Ropes and Revenge (23 page)

He did love her. Not in the same way he’d loved Lily, but it was real. So real his heart ached with a mix of pleasure and pain at the thought of seeing her again. Pleasure because being near her made the world seem like a better place; pain because he’d proven he didn’t deserve her and when she left town tomorrow she might never come back.

He was so lost in his thoughts and focused on making out the smudged street numbers in the dim light, he didn’t realize the car approaching from the opposite direction was speeding until it whizzed by him fast enough to set his truck to rocking.

Slamming on his brakes, his gaze flicked to the rearview mirror, glaring at the taillights disappearing in the distance. Probably some drunk kid leaving a party. Lonesome Point had more than its fair share of drunk drivers and so far John hadn’t seen a single checkpoint set up going into or out of downtown.

Just another way the LPD was proving they were all but worthless.

With a disgusted sound, John went to shift his foot from the brake to the gas, only to find his leg muscles locked and a chill creeping up his thighs. His stomach turned and the hair on his arms stood on end as that frozen, swarm-of-bees feeling he’d experienced in the gully with Percy surged through his chest, stealing his breath away. But this time there was no angry voice in his head or rage seething through his chilled veins. This time there was only a bittersweet sense of recognition and a petal soft voice whispering for him to turn around.

Turn around. The car. Follow the car. Turn around, John.

The voice was faint and stretched thin, but John could feel the urgency in the request. He had to turn around and follow that car. If he didn’t, he would regret it forever, the way he regretted letting Lily head out alone that morning last March.

As if sensing he’d understood the message, the cold seeped away, leaving him alone in his skin. With a ragged breath, John jerked hard at the wheel, turning the truck around. He didn’t have time to waste wondering if he was losing his mind or if he’d really heard his wife’s ghost talking in his head.

He had to catch up with the other driver before it was too late. Percy was in that car and she was in danger, he knew it the way he knew that she’d been right all along—about life and love and it being past time for him to let both back in.

Love wasn’t selfish.
He
was selfish. It wasn’t loyalty to Lily that had made him push Percy away, but his selfish fear that he wouldn’t survive losing someone else.

And now, his cowardice might have made his worst fears come true.

John pushed the gas pedal closer to the floor, determined to catch up with the car taking a quick right onto Cedar. He wasn’t going to lose Percy; he wasn’t going to let anyone hurt her. He was done with shadows and pain. The nightmare ended tonight and he was bringing Percy out of the darkness with him.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Percy came to with a start, her throat clenching and her arms and legs flailing the way they did when she dreamed of falling from the roof of her aunt’s apartment building and woke seconds before her body made contact with the pavement below.

But this time, instead of cool sheets whispering beneath her skin, her bound hands scraped across rough carpeting to make contact with something hard and metallic.

Her eyes strained, but she couldn’t make out anything concrete in the blackness surrounding her. Her eyes were useless, but her nose caught the scent of exhaust, her muscles felt the carpet beneath her vibrating roughly, and her ears pricked at the grumble of disturbed gravel and the occasional sharper
ping
as rocks collided with aluminum paneling. It didn’t take long to guess that she was in the trunk of a car traveling down a gravel road, and that Clint was most likely her driver.

Fear dumped into her bloodstream and the sour taste of terror filled her mouth. The back of her skull still ached, but she couldn’t remember a thing between being hit on the head and this moment. She didn’t know how long she’d been in the trunk or how long they’d been traveling, but she knew every mile that stretched between her and civilization made it less likely she’d be returning to Lonesome Point alive.

Fighting a wave of panic, Percy focused on the rope tying her hands together. Her feet were unbound, so if she could get her hands free she might be able to find a way to escape and run. If Clint’s car was a recent model, it should have a release button inside the trunk.

And even if it didn’t, she’d be better equipped to fight him when they stopped if she had the use of her hands.

She struggled with her restraints, managing to hook her thumbs into the coarse rope and pull it away from her skin for a moment or two. But after several long minutes of struggling, she had only succeeded in working up a sweat and making her wrist joints ache.

Pain flashed through her connective tissue as she abandoned her efforts and rolled onto her other side. She was going to have to try to open the trunk with her hands still bound. It would be harder to jump from the car without hurting herself with her hands tied together, but she didn’t know how much time she had. Clint could be planning to drive all night, for all she knew, though her gut said he wouldn’t take her too far from town.

The serial killers whose victims she’d encountered in her work had almost always disposed of their victims’ bodies not far from where they lived. Definitely no more than a half day’s drive from their home base. Like the rest of the modern world, serial killers were short on free time and unable to disappear for days at a stretch.

There were errands to run, girlfriends to take on dates, drinks to be poured.

As Percy ran her fingers up and down the metal inside the trunk, searching for the release latch, she wondered if Clint had been back at work the night after he killed Lily. She wondered if he’d be back at work tomorrow and if John would survive losing both of the women he’d loved.

You’re not going to die. You’re going to get out of here, get to John, and make sure he and the boys are safe.

Percy wanted to believe the voice in her head insisting on life, but she could already feel death’s breath cold on the back of her neck and the chill of the other side seeping under her skin.

So when the car eased to a stop before she found the latch, she wasn’t surprised. She was only sad and terrified that soon she’d be looking up into the face of the man who would take her life.

John had turned his headlights off miles ago, but as the car ahead of him passed through the open gate leading into the Wheeler ranch he still pulled to the side of the road. He sat in the oppressive silence of the cool night, forcing himself to wait several long moments before he followed.

He had to let the car get far enough ahead that the driver wouldn’t hear the truck’s wheels on the gravel, but not so far he would lose the dust trail the car left behind. The Wheeler ranch was even bigger than his family’s property, twenty-thousand-acres of desert, mountain, and river valley where a man could get lost for days if he didn’t know his way around. If he lost the trail, he might not catch up with the car before something horrible happened to Percy.

What if she’s not in the car? What if she’s back at Yasmin’s house with her phone turned off?

John ignored his doubts and eased his foot back onto the gas pedal. There was a chance he was out of his mind and Percy was fine, but he wasn’t going to risk it, not when his gut was screaming that she was in danger and he was the only one who could save her. There wasn’t time to call the police or even to call his mother and ask her to tell the boys he loved them. Just in case.

John turned left at the first fork in the road, relying on the moonlight sifting through the clouds to follow the trail of dust hanging in the air. Even with the rough road, the car ahead of him was moving fast. So fast, the taillights were tiny pinpricks in the darkness over a mile ahead of him, pinpricks that disappeared entirely as the vehicle crested the top of the rise and started down the other side.

He accelerated, going as fast as he dared, but slowing as he neared the top of the hill. He could see the glow of headlights on the other side and it looked like more than one set.

Knowing he didn’t want to drive up in the middle of whatever was going on, he pulled over and cut the engine. Slipping out of the truck and closing the door quietly behind him, he crept to the top of the rise, dropping to his stomach when he spotted the cattle pond on the other side.

A giant truck with wheels as big as he was tall was parked near the pond, its headlights revealing the silhouettes of two men he guessed were the older Wheeler brothers. They stood by the road with their arms crossed, watching the car John had followed approach. The car’s headlights swept across the dark surface of the water as the driver pulled in beside the truck, illuminating the insects dipping and swirling above the pond. A moment later, a man emerged from the driver’s side.

John was still a couple hundred feet away, but when the man joined the Wheelers by the truck his pulse raced with recognition. It was Clint. He knew the bartender’s profile and certain way of standing, with his shoulders back and his thumbs hooked into the waistband of his jeans.

But tonight, the older man’s posture wasn’t as relaxed as it was when he was shooting the shit at the bar. His spine was straight and his shoulders stiff and he’d only been talking to the other men for a few minutes when he jabbed a finger back toward the car and shouted something John couldn’t understand.

He couldn’t understand it, but he understood what it meant when the taller Wheeler brother held his arms up in surrender and followed Clint to the car to brace his hands against the trunk. He understood what was happening long before the wheels of the car began to turn, rolling slowly toward the dark water, but there was no way for him to get down the hill fast enough.

By the time he jumped to his feet, the vehicle was already splashing into the pond.

A moment later, from inside the car, a woman began to scream.

“She knows. I don’t know how, but she does.” Clint’s voice was low but loud enough to be heard inside the trunk.

Percy bit her bottom lip, willing her heart to stop racing as she strained to hear what was being said.

“Well, we need to figure out how,” an unfamiliar male voice insisted. “How did she know it was us? We got to figure that out before somebody else learns the same way. If women keep disappearing, people are going to get suspicious.”

“No one has disappeared for years,” Clint snapped. “You know that as well as I do. And everyone else believes Lily’s death was an accident.”

“Except her husband,” a third, deeper voice said. “And he’s going to be even more suspicious when his new girlfriend up and vanishes.”

“No, he won’t,” Clint said. “They fought and she was on her way out of town. As soon as we’re done here, you can drive me back to my place and I’ll start doing damage control. I’ve got her phone. I’m sure I can get into her email account and send John something that will keep him from looking too closely at this.”

One of the other men mumbled something Percy couldn’t hear, but she definitely heard Clint’s shouted response. “You did sign up for this! It doesn’t matter if you think I made a bad call last March. You signed up for this the day we decided Hope deserved to pay for promising to marry you while fucking me behind your back. You wanted her dead every bit as much as I did, so get your ass over here and help me push the car into the pond.”

“No,” Percy whispered, her voice too loud in the tightly enclosed space. Her already speeding pulse began to pound.
Into the pond.
They were going to push her into the pond, drown her so she couldn’t share their secrets.

“Please, no!” she begged as she heard hands make contact with the trunk. “Please, don’t do this! Please! Let me out!”

“I’m sorry,” Clint said, his voice so close it sounded like he was inside the darkness with her. “I don’t like hurting an innocent woman, Percy, but you gave me no choice. You should have left town when I told you to.”

“I’ll leave now,” Percy said, her voice shaking as the wheels of the car began to turn beneath her. “Please, Clint! Someone! Whoever else is out there, you don’t want to do this!”

But no one responded and a second later the car picked up speed, the front end dipping down sharply, sending her rolling to the other side of the trunk as the car splashed into the water.

Percy screamed and kept screaming for several long, panic-laced moments. She couldn’t help herself; her terror insisted on being voiced even though she knew no one was coming to save her.

John hesitated for a split second before turning and racing back to the truck. He was unarmed against three men. If the Wheelers had guns, he would be more protected in the truck and be able to get down the hill a hell of a lot faster.

Besides, a vehicle could become a weapon.

As he gunned the truck to life and started down the hill the words “vehicular manslaughter” kept racing through his mind. He didn’t want to kill anyone; he just wanted to get to Percy before it was too late. But those men had pushed a car with a woman locked inside into a pond to die. They weren’t going to stand aside and invite him to swim out to save Percy. They were murderers, and if he had to run one or two of them over to get to the woman he loved he would do it.