CHAPTER THIRTY
Laura pulled up at the Bluton farm and leapt out of the car, leaving the engine idling, not wanting to waste even the moment that it would take to turn it off. She raced toward the front door in the darkness, almost tripping over a loose stone on the path. The house was silent, but the kitchen light was on. That and her headlights were the only illumination around.
There was no time to waste on knocking and waiting politely for Maria to answer the door. Laura tried it and found it locked, then raced around to the side in the direction of the lights, thinking she could get Maria’s attention through the kitchen window. There was a door round there, too. Laura ran toward it—
And stumbled again, this time hitting the ground as she stumbled over something lying there in her way. Her hands groped for it blindly, her eyes adjusting to the darkness enough to make out a long shape as her fingers closed on it. The smooth metal was a familiar shape, the weight a known one when she lifted it.
A shotgun.
She should have been wearing gloves; maybe it was evidence. But it was too late now. She’d touched it, even the trigger. Useless for evidentiary value now. She kept her grip on the barrel firm, taking it with her as she stood and turned in a circle, straining her eyes for some sense of movement and her ears for a sound. All she could hear was her own engine rumbling quietly behind her. Damn. She should have turned it off.
Laura turned back to the kitchen door and fumbled with it, finding it locked as well. At least that was good. If Maria was inside, she was being sensible. But the discarded shotgun was giving her a sense of unease that crept all the way down her spine as she pounded heavily on the glass of the door, trying to get Maria’s attention. She waited a moment and then did it again.
Nothing.
The night was almost silent, except for her damn rental car.
Laura blew out a heavy breath, then began to race around the side of the house, her eyes searching all directions as she went. Somewhere out here, there was a woman who was in danger.
Laura hoped beyond words that she wasn’t about to stumble over her corpse.
She made it almost a three-sixty around the house when she heard the scream.
Laura froze for just one moment, her whole body going stiff with fear, all her senses straining to pinpoint the sound. There was a small copse of trees, the beginnings of a wood, right behind the home on the final side, the one not far from where she had parked her car, at a distance of maybe five hundred feet. That was where the scream had come from. She was sure of it.
Laura had no time to let fear rule her. She had to move. It was the only way she could help to save a life. That was her job—the duty she had sworn to complete when she signed up for this.
It didn’t mean her heart didn’t pound, her veins didn’t freeze, her mind didn’t flash into fight or flight mode immediately.
It just meant that, as she threw herself headlong toward the trees, she chose fight.
Laura only had a few brief and blissful moments of that open view on either side of her, that clear sight, until she plunged into the trees and the cover of darkness. It was like running headlong into pure night. The trees shaded the light from the moon, which was strong enough to illuminate her path when it was out from behind the clouds. But it was drifting under cover and out of it, a light wind pushing the clouds across it, and when it was covered it was blacker than tar under those trees.
Laura paused a moment, getting her bearings. Hoping her eyes would adjust more. If she lit up a flashlight, she would give her own location away, make herself a target. She might even lead the killer right to Maria, if she wasn’t already dead.
She shoved the shotgun through the back of her belt, drawing her own gun instead. It was lighter, easier to run with, easier to aim at closer distances. In here, between the trees, there wasn’t much room to maneuver. If she did come across the killer, it was going to be fast and unexpected. It was going to be close.
Laura couldn’t wait any longer, couldn’t waste any more time. Even though she could barely see much more than the few trees around her, Laura plunged further into the darkness of the woods, fighting her way through branches that threatened to snatch at her clothes and raise roots that threatened to trip her. She had no way of knowing if she was going in the right direction, only her memory of the scream and the rough area it had come from. She was relying on luck, on the possibility of a vision, on something, anything. All she knew for sure was that she had to keep going.
Maria, Maria, Maria—the name raced through her head as she fought her way forward, all too aware of how much noise she was already making as she crunched twigs underfoot and snapped them off branches as they caught on her FBI windbreaker. She wanted to call out the name, to tell the woman she was coming. To let her know that help was at hand.
But she couldn’t give away her position so easily. Not without putting herself—and the very rescue she was attempting—at risk.
She was making too much noise as it was. Every snapped twig could be the one that gave her away. She wasn’t trained in moving quietly through woods like this, and even if she was, in the dark it would be next to impossible. The only thing she could hope was that it would be the same for the killer, that he wouldn’t hear her over the noise he was making—
She stopped dead, realizing how stupid she was being. All she had to do was listen. Stop making noise of her own, and listen.
Laura strained her ears, looking around, her eyes as wide as she could make them even though it wouldn’t help her see anything in the near-complete darkness. She listened. Just listened. Her own heavy breathing from her run, her heart pounding in her ears, the rustling of the breezes through leaves that were dry and dying—
There!
Laura turned toward the cracking noise she’d heard, forcing her body forward with all the strength she had, racing right through a tightly grown pair of trees whose branches interlocked. She felt the branches whip at her clothes, catching her hair in its ponytail, scraping over the bandage on her hand and threatening to tear it off. She thought she’d heard something else. Something that put even more fire into her steps, even more speed in her reckless headlong approach.
The quiet whimper of a woman’s voice.
There was a chance that Maria was still alive.
Laura raced toward the sound, and she burst out into a small open clearing between the trees just as the moon came out from behind the clouds, leaving her a full view of the scene in front of her—
It was like a tableau before her eyes, her senses so heightened with the adrenaline surging through her veins that she took it all in at a single glance and understood everything.
There was the killer, a man she’d never seen before. He wore dark clothing, shrouding his face in a hood, a look that combined with the bloodied scythe he held to create a chilling image. A vision of Death himself. He looked at Laura as she emerged from the trees, his eyes swinging around, and she saw that he had a facial structure she knew. He was clearly related to Allan McLean—the same dark hair and eyes, the same long nose, the same mouth. He was younger, though. Maybe in his early or mid-twenties.
Maria Bluton was on the ground in front of him, struggling to crawl backwards, trying to get away from him. Her leg was bleeding heavily from a cut that had slashed through her jeans, the fabric already starting to drip, stained red from the wound downward. The ground was getting soaked with it, splashes sinking into the soil with every movement she made.
With a flash, Laura saw it all. The sickle ready to sweep down and harvest her, almost like she was an ear of corn ready to be slashed in half. The killer, his victim, the fact she was so close to losing her life. With a flash, she had her gun pointing in the right direction, aiming right at the killer’s head, the range close enough that she wasn’t at all concerned about not being able to hit him.
But with a flash, the killer, too, had seen her—taken it all in—and reacted. In the same moment she brought her gun to bear on him, his sickle slashed through the air toward Maria’s neck, freezing just the moment before it cut her a second smile to match her husband’s.
He stared at Laura. She stared back. On the ground between them, Maria sobbed once, then froze too, her neck having touched the sharp blade with the outward breath.
If she shot him, he was likely to cut her neck, the curved blade severing her arteries even as he fell.
If he cut her neck now, she would shoot him, killing him where he stood. They both knew that there was no chance she would miss at this distance.
They had themselves a stand-off.
“Well,” the killer said. “What now?”