Page 25

Twenty-Five

Stephanie

It takes every ounce of what little strength I have left to shift the dead weight on top of me.

At this point, I barely even feel my arm anymore, that whole side of my body is going numb, and I’m not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing. At least I’m able to breathe again.

He shot him.

Ben Vallard shot Laine, who had a gun pressed against my head. He didn’t care.

I’m able to raise my left hand to check for damage, but find my forehead intact.

Lucky.

My eyes find Vallard crossing the room toward Tracy, who is softly crying in the corner. Laine’s heavy body still has me pinned and I’m paralyzed as I watch Ben stop a few feet away from her, raise his gun, and shoot her in the head, execution style. I stare in disbelief and swallow a sob as her body hits the ground with a dull thud. A pool of blood slowly spreads under her head like a halo.

The poor woman never had a chance.

“What? No!”

Vallard swings around and seems surprised when he sees me struggling to get out from under the weight pinning me down. Shock and fear and rage fuel me enough to heave Laine’s body off me.

“I thought for sure old Mitchel here would take you out with him. That man hated you with everything inside him,” Ben calmly informs me.

He looks at me with a faint smile on his face, his arms crossed, holding the gun like some poor imitation of the classic James Bond pose. It’s almost like he’s mocking me. The thought I ever invited this man’s hands on my body turns my stomach.

“He held you responsible, you know?” he continues, before chuckling. “I thought it was quite funny, considering the old man and I were the ones who made sure his ass ended up in jail. He was a loose cannon. He was only supposed to hit banks out of state or at least in outlying jurisdictions, and just the ones we cased for him, but he decided to pick a target on his own. It was too close to home, that was his first mistake, and then he beat that old bird to a pulp. That was the end of the run for old Mitchel.”

He barks out a laugh and turns his head, letting his gaze drift out the large picture window, like he’s reminiscing or something.

“Even as a kid he was too gullible. It was so easy to get him to do shit and eat the consequences. He got the bad rap and I got off scot-free. I remember my parents telling me not to hang out with him because he was a bad influence. If only they’d known the bad influence was me.”

My brain is still scrambling to make sense of what is happening and what he’s telling me, when a soft moan draws my attention to Mitchel Laine’s body. Is he still alive?

“I told him to keep his mouth shut, no matter what, and he’d be out in no time. I’d make sure of it. Heck, he even bought it when I told him I’d keep his cut safe for him.”

He likes to listen to himself talk, that I knew about him. One of the telltale signs of a narcissist, along with his inflated sense of self, his arrogance, his callousness, and his manipulative behavior. That’s not news to me. But it never occurred to me until now that most of those traits also fit the profile of a psychopath, and that comes as a shock.

I stay quiet and let him orate, absorbing the information he gives me, while I start plotting a way out of this situation with another part of my brain.

Because of one thing I’m sure, Ben Vallard has no intention of letting me go. If I’m to walk out of here, I’ll have to make that happen myself.

With his back partly turned to me, I let Ben boast how he let Mitchel Laine believe I was involved in their arrangement, while I inch my way toward the prone man’s body. I’m sure I saw his chest move, but helping him isn’t the only reason I’m trying to get close; it’s the butt of the gun I see poking out from under his shoulder. He must’ve landed on it when I rolled him off.

“…bastard took off the moment they let him out early. I was too late to welcome him to the outside world with a bullet between the eyes. No one would’ve been the wiser, but he made me chase him clear across the damn country…”

I can just touch the edge of the gun with my middle finger and try to slide it free, but it’s stuck, wedged between the floor and Laine’s shoulder. I need to get closer.

“…and when I figured out he was headed your way, I couldn’t believe my luck. I knew all I had to do was wave you in front of him to draw him out of hiding. He always believed you were in on it. I knew he’d want revenge. All I had to do was stick close to you and wait for him to make his move.”

When he suddenly turns to face me, I move as well, pushing myself up and leaning forward over Mitchel’s upper body. I can feel Vallard’s eyes on my back, and I hope like hell, from this angle, he won’t be able to see the gun I’m trying to shield.

* * *

Jackson

For a moment we’re frozen, the sound of the second shot still reverberating in the air.

I’m the first one to move, but a strong hand grabs my arm and holds me back.

“Stop, breathe, and fucking think before you get yourself or someone else killed,” Jonas growls in my ear.

With fear and adrenaline surging through my veins, I need my stepfather’s clipped order to remind me of the basics. You don’t barge into volatile situations without intel, and right now—other than Stephanie is in that trailer and guns are being fired—I don’t have any. I don’t know how many people are in that trailer, who is armed, who is hurt. Aside from Stephanie, I don’t know fucking friend or foe. For all I know, she’s already dead, but I won’t know until I get more intel.

I force down the fear and the panic, and suck in a deep breath through my nose.

“I need an eye on the inside.”

Jonas nods at me. “Good. Yes, but not much opportunity back here.”

He’s right, there are only two windows; a small, frosted bathroom window, and I’m guessing the other is to a bedroom and has closed blinds. From the front is the better bet.

“I’ll go around. I’ll stay out of sight. See if I can find a vantage point, use the scope on my rifle.”

“No,” Ma interrupts, shaking her head furiously. “I can’t?—”

Jonas turns to her and cups her face in his hands. She grabs on to his wrists.

“Yes. He knows what he’s doing. I wouldn’t let him go if I didn’t trust one-hundred-percent he’s got this.”

She doesn’t say anything, but drops her head down as Jonas continues to talk to her in a low voice.

“This is what I need from you. I need you to retrace your steps back to the other trailer and wait for the deputy to show up. Then I want you to get him to radio his boss and pass it to you, so you can fill Junior in on the situation here. And for God’s sake, do not let that deputy come blundering into this scene because that won’t end well for anyone. Fucking tackle him if you must.”

If the situation wasn’t so dire, I might’ve laughed at his last words, because if anything could get Ma on board, it was that comment.

But if I don’t get moving there may not be much left to laugh about at all.

“I’ll be back,” I promise with a nod at my mother, before rounding the back of the motorhome and ducking into the cover of the trees.

Since I can’t move silently anymore, it’s safest to get some distance, circle around, and approach from the front. With some luck I’ll be able to find a tree with adequate handholds I can climb. One that offers me enough of a view inside the trailer so I can get a bead on this clusterfuck.

It’s weird, finding myself slipping back into a zone I used to be so familiar with. One where your senses are attuned only to those things you need to see, feel, or hear, and the world around you becomes like a funnel, aimed directly at the objective of your assignment. In the zone, time doesn’t exist, and the only reminder it passes is the sound of your own heartbeat.

It’s an old, tall pine tree. A Ponderosa pine, in fact: Montana’s state tree. What draws my attention at first is the thick cover of the branches and the way the top appears to lean slightly toward the large window and the partially open door I spotted at the front of the trailer home. But it’s the shoulder-high stump of a second tree right beside it that has me look a little closer. The top of that tree must’ve broken off at some point, leaving jagged splinters sticking up. It looks like maybe it was struck by lightning, a scorch mark where the trunk is split down to the soil.

It’s perfect. I’d never be able to get up to the shelter of the tall pine’s branches without that stump to serve as a ladder of sorts, and from there, I should be able to pull myself up.

I sling the rifle over my shoulder and make my way over. With my back leaning against the stump, I quickly remove my prosthesis, and lay it down at the base, before tucking my loose pant leg in my waistband. It’s ungainly and will only get in my way. I’ll do better with one leg and two arms; it’ll give me more flexibility.

I probably have some serious splinters in my hands, but I make it up into the tree with relative ease. I settle in on a branch that is thick enough to hold my weight, close enough to allow me a clear view inside the window, yet still provides sufficient cover so it’ll be hard to spot me.

Lining up my sight, I get my first glance inside the trailer. It’s not perfect, there is some reflection on the window that slightly distorts my view, but I’m able to make out one figure standing over what looks like the naked body of a woman.

Bile lurches up from my stomach, but I force it down and will myself to focus.

Movement draws my eye to the far side of the room, where I spot another body—this one looks to be a man—and the slighter figure of a woman with her back to me, leaning over him. As I watch, her head snaps around at the standing man.

Stephanie .

It plays out like a slow-motion movie, the way she turns her body, revealing a weapon in her left hand. Then I catch a glimpse of the man’s face. Fucking Ben Vallard, and he’s raising a gun of his own.

Years of training and experience have forged a direct connection between my eyes and my trigger finger.

No thought is necessary, only instinct.

* * *

Stephanie

“What are you doing?”

“He’s still alive.”

I’m surprised how weak my voice sounds. Maybe it’s because my mind is working overtime to sort through all the pieces of information he’s giving me and trying to sort them in some kind of order that makes sense.

“With a hole in his head?” He snorts. “If he is now, he won’t be for long. Leave him.”

“You were never in Eureka, were you?” I toss out at him.

“Ding-ding-ding, give the girl a prize. You’re finally clueing in to that? No, I wasn’t. And if you’re banking on help to arrive, that’s not coming any time soon either, I made sure of it. They’ll have their hands full with the explosion I set off at my hotel.”

Jesus , this man is diabolical.

“By the time they get here, no one will be left alive. The story that will go down is that I got here a fraction of a second too late, Laine already finished you off and I had no choice but to defend myself when he turned the gun on me.”

The gun he’s talking about is now firmly clenched in my left hand in front of me, but I need to stop my hand from shaking, because I’ll only get one chance.

“The evidence won’t support you. How do you explain your bullet in Tracy’s head?”

When he barks out a harsh laugh, I whip my head around. The man I see is no one I recognize.

“Evidence can be manipulated. It’s not that hard. I learned that from the best.” A grin spreads on his face as he leans forward a few inches before adding, “Your father taught me.”

He’s toying with me. He knows how I’ve always tried to live up to my dad’s expectations. This is what psychopaths do, they use little bits of information they’ve been given to play games with their victims.

But I’ll be damned if I become his next one.

He seems startled for a brief moment when I swing around, my fingers steady around the butt of Laine’s gun and my finger ready on the trigger. The moment I have him lined up in my sights I depress.

I’m not prepared for the hollow sound of an empty magazine, and my lungs deflate.

Slowly, the man I once shared a bed with raises his weapon.

In a single moment, all that could have been, the life I could’ve led, the man I could’ve loved, the family I could’ve had, flashes with painful clarity in my mind.

Then I close my eyes and wait for the end.