruciating pain jolted through her body. “Nice try,” he sneered, as a whimpered “please” dribbled from her lips and everything went black.
Sherri startled to consciousness at the bite of icy water seeping through her shoes.
“Your boyfriend’s spoiling my fun,” Joe hissed into her ear, his arm hooked under her armpits and around her chest as he dragged her across a shallow part of the river. He paused in the center and planted her on her feet.
A roar filled her ears. She swayed, straining to gain her bearings.
He clutched the back of her head and forced her gaze to the ground.
Her heart dropped. They stood on the precipice of a ten-foot waterfall.
“But I’m thinking he’ll dive in after you.” He cackled. “Make for some good target practice.”
Sherri jerked back her head, felt the moment it connected with his nose.
The next instant his shove sent her free-falling.