Aaron Torres.
She assumed the message came from the killer. Though she’s terrified Aaron and his friends already hurt Hunter, confidence thaws her frozen bones. She can handle a group of teenagers.
The wet smack of fist against flesh gets her moving. A blow to the head is a game of Russian Roulette for Hunter. Another trauma could cause a brain bleed or seizure. Or worse.
She stops short of the clearing and clamps her hand over her mouth. Don’t scream, she repeats to herself. Stay calm and line up the shot.
Hunter kneels on the trail, body limp and supported by the three teenagers grasping him around the arms and chest. Aaron stands over him with his fist cocked back for another punch. A string of bloody drool connects Hunter’s lips to the earth. His face is a lunar landscape of bruises and cuts.
“What the hell are you waiting for, you piece of shit? Finish him.”
That voice. She recognizes it. Darcy swings the gun toward the darkness and spies the large figure silhouetted against the tree line. He was so close she almost led Jennifer into his path.
Bronson.
“Back behind the pine,” Darcy whispers. Jennifer shakes her head. “Do it. If anything happens to me, run as fast as you can and wait for Agent Hensel at the park entrance.”
When her daughter backs away and crouches behind a stand of pines, Darcy edges toward the clearing. She keeps one eye fixed on Bronson. He hasn’t noticed her yet.
Aaron leers at Bronson and spits on the ground. Then he turns his fury on Hunter. He won’t hurt her son again.
Darcy pulls the trigger. The bullet decimates the bark of a tree on the other side of the clearing. The warning shot scatters the teenagers and drops Aaron and Sam Tatum to their bellies. Hunter sways and coughs blood.
“Looks like we have a visitor,” Bronson says, walking into the clearing. “You can come out now, Darcy.”
Stepping into the silver light, Darcy swings the gun between Bronson and the teenagers. The two thugs aiding Aaron and Sam are the football players who spray-painted her car. Not wanting any part of Darcy and her gun, they back away to the railing overlooking Darkwater Cove. Sam glances uncertainly between Bronson and Darcy, but he doesn’t flee. Emboldened, Aaron crawls to his feet and smirks. When he walks toward Hunter, Darcy aims the gun at his chest.
Aaron halts and raises his hands, but the grin remains.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Bronson says, shaking his head at the boy. “It’s not like she’ll shoot.”
“Like hell I won’t.” Darcy motions at the railing with the gun. “Aaron and Sam, go stand with your friends. Now.”
Darcy kneels beside Hunter. His body slumps against hers. The glaze of his eyes hints he doesn’t know she’s there. She wants to put a bullet in each of the boys’ heads. Make them pay the ultimate price for what they did to her son. Then a shot between Bronson’s eyes. The son-of-a-bitch must have fooled Hunter into thinking he wanted to help. Once Bronson lured Hunter into the truck, he fed him to Aaron and his wolves.
But Bronson didn’t come unarmed. He raises his gun before Darcy can react.
“You didn’t think I’d come unprepared, did you? Drop the gun.”
“Not a chance.”
“How good of a shot are you, little lady? I bet I take you down first. Fast and hard.”
His comments sound vulgar, a double entendre meant to demean her in front of the laughing teenagers.
“I understand that you hate me for throwing you out of my life, but there’s no reason to take it out on Hunter. Let him go.”
“He’s in no condition to walk. The amount of times these boys clubbed his head, he’s got to be a goddamn vegetable.”
Bronson’s eyes are wild…unhinged. She can’t reason with him. Only one of them is leaving the clearing alive. Darcy can beat him to the draw. She’s never seen him shoot, but she has faith in her quickness and accuracy. But she can’t be certain Bronson will fire at her. He’ll turn the gun on Hunter and shoot her son instead. That’s the most direct route to shattering her.
“I don’t get it,” Darcy says. “The police will charge you with kidnapping. Why help these kids settle their petty dispute? It has nothing to do with you.”
Bronson snickers. The laugh grows until it echoes off the trees. Yes, he’s lost his mind.
“I don’t give a shit about these kids. But I figured, what the hell…let them have a go at your boy. Right place, right time. You know why we’re here. Right, Darcy?”
Aaron and Sam share a look. Sensing something is wrong, the other boys eye the path. They’re close to abandoning this sinking ship.
“The police are on the way. None of you are getting out of here, so lower the gun and let me take my son home.”
“Not a chance. Even if I wanted to let you go, and I don’t, he would spill your insides before you got off the ridge.”
Is Chaney here?
Aaron leads his friends past Darcy. Bronson swings the gun at them.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
“We don’t want to be part of this anymore,” Aaron says, raising his hands to mollify the suddenly hostile man who delivered Hunter. “We’re getting out of here, and if what she said about the police is true, you’ll follow us.”
“Don’t take another step.”
The other boys look pleadingly at Aaron. He straightens his back and calls Bronson’s bluff.
“You plan to shoot all of us if we leave?”
The gunshot explodes and spins Aaron around. He drops to his knee, clutching his shoulder.
Darcy’s finger closes on the trigger, but Bronson fixes his gun on her head. Her chance came and went, and Bronson won’t feel a bit of remorse for murdering all of them. Hopefully Jennifer is halfway down the ridge and running for help.
Aaron opens his hands and stares at the blood, disbelief etched on his face. Bronson grins, arrogant in his power.
“Yes, that’s exactly what I plan to do—”
Bronson squeals and grabs at his eyes when Hunter slings a handful of dirt and stone into his face. Darcy squeezes off two shots. One clips Bronson’s shoulder in a spurt of red. The second barrels through the man’s chest and knocks him flat. The scream that rips out of Darcy causes the three boys helping Aaron to scurry backward. She wants to unload every bullet into Bronson. His eyes lock on hers. Even entering death throes, he can’t accept she beat him.
Bronson’s gun lies a step away from his grasping hand. Choking sounds echo off the trees as he looks up at Darcy. She nudges his gun away with her toe and stands beside Hunter.
Another cry tears a hole in the night. Jennifer.
Panic surges through Darcy. She abandons Hunter in the clearing and sprints into the forest, leaping over a log as bramble claws her skin. She spots the stand of trees where she left Jennifer. But she’s gone. Vanished.
Darcy spins around and calls out to her daughter.
The moon screams down at her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Tired eyes project phantom images of Jennifer at the periphery of Darcy’s vision with a cruel trick of the mind. But her daughter isn’t here. When she swings around, she sees only forest and suffocating darkness.
Stumbling amid the trees, she loses her direction as the cold saws through her bones. This can’t be happening. The Darkwater Cove killer has Jennifer, and Hunter hangs by a thread beside Bronson’s dead body. Fate pulls her down opposite paths, but she can’t save both of her children.
She’s familiar with Alder Park, but she’d never ventured off the trail. The forest runs three miles through the valley. She could wander all night. Jagged branches and bramble take pieces of her. Death by a thousand cuts.