Chapter 21

 

A friend of both Sean and Jimmy, with access and opportunity to frame both men.

But why?

Cole shook his head. The why didn’t matter right now. He had to find Talia and warn Megan.

He cut off Angela with a terse “thanks” and headed for the door.

“Wait,” she called to him as he sprinted to his car. “What about Jimmy?”

“I know he didn’t do it,” Cole called over his shoulder. “I promise the truth will come out soon enough.”

He drove as fast as the weather would allow back to Dev’s trailer, his knees buckling at what he discovered. A woman dead, her throat cut on the floor.

Megan and Devany nowhere to be found.

Devany ran back in what she thought was the way Nate had come, but it was hard to tell since she’d been on the floor of the car during the trip. She ran for what felt like forever before she hit another house. She banged on the front door, sobbing with frustration when no one answered. There was no one at the next house either, or the next, and she was starting to wonder if the whole fucking neighborhood was deserted when she caught a flash of headlights through the sheets of rain.

She ran into the road, waving her hands until the minivan screeched to a stop. The window rolled down and a woman leaned out to yell, “Are you crazy? I could have killed you—”

Dev ran around to the woman, whose expression softened a little when she got a closer look at Dev.

“What are you doing out in this, dressed like that? You’ll catch your death if a tree doesn’t come crashing down on you first.”

“I need to borrow your phone. It’s an emergency!” Dev’s hands came up to grip the door. The woman gasped when she saw the deep cuts welling with blood.

“There’s a guy, he has my friend, and I really need to call the cops.”

“I don’t get cell coverage up here.”

“Then dammit, give me a ride to a real fucking phone!”

The woman’s face paled and she glanced behind her. Dev followed her gaze and saw two boys strapped to car seats in the back. “Mommy, she said fuck,” said the older one.

“I know, Wyatt,” the woman said through clenched teeth.

“Please, lady,” Dev said, her teeth chattering as the cold finally caught up with her. “Just take me to a gas station or something.” She pitched her voice lower so the little kids wouldn’t hear her. “He’s going to hurt my friend. Please help me.”

The woman closed her eyes and gave a qu nod. Dev dashed around to the passenger side and climbed in. They drove down the road another mile or so before the minivan had to stop for a fallen tree.

“Can’t you go around it?”

“There’s a market just up ahead, at the junction of this road and Forest Drive.” The woman leaned over Dev and opened her door. Dev took the hint and hopped out with a muttered “thanks.” She picked her way over the tree, cursing when she slipped on the wet bark and skinned her knee.

The little market was right where the woman said, and the guy working the register took pity on her and pointed her to the phone in the back. She dialed 911 with shaking hands.

“Thank you for calling the King County central dispatch. To reach the fire department, press one. To reach the sheriff, press two.”

A fucking voice mail menu?! Dev punched two. “Emergency services are experiencing a high volume of calls. Please hold…”

“I don’t have time to fucking hold!” Dev slammed the phone down and swallowed back angry tears. What the hell was she supposed to do?

Duh. She dialed, picturing the card Cole Williams had given her the night of Bianca’s murder, thanking whatever powers had blessed her with a freakishly good memory for numbers. She bounced on her toes as the phone rang, praying he could get here before it was too late.

Megan watched as Talia blinked foggily for a few seconds; then, as she became aware of her surroundings and her nudity, she let out a high, frantic scream. Megan joined in, Talia’s hysteria feeding her own, until it seemed impossible that someone wouldn’t hear them.

Nate laughed as Talia launched herself clumsily off the couch, her legs buckling as the effect of whatever he’d drugged her with maintained its hold.

“Scream as loud as you want. No one can hear you except for me.” He dragged Talia to the middle of the floor, positioning her on a beige rug that Megan just now realized was covered with heavy plastic.

He grabbed Megan from the floor and shoved her onto the couch. “I want to make sure you can see everything.”

He pulled out a remote and pointed it at the TV. Megan swallowed back a rush of nausea, fully expecting to see Talia’s image on the screen as the naked woman tried to crawl away, only to fall flat on her stomach as her legs and arms collapsed under her weight.

From the corner of her eye, Megan was aware of Nate stripping off his shirt. The smell of a match striking and burning tobacco stung her nose. She gasped as Nate turned, and she saw his naked torso for the first time. He had a tattoo on his upper right biceps, just like Sean, Jack, and Jimmy Caparulo.

But Nate’s ink didn’t stop there. “You like it?” He smiled and spread his arms wide. On his right arm was the head of a snake, fangs bared, the rest of its gold and black scaled body coiling up his arm, down his back, and around his torso. He flexed his muscles and Megan stared, transfixed, as the snake undulated around his body.

On his chest was a bloody heart with a knife through it, with tear-shaped drops of blood dripping out of it, all the way down the left side of his chest and abdomen. “One drop for every kill,” Nate said.

There were dozens.

“She was one of my favorites, though.” He pointed at the TV.

“Oh my God.” There, in full color, was Evangeline Gordon, naked, on her knees, her blue eyes wide with terror, her screams muffled around the gag stuffed down her throat. Megan recognized the familiar furniture of Sean’s living room. She watched in horrified fascination as Nate appeared on-screen and mugged sickeningly for the camera. His image blurred as he approached the camera, which was abruptly wrenched to the right.

Nate laughed at Megan’s audible gasp at the image of Sean, slumped against the wall, completely unconscious.

Oh God, oh God. Megan had always wondered if something like this had happened, but she’d never envisioned this kind of horror.

“Sorry you have to miss all this, buddy, but you’ll see soon enough what happens to people who fuck with me.”

On-screen, the camera swung back to Evangeline, her screams getting more frantic behind the gag as Nate’s hulking form came into the frame. Without warning, he pressed the lit cigarette into the skin of Evangeline’s buttock.

Megan’s attention snapped back to the room at Talia’s animal cry of pain, the smell of burning flesh making Megan gag.

“Stop!” she screamed as Nate hefted the knife.

His hand moved, blindingly fast, and a red stripe welled across Talia’s back as she arched and screamed in pain.

“Please stop hurting her!” Megan cried. “You don’t need to do this. Let her go.”

“You have no idea what I need.” He shifted the knife to his right hand and made another cut, creating a bloody X that covered Talia’s back from hip to shoulder in each direction. He leaned down until his mouth was at Talia’s ear. “What made you think you could talk and get away with it? No one else ever has.” Talia’s spine arched as Nate traced a bloody line along the skin of her inner arm.

From the speakers, Evangeline’s screams grew louder. Megan squeezed her eyes shut against the violation replaying on the screen, against the horror happening in this very room.

“No!” Nate was screaming in her ear, yanking her head up. “Open your eyes and watch, you bitch, or I’ll make it even worse for both of you.”

She opened her eyes just in time to see Nate flip Evangeline Gordon to her back and tease her with his knife before delivering the killing blow.

A choked sob ripped from chest, and she snapped her focus back to Talia, who was on the floor, her eyes locked on Megan’s, pleading, as though Megan could somehow get them out of this.

“I did all of this for you,” Nate said with a savage yank of Megan’s hair. The cold bite of his blade pressed against her throat. The slightest movement would draw blood.

“I did everything, set it all up so perfectly, so we could be together. Sean tried to keep me away from you, and he lived to regret it. They tried to keep me away from you.” His hand ran down the side of her almost tenderly. “And you don’t even care. You ruined everything.”

The blade sank into the tender skin just under her ear. “You’re going to watch every second so you see exactly what I did for you. So you can understand what you’re going to suffer for failing me.”

He released Megan and stripped off the rest of his clothes. Completely nude, except for the tattoos that continued down the lower half of his body, he was even more terrifying.

He pounced on Talia like a hyena taking down a wounded deer and flipped her to her back. His blade flashed and Talia’s screams filled the room.

The screams filled Megan’s head, tore from her throat, the scents of blood and fear choking her as she succumbed to the living nightmare unfolding in front of her.

Cole screeched to a halt in front of Nate Brewster’s building. He’d left a message for Petersen but didn’t have much faith she would follow up on his findings. Not that he could blame her. They had a suspect in hand and a load of damning evidence. It didn’t make sense to chase down a less likely suspect based on little more than a hunch.

Cole might have felt that way himself, if he weren’t stone-cold sure Nate had taken Talia, Devany, and the woman he loved. Please, God, let her be alive.

Cole couldn’t even contemplate the alternative.

He scanned the directory, saw Nate’s name, and rang the buzzer. Shocker, no one answered. He didn’t have to wait long before another tenant came into the entryway, shaking rain off her trench coat as she slid her key into the lock. She didn’t even give him a second look as he slipped into the building behind her.

So much for a secure building.

He knocked on the door. No answer. He gave the door a quick once-over. Strong, but not steel core. He drew his gun as a precaution, angled his body, and delivered a hard kick, just under the dead bolt. Another kick, and the sound of splintering wood echoed through the hall as the door swung open.

“Hey, what are you doing?” A guy with heavy-framed glasses and a goatee had opened his door two doors down. “I’m gonna call the cops!”

“I am the cops,” Cole said as he shoved inside Nate’s apartment. He did a quick sweep, though every instinct screamed the place was empty. What had he expected? That Nate would suddennhange his MO and bring Megan and Talia back to his condo?

He pawed through Nate’s desk, through his bedside table, looking for something, anything to give a clue as to where he might have taken them. He’d killed in abandoned homes around the city, with no evident pattern in how he chose the locations for his kills.

Fuck. He dialed Petersen. “I need you to look something up for me,” he said as soon as she answered. “Find out if Nate Brewster has any property besides his primary residence.” He hung up before she could utter a sound.

He could hear voices outside, neighbors wondering what to do about the maniac who had just kicked down the door. Time for Cole to get out before the police made it here.

He sped away from the building and parked two blocks over, banging his head against the steering wheel.

Nate had Megan. She’d been gone for over an hour. Plenty of time to hurt her, to kill her. His eyes stung and he wracked his brain, coming up dry. He swallowed against the lump in his throat. He’d done this. He’d left her alone, and now she was going to be killed—if she wasn’t dead already.

His phone rang, a number he didn’t recognize on the display. Cole answered, his voice choked.

“Detective Williams? It’s Devany Sinclair.”

Cole almost lost it. “Where are you? Where’s Megan?”

“I’m at the Pick n’ Save store in—Where the hell am I?” Cole heard a muffled voice answer in the background. “I’m in Coal Creek.” Cole knew the area, a town southeast of Seattle. Most days it took about twenty minutes to get there, but that was without a storm blowing trees down every other block. “But that guy Nate—Megan’s friend—he still has her. He killed my mom.” Cole heard her voice rise in hysteria. “He killed her and now he’s going to kill Megan, too, if you don’t help her.”

“Where’s the house? Tell me the address.”

“I don’t know,” she sobbed. “I know it’s on 168 southeast, but I don’t know the number. I can show you—”

“Stay where you are.” Cole put the Jeep in gear and floored it. “Keep trying nine-one-one and I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

At some point Megan’s screams faded to whimpers. Deafening sounds of horror filled the room from the blaring speakers as Nate showed them one sickening video after another of him and his victims.

But he hadn’t raped Talia—not yet anyway. In fact, his penis hung flaccid between his legs as he loaded up a new video. He left Talia prone, silent on the floor. Her dark eyes were slitted open, staring and empty like she’d escaped to a faraway place only she could reach, away from the horror of what was happening.

Megan wanted to join her, but she was acutely aware of every noise, every image, the metallic smell of blood, the acrid sweat hanging in the air. Nate didn’t have to tell her to watch—she couldn’t look away, couldn’t shut it out as every sickening detail was branded into her brain. The small part of her brain capable of logical analysis noted that he was taking an abnormally long time making his kill.

He was drawing it out, making them both suffer. A sick part of her wanted to scream at him to do it already, get it over with and put them all out of their misery. In a flash of clarity, she understood, on some primitive level, why Sean had chosen the path he did.

But while they were alive, there was still some chance someone would find them.

But how? The only person who knew they were with Nate was Devany, and she…

Megan bit back a sob. He was going to kill Devany, too, and she couldn’t do anything to stop it. Cole had no idea where she was.

Oh God, Cole, is this how it really ends for me? For us? For Sean?

She scanned the room, searching desperately for something, anything, she or Talia could use as a weapon. But the more she struggled against the flex ties binding her hands and ankles, the deeper they cut into her skin.

She tried to catch Talia’s eye again, but the other woman was gone. Not dead, not yet, but definitely someplace other than the room.

Her fear increased as Nate loaded another video, this one of an exotically beautiful woman in her early twenties. Nate stared, fixated, at the screen, absently running his thumb over the blade of his knife. The woman smiled uncertainly at the camera as Nate said something offscreen that Megan couldn’t quite make out.

Whatever he said replaced the woman’s ingratiating smile with a look of terror, a look that said the woman had seen the face of death and knew it was coming for her.

Nate let out a frustrated curse. Megan’s attention snapped to him, and she realized with horrified disgust that he was masturbating. Or trying to. Tugging and jerking brutally at his penis, he couldn’t get it up.

Relief that she and Talia wouldn’t be raped shot through her.

It lasted a mere second before Nate turned his terrifying anger on Megan.

“I did everything for you, and now you’re taking it all away,” he raged.

Megan tried to scramble away as he lunged at her, but with her bound hands and feet, she only managed to fling herself to the floor, where she heaved herself like a spastic inchworm toward the narrow hall that branched from the right side of the room.

He caught her by the hair and twisted her around with such force she thought her neck would snap. With her face now level with his groin, she lunged without thinking, teeth snapping, but he caught her with an open handed blow that sent pain exploding across her cheekbone. She would have fallen had he not still had his fist twisted in her hair.

Another blow splt her lip, and his knee to her ribs made the oxygen spew from her lungs in a rush. A loud buzzing sounded in her ears and a red fog clouded her vision.

Cole turned up Stonegate Road in Coal Creek, a twisting road that wound up a hillside and was lined with dozens of large properties. He blew past an emergency crew that tried to flag him down and continued up the road. He’d lost cell coverage a mile back. No way to try 911, no way to find out if Petersen had gotten anywhere. He was on his own.

The dread grew stronger with every passing minute. Nate had taken her more than an hour ago. He had no idea how long Nate kept his victims alive after he first took them. Days? Hours?

Minutes?

How long would he torture her? Cole tried but couldn’t stop thinking about the other victims. Jesus, was Megan at that very second screaming in pain, begging Nate to end it so she could stop hurting?

Cole swallowed back a surge of bile. Focus. He couldn’t afford to dwell on the worst-case scenario if he wanted to have a chance in hell of saving her.

Megan was alive. He was going to find her.

He nearly missed the turnoff to the convenience store where Dev was waiting. The Jeep fishtailed as he swung it through the turn and into the store’s tiny parking lot. He bounded up the stairs of the building and found Dev inside, behind the counter huddled on a stool in a sweatshirt that was two sizes too big for her.

She jumped to her feet. “Took you long enough.”

“Just let me use your goddamn phone,” a male voice boomed from the back of the store.

“Let’s go,” Dev said, heading for the door. “A crazy guy just burst in here.”

A chubby teenager rounded the corner. “Dude, find a pay phone. I’m gonna call the cops.”

A large, barefoot man followed close behind. He was soaked from head to toe, dressed only in a thin T-shirt and cargo pants. “I don’t have any money,” the man said in a strained voice. “Don’t make me kick your ass—”

“Jack?”

The man’s dark head whipped around. Jack’s face was almost gray, his lips blue.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Cole asked.

Jack shook his head. “Fuck if I know. All I know is I woke up about half an hour ago, facedown in the woods.” A shudder racked his large frame.

Cole didn’t know how long he’d been out in the rain, but it was long enough for Jack to get good and cold. “Let’s go.”

“Wait, you know him?” Dev asked as Cole herded her to the car.

Cole ned and they all scrambled into the Jeep. He cranked the heat and peeled out of the parking lot in a spray of gravel. He filled Jack in on the details as they sped up the road.

“Son of a bitch got right by me,” Jack said tightly, his hands shaking as he held them up in front of the vent. “Must have dosed me with something strong. All I know is I woke up facedown in the mud, no shoes, no money, no gun, no idea how I got there.”

Jack still looked foggy from both the cold and the drugs, shaking his head every so often as though to clear the cobwebs. He flexed his fingers in the hot air pouring from the dashboard and winced as his skin started to pink up.

“How much farther?” Cole asked Dev.

“Not too far.” She stared intently out the back passenger window. A few more minutes passed. “There it is. On the right, past the boulder.”

They parked on the side of the road. “Do you have any idea where in the house he took them?”

“Not in the house,” Dev said. “He put me in the kitchen, but then he went outside and didn’t come back in.”

So they were looking for a shed or a garage or something. “You two wait here,” Cole told them.

“No fucking way,” Jack said. “You’ll need backup.”

“You’re half hypothermic and coming off whatever he hit you with. Besides, you need to get her out of here,” Cole said, nodding toward Dev.

“You have to save Megan,” Dev said. “Don’t worry about me.”

Jack’s jaw tightened and his shoulders went back. “I’m fine,” he said. His face was still ashen, but the shaking had lessened in the warmth of the car. “I fucked this up and let him take Talia. Let me help.” The look in his eyes said he was coming with Cole whether he liked it or not. Cole was pretty sure he could take him, but he didn’t have time to waste fighting.

Cole caved. He turned to Jack. “If you fall on your drugged ass, you’re on your own.”

“Do you know how to drive?” he asked Dev.

Dev nodded. “If Jack isn’t back here in five minutes, take the car back to the store. Find out where the nearest sheriff’s station is and send them here with the paramedics.”

They cut through the wooded area on the neighbor’s lot in case Nate was keeping watch. Creeping between the trees, they sidled up to the detached garage. Cole heard nothing. They entered through an unlocked door. Nothing but a black SUV was parked inside.

“Motherfucker stole my car,” Jack muttered.

The guy was tough. Cole had to give him that. Jack’s jaw clenched against the shudders as the icy rain pounded down on them, and he hardly winced as his bare feet crunched against the wet gravel of the driveway.

There were no other structures on the property that they could see. Despite what Dev had told them, Cole picked the lock on the back door and they ducked inside the house. A quick search of the rooms revealed nothing.

“They have to be somewhere close,” Cole said, trying to clear his mind of the panic so he could think. “Dev said she didn’t hear a car.”

Jack’s gaze swept the room, locking on an old-fashioned metal floor vent. “There’s a heat vent, but I didn’t see a furnace anywhere up here.”

The garage was detached. That meant the heating system had to be in a basement or crawl space.

But there was no way in from inside. They dashed outside and walked the perimeter of the house, eyes trained on the siding, careful to miss nothing as they searched for another entrance to the cellar. As they started down the south side of the house, Cole saw it.

Partially hidden by two green plastic garbage bins was a set of weathered wood doors, barely the height of the garbage cans, like it was built to hold them once the trash had been picked up. Cole yanked the doors open and ducked in. He descended a short staircase that led to the basement door.

Unlike the flimsy, easy-to-pick front door, this door was steel core, rigged with an electronic keypad that activated three heavy-weight dead bolts that kept the thing locked.

Cole pulled out his Glock and took aim at the door.

“No!” Jack deflected the gun with a sharp chop of his arm. “It won’t penetrate the locks and will only let him know that we’re here.”

“How the fuck do we get in there, then?”

Jack squatted down next to the keypad and tilted his head, studying.

“What?” Cole snapped.

“I’ve worked with a system like this before,” Jack said. “I’m pretty sure there’s a way to override it.”

“So do it.”

“Give me a minute,” Jack snapped, rubbing at his temples. “I have to be careful. If I do it wrong, it will set off an alarm.” Jack nodded to himself, straightened, and started to trot back up the stairs.

“Where the fuck are you going?”

“I need to get something out of my car,” Jack called down.

He was back in seconds with a small tool set. He pulled out a Phillips-head screwdriver and tried to raise it to the keypad, but his hand was shaking too bad to fit the driver with the screw head.

Cole snatched it from his hand and knelt down. “Talk me through it.”

Megan tried to shrink back but there was nowhere to go. The room blurred around her, and she feo her back, Nate straddling her chest. Her blood froze in her veins when she saw the blade flash in his hand once again.

Megan heard a feral cry that didn’t even sound human. The knife stopped its deadly path as Nate was jerked to the side by the black cord digging into his neck. Talia!

Fear and rage twisted her beautiful face as her slender arms flexed and strained, knocking Nate off balance enough for Megan to wiggle out from under him and land a kick to his chest with her bound feet. She kicked again at his hand but couldn’t dislodge the knife.

Nate roared and thrashed around like a wounded bear. He reached one hand behind him and yanked Talia over his shoulder, throwing her to the floor in front of him. Her scream cut short as her back met the ground, and Megan watched, as it though were happening in slow motion, Nate bury his knife in Talia’s stomach. He yanked the blade out, and blood bubbled from the wound, soaking her abdomen and the hands clutching it.

He grabbed Megan by her bound wrists and dragged her across the room, through the crude door cut into the wall, and into another room. Light from the other room barely trickled in. She could smell dirt and damp. A sharp click and the room was flooded with the light of a single hanging bulb. The room was little more than a cave in the ground with a dirt floor.

He yanked her up by her hair. “Do you see? Do you see how much you were loved?”

It took her eyes a second to focus, but what she saw made her breath freeze in her chest. The only finished wall in the room was covered with pictures.

Of her.

He’d put up pictures of her from the paper, from Sean’s trial. There was even a picture of her and Sean, fishing poles in hand, taken before their parents died.

It had been on Sean’s mantel.

Nate pulled her onto a crudely built wooden platform in front of the wall, set like an altar in front of the pictures. He shoved her face against the wall, and she realized the photos weren’t just of her. Some were of another girl, pictures ranging from infancy to about twelve years old.

The girl had dark brown hair and big green eyes. It was like looking at pictures of herself as a girl.

“I loved you so much,” he whispered, his hand tightening in her hair. “I did everything for you. Did you even know how many times I saved you?”

There were other newspaper clippings, headlines screaming BOY, 14, KILLS IN SELF-DEFENSE AFTER MAN KILLS MOTHER AND SISTER.

Her heart dipped to her stomach. She could only catch a few words of the articles, but the headlines—and the pictures—told her enough of the story. The girl who looked so much like Megan must have been Nate’s sister.

Sarah.

She scrambled to find a way to pull him back from the edge and buy herself a little more time. “I know, Nae. I know what you did for me, how much you love me,” she said in a shaky whisper. “I love you too.” She reached out her bound hands and made herself touch him. “Please don’t hurt me anymore, and I promise I’ll love you and stay with you forever.”

He made a sound that was almost like a sob. “I want to believe you. I wanted you to be the one to save me. But it’s not you.” His hand reached out and stroked her hair.

“I don’t want you to be alone.”

His tender smile made the nausea coil in her stomach. “You don’t have to worry. I found someone new.”

“Who?”

“Her.” He sounded euphoric as he pointed to the photo right in the center of the collage.

Megan wanted to howl in protest. She recognized the ponytailed, freckled ten-year-old immediately. Before she’d streaked her hair purple, pierced her nose, and started caking on the eyeliner, Devany could have been Megan’s little sister. Other than the brown eyes, she could have been Sarah’s twin. Nate had stolen the picture from Dev’s trailer.

“I should have known that first night I saw her that it was her all along.” His mouth pulled into a sneer. “Not a slut like you.”

He pushed her down to the platform and the knife came down. He slipped it up under the hem of her shirt, and she waited for its cold sting against her belly. She started to scream, then realized he was cutting her shirt off. Her heart lodged in her throat as her bra followed, and then she was naked from the waist up, the tip of his knife tracing the soft undercurve of her breast.

“Please, please don’t,” she whispered through swollen, bloody lips. “Please leave Devany alone.”

But he didn’t seem to hear her. “You are so beautiful, so beautiful.” He circled the knife around her nipple, almost like a caress. Then his blue eyes narrowed on her face. “But not innocent. Not like her. I would have worshipped you, and this is the thanks I get. I should have known you were nothing like Sarah. I should have seen you were a whore.” He raised the knife, and Megan turned her head to the side, knowing in her gut this was it.

No more playing, no more taunting.

“You were supposed to set me free,” he whispered.

She felt the muscles of his arm shift as he raised the knife higher.

The room exploded in noise as a deafening cacophony assaulted her ears. Startled, Nate loosened his grasp on her and she flung herself away.

“No!” he screamed, and launched himself at her, knocking her to her back.

Megan shoved her hands up, felt the knife bite into her palms. Through the wail of the alarm, she heard a shout but didn’t dare look away as she managed to bring her knees up against Nate’s stomach. She shoved hard and he rolled to the side, bringing her with him.

A gunshot blasted, and a spray of dirt hit her face. She needed to get out of the way. She kicked, bucked, squirmed, but couldn’t break his hold. Nate rolled to his knees and jerked her up in front of him, using her body as a shield, the blade of his knife pressed against her jugular.

The alarm cut out, leaving eerie silence in its wake.

“Let her go,” Cole said, his voice calm, his gun perfectly steady as he held it on Nate.

The hot sting of the knife made Megan gasp.

“I don’t think so,” Nate said with a laugh that was like an icy finger down her spine. “I think it would be much more fun to kill her while you watch.”

Megan tracked the bead of sweat trickling from Cole’s hairline, its path mirroring the warm tickle of blood sliding down her throat. “Let her go, and you’ll have a chance. You kill her, you die too.”

“I think your suffering will be worth it.”

Megan shrank back into Nate’s chest as the pressure against her neck increased. Don’t look, she wanted to shout to Cole. Don’t watch. But she couldn’t make her mouth move.

“Look,” Cole said, holding his gun out to the side. “I’ll put down my gun. I’ll let you walk out of here. Just let her go.” He dropped the gun to the ground and held up his hands, a naked plea in his eyes.

She could feel Nate’s arm tensing, the muscles bunching. Megan squeezed her eyes shut.

There was a scuffle and a shout from the other room. “Oh my God! Is she dead? Where’s Megan?”

Devany. No! Megan didn’t want Devany to see this anymore than she wanted Cole to.

The girl appeared in the doorway and froze when she saw the scene laid out in front of her. “No.” She swallowed hard. “Don’t. Please don’t. Not Megan too.”

Megan felt the tension in Nate’s arm ease almost infinitesimally.

“Sarah? Sarah, you need to go. You shouldn’t watch—”

“Let her go!” Dev screamed.

Nate’s hold slackened another degree. He still had his fist in her hair and his forearm locked around her, but maybe he was distracted just enough….

Megan threw herself to the side, felt the cold pain of the knife slicing into her shoulder as she went down. Cole was a blur of motion as he dove to the side.

Gunshots thundered and Megan felt the hot spray as blood and flesh exploded from Nate’s chest.

Another shot, and Nate fell to the side, half of his face blown away.

Then strong arms were around her, holding her tight as the bindings on her hands and legs were cut.