Thirteen months

In those moments between sleeping and awakening—those isolated instances of time that could stretch out forever or snap back, tight and short like a rubber band—that’s where Alace was caught when she heard the truck’s engine, the sound growing louder as the vehicle approached. In those moments, she could be anyone she wanted to be. Right there where the tail end of dreams lingered and imagination soared. In those moments, she was young and beautiful, she was older and surrounded by family, she was rich and powerful, and she was living a hardscrabble life. She was everything.

Two breaths beyond those moments and her life dropped back into place in her head, the mass of reality suffocating. Without opening her eyes, she sucked in a hard breath of the already hot air, and blew it back out on a huff, scrubbing the inside of her mouth with her tongue, trying to erase the results of sleeping hard in the open air of northern New Mexico after drinking herself sick last night.

She lifted her hands and opened one eye in a narrow slit to try and see how crusted they might be from the evening’s activities, thankfully finding her palms and fingers, even her nails were blameless and clean.

The truck engine rumbled closer and closer, and she let the weight of her head roll it to one side, that single, slightly-opened eye struggling to focus. Greens and browns swam into view. She sighed.

Ranger Rick.

She didn’t actually know the man’s name, but he’d made it a point to check on her every fucking morning for the past two weeks. From months in the park with no notice paid to her presence to a daily welfare assessment, it struck her as odd. Odd was never good. At first, she’d thought he was looking to make bank for the park on fines if she didn’t have her permits in place. Or make bank on bribes to keep those fines from hitting the official books. Or he’d be after a different kind of currency to pay those fines. Oldest profession in the world, if not an honorable one. Those thoughts fell by the wayside quickly when all he ever asked after was her well-being. He seemed to simply care about the people under his protection, which—given his position—was every visitor who set foot inside the entire fucking national park.

I can’t deal with him today, she thought, and closed her eye. Grunting, she struggled with her sleeping bag, rolling to her stomach while keeping it straight under and around her. Sliding the off-side zipper down a little more than halfway, she arranged it to cover her ass while letting her bare leg lay uncovered. She’d found the quickest way to get rid of Ranger Rick was to flash a little skin, and it didn’t matter if she had her shorts on underneath or not. If she made him think she was naked, he wouldn’t come close.

Him coming close was a risk she wasn’t willing to take. Even one with an erratic schedule, a forestry employee this active would be missed, and Alace had that long list of rules which included things she wouldn’t do. Dealing with the kind of attention that would come from someone like him going missing was high on that list. Don’t shit where you eat. That’s what her mother had taught her long ago, showing by her actions that when it did happen, you turned and skedaddled as quickly as you could. It was the only way to avoid dealing with consequences.

Propping up on her elbows, she gave a quick look at her cleavage, intending to verify there was enough showing to make him uncomfortable. That’s when she saw the red stains on her shirt. With a grimace, she flopped to her belly, crossing her arms in front of her and resting her forehead on them. Now that she was aware of it, she felt the fabric sticking all along her chest and belly. She huffed out another breath, this one sounding different even to her ears.

Last night had been the worst one in a long time.

The knife rising to glitter in the light that bled in from outside. A dark spray of shining liquid across the walls and ceiling. Experiencing a terrifying shimmy of the handle trying to escape her grip as it wedged between bones when she thrust deep. Even the smell was embedded in her memories, fear and anger vying with the bright copper scent of aortic blood. Alace shivered.

“If you’re cold, you should get a better bag.” The man’s voice was closer than she expected, and Alace jerked her head up, glaring at him through squinted eyes.

“Hey, Ranger Rick,” she said, settling her cheek onto her crossed arms. “How’s it hanging?”

“Ma’am, I think the better question is how are you doing?” Warm brown eyes stared at her in concern, and for an instant, Alace wondered if she had anything on her face to worry about. “You’re not usually asleep this far into the day.”

Glancing around, she gauged the time by the sun’s position, coming up with midafternoon. He wasn’t wrong. Normally she was up with the sun, making coffee and breakfast before the campers rolled out of their tents. A quick perusal of her site showed everything in order. Her food bag was hanging about a hundred feet into the woods, her backpack dangled from a hook in the rafters of this little picnic table shelter, and she and her sleeping bag were on top of the table. Easier to avoid critters of all sorts by sleeping up here.

“Recovery day.” Total bullshit and a blatant lie. She hadn’t hiked enough to warrant a recovery day, hadn’t expended enough energy on anything, really. Except for last night. She sighed. “Girl can always use a little more beauty sleep.”

“All right, Thistle,” he said, using the trail name she’d provided the first day. “As long as you’re okay, I’ll be on my way.”

“Right as rain.” A little extra pep in her voice was the encouragement he needed, and she watched as he strolled back to his truck. One minute and a lifted hand later, he was gone, dust from his slow passage barely stirring off the roadbed.

Thistle. She yawned wide, jaw cracking, and worked her way onto her back. Need to get Regg to use that one next. Sutton had worked for this gig, a noncommittal, non-regional, gender-neutral, fucking nondenominational name. She lifted a hand and sank roughened fingertips far into her eye sockets, letting the ache build along with the flaring lights before releasing. The sudden lack of pressure helped to relieve her headache somewhat. She’d never done something like that before. Gotten drunk after a gig.

There was a buzz from something that felt like a stone wedged against her ass, rumbling against the cement tabletop through the light padding of her bag. Fumbling under the sleeping bag, she dug into her pocket and pulled out her phone. A phone that shouldn’t be in her pocket and on, but in a waterproof bag tucked inside her backpack. Fucking, fucking phone.

Fourteen missed calls. What the fuck? Propping up on an elbow, she stared at the numbers. Regg’s number showed, which wasn’t expected even though he knew she was close. Alace had told him on their last check-in that she’d isolated the information she needed and simply had to find the opportune moment. Or create it, as she had last night. The reservation cop stopping to help a stranded motorist, a nail-punctured flat tire on the junker she’d bought for two hundred bucks cash had proved just enough of a lure. After she’d knocked him out, the stocky Native American man had been heavier than she’d expected, but she’d managed to lever him up and over the back bumper of his vehicle.

Leaving the junker was easy. The original owner’s name still on the title meant she had no tie to the car. It had been hours before the cop’s radio had crackled to life, the dispatcher calling his name with such a tired lack of interest Alace knew he often went off the grid.

Off the grid, and into the woods. She hadn’t been present for his last kill, no. If she were, she would have stopped it, letting the little fourteen-year-old runaway go free if she’d had the chance. Alace had seen the aftermath up close and personal, though, when she’d toured his cabin last night. She’d found the child still strung up like a deer, ponytail tied to the waistband of her pants with a frayed shoestring, working as a harness to keep her head bent backwards and out of the way, letting the last of the girl’s blood drain into the bucket that fucking res cop had set so tidily beneath her.

Alace had ID’d the kid from a Tennessee junior high school lunch ticket she found in a backpack. The sum total of the backpack’s contents had been the ID and a red sweatshirt. The backpack had been stacked along the wall, last in a line of twelve. Before everything was said and done, Alace had spent part of the day scouring the woods, finding his burial sites for most of the kids represented in that line.

By the time he came to, groggy from the blow to the head mixed with a nose full of the chloroform he kept in a duffle by the door, she had everything ready. Admission of guilt took no time at all. Officer Waterdrum had no hesitation about telling her what he’d done. His term for the kids, calling them disposable children, turned her stomach. “A kindness.” He’d claimed his end was more merciful than what awaited most runaways.

The damned thing was…Alace didn’t entirely disagree with him. At seventeen, if offered the choice between going peacefully to sleep and not waking up, or being gang raped by men and boys she would have to look in the eye for months afterward—twenty-twenty hindsight. Alace knew she would have picked death.

Regg would say she was still trying to pick that path.

Why does it always have to be kids? she thought, still staring down at her phone. That was the real reason for the drinking. She hadn’t been able to get the girl’s face out of her head. Wide-open eyes, staring at nothing but the floor, but her gorgeous red hair tied into a fucking ponytail and kept out of the gore surrounding her.

Regg’s number was on the screen, but there was another one, too. An area code she recognized, and a number she knew, but it wasn’t in her contacts on this phone. Hadn’t been a contact for more than two years.

Thumb to the screen, she flipped to recent outgoing calls. One. One in the past week. Three in history before that, in the thirteen months since getting this phone and becoming Sutton, she’d only called Regg. Then, last night, apparently wasted and without any sense of self-preservation, she’d called fucking, fucking Eric. Tapping the three dots that led to more information, she stared at the screen. Sixty-two minutes.

Alace collapsed backwards onto the table. Unblinking, she stared up into the sun Ranger Rick had so helpfully announced was high in the sky. Jesus, what did I tell him? Eyes shut tightly, searching her memories, she found a trailing edge of a single word, then followed that bare thread to the softer resonance of Eric’s voice saying her name, “Alace.” Once she had that, the rest came easier, and she began to piece things together, word by word, sentence by sentence, until she was sure she had nearly the entire hour of conversation.

“Alace, baby. Tell me where you are.” Eric’s plea was soft, cajoling, sweet as syrup, and she wanted to lap it up, let him rest on her tongue for a long time.

“You always tasted so good. How did you do that?” Slurring so badly it was like the sounds were foreign in her own head, so it was a wonder he was able to make any sense out of her words. “Addictive. Minute I tasted you, whoosh, man, I was gone. ’F you could bottle that shit, you’d make a mint.”

“Baby, where are you?”

“Can’t tell ya. ’Gainst the rules. I live by the rules.” She cupped the phone to her face, trying to get closer to Eric. “Can’t tell ya.”

“Okay, if you can’t tell me where you are, then tell me you’re okay. Are you safe, baby?” His voice dropped an octave, the rough gravel in his tone pulling a shiver from her bones. “Please be okay, baby.”

“’S okay. I’m always okay.” Outside the cabin, she’d laid back on the hood of the reservation police car, eyes on the stars wheeling overhead. “Best lie I know. I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine. You’re drunk.” Eric wasn’t laughing, which surprised her. “Who’s there with you, baby?”

Rolling her head to stare at the open cabin door, she sighed. “Red’s here for now. She don’t gotta worry about the big bad wolf anymore.” Alace turned onto her side, curling up, tucking her knees close to her chest as she faced away from the cabin. “None of us do. I played Granny’s part tonight.”

“Didn’t Red Riding Hood’s granny get eaten?” He sounded nearly frantic now, words coming faster than she could make sense of them at the time. “Baby, don’t get eaten. Don’t get caught. Tell me where you are. I can help you get out of this. I know people. I have friends. I can make it all go away.”

“Depends on the fairy tale.” Alace stared at the unmoving darkness behind the opening she knew led into a scene from hell. She remembered the blood splattering, flung far and wide by her frenzied attack on his still breathing body. “In my story, Granny’s the one who kills the wolf.”

“I like your version, baby. That’s a good one. The best. Tell me where you are.”

The empty bottle mocked her from its position on the top stone step. One of three that lead upwards into the cop’s lair. “No stairway to heaven, that’s for sure.” She rolled to her back, eyes once again on the cold, unblinking stars. “No heaven for the likes of me.” Pushing to a seated position, she leaned back on an arm as the world swung around her. “Whoa. Dizzy.” She waited it out, Eric’s voice a pleasant anchor to reality, even if she couldn’t make out the words. Propping the phone to her ear with a shoulder, she dug out a scrap of paper from her pocket. “I gotta go now, Eric, before someone comes. I shouldn’t have called.”

“No, baby. Stay on the phone with me. It’s just you and me, yeah?” He stumbled for a moment, his words for once not coming smoothly. “I just…I’ve missed you, Alace. I saw you in Mobile.”

“I saw you, too.” She unrolled the paper, smoothing it flat against her leg. “I kept your number.” Scrawled along the paper, angled across the evenly spaced lines in a way it couldn’t be contained was Eric’s phone number. He’d given it to her the first night they’d talked, the first night they’d kissed. Given it to her before he came back, when he didn't yet know what they might have been.

“I’m glad. So glad, baby. Keep it. I’ll always pick up for you.”

They’d talked about nothing from there forwards, just words to fill the void, and Alace had let him lead the conversation. He’d pulled her in, lulling her with soft renditions of his everyday life. A life she’d never had. She’d gone from being Alace to what she was today. The fourth or fifth time he’d tried to get her to tell him where she was she’d slipped, dropping the tiniest of comments about camping. Eric hadn’t pounced, not right away. He’d waited, which was unfortunate for him since it meant she’d had nearly an hour of sobering up under her belt. So when he pushed, asking about a series of state parks she at least hadn’t blurted out anything. However, her very silence was telling for him, and she’d known it.

“Baby, I can help. I promise. I’ve been piecing things together, and I know why you do what you do.” Sweet and soft, his words ran through her veins like liquid cocaine, sending her heart into overdrive. She hadn’t responded, and he pushed again. “You’re not the bad guy, Alace. I know that. Baby.” He paused, and she wondered if he was wavering on how to push her next. She was wrong. “We don’t have to talk about that. Just be safe. Always be safe, yeah?”

She’d hung up after that. Hung up and then sat crying for an hour. It was all the time she could allow herself. She’d had a hell of a lot of work to do, and still had to be back here before sunrise.

I didn’t tell him where I was. She held tight to that knowledge. Him not knowing meant she could let the rest of the gig play out. He might guess, but he couldn’t know, not from what she’d said. So she’d wait and see who the cops looked at, since she thought the wolf in cop’s clothing had an accomplice, but hadn’t been able to get a name out of the man last night. Got a lot of other stuff out of him. She glanced at her backpack, the bottom section where her bag would normally go already packed full with bricks of cash. Seemed selling parts of little girls was a lucrative biz, who knew? Fetish out there for everything. She yawned, then had a thought that made her shiver, skin crawling with goose bumps. At least he hadn’t killed them inside first. Small wonder, that. He’d only killed their shells, not their souls.

***

Ugh. She hiked the backpack higher on her shoulders, trying to relieve the pain where the straps were cutting into her muscles. It was far too heavy to be comfortable, and she’d known she was pushing it before she set off from the campsite. If she could make it to town, she’d scavenge a box from behind the local liquor store then beg some tape from a clerk. The address she’d memorized years ago was great for things like this. It would forward to another address, then that location would put the box inside a new box, and that would be sent on its way another two times before it ended its journey in Regg’s hands.

Time consuming to set up, and Regg argued against the maintenance of the process every time she used it. But, and here was where it became worth it, packages sent this way were virtually untraceable. Regg would get the box and deal with the contents in a way that split the take sixty/forty.

She’d already decided half of her money would go to help support a runaway shelter on the east coast. If kids like Red had a place to go that was safe and confidential, they might not end up in the hands of men like Waterdrum. Escaping from abusive homes, or abusive relationships, or sometimes just from their own reactions to the shit life threw at people, if they had a better option to escape to, it could make the difference between life and death. She shook her head, trying to dislodge visions of the girl hanging from the bar, feet spread wide, head tipped back at an unnatural angle.

One of her marks—a self-castrated priest who made people forget it wasn’t just the pricks men had in their pants that could do deadly damage—had a parrot. That parrot had screamed at her every time she walked into the man’s house. Screamed and screamed, sounding like someone in agony. After a few times, the parrot had begun to alternate caterwauling and shouted words. It had taken Alace nearly a week of daily visits to sort out the words, since the minute the parrot—its name was Walter—began talking, the priest would give it a gnaw bone to keep it busy. Keep it quiet, she thought. Put this in your mouth, little boy.

On the last visit to the priest’s house, made so by her actions later the same night, Walter had greeted her when she walked in, strutting his stuff by pacing back and forth across the wooden floor of the foyer. Not in his cage, not on his perch, it seemed the bird had escaped captivity just in time to welcome the cleaning lady. She’d crouched and offered a cupped hand, smiling when the parrot’s soft, heated feet had gripped her fingers, claws slipping harmlessly into the spaces between. “Hi, Walter,” she’d said, and braced for the screams.

What she’d gotten had been so much worse.

“Please, Father.” A stuttering little-boy’s voice came out of the bird’s throat, his beak held wide as he forced the unnatural sounds. “I don’t wanna die. I don’t wanna die. Die in here. I’ll die in here. Please. Father die, don’t make me die.” She lifted the bird, reaching to stroke the back of his gray head, fingertips slowly ruffling and scratching down to the skin, wanting in a small corner of her active brain to soothe the animal. Walter tipped his head forwards for a moment, then shook and looked at her out of one yellow eye. “Don’t hurt me, Father. Please. I’m good. Good boys don’t go in the closet.” Goose bumps shivered into life on her arms when the bird spoke next, his tone and cadence an imitation of the priest’s speech. “Good boys don’t tell their Father no. Good boys do what they’re told.” Walter whipped his head side to side, shrieking in the little-boy’s voice, “No, Father. Please, Father. Please. Die. Die. Please. Don’t.”

There was a closet in the priest’s study she’d been told to steer clear of. The reason given about how it held the filing cabinet with the parishioners’ personal information. The priest’s instructions to the temp agency had been very specific. Light dusting and vacuuming only in the study, all locked doors to be respected.

Walter looked at her again, then twisted his neck so his head lay along his back, upside down. He was back to wailing like a banshee, wave after wave of raw sound that now held a bleeding edge of little boy. The priest came bustling into the foyer, hands out to take Walter from her, scolding him in a mockery of an old man’s voice. “What’s this? Tut, tut, Walter. Bad bird.” His words seemed to trigger the bird and again he screamed, “Don’t hurt me, Father. Please. I’m good. No dark for me. Please.”

Alace met the man’s eyes as she handed over the bird, and they shared a moment. The kind of meeting of the minds she’d come to believe was a mutual understanding. He saw how she’d sorted out his secrets. Recognized what she was, his face collapsing in on itself in resignation. She knew he needed to die. He knew death stalked him, walking through his house wielding a dustrag. Somehow, just from looking in her face, he knew.

Alace was expecting the call from the temp agency early the next morning, the young receptionist telling her the job was canceled. Not that she’d put it in so many words. No, it wouldn’t be professional to spread rumors about clients. But, while Alace was waiting for a reassignment, the girl on the phone let drop that it seemed the priest had offed himself during the night. Listening to that, Alace had smirked at herself in the bathroom mirror of the one-bedroom apartment she was renting. He’d done more than kill himself. He’d killed himself by first ingesting nearly an entire spool of unedited videotape, then by braiding a rope out of his several cinctures and stepping off a chair.

His still seemed one of the more fitting ends she’d orchestrated. The cincture was supposed to symbolize the virtues of chastity and exercising of self-constraint in sexual matters. Ending his life was the only way to truly gird that man’s loins. While man’s medicine might have taken away his body’s ability to get it up to rape little boys, they’d left him his fingers and teeth. That’s what was all captured on the video she’d shoved down his gullet, as well as on the piles of other videos in the massive filing cabinet taking up half the space in the closet. The other half contained a tiny staircase that led to a hallway terminating in a tinier room under the baptismal.

Walter. The motion he’d made with his neck reminded her of how Red’s neck had been stretched back. Like she’d had extra joints, flexible in death as she’d never have been while breathing. Alace’s stomach rolled, quietly threatening. A soft crunching edged into her consciousness, and Alace glanced over her shoulder to see a vehicle approaching at a crawl, barely fast enough to stir dust on this dry-as-a-bone gravel road. The hood was all she could really see, and it was painted a familiar shade of green. Ranger Rick. Alace rolled her eyes, stopped and turned to face the oncoming vehicle, feet planted wide. I do not have time for this shit.

The SUV pulled even with her as the passenger window silently lowered, “Hey, Thistle. Need a ride?”

She’d opened her mouth to explain half the fun in hiking was the part where you actually walked places when he moved. Held close to his leg, the black rectangle in his hand caught her attention, and with an instinctive reaction, she was already turning away, preparing to sprint at a slant into the woods when he lifted and triggered the Taser. Alace’s body went rigid, and the sky swapped places with the trees edging the road. There was a burst of brilliance, disorienting her. It was followed by a hollow ringing in her ears and splitting pain in her head. She felt the biting angles of sharp-edged gravel grind into the skin of her elbows and skull, her back and shoulders protected by the backpack.

Ranger Rick’s face appeared above her, and he grunted, tugging on the silver wires that connected them. “Damn. Caught the strap.” Alace’s chest was on fire, burning like she’d been stung by a hundred wasps. She felt her skin lift, then his arm moved and made a sharp motion that correlated to a pinching pain in her shoulder. Her arm hurt like someone had dipped it in kerosene and set it afire. She’d seen a pack of street kids do that to a cat once. Down in Miami. She’d been a homeless person for that gig, the ending of which saw her taking a four-hour shower and still feeling as if she’d never be clean. The cat had yowled like she wanted to, but trying to suck in air was beyond her right now. The weight on her chest shouted heart attack, while the electrocuted parts kept her lips stitched firmly shut. The cat had run away, hoping to leave the agony from its tormentors behind, never knowing there’d be no escape. Some pain follows you all your life.

“Thistle, I’m going to put you in my car now. I want you to be quiet, or I’ll have to hit you again.” Her brain must have short-circuited and lost a few minutes, because she found herself lying in the gravel at the back of the SUV, not alongside the road. Why? Her brain was screaming the question, but all she could hear over his panting breaths from the exertion of moving her were odd grunting sounds. A moment passed and the world spun, shifting so the roofline of the SUV bisected the sky which had gone upside down, tops of the trees inserting themselves into the top of her vision, her brain too scrambled to interpret the images.

Gloom descended, and she felt her body being moved, then something touched her face, and true darkness enveloped her.

When she came to, she was just as confused. It took a moment for her vision to resolve into an up-close view of carpeting that covered a vehicle’s seatbacks. Dark gray and nubby, if the seats were laid down, they’d form a solid floor big enough to stretch out across, instead of the tiny space between the last row of seats and the back doors. Alace jerked her wrists, but the material used to bind her bit in, tearing her skin. Zip tie, fuck. She tried to sit up, but her legs were bent, and when she attempted to straighten them the restraints on her wrists tightened painfully. Hogtied.

Quiet crunching from under the vehicle, the soft pings against metal telling her they were still on a gravel road. That didn’t mean anything. Nearly all the roads around the park were dirt or gravel, and once you crossed the line onto the reservation, it was the same. Her excesses from the previous night weren’t far enough from present, not yet. Even with the hike, the alcohol had not quite sweated out of her system, and she found the heaviness of her eyelids threatening to pull her back under. Alace shook her head, bumping the back door with a soft thud. That noise interrupted the sounds that had been so muted and innocuous she hadn’t even noticed them until they were gone.

He’d been talking to himself. Ranger Rick didn’t like quiet, it seemed. She lay still and waited, flexing her fingers to try and stave off the worsening pinprick sensations. Out here, the normal radio stations didn’t reach, and the DNR wasn’t the kind of organization to spend money on satellite music for their rangers. Alace lay as still as possible, holding her body against the lurch and sway of the vehicle’s chassis. After a moment, Ranger Rick began again, and with his first words, her blood ran chill in her veins.

“Waterdrum was always too sloppy. I told him a thousand times, bury them on the res. Did he listen? No. I told him. More than once. Man had an argument for everything. No weak blood on tribal land, not for whites, trash belonged with trash. A thousand reasons and what did they get him? Dead. That’s what they got him. Dead.”

Jesus, fuck. Ranger Rick had been working with Waterdrum. He was the blind partner. Jesus, how did I not see that? Ranger Rick had been so far off her radar, she hadn’t even bothered to find out his real name. She had no intel on him, no info, nothing to help her through this current situation. Jesus. Waterdrum didn’t have anything on her kind of slop, it seemed. Slippery slop if it meant her radar hadn’t even pinged weird on this dude. Hell, she’d stood still and let him drive up to her while rolling her eyes, because he was just a nuisance. A nuisance who got the drop on me, and a hell of an annoyance who knows his way around a zip tie.

The angle of the floor under her tilted as the nose of the vehicle slanted down, and she rocked forwards against the seatback. A moment later she heard water, then splashing against the tires as they rolled through a creek. Alace took in a careful breath. If there was a pothole in the middle of—the vehicle lurched as first the front then the rear wheel churned through the deeper water of a dip. He’s taking me back to Waterdrum’s cabin. A place she’d walked away from only hours before, stopping midstream in this creek to try and wash the worst of the blood from her hands and face. The logical idea was that he knew she’d been the one to kill his partner. It wasn’t much of a leap to assume he would want to deal out damage in return. The engine revved, wheels slipping and losing purchase on the riverbed, then gaining traction.

Gingerly, she tested her bonds again. No give at all, but her wrists were skin to skin, which meant he’d only used a single tie there. The ties felt thin. If she could manage to get her hands in front of her, that would be easily broken. She’d need to solve the hogtie situation first. With a few moments work, she knew she could accomplish it, but there were tools and supplies stacked around her. That had been what the thump came from earlier. Not her head hitting the door, but hitting a bag that knocked against the door. If she tried to turn to her back and worm her wrists around her ass, she might as well ring the dinner bell. Shivering, she thrust away the idea of Ranger Rick lifting a sliver of raw meat to his lips. Stop it. This wasn’t the worst situation she’d ever found herself in, not by a long shot. And at least now she was older and better trained. Not overly confident, but still, experience had to count for something, right?

“Woman worth her salt.”

She heard the words clear as a bell. Then the car was crashing around her, body and head pelted with fast-moving debris. Alace hunched her shoulders, eyes closing just before her face impacted the leg of the seat in front of her. Agony burst into life under the skin of her nose and forehead, and she blinked slowly, every reaction blunted by the pain. Ranger Rick was cursing, his voice echoing over the sound of a hissing radiator and crunching metal, the grinding shriek of whatever had impacted them dragging along the side of the vehicle. Gravel pelted off the inside of the wheel wells as the SUV slid sideways, tilting enough to launch a new onslaught of projectiles to bounce off her body before settling back onto all four wheels.

Alace gathered herself enough to take advantage of the overpowering noise, pulling her wrists up at the same time she forced her feet down and out. She needed three hard yanks like that to break the tie securing wrists to ankles and knew her arms were bleeding when she was finally successful.

The engine revved loudly, then started knocking, the metal in the motor hammering hard enough to shake the vehicle. Ranger Rick’s voice was a shout now, and the SUV gave a lurch forwards, then slid sideways again, the sound of water all around. Sudden silence from the engine left the man’s wordless yelling louder than ever, and Alace twisted around to find no handles on the inside of the doors behind her. She jerked one foot up while pushing one down, nearly smacking herself in the face with a knee as her ankles were suddenly freed. Hands, she thought, turning to her back as a cascade of noises chimed her movement, bottles, and camp stove fuel tanks rattling and jostling for space against each other. Alace’s arm chilled immediately, and she looked to see water seeping under the doors. The sound of the water was close, running swiftly, and she knew if they’d been swept off the graveled crossing, the water could be deep enough to partially submerge the vehicle. She wiggled, bringing her knees up to her chest, pointing her toes as much as she could in the hiking boots as she shoved her arms down, spreading her elbows as wide as possible.

The vehicle moved again, and as it shifted side to side, her heart jolted, pumping triple time as she heard Ranger Rick, still cursing, coughing as he made his way towards her. Just as her arms maneuvered free of her boots and she brought her elbows down to either side fast, breaking the tie, his head popped over the seat, blood coating half his face. Silent, lips moving soundlessly, his eyes were squinted tight. What she could see of them were bloodshot and weeping. As the smell of bear spray made its way to where she lay, Alace squinted her eyes, mouth sealed tight as he lunged over the seat, his hand swiping the air within a foot of her face.

She rolled, shoving her face into the scant inches of water at the back of the SUV. Back and forth, she scrubbed against the saturated carpeting as the stinging set in. It felt like her sinuses were on fire, as if she’d snorted ghost pepper juice for the fun of it on a dare. The skin of her face grew taut, already swelling from the capsaicin used to make the bear spray effective against a thousand-pound bear. The canister must have ruptured in the wreck.

Sudden, brutal pressure across her chest had her gasping in a lungful of water. She surfaced coughing and choking, eyes running with tears and refusing to open. Disoriented for the umpteenth time today, she felt something pulling at her shoulders, then a hard bar scraped across her low back before she dropped what felt like two-feet onto a bouncy surface. Flailing with her hands, she caught fabric and yanked, tearing whatever it was she’d grabbed. More pulling at her shoulders, another stomach-churning drop, this one farther down, then she was moving horizontally before dropping again, finally onto a solid surface. Rocks and sticks poked the backs of her arms, scratching streaks across the backside of her legs as she was dragged, still gagging from the strength of the bear spray.

It took Alace a moment to register she’d stopped moving, that the rocks imprinting on her ass were stationary and not a fresh discovery with already raw flesh. Eyes closed, she lurched, trying to sit up, yanked backwards by the backpack strap still fastened across her chest. Fingers to the clasp, she released it, rocking forward to get her legs underneath her in an effort to get up and away.

A thick-sounding shout, as if Ranger Rick’s throat was filled with phlegm, then hard fingers latched onto her arm. Forward momentum halted, Alace stumbled and lost the precarious hold she had on her balance. Falling backwards, she flung out her arm, hearing Ranger Rick curse as her elbow caught some part of his anatomy. She still couldn’t open her eyes, tears streaming down her face, and even in the clutch of panic, her brain compared how he sounded to the way her nose was flowing, and she thought he must have gotten a worse dose of the spray than she had.

An arm, thick as an Amazon anaconda, wrapped around her throat, and Alace pried her eyes open finally, the barest sliver, shocked when she realized it was still broad daylight. Somehow between being hit with the Taser, waking up to find herself kidnapped, involved in an accident that included the possibility of drowning instead of being killed by a serial killer—it seemed absurd for it to not be the deepest part of night. Breath choked off, Alace barely had time to rip at his arm in an effort to free herself and think the fainting game, and then she was gone for what had to be a very long time.

When she came to next, the stench of blood on the air gave away her location.

Waterdrum’s cabin.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise since she’d figured out that was where Ranger Rick was headed when he wrecked his Park Service SUV. Still, it caught her off-guard. She hadn’t intended to ever return, and didn’t want to see the scene again, knowing it would play with her memories of Red’s slaughter. Swollen eyes fighting every opening blink, she forced herself to look around. Trussed up again, the same kind of ties probably, given the bright pain of her wrists, she’d been tossed to the side, wedged against the bottom of a wall like windblown trash.

Same cabin, same room, same smells—very different scenery.

Hanging from the suspension bar was Waterdrum. Alace stared in disbelief, fighting her stomach’s immediate revulsion, gagging at how his corpse had been butchered. Oh my God, oh my God. It wasn’t the evidence of the multiple killing blows she’d landed in her frenzy to make him pay for the children he’d killed that had her writhing against her bonds, no, what was twisting her insides was the sight of him gutted. Jesus. Entrails laid in several tidy piles in plastic bins, it looked as if the heart and liver had been separated from the intestines and other offal. What…why? Ribs gaping wide, bones outstretched as if they were welcoming someone in for a grisly hug, her mind imposed the image of an innocent Red on his body, and she shuddered, glad he hadn’t gotten that far before she stopped him.

Where the fuck is Ranger Rick?

Alace found no answers from Waterdrum. His hands had been removed, and even trying to not see details, she noted there were entire pieces of him carved off. If she’d been looking at a prime cut diagram, she’d label them as rump, flank, and shoulder. Alace swallowed hard, her throat working furiously to force down bitter bile, eyes burning with the effort. She’d left him lying on the floor, fleeing the cabin after she’d regained enough sobriety to realize her mistakes, but someone—likely Ranger Rick—had strung him up. She strained against her bonds again. Fuck.

A sound from outside forced itself onto her awareness, the soft whoomph of a heavy object being placed on a padded surface, a bass grunt signaling effort. Alace allowed her lids to droop almost closed, filtering light with her lashes to see who was coming in through the door. Pausing just outside the opening, Ranger Rick stamped his feet twice on the porch, courteously clearing his boots of debris before walking into the dead man’s cabin. He had on a pair of chest-high waders and a plastic rain jacket, open to show bright yellow suspenders. Without even glancing her direction, he moved through the room and into the back where she knew the kitchen was. He returned a moment later with a large knife, jacket now fastened tight around his neck. One gloved hand on the body, he studiously spun it in a slow circle, paying careful attention as he paused here and there, finally settling it with the corpse facing away.

Alace watched with disbelief as he prodded Waterdrum’s back, hips to waist, poking hard with a stiffened thumb, grunting when he seemed to identify whatever he’d been feeling for. He set the knife to a section of flesh low on Waterdrum’s back, skin already removed in a strip. Wiggling the knife’s tip into the muscles alongside the dip showing the man’s spine, he drew it down towards Waterdrum’s neck.

The steel sliced through the soft flesh, and Alace couldn’t look away, sickly fascinated with the skill and speed with which it was used. Hissing undertones of sound accompanied four long cuts, the swiftness telling her everything she didn’t want to know about Rick’s experience and expertise with the flashing blade he wielded. Pink-tinged bone shone through the open space, silver fascia covering the different muscles. All the things intended by God to be hidden, exposed for her to see.

Rick worked his fingers into the cut he’d made, parting and easing it open wider and wider until at last, he grasped the exposed wad of meat with his fingers, one hand steadying the carcass while he ripped the length of backstrap from the body.

Still not looking at her, he began murmuring, and as his words became audible. It chilled her to realize that of the pair, Waterdrum may have been the sane one.

“Every man’s worth something. Gotta find out what that is, sort the good from the bad. Wheat from chaff. Find the balance between the light and dark.” He lifted a hand to wipe sweat from his forehead, painting a broad swath of red across his skin. “Wheat from chaff.”

The efficient separation of flesh from the human carcass produced a noise unlike anything Alace had ever heard.

A memory crawled along the edges of her mind. Anything would be better than this. Closing her eyes for a moment, she concentrated, trying to bring it into focus.

She’d lived in Florida a long time ago. The gig had her staying in a camper park near a resort. One of the things almost all the residents had in common was the sheer quantity of offspring they produced. Towards the end of the day, those children would run the park in packs separated by age, older of the kids searching out hidden places to light their stolen smokes and the younger moving in waves from trailer to trailer at the whim of the current ringleader. Those groups only flocked together when the ice cream truck would make an appearance, the bright music luring them close.

She’d happened to be outside one night when the ice-cream truck came. Sitting on an open tailgate, legs swinging through hot, humid air, the only breeze was stirred by her movement. There had been three kids left at the end of a line that had snaked for a half an hour towards the window set in the side of the truck, disappointed when the driver announced he’d run out of drumsticks, the local favorite. In recompense, he’d given those kids frozen ice pops for half price.

She remembered, wishing for once she could forget.

The sound their mouths made as they slurped the fruit-flavored ice on a stick had been obscene. Obscene to the point the man she’d been sitting next to had blushed bright red. The kids were determined though, not willing to let a single drop of their rapidly turning-to-slush treats escape. Slurping and swallowing with a loud suck, the kids had walked past and into the gathering night, careful—as all Florida kids were—to watch for the dangerous shine of eyes in the dips separating the camper lots.

She opened her eyes. That sound didn’t hold a candle to what Rick was doing to Waterdrum’s body. He paused and stepped back. Leaning to one side, he grabbed something balanced on the edge of a bucket, and his arms began making steady, measured movements. The harsh scraping sound of a knife blade on sharpening stone filled the air, and she breathed deeper for a moment, relieved he’d stopped even as the sour at the back of her throat filled her nose with burning fumes.

“Wheat from chaff.” Rick—at some point she’d unconsciously abandoned the helpful-sounding Ranger—spoke quietly as he approached the body again, aiming himself at the other edge of Waterdrum’s spine. His knife flashed again, the blade making ticking noises against rib bones, bringing to mind picket fences and sticks, small bodies flying as they ran along, their plaything of choice easily discarded if the homeowner was discontent at the plunking along his fence. “Man’s gotta be good for something, needs to stand for something. Still—” Rick grunted, elbow jerking as the knife sawed through a bone. “—looking for yours, Waterdrum. I told you.” Another grunt, then a section of ribs sagged free, and he leaned over to place it in a container. “Wheat from chaff.”

He’s occupied. Find a way out. Alace closed her eyes for a moment, focusing on her bonds for the second time that day. Ankles and wrists restrained separately this time, she tested the bounds of movement allowed, finding more than before. It made sense; he’d been impacted by the spray more than her, and with the SUV in the middle of the creek, he would have only had the contents of his pockets. She moved cautiously to check circulation, cheek pressed to the floor, and awareness of her body let the stench from the blood-soaked boards drive into her brain like a spike. Pushing that away, she wiggled her fingers and toes, relieved to find them stiff but not tingling. All I have to do is break free again. The ties would make noise as they gave way, so she’d have to wait until he left the cabin once more.

Rick had removed the other rib section while she’d been busy inside her head and laid it in the same container. He straightened and studied the body for a moment, slowly twirling it left then right. With a jerk, he twisted to face her, and Alace rejected her body’s demand for more air, movement, anything—keeping her breathing steady and shallow, eyes closed so only the barest of shadows could be seen through her lashes. After a moment, there was the sound of steps moving away, and the scrape of the container’s bottom against the sticky floor told her he’d been satisfied with her performance.

Lids lifting a miniscule amount, she followed the dark outline of his body as he moved to the door and through it, forcing herself to wait for an eternity of five seconds before she began working her way free. Fifteen seconds more and she was kneeling on the floor, angling to see out the door. Waterdrum’s vehicle was still parked in front of the cabin where she’d left it, and Rick was stacking the container in the open back, adding it to the myriad of boxes already placed inside.

She had taken a single step towards the front door when Rick lifted his head, and she froze, thinking he had somehow heard her movement. A moment later, she realized he’d caught the grinding noise of an engine in the distance. Having walked out from the cabin just hours ago—Is it still the same day? She dismissed the thought as unimportant—she knew there were no buildings nearby. The road continued past the cabin only to make a wide loop through the trees, probably used by semis when winter hay was trucked in for the venison herds. A vehicle this close meant either Rick had called for reinforcements, or he was about to be interrupted by someone unexpected.

From his aggressive stance, she suspected the latter.

Creeping along the wall, Alace secured a position near the single window at the front of the cabin where she could keep an eye both on Rick and the approach to the cabin. A dark SUV drove into view, crawling up the rough road, front end rocking as the suspension took a beating navigating over the rocks exposed by recent erosion. Dust was thick along the side panels, and the front plate on the vehicle was familiar, a neighboring state to the north. The whole damn vehicle was familiar.

Rick moved, opened the driver door of the police car and stood in the space. She recognized this as a way to mask the state of his clothes, keeping the distorting glass of the front windshield or side window between him and whoever was making an approach. That told her he didn’t recognize the vehicle, or maybe he did. Which actually doesn’t tell me anything. She grimaced, flexing her knees as best she could in her crouched position.

A swirl of dust washed out in front of the SUV when it parked about forty feet away. Too far for easy conversation, close enough to see details without getting out of the car. Seemed the SUV’s driver had his own countermeasures he was putting into place.

The driver’s head twisted back and forth as he looked around the clearing, and the spit in Alace’s mouth dried, leaving her tongue a foreign-feeling wasteland. That profile looked familiar, a terror-inducing familiarity that fixed her in place. She watched as Eric—fucking, fucking Eric—opened the driver door and stood, placing one hand on the roof of his SUV. Less than six hours to Denver from here, she’d mapped that months ago. She must have given away more clues to her location than she remembered of their call if he’d not only found the national forest but this individual cabin on the reservation, following a trail of breadcrumbs she couldn’t recall laying out. She was frozen, staring at him, the well-known lines of his clean-shaven jaw making her fingers tingle, longing to touch him again.

Rick called a gruff greeting, his voice harsh with anger, a sound that would surely discourage Eric from doing anything stupid. “Can I help you? This is private land.” A park ranger standing next to a reservation cop car might ping strange to someone like Eric, and she knew she was right when he didn’t move from his position. With the waders and jacket, maybe Rick’s profession wasn’t recognizable.

Alace shook her head, racking her brain to remember if Waterdrum had left any weapons in the car. Of course, Rick could have taken any multitude of things out and placed them inside, and if he intended to use the vehicle to leave, he probably had. Think, Alace. There’d been nothing in the front seat as she’d driven out here, and she’d stripped Waterdrum of any dangerous items before bringing him inside, storing everything in the back of the car, where Rick had been stacking boxes. He’d probably either moved or shoved them to the side. Rick had left his knives inside the cabin. His Taser was likely in the park service SUV in the creek. All of this meant he was likely unarmed. This might not be as big a cluster as it could be.

Reluctantly approaching the carcass hanging from the ceiling, she soundlessly lifted the knife from where it lay across the edges of a container, shifting it in her hand until she found a balanced grip.

Voice now holding an edge of anger, Rick asked, “What do you want?”

Her lids slipped closed for an instant when Eric answered, his voice rough and hoarse from disuse on his solo trip. “I think I’m lost. Can you help me?” It was a good ploy, people did that kind of shit all the time. Get on a road and just drive, thinking whatever they were looking for would be around the next corner, waiting to reward their persistence. “I was looking for Cuba and think I got turned around.” Back at the window, she watched as Rick’s shoulders lost their stiffness. Cuba wasn’t far from here, and if Eric had been a tourist who was seeking out the far backroads, it was easy to get off track as roads wound around mountain peaks. In some cases, you had to go east to go north, or vice versa. “Can you help me out?” He hadn’t moved from his position, tucked behind his opened door, keeping a layer of protection between him and the unknown man.

“Easy enough.” The comfortable jocularity had slipped back into Rick’s voice; this was his helpful ranger mode, and Alace’s lip curled at the lie. “Head back down the track to the second road, turn left and follow that down to 550. You’ll take another left there, and be in Cuba in a half an hour or so.”

“Oh.” Eric looked around, making no effort to hide his curiosity. Also a good ploy, since a real tourist wouldn’t care if they seemed rude, most of them falling into the “these people will never see me again so I can act an ass” train of thought. “Nice place. Is this yours?” He stared at a peak in the distance. “Gotta say, I love the view. You ever rent it out?”

“No.” All friendliness had left Rick’s tone, leaving it harsh and flat. “Safe travels.” With that blunt dismissal, Rick turned with a jerk and took a step towards the cabin, slamming the vehicle door behind him with an angry swing of his arm. A look of shock hit his face when he saw her in the window, his movements too abrupt for her to take action to hide.

Thinking quickly, she dropped the knife to grab the strap on her backpack, placed conveniently near the door and walked out onto the porch, glad Rick’s back was towards Eric. That meant he didn’t get to see Eric’s reaction to seeing her, their positions hiding the jolt his body gave that shouted recognition. She hefted the bag, slinging one strap over a shoulder, feeling the weight bearing down.

“Hey, did you say you’re headed to Cuba? Can I get a ride?” If Rick thought him a tourist, he might not be willing to involve him in what was going on here. When his partner was unknown, she’d been convinced Waterdrum had to be the hunter of the two, but now she remembered how Rick had continually surprised her today. First by linking her together with Waterdrum’s death, and then by Rick’s efficient abduction of her, a person trained in the kind of countermeasures that should have kept her safe. She stepped to the end of the porch and off, dropping the three feet to the ground, landing balanced, with soft knees that still complained about the impact. “I was going to hitch with Rick, but he’s tied up with something for a while. I need to get to Cuba. Any chance of you helping me out?”

“Sure.” Eric’s calm voice didn’t match his expression, which bordered on freaked out. “Climb on in.”

“Thanks, Rick.” She called over her shoulder, twisting to see the ranger had swung to watch her walk away. “Love what you’ve done to the place.” A reminder that his interior decorations held secrets he would probably prefer to keep hidden. “See you around.” You won’t see me coming. She held her breath as she dropped into the seat, hearing Eric’s door slam shut, closing them inside the vehicle. Shifting the bag to her lap, she wrapped her arms around it. Will he really let me drive away, knowing what I know?

From his position on the steps, Rick watched, unmoving. Alace locked gazes with him and he didn’t blink, didn’t flinch. He was letting her go. Time to get the fuck out of Dodge.

Alace turned her head towards Eric who was staring at her, equal parts terror and exhilaration in his expression. “Drive. Turn around and drive.” Surprised out of his shock, he reached and started the car then reversed into the field next to the cabin, pulling out onto the rocky track. “Not too fast, you’ll tear up the car.” Tearing her gaze from Eric’s face, still not believing it was real, Alace angled her eyes to the mirror, seeing Rick growing smaller with every second. “How’d you find the place? How did you find me?”

Eric didn’t respond, and she glanced at him. Fingers tight around the wheel, his knuckles were stark white from the force of his grip. He was alternating looking at the road and flicking his eyes towards her. Back and forth, as if he were afraid she would disappear in an instant. The vehicle was rapidly picking up speed, and he looked about  half a second away from that promised freak-out she’d seen on his face earlier. Keeping her voice soft, she repeated the question, “Eric, how did you find me?”

Motion in the mirror pulled her attention, and she saw the cop car slowly pulling away from the cabin. It turned the other direction, towards the loop that ran through the back of the property, and Alace wondered if she’d missed something up that way. “Slow down. You can slow down, he’s leaving. We’re good.” The SUV immediately decelerated to a crawl, the punishing bounces from the rocks in the road lessening.

Alace was pulled, finding herself unaccustomedly uncertain what to do. Should she bail out and head back to follow Rick or stay with Eric and make sure he got out of harm’s way? Shit. Her inclination was to keep Eric safe, no question. I can always come back and track Rick. I’ll need to gather the kids’ IDs anyway. She would send those to someone Regg kept on retainer to report things like this, since attempting to give every family closure was part of her standard gig.

With Rick headed away from them, it felt safe to turn her full attention to Eric, so she twisted to see he was no longer pretending to watch the road, staring across the car to where she sat. “Hey.” His eyes widened at the greeting she’d worked to keep casual. “You saved me.”

“You’re really here?” Eric’s hands slipped and tightened on the wheel as a pothole threatened to rip it from his grip. Then he gifted her with something she longed for every day, playing each utterance of her name in his voice in her dreams. “Alace, baby. You’re here?”

“I am.” One side of his mouth pulled down, and he quickly turned to look out the windshield. She drank in the sight of him. Hair slightly longer than before, curling softly at the nape of his neck. He bore lines of tension she suspected would smooth out once things had calmed down, but they didn’t look bad on him at all, giving him a veneer of even more rugged handsomeness.

She studied him, impressing every detail on her brain, storing up the tiniest of things for later. The way the muscles in his forearms shifted as he wrestled the SUV down through the creek and up the other side. The DNR vehicle downstream fifty yards or more, wedged against the bank in a crush of tree branches and logs. Alace shivered, remembering the chill of the water as it seeped into the vehicle. She dragged her gaze away and stared at Eric again. He’s really here.

“Eric, you saved me.” Not that she’d needed saving, really. When he drove up, she’d been two seconds from exiting out the back door and into the woods, where Rick would have been hard-pressed to find her. Eric pulling up when he did certainly made her escaping easier.

“This was the place? Where you called from last night?” His voice dipped a register, adopting a husky drawl that teased along her spine.

How odd that it was just last night. A handful of hours ago, she’d been drunk off her ass and crying on the phone with a man. This man. Someone who had made it a mission to hunt her down, but not for reasons most men searched for a person like her. Not to take her to the nearest authorities and turn her over for a reward. Fear drilled into her head, stiffening her spine. What if he is? It had been more than two years since their short-lived romance. People changed all the time. Hell, I’ve changed. She thought of the small cache of mementos she carried with her now. On the phone, he’d told her he knew people, folks who could make things go away. That implied confronting her actions, something she wasn’t willing to do anywhere near anyone who wore handcuffs as a uniform accessory. “Where are we going?”

“What?”

“Where are we going? Where are you taking us?” If she couched it like that, he might be less inclined to immediately hit up the nearest authorities. “Yes, that’s the cabin I was at.”

“How…why would you come back? Did you ever leave?”

“Yeah.” She shrugged off the backpack and settled it on the floor between her boots. “Rick found me and brought me back.” She plucked at her shirt, pulling it away from her body, wincing as the material stuck to the oozing burn on her chest.

“He brought you back? Why?” She ignored his questions for a moment and hooked a finger in the neck, dragging the fabric out to expose the spot and angling her chin down to look at where the Taser barb had impacted. There was a quarter-inch hole with red, raised edges flaring from the site. “What is that? Did he hurt you?” The vehicle slowed. Glancing up, she saw his eyes fixed on the burn, then flicked to her wrists, raw and torn from the repeated sessions with zip ties. He scowled, expression hardening, and Alace realized Eric was about a half a second from deciding to go back and do something stupid.

“He used a Taser. Got the drop on me because he didn’t ping like he was dangerous. The man—” She hesitated a moment, then continued. “—I told you about the man last night.” Eric nodded. The SUV had drifted to a complete stop, the quiet engine leaving the silence of the wilderness nearly unbroken. “Rick, Ranger Rick…I don’t know his name because he didn’t fucking factor.” She let go of her collar and slammed a fist against her thigh. “He didn’t fucking factor, but he was the partner. The one I couldn’t figure out, and I’d talked to him nearly every day for weeks.”

“Baby, I don’t understand.” A sweet pain swept over her with his use of the word, and Alace let her eyes close for a moment. Sound in the distance alerted her, and she looked in the mirror, staring at Waterdrum’s car as it returned to the front of the cabin. We gotta go.

“Drive, Eric. Get us out of here. I’ll explain everything, just…” She couldn’t wait any longer, needed to reassure herself that this was real, not a drug-induced hallucination. Alace reached out and covered his hand with hers, flesh and bone fingers spreading to let hers fall through, tightening around and trapping her as their fingers threaded together. “Get us safe first.”

He released a deep breath, heat gusting over her hand where it was joined with his, and he brought their clasped hands to his thigh, adjusting his other hand on the wheel as he started the SUV rolling again. “Okay. I can do that.”

By the time they’d reached the highway, she’d thrown caution to the winds, no longer caring if he might have a recording device in the vehicle. She had explained what brought her to the location, a scattering of reports on the darknet about how kids who hit the local state cops radar fell off when they headed west through the reservation. Those disappearances had eventually led her to Waterdrum. He’d been the last contact for many of the cops dropping the runaways at the edge of the reservation, as far as the treaties would allow them to go without a clear invitation. She talked through her process, and how she’d been hiking and camping for months, working a grid pattern to try and find his base of location. The process of identifying which of the many remote cabins held not only the tools, but as of last night, graphic evidence of his murder and mutilation of so many kids. She’d skimmed over her involvement in his death, not certain what pitfalls her failed memories held for things she must have told Eric last night.

Through it all, he’d listened quietly, not asking questions, just taking in the story. His fingers had tightened on hers at places when she’d gotten too detailed, those reactions letting her map out when to back off. When she got to today and her disgust at not picking up anything from Rick, irritation at herself for allowing him the opening to scoop her up, Eric made a tortured sound, and she looked at his face, seeing lines of pain drawing his mouth down and to the side. Too much. Skipping to waking up at the cabin and what Rick had been doing hadn’t alleviated Eric’s distress, so she quickly drew her narrative to a close, ending with her relief at seeing Eric in the vehicle.

When he turned towards town on the highway, they were only minutes away from whatever came next, and she pulled in a hard breath. Reality time. “What are you going to do? Where are you taking me?” His fingers clutched hers, knuckles grinding painfully against her bones. “Eric, what—?”

“I’d checked into a motel room, but he knows I was coming back to Cuba. That was it.” He gestured over his shoulder at the brown building they’d just passed. “I’d rather…” Trailing off, he loosened his grip slightly, adjusting to pin her hand between his palm and thigh. “Come home with me, Alace.” She opened her mouth, but he cut her off. “You’re injured, exhausted, and you have everything you need from here to sort out what’s next. You have everything you need, baby. What’s a day or two? Hmmm? Come home.”

Not a mention of cops or his friends who could magically fix everything. Eric didn’t give any reaction to the things she’d said, any guilt she’d claimed. Come home. Like anything could be that easy. “Your home?” Five and a half hours away waited the place that still was a balm to her soul. “Just leave this unfinished?” That went against the grain, and she knew he heard it when he pressed her hand farther into the giving flesh of his leg.

“Just for a couple of days. We’ll come back and sort it out.”

Her head was shaking back and forth before he’d even finished spitting out the lie. “No. That’s not what you mean. Not at all.” The tone of his voice had given it away. Up to that point she’d believed, but not now. He would take her home, right. “You’ll pick up the phone first chance you get. First time I doze off, you’ll be up and making a call.”

He shook his head, the quick motion exposing his fear. Fear of what? “No, Alace—”

They’d pulled up behind a car turning left, stopped in the middle of town in light traffic. She evaluated her options, reaching down to grab the strap of her bag as she tried to yank her hand out of his grip. Tried and failed, and they were moving again, faster, turning a corner with the vehicle’s frame rocking violently before he screeched to a stop, tires barking as they slid on the pavement. “Alace, don’t.” He slammed the gearshift with his hand, reaching over to grip her arm.

She twisted in his grip, willing to leave skin behind if that was what it took. He was ripping apart every dream she’d had about him. His words down in Alabama making her believe he could look past what she’d turned herself into and see the person she wanted to be. “Alace.” He sounded frustrated as she opened her door, sliding half out of the seat, one foot and one hand still inside the SUV. Yanking hard, she nearly broke free. Then he stripped her of movement with a word.

“Baby.” Fucking, fucking Eric. He pulled, and she slipped halfway across the seat towards him, foot leaving the ground to dangle uselessly in the air. “Don’t. I’m not going to do that. Not a chance, baby. I get it. I do.” Fucking liar. No one could get it, especially not someone like him who had lived such a good life. Her words to Regg echoed through her head. He’s a good man. “Baby, I get what you do. I want to help.” That stiffened every muscle as if she’d been Tasered again, and she stared up into his eyes. Honesty and something else shone out at her, the something else undefinable, outside her wealth of experience. Honesty she could deal with, and she stopped struggling, choosing to believe him. “Baby, I want to help. Get back in and let me bring you home. We’ll sleep and eat and plan. I’m good at planning. I can do that with you.”

“Help me?” He nodded, pulling her closer, her head nearly in his lap, neck craned so she could look up at him. “Not turn me in?” She needed the reassurance. In her experience, people could say things on their own, volunteer lies through smiling lips, but if asked a direct question they didn’t like, you could see it on their face as they answered.

“Help you, baby. I want to help. I get it.” He’d said that several times now, over more than one conversation, but it still confused her. How much has he looked into me? He’d had two years and then some to put everything together and come to peace with how her chosen life’s direction went. He was staring straight at her, gaze locked on her face, and nothing in his expression told her he was lying. He meant every word and was so willing to back it up he’d driven down to what she’d described as a slaughterhouse to find her. On the strength of her words, he’d dropped everything to come to her. She hadn’t allowed herself to do more than cursory searches on him since she’d left his bed in the middle of the night. Her searches had dug a little deeper after Alabama, just enough to find out he’d taken paid vacation time to drive down. She didn’t know what methods he’d used, what markers he’d called in, but she did know that nothing he’d done to find her had raised an alarm with any of the countermeasures she had in place against that kind of thing.

You’d think I’d have worried more after Alabama. She hadn’t, though. Getting away and sorting out her next plan of action, she’d laid aside any misgiving about his actions. It’s like I’ve known all along I could trust him. She stared at him. Can I trust him? Multiple adrenaline crashes were clouding her brain, making every thought more difficult than it had to be. She might have slept until nearly midday, but that didn’t count for much when she’d been up more than twenty-four hours previously, and only laid down her head after six o’clock. Add in all that had happened today: Tasered, drugged, hit with bear spray, choked out, then rescuing herself again—exhaustion made her muscles weak, biceps and quads quivering from the strain of holding her position.

He stayed still, not shifting his grip on her arm and hand, not moving. Eric watched her, his gaze seeming to drink her in, eyes flicking side to side as he tracked down her features. No doubt she was a sight. Face covered in dirt and blood, flushed red with fear and anger, probably paling now as she came to a decision. Am I deciding right now? Once again, their penchant for having single words alter their trajectory together came into play, and she gave him what he wanted. Gave herself what she wanted, too. More than anything. My dream. “Okay.”

Without another word, he tugged, and she slid all the way into the seat, swung her legs around and dropped her bag as she reached out to close the door. Only once it was shut did he release her arm. Eric glanced down and his eyes closed, an anguished expression on his face as he turned away. She looked at her arm and saw the white imprint of his fingers there. That’s gonna bruise. Snorting, she regained his attention. His eyes flew open and he stared at her. “Smallest of prices.” She was already leaning his direction when he hooked a hand around the back of her neck, abandoning her hand for a more secure grip.

For the first time in more than two years, she kissed a man. Not any man, but Eric—fucking, fucking Eric—and just like that, she was gone for him again.

His lips softly questing across hers led to a firmer pressure as their mouths worked together. Her palm hit his chest, fingers twisting into his shirt to pull him near, pull herself closer, anything she could do to reduce the gulf of distance between them. The tip of his tongue slipped between her lips and tenderly touched hers, sliding and withdrawing, testing the waters. A breath later, she knew he found the waters to his liking as the kiss did what every one of their caresses had done and exploded into a corona of heat.

He made love to her mouth, breaths mingling as they separated to draw in air, panting and groaning. “Beloved.” His murmur covered her like a blanket, separating her from the knowledge of what he was, letting her fall farther under his spell, no longer caring if she ever crawled out. She shifted, angling her body towards his, slipping between the wheel and his chest, and he adjusted on the fly, lifting and supporting her. Cradled in his arms, she explored as much as she could reach. Nips and licks drew more groans from him, making her smile when he arched his neck, giving her access to the sensitive underside of his jaw. She worked along the edges of muscles and bone, mapping his skin and charting every inch with her touch.

The whoop of a siren yanked her back into her head, heart pounding as she looked through the SUV and out the back window, seeing a cop car parked behind them. Eric had done a half-assed job of pulling over to the curb when he stopped, leaving them blocking part of the lane. God. Sloppy and stupid. She eased back across the seat to her side as Eric recaptured her hand, rolled down the window and propped his arm on the wheel. When he squeezed her fingers, she realized this was intentional, a way to partially block the cop’s view of her.

“Officer.”

“License, please.” The nameplate on the cop’s breast said Smith. An innocuous name, and Alace decided to tell Regg to use it as her last name when it was time to pull that letter out of the hat. “You’re not quite parked, partner.” The spring of tension in her breast eased slightly as a narrow band of teasing looped through Officer Smith’s tone. “Got a good reason?”

Eric laughed, sounding so natural and easy she wondered at his acting abilities. With a father like his, and knowing the many decades of intimate involvement in so many political campaigns the man had demanded from Eric, it shouldn’t be a shock he was quick on his feet when confronted by fast-changing events. “My girlfriend just hiked out of Mesa. I haven’t seen her in a few days. Sorry for the bother.” Eric shifted in the seat, pulled his wallet free and plucked out his license to hand to the officer. Smith gave it a cursory glance before handing it back.

“Figured as much.” Smith tipped his hat to her. “Ma’am. Good hiking?”

Alace nodded, slipping a tiny smile into place on her face. “Not easy, but good.” It was, too. She’d hiked all over the Mesa de Cuba area. “The erosion gives it a surreal feel. It’s awfully pretty.” The entire area was peppered with channels from flash floods over decades, troughs scratched into the dirt and rock by the force of rushing water.

“Beautiful in the right light.” Smith agreed with her then tapped the window frame. “Be more careful where you stop to reconnect next time, Mr. Ward.” Teasing and playful, his tone gave no sense of danger. “Travel safely.”

“We will, Officer. Sorry again.” Eric dropped his wallet into a cubby in the dash instead of replacing it in his back pocket. Turning away from the cop still standing there, he asked her, “Hungry, honey?”

She smiled shyly, letting what she hoped was a little sexy curve lift one corner of her mouth. Knowing full well the cop was still looking and listening, she tapped the frustration left in the wake of the kiss they’d just shared, infusing the single word response with everything dirty she wanted to do to Eric. “Starved.”

Smith laughed, the sound light and airy, his saunter knowing as he moved away.

Still staring at her, Eric fumbled the vehicle into gear and with a shaky voice that belied the entirety of his cool performance, told her, “He’s watching. Buckle up.”

She leaned over and brushed the corner of his mouth with her lips. “Okay.” The click of her buckle slipping into place was loud in the quiet car. “You okay?”

“Scared the fuck out of me.” He waited for a break in traffic, then signaled, pulling out and making a U-turn, blowing out a hard breath as he paused at the stop sign. “What do we do now?” Alace waited a beat, verifying her feeling that this was what safety felt like, that Eric would no more hurt her than he’d hurt himself. That he wouldn’t betray her, and his action that long-ago night had been misguided, but done with the best of intentions. Didn’t help Pandora when she opened the box. Still, her gut was seldom wrong.

“There was a gas station just back over there. We’ll need to go north through some remote areas to get to Colorado the fastest way. So I vote that right now, we drive back the way we came. We stop at the gas station, and then we hit a drive-through because I really am hungry.” His neck twisted, and he looked at her. “I am.” She nodded. “And you probably are, too. Unless you ate just before driving into the wilderness to rescue me?” She tried for Smith’s tone, but it fell flat in the face of Eric’s somber expression. He shook his head, a muscle in his jaw pulsing just under the skin. Okay, he doesn’t like me making light of what just happened. “We get gas first. Then food. And then…” She paused and studied him closely. Time to take a leap, trusting in her gut. God, catch me. Please. “And then, we talk while you drive us home.”