Carter said he’d send a unit.
The garage was only a few feet away and the keys were in the Jeep, weren’t they? If not, there was a spare set hidden in a drawer in the garage.
Suddenly, Critter stopped dead in his tracks. The hackles on his back went up and he snarled, baring his teeth.
Jenna slid to a stop. Held fiercely onto her child. Through the viscous curtain, she thought she saw movement. Her heart stood still. Every nerve ending sprang to life and she squinted and decided it was only the dark silhouette of a tree, branches moving in the wind.
“Come on, Allie,” she said, urging her daughter forward.
She didn’t hear a sound, just felt a change in the air, a whisper of cold air against the back of her nape. From the corner of her eye, she saw movement again, a dark, leonine mass springing from behind the garage.
Allie screamed.
Jenna swung the shotgun upward, flicked off the safety as he landed upon her, a strong, heavy male whose weight forced her to the ground.
“Run!” she screamed at Allie. She attempted to stand, searching frantically in the drifts for her gun, facing her attacker as the dog barked and snapped. Dressed in camouflage that was visible in the snow, his head covered with a ski mask, he lunged at her again. She rolled to one side through the freezing drifts. “Run!”
She felt the barrel of the gun and reached for it, gloved fi
ngers surrounding the cold steel. But he was upon her again. This time something cold pressed hard against her neck and then a jolt ripped through her body, thousands of volts of electricity that burned through her nerves. She let out a pathetic whimper and collapsed back to the ground.
CHAPTER 45
Carter was too late. He pulled through the open gates of Jenna’s ranch and he knew it was over. He’d heard her terrified scream on her phone and then the still, damning silence that had followed. No matter how loud he’d yelled, she hadn’t responded. When he’d tried to dial her again, he couldn’t get through.
A lifetime had passed since the moment they’d been cut off, but if he checked his watch, it had been less than ten minutes. Don’t give up, he told himself, but now that he was here at her house, he knew without stepping outside of his truck that he’d lost her. He put in a quick call for backup, but didn’t wait. Time was too precious.
His gut clenched as he opened the Blazer’s door and a blast of winter slapped him hard in the face. He ran through the thick snow to the house and noticed a glow in the windows. Maybe he’d been too hasty; there was a chance she’d survived. Drawing his weapon, he moved toward the breezeway and hurried to the house. The back door was unlocked. Not a good sign. He pushed it open and stepped quietly inside.
No one greeted him, not even the damned dog. “Jenna?” he called. “It’s Shane.”
From somewhere in the back of the house he heard a sob.
“Shane?” Rinda’s voice. “Thank God.” Footsteps clattered against the wood of the floors. “I thought you’d never get here!” A flashlight bobbed, the weak beam pointed at his face, and suddenly she was upon him, crying and sobbing, talking in gibberish, Jenna’s youngest child at her side.
“Slow down and tell me exactly what happened. Where the hell’s Turnquist?”
“Dead, I think, in the barn. I—I haven’t been down there, but Allie was.”
“You’re sure he’s dead?” Shane asked Allie, and she nodded mutely, her eyes round with terror.
A cold, certain fear twisted Carter’s insides.
“It’s worse,” Rinda said. “Josh Sykes is dead, too. In his truck down on the other side of the fence, at the logging road. Allie followed Cassie after she snuck out to meet Josh there. She witnessed the killer attack Cassie. He’d already killed Josh. The poor kid’s still in his truck. Dead.”
“You checked?”
“No. But I took her word for it.”
“He’s dead. I saw,” Allie whispered, her voice raw.
“And Cassie?”
Allie began to cry. “I shouldn’t have left her. He had her. He had her!”
“He’s got them, Shane,” Rinda said, her face twisted in a deep, horrified fury. Her dark eyes flashed in the firelight. “That brutal monster, whoever he is, has Cassie and Jenna.”
“You don’t know who he is?”