Page 27 of Disappearance at Angel’s Landing (Red Rock Murders #2)

She liked the dark. She could admit now that part of her had missed it.

Stab wounds tended to do that. Made you think about all your life’s choices and regrets.

They weren’t lying when they said your entire life flashed before your eyes in your last seconds.

Lila could see where she’d gone wrong. How she’d deluded herself into believing—down to her very core—that becoming someone else hadn’t fixed her problem. It’d just made them worse.

She was back in her seventeen-year-old body.

Sneaking into her childhood home through her unlocked window in the basement window well.

Her mom wasn’t home. Her dad had gone to work.

Her sister and brother-in-law had moved out.

And she was hurting. So much. She’d just wanted to go home, for the pain to stop. To be loved again.

She crawled through spider webs and decomposing mouse carcasses that’d gotten caught in the window well and couldn’t escape, studied the very bed where she’d metaphorically died that night her brother-in-law put his hands—and other things she didn’t want to think about—on her.

Her dad’s pocketknife was right there in the nightstand.

Right where she’d left it. Her mother must’ve missed it when she threw everything on the front lawn that day three weeks ago.

The day Lila had been discarded as nothing more than garbage.

Or maybe her mom couldn’t bring herself to get rid of it. Didn’t matter.

Lila knew what she had to do. It would be easy.

All she had to do was pick up the knife, and everything would be okay again.

She took one last look around the room, catching sight of silky blond hair beneath the bed.

Getting on her knees, she got a better look.

One of her Barbies, the one with its pink cowboy hat and pink jacket with fringe.

The kerchief was stained with marker but was still tied around Barbie’s neck no matter how many times she’d tried to take it off.

She clutched the too-thin doll like a lifeline, but Barbie couldn’t fix this hole inside her chest. She had to do it herself.

And set her dad’s pocketknife against her throat.

A rushing filled Lila’s ears. Her pulse? She was alive. Barely. But alive. The world tilted as a set of strong arms held her upright. Her vision wavered. In and out. In and out. She could’ve sworn she’d heard Branch’s voice, but that wasn’t possible. He’d left her. Just like everyone else.

Her body felt too heavy, her bones too big for her skin. Pain erupted from both sides of her ribs. Throat burning, she peeled her eyes open, and the world exploded with sensory overload. Bark bit into the back of her scalp. When had she sat down?

Movement darkened the edges of her vision. An outline materialized in front of her. Then dark eyes. The darkest brown she’d never been able to recreate in her morning coffee.

Branch’s eyes.

“Lila, can you hear me?” His mouth moved, but the words sounded like they’d been put through a blender.

He was here. Or her brain was playing tricks on her.

She couldn’t be sure. The man whose love language was comprised of growling and glaring set his palm against her cheek.

“Where are you hurt? I need to know what to focus on first.”

“You’re pretty.” Her head became too heavy, rolling with the pattern of smooth bark at her back and into his touch.

This wasn’t real, though. Just a whole bunch of electric pulses her brain fired to make her final moments as pleasant as possible, and she could die in peace.

How were you supposed to run from the things in your head?

Good job, brain. But even if this wasn’t real, she’d been wrong to manipulate him with fake smiles she didn’t mean, forcing a surprise party he’d hated and trying to get him to open up to her.

All of it had been a lie. A halfhearted one at that. This… The pink, the death threats, the bedazzling… None of it was her.

Bleeding out in that bedroom had rewired apart of her brain that told her if her family couldn’t love Lila anymore, all she had to do was become someone else.

And Ranger Barbie had been born. But Branch had looked past it.

Seen the real her underneath all the makeup and manicures and kerchiefs.

He’d seen the unlovable Lila and run in the other direction like everyone else.

She didn’t even blame him, but holy hell she was tired of being someone she wasn’t.

And Ranger Barbie hadn’t done her a damn bit of good when it’d mattered.

She’d still lost the one person she wanted the most.

“You know. You were right.” Why did her tongue suddenly feel like she’d licked sandpaper? “I was craving attention. I’d never done that before. Until I wanted yours.”

That grizzly-bear expression softened in the smallest relaxing of his eyes. She probably would’ve missed it if he wasn’t a conjuring of her own mind.

His fingers threaded through her hair at the base of her skull.

“No. I was wrong, Lila. The things I said to you were abhorrent and untrue. I’m sorry I pushed you away.

I’ve taught myself to become so independent since the divorce, I refused to let anyone in.

I thought I could handle it, but it’s really a terrifying and empty way to live.

Then you came along and blew up my whole world like a pink glitter bomb.

You brought color into my life, and the only thing I could think to do was run because I was afraid of how much I’d been missing it.

But, damn, woman. Trouble never looked so fine.

I want you. More than anything and anyone I’ve wanted before.

Because I love you. All of you. I love Ranger Barbie and Lila and your death threats and the whole pink nightmare.

I know you lost your family, but if you give me the chance, I’ll be your family now. I’ll always choose you.”

He pressed his forehead to hers, one hand gripped on the back of her neck. “And I’m going to get you out of here.”

It was everything she wanted to hear. Her nose burned with the impending breakdown she’d scheduled after getting stabbed. “I hope you’re real because if you aren’t, this is a very cruel dream, and my ghost will haunt you until you die out of spite.”

His hands slid to her low back and beneath her knees, and Branch hefted her against his chest. “I wouldn’t have it any other way, Barbie, but if it makes you feel any better, I’m real. I’m here, and I’m not leaving you ever again.”

He took a single step.

And a gunshot echoed off the surrounding cliffs.

Branch jerked forward with a grunt. His hold loosened on her frame, and she pitched forward. The ground rushed up to meet her—faster than she expected—and a scream burst free of her chest. His weight crushed her into the ground, reinvigorating the pain in her sides. But Branch wasn’t moving.

Didn’t even seem to breathe.

Digging her fingernails into his shoulders, Lila tried to roll him off of her. Real. He was real. He’d come for her again. And the words he’d said… He loved her. A flood of prickling warmth shot from her head to her toes at the realization her brain wasn’t playing tricks on her.

But something else—something hotter and liquid—drenched her uniform shirt. Blood. No. No, no, no. This wasn’t happening. She’d just got him back. He’d chosen her.

Struggling against the bruises and the stab wound across her torso, she rocked him back and forth.

“Branch, you have to get up. We have to move. Please. I love you. I love you, too. Okay? I brought color into your life, but you brought feeling into mine. I was numb before I met you. I thought I had to be something I’m not for people to love me, but it only made things worse.

I was scared of the things you made me feel because I didn’t want to feel, but I don’t ever want to be numb again. So you have to get up. Please.”

An outline took shape, peeling away from the black trees surrounding them. The killer. He’d found them. It didn’t matter how hard she’d fought to escape that dark little cave or the hollowness in her chest, he’d never let her leave this park alive.

Her hands shook as she set them on her partner’s shoulders, but his eyes had slipped closed. He was losing consciousness and too much blood.

“Branch.” His name broke on her lips. “Branch, get up.”

“There’s nowhere you can run that I won’t find you, Ranger Jordan.

” How had the killer gotten so close without her noticing?

Or had her body started shutting down? He closed in, standing above her beside Branch’s unmoving frame.

“My sister thought she could hide once I was released from the mental institution. She was wrong.”

He took aim.

Throwing her arms over Branch, she stared at the end of the gun barrel.

It took everything she had left to keep her voice even, leaning on that massive confidence Ranger Barbie had always given her.

“Just finish it. If you don’t, I’ll dismember you so completely, the devil won’t know what to do with you when you get to hell. ”

“Always with the jokes.” The killer kept the gun steady. This was it. This was where she and Branch ended, just as they’d gotten started. Not how she pictured it in all those late-night fantasies. “You never cease to amaze me, Ranger Jordan, but you’re not laughing now, are you?”

A deep warning penetrated through the small clearing where she and Branch had gone down. A blur of tan fur and fangs broke into her vision.

The killer turned the gun toward the new threat, but it was too late. Claws sank deep into the killer’s chest, and he vaulted backward. His scream jerked Branch back into consciousness.

A second gunshot tore through the adrenaline-induced haze that’d taken over her body, and the mountain lion that had attacked sank to the ground.

Where had he come from? Cougars rarely attacked unless provoked. Her heart clenched at the thought of the animal sacrificing itself to save her and Branch, but she wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth, either.

“Lila, run.” Branch’s pained voice barely reached her over the hard thud of her heart.

Rolling onto his back, he clamped a hand against his shoulder.

Blood seeped through calloused fingers and spilled over the back of his hand.

Fingers that’d held her with such care and acceptance. Now stained with blood.

Biting against the moan of pain in her throat, she slid her hands under his shoulders and pushed him upright. “I’m not going anywhere. You owe me a coffee date, and you’re not getting out of it this time.”

His laugh cut short as another growl broke the silence.

The killer launched himself at them.

Branch brought his knee up in time to neutralize the collision, then kicked out as the killer took aim. At Lila. His heel connected with the killer’s chest and sent him spiraling backward into a tree. Then Branch was on his feet, his inhales strained and shallow. “You can’t have her.”

A frustrated scream tore from the killer’s throat as he practically threw himself at Branch. Her partner used the attacker’s momentum against him, stepping aside and planting his elbow into the killer’s back.

The man who’d killed Sarah Lantos—his own sister—turned the gun on Lila, and everything inside of her went cold. “Neither can you.”

He pulled the trigger.

But nothing happened.

The killer tried again. And again.

Branch didn’t give him time to test it a fourth time. He scooped up a rock from the ground and swung it into the killer’s head, knocking their assailant out cold. In the aftermath of adrenaline, Branch’s legs failed to hold his weight, and he dropped to his knees.

But Lila was right there. Holding him upright as he’d held her in the desert last night while she exposed all the broken pieces of herself. She swiped her thumb across his bottom lip. “Hello, Grizzly Bear.”

“Hello, Barbie.” He smiled at her, a genuine, full-blown smile that threatened to unravel her insides. It was the most beautiful sight she’d ever witnessed. And it was all for her. “Do me a favor. Stay with me.”

“Always.” She clutched his hand between both of hers. Just as Risner and the search and rescue team descended.