CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Friday, June 23
6:05 a.m.
Maggie didn’t run. She wanted to—God, how she wanted to, with that damned taunting voice that seemed to be everywhere and nowhere—but she knew better. If she ran, she’d either run herself into the ground or she’d misstep, twist her ankle, and might as well offer her throat to Lauren to finish her off.
She had no intention of dying today, but if it was her time, she wasn’t going without a fight.
She moved uphill, her thighs burning from the climb, her back in constant pain she had no solution for. Lauren would expect her to head downhill, since it was easier. She’d had to leave some sign of her passing so she could actually draw the woman away from Madison. Lauren was too smart to believe her if she started making noise, so she’d been forced to be subtle. A broken tree branch here, a deliberate footprint in the soft soil there. It was more difficult than just blazing a trail, but she had to make it believable.
It wasn’t believable that she wanted Lauren to catch her.
She touched the metal pen still in her pocket. Her phone had been taken, but the woman had missed the pen. She laughed softly. A pen wasn’t any better a weapon now than it had been when she was in the hospital, but it’d have to do. She didn’t have time to try to find a decent stick, and even if she found one, she had no knife to carve it to her needs.
No, there was just the pen and, hopefully, the element of surprise.
She stopped. She’d reached the peak of the ridge. It was all downhill from here—literally. It also meant she’d have high ground. Maggie searched the surrounding trees. There were two that would fit her needs, and only one of them had a branch low enough for her to reach. She checked to make sure Lauren hadn’t magically appeared . . . which was the exact moment she realized the taunting had stopped. She cursed silently and then cursed again when the move to pull herself into the tree resulted in what felt like her back being torn in two. There go the stitches.
There was no time to waste. She shinnied up the tree, sending a silent prayer of thanks to the universe for the fact that most of the clothing she owned naturally blended into the forest. The items Ava had brought her were no exception—a long-sleeve green T-shirt with brown cargo pants that she seemed to remember her friend claiming belonged in the nineties. Maggie had laughed at the time, but they might save her ass today, because they gave her a better range of motion than even her most comfortable jeans. She climbed onto another branch and pressed herself against the trunk of the tree.
Lauren didn’t make her wait long. The woman slid out of the nearby trees as if she was part of the forest itself. She still had the pistol, which meant they hadn’t reached the spot where she’d stashed her gear. It wouldn’t make a bit of difference if the woman was as good with a gun as she was with the bow.
And I just stranded myself up a tree.
She was roughly ten feet off the ground, and Maggie had never been all that accomplished at springing out and surprising someone. Strangely enough, that wasn’t an action covered by either the FBI or the park ranger training.
She held her breath as Lauren moved closer. What is she . . . Her heart actually skipped a beat when she realized what the woman was doing. Her gaze was on the ground, her entire body tense with anticipation.
She’s tracking me.
Lauren reached the spot where Maggie had climbed up the tree and started to straighten. In another second, she’d see Maggie, and then it’d be like shooting fish in a barrel. Maggie shot forward before she could think too hard about how much this would hurt. She hit Lauren square on, taking them both to the ground with a bone-jarring impact.
“Bitch,” Lauren wheezed.
Maggie rolled onto her back, fighting through the feeling of her lungs trying to collapse. Just knocked the breath out of me. Don’t stop. When she hit Lauren, the gun had flown, and she had to be the first one to get to it. She crawled across the ground, each move sending a flare of pain through her back.
Nurse Colleen is going to kick my ass if I live through this. She almost looked forward to it.
Weight hit her square in the back, and she found the breath to scream. Lauren’s fingers wrapped around her throat. “Bitch.”
“Get a new insult,” she ground out. She scrambled for Lauren’s fingers, trying to loosen the grip choking the life out her. It was hard, so hard. Her eyes wanted to close. Fuck that. She snapped her head back, making contact with Lauren’s face. It startled the woman enough that she loosened her grip.
But only for a moment.
Lauren slammed her head into the ground once, twice. By the third time, Maggie saw stars, and her body stopped obeying her commands to fight. Her fingers dug into the dirt, a futile attempt to lift herself, but that was as far as the move got.
And then Lauren’s weight was gone, and a shriek of fury echoed through the forest. Maggie lay there, unable to focus enough to even roll over and see what had happened. She took a breath and then another, distantly noting that her face was wet with what was probably blood. Sounds reached her next, staggered breathing and grunts like there was a struggle going on behind her.
Have to see. Need to know.
She dug deep and flopped onto her back to the sight of Madison punching Lauren in the face. It was a solid right hook, and the other woman staggered back but didn’t go down. Lauren made a sound approximating a roar and charged her, hitting her in the stomach with her shoulder and taking them both to the ground.
Maggie wasn’t stupid enough to get in the middle of a brawl in her current condition, even if she was capable of running over there. Instead, she turned and crawled inch by agonizing inch in the direction she’d seen the gun fly. If she could get to it, she could put a stop to the beating she could hear going on behind her.
It was the only way she could do any good.
She caught a glint of metal in the brush and headed for it, trying not to listen too closely to the pained noise Madison was making. Her fingers closed around the butt of the gun, and she gritted her teeth and threw the last of her reserves into sitting up.
Maggie lifted the gun, only to find Lauren smirking at her. The woman had Madison facedown on the ground, one arm wrenched between her shoulder blades in a move Maggie had used more than a few times to subdue reckless idiots.
Lauren’s lip was bleeding, and she’d have a wicked black eye if she lived through the day, but she had the upper hand. “Put that gun down before you shoot yourself with it.”
Maggie clenched her jaw and tried to steady the shaking in her arms—tried and failed. “Move away from her. Now.”
“You pull that trigger, and you might hit her instead of me.” Lauren twisted a little harder, drawing another cry from Madison. “Or I could just sit here until your strength fails you.”
It would happen sooner or later. Maggie had always been taught never to draw a gun on a person unless she was willing to pull the trigger. She was. Lauren had killed so many people and would kill both her and Madison if she wasn’t stopped.
Her arm spasmed, and she dropped the gun without meaning to.
Lauren laughed. “That didn’t take long.”
Maggie reached for the gun again, but her vision grayed alarmingly. She was so beyond tapped out right now, she was worse than useless. She glared at the woman and froze when she caught movement in the trees behind Lauren. Even with exhaustion and pain hazing her vision and making her weave while sitting down, she’d recognize Vic. He was too far away to get to Lauren before Lauren got to the gun, so she lifted her chin. “Anyone tell you that you have serious abandonment issues? I mean . . . fuck.” If she could keep her distracted, Vic could remove the threat.
“Shut up.”
As if that was going to happen. She’d obviously hit a nerve, so she just kept poking at it. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it? Poor little Lauren, left behind by everyone she loves.” Vic moved closer, almost within reach of the woman. Madison hadn’t moved in the last minute or so, which was worrying, but there was a list as long as Maggie’s arm of things that were worrying right now. She hitched up her chin. “Guess you weren’t as important to them as they were to you. Weird how they wouldn’t want a crazy psychopath hanging around.”
“Shut up! You don’t know the first thing about it. They ruined everything.”
“God forbid.”
Lauren drew a knife from her boot. “Keep talking, bitch. I’ll finish Madison and then I’ll come for you.” She leaned down, going for Madison’s exposed throat.
Vic moved. He crossed the remaining distance in two bounding strides and took Lauren down to the ground in a tackle that had Maggie wincing. Before she could decide if she was supposed to try to help, he had the woman facedown on the ground and was cuffing her hands behind her. “Lauren Rosario, you’re under arrest for the murders of Ashleigh Marcinko and six others. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”
Wyatt and David approached cautiously, shooting incredulous looks at Vic and Lauren. Maggie couldn’t blame them. If she’d been asked before today, she would have put Lauren Rosario at the very bottom of the suspect pool—and that was before the girl had turned up dead.
But to their credit, they didn’t waste time. David went to Madison, and then Wyatt was blocking Maggie’s line of sight as he crouched in front of her. “You’ve seen better days.”
“You say the nicest things.” Her adrenaline started to fade, bringing with it a wave of pain that she hadn’t noticed until now.
“You want to tell me what’s wrong, or do I need to do a check myself?” Wyatt said.
Mortification at the thought of Wyatt going over her body had her speaking up despite the fact she just wanted to lie there in the dirt and rest awhile. “Ripped my stitches. Bruises, nothing broken.” She touched her throat and then her face. “She got some good hits in. Possible concussion.”
His gaze went to the gun lying on the ground near her foot. “I’d say you got off lucky.”
“Yeah.” She didn’t feel lucky. There was so much she could have done differently from the time she saw that van and realized that it belonged to the unsub.
“You did good, Maggie.” Wyatt touched her shoulder awkwardly. “Pretty sure that agent of yours is going to take off my head if I don’t let him be the one to carry you out of here. Unless you think you need a chopper?”
“No.” She licked her dry lips and winced. “Not unless Madison does. She’s the important one.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Wyatt stood and moved over to Lauren.
Maggie didn’t catch what he said to Vic, but he took over watching Lauren, and then Vic was in front of her.
His gaze raked over her, and he turned to David. “How is she?”
“Banged up, but she’ll be okay. She wants to hike out.” The thin line of David’s mouth said all anyone needed to hear about what he thought of that.
Vic just nodded. “Let’s get the fuck out of here, then.” He crouched next to Maggie and lowered his voice. “Anything I’m going to hurt if I pick you up?”
Her pride demanded she tell him that she was more than capable of walking, but the truth was that she wouldn’t make it ten feet before she collapsed. “I’ll be okay.”
“You had damn well better.” He carefully picked her up, tucking her in against his chest. “Fuck, Maggie, you scared the shit out of me.”
She was sorry, but . . . she also wasn’t. “We got her. She won’t hurt anyone else.”
“Yes.” He didn’t say anything else.
Maggie tried to stay awake, but the events of the last twenty-four hours were too much. Exhaustion pulled her under on a dark tide.
Friday, June 23
10:09 a.m.
It didn’t take long for Vic to get the information he wanted out of Lauren. She was spitting mad and knew that she wasn’t getting out of this without going to prison. There was too much evidence, and the testimonies of Madison and a park ranger were the final nails in her coffin.
Plus, the woman liked to brag.
She confessed with little prompting, every inch the proud sociopath who wanted credit for being clever. As he’d suspected, the Haglunds had stumbled onto the camp she’d set up in preparation for murdering her former friends, and she’d gone after Bill’s eyes in response. The only part he couldn’t quite figure out was why she’d let Madison and Ashleigh light the signal fire to be rescued. Lauren claimed it was so she could frame Madison, but it read like a mistake to Vic.
Lauren would be going to prison for a very long time, and it was entirely possible she’d get the death sentence, since the crimes were committed on federal land. It left the case wrapped up in as neat a bow as possible, but that didn’t change the fact that Lauren was responsible for the deaths of seven people.
Interrogating her left him feeling off center and sick to his stomach. All he wanted was to see Maggie and reassure himself again that she was actually okay.
He didn’t expect to run into Britton in the hallway outside her hospital room, but he should have. “Now’s not a good time.”
“On the contrary. It’s as good a time as any.” Britton eyed the door to her room. “I’m offering her a spot back in the BAU. There’s no hard feelings if she turns me down, of course, but I have a feeling she won’t.” His lips quirked up in what was almost a smile. “Don’t you think, Vic?”
A position in the BAU would put them in close quarters again. It would mean that they wouldn’t have to try to juggle a long-distance relationship while they figured things out between them—or after. He swallowed hard, recognizing the gift Britton was giving him. “You’d do that for me.”
Britton frowned. “No. Of course not. I’m pleased that you and Maggie are figuring things out, but we lost one of the best up-and-coming agents when she left. I’m keen to have her back.”
Of course. Vic should have known that, as in touch as Britton was with his people, he wouldn’t do something as permanent as offering them a job without a legitimate reason. “Have you asked her?”
“I thought I’d leave that up to you.” Britton checked his watch. “I have a plane to catch. Let me know how it goes.”
“Of course.” He didn’t wait for Britton to disappear down the hallway before he walked into Maggie’s room. She lay in the hospital bed, looking tired and grumpy. It was all he could do not to pull her into his arms and never let go. That hellish hike down to the road, the only thing that had kept him going was her breathing and his being able to hold her.
She managed a smile. “Hey.”
“Hey.” He considered the chair next to her bed, but it was too far away, so he took a spot on the bed and held her hand. “You scared the shit out of me.”
“Sorry.” She looked at their intertwined hands. “We got her. She’s going away for life.”
“Yes, she is.” It wouldn’t change the fact that seven people wouldn’t be going home because of her. Their families would have closure, but it was a small comfort in the grand scheme of things.
As much as he wanted to let Maggie rest, there were things still hanging unsaid between them. If this case had done nothing else, it had convinced Vic that he had to fight for what he wanted.
What he wanted was Maggie.
“Maggie, I love you.”
“What?” She stared at him as if he’d just pulled a gun on her. “How can you . . . It’s so soon . . .”
He didn’t let her shock deter him. “Britton’s offered you a job back at the BAU. I know you love your park, and I’d never ask you to leave your job here if you don’t want to. Whatever you decide, I support you. If you want me—if you choose me—we’ll make this work one way or another. Distance is a small thing compared with what we’ve faced in the last few days.”
She laughed softly. “Yeah, I guess it is.” Her smile faded. “I do love you, Vic. It might have started as a schoolgirl crush, but it’s the truth. I . . . I’ll think about the job offer.”
“Okay.” It was more than he’d thought she’d do. Vic lifted her hand and kissed her bruised knuckles. “I choose you, Maggie. The rest will figure itself out.”