Worthington tried to stop her. Paige didn’t listen. The truck was blocked by the patrol car, so she told Jace, “Run,” put the goggles over her eyes again, and did it.
Her leg hurt, and so did her face and her shoulder. She ignored all of them. Down the paved road, around the corners. Jace was out in front of her, his long legs eating up the ground. Her lungs told her she hadn’t done anything aerobic in a month and that she had too many bee stingers in her body, and she ran anyway.
Please, Lily, she thought. Please be at Jace’s. Lily had said before that if somebody broke in, she’d run through the woods. If she hadn’t made it to Jace’s, though… where would she be? A bear, Paige’s treacherous mind tried to say. A mountain lion. The pulsing waves Paige was getting felt like that. Like fear, not pain. Like terror.
Less than five minutes to get down the road, and Jace had turned onto the gravel side road, was running uphill. They were almost to his house. She could hear something, now. The deep, husky sound of a very big dog barking.
Tobias was outside the cabin. One front leg tucked up against himself, crashing all the same into the front door, then doing it again. And barking. He turned at sight of Jace and Paige, and Jace ran up the stairs, his tread light, motioned Tobias back, and shoved the door open, moving inside with care and deliberation, shotgun first.
It was unlocked. Or more like—the lock was torn out, because the frame around the deadbolt was splintered. In the stone-flagged entryway, a metal box lay crumpled. The panel to the alarm, prised out of the wall.
The lights were off, and Jace didn’t turn them on. Paige slipped past him, signaled to him. I’ll go upstairs. You check down here.
He nodded. There was no sound, but there was somebody here. She felt it, and she knew Jace did, too. No car. No truck. But somebody was here. Lily would have slipped out the back again while the person was breaking in the front, taking on Tobias. She was out there in the dark, and somebody was hiding here, waiting for Jace. Paige hoped.
She moved up the stairs weapon-first, placing her feet as silently as she could. When a board creaked underfoot, she didn’t freeze. She kept going. Another creak.
Nothing.
No door to the bedroom, nothing but shadowy space. The heat-registering goggles weren’t picking up anybody, either. She swept the drapes at the two windows aside with a quick hand. Nothing.
Bathroom.
She’d cleared the door when the figure came at her from the right, from behind another door. Water heater, she registered even as somebody jumped onto her, smashing down on her gun hand with something very hard. The clunk of the revolver hitting the floor, and Paige felt a prick at her throat sharper than the bee stings, and then the warmth of blood.
“Don’t move,” the woman said, her voice low. Shaking. Furious. “I’ll kill you.”
Noise behind her, and the world lit up. Paige got that starburst again, had to close her eyes. The woman was shouting. Screaming.
“I’ll kill her! I’ll kill her! Stop!”
Jace skidded to a stop. He put a hand out for Tobias, but Tobias had already stopped, too.
Charlotte from the reception desk. Standing behind Paige with a knife at her throat. Too far away. Twelve feet. He couldn’t risk rushing her.
She was dressed in jeans and a navy-blue sweatshirt, but her hair wasn’t red. It was blonde, and long. A wig, Jace thought. Because this was who Charlotte wanted to be. A seductive blonde. The woman in red.
She probably engages with him, and then breaks it off rather than openly pursuing him, Dr. St. John had said. Charlotte, who’d blushed when he’d come into the gym. Who’d looked at him and looked away. He’d sent her into the locker room after Paige when she’d hurt her leg. He’d asked her to call 911—after she’d hit Paige in the head and tried to kill her. He could tell that had been her. He could see it. He could smell it. The willingness to kill.
He focused in. Focused hard. Charlotte held the knife to Paige’s throat and said, “Put the shotgun down on the floor. Slowly. And then kick it away. Now.” Like she’d watched too many cop shows.
A low growl rumbled out of Tobias’s deep chest, and Jace could tell that his eyes were fixed on Charlotte, that he’d leap at the smallest sign. Charlotte’s hand moved, the knife sliced, Paige flinched and closed her mouth against a cry, and a line of red snaked down her throat. “Do it now,” Charlotte said.
Jace did it. He sent the shotgun only a couple feet, though. She wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. He kept his voice level, too. “Why do you want to do this? What are you after?”
Charlotte said, “I don’t want to do it.” The tears came to her eyes, the hand holding the knife wobbled, and the stream of red down Paige’s throat grew. “I wasn’t going to hurt you. I just came to talk to you. But you never let me. You kept leaving with her.”
“How did you know somebody was here?” Jace asked. Keeping it steady. Keeping her talking. Keeping her from escalating. “I’ve been gone.”
Something else flickered across Charlotte’s face. Anger. “You must think I’m dumb. I was watching. I’ve been watching. I saw the light come on. I knew you had come back.”
“From where?” She blinked at him, and he asked, “Where were you watching?”
Her eyes shifted. “I don’t need to tell you that.”
“No, you don’t,” he said, “but how will I do what you want if I don’t understand?”
“I’ve been watching,” Charlotte said again.
Jace said, “You had my phone number and address from my membership application. You had my occupation, too. How did you figure out who I was? That took some good detective work.” He even managed to sound admiring. She thought they had a special bond? He’d work that. Right up until he killed her.
“I started watching you a long time ago,” Charlotte said. “I looked in the window one time and saw a stack of books on the table. I took a picture and I blew the picture up until I could see the name. And then I looked you up. I found out.”
“Ah,” Jace said. “Author copies. Very good. So what are we doing here? What does Lily have to do with any of it? Let her go, and we can sit and talk.”
Charlotte’s hand jerked again, and this time, a noise tried to escape Paige. The stream of blood was threatening to become a river, and there was no tourniquet in the world for that. He had to act. He had to do it now. “No,” Charlotte said. “They say not to let her go. They say I have to get rid of her.”
Three things happened very fast. The closet door beside Jace opened and Lily leaped out. Paige’s elbow drove into Charlotte’s solar plexus, doubling her over. And Tobias sprang. The dog leaped through the air from a standing start and sailed into the woman, knocking her flat and standing over her. Jace shouted, “Hold her!” but Tobias was already there, growling in her face, and Charlotte screamed.
Lily was there, too, though. Wrestling with Charlotte for the crowbar she still held in one hand, slashing at her hand, her arm with something small.
Jace’s razor. She must have grabbed it from the bathroom when she’d heard Charlotte breaking in. And then she’d hid in the closet.
“Keep your filthy hands,” Lily gasped, finally wrenching the crowbar from Charlotte, “off my sister!”
Charlotte was crying now, great gulping sobs. Blood welled from long, deep scratches on her arm and hand, and the blonde wig sat askew. “Stop,” she begged. “It hurts. I didn’t mean to… I didn’t…”
Lily didn’t listen, and neither did Jace. He motioned Tobias off, flipped Charlotte over without much care, wrenched her hands behind her back, held both her wrists in one hand, and sat on her.
Charlotte barely seemed to notice him. She had her head turned to the side, was still looking at Lily. “Wh… what?” she asked. “Who… what? But I got you. I got you! I won! You can’t… come back. You can’t come back.”
“I can come back,” Lily said. “I did come back. I’ll always come back for my sister. You lose.”
Not two halves of the same person at all. Two sisters with a whole lot in common. Because Paige was behind him, saying, her voice not shaking a bit, “I’ve got you covered with a shotgun, Charlotte. You move, and I’ll blast your brains all over this floor.” She asked Lily, “Where’s your phone? Call 911. Tell them to bring a cage, too. Because this woman is going to be locked up for a long, long time.”
Lily called. She didn’t ask for a cage. She asked for the police. “And you need to send an ambulance,” she added. “Fast. Right now.”
“She doesn’t deserve an ambulance,” Paige said. “And she doesn’t need one. She’s barely scratched. She rides in the cage.”
“Not for her,” Lily said. “For you.”
Jace would have sworn that Paige didn’t know what she was talking about. He almost laughed.
They’d won. Twice. He sat on a weeping Charlotte, held her bloody wrists in his hand, and told Paige, “You’re a wee bit damaged, baby. Half your face is twice its size, your neck is bleeding, and your hand looks like you’ve mangled it. And bloody hell, but I love you.”