Delilah’s pulse pounded and pounded until her body shook.
An unfamiliar male voice surrounded them. “You out there? If you’re there, come out. I don’t have time for this.”
The man looked at Delilah and Jayme, and then answered. “Over here.”
The stranger on horseback stopped on the path and dismounted, tied a tall black stallion onto the scrawny trunk of a half-dead tree. “What the hell are you up to?” he asked. “Get out here, and bring that Jefferies girl with you.”
The man turned to the girls, frowning. “Damn it,” he said. “You heard him. Git out there.”
Jayme ambled around the side of the boulder at Delilah’s side, and they retraced their steps to the path. A big man waited there; he bore a resemblance to the man who had taken them.
“You’ve got two girls? Two? Goddamn it, you twisted son of a—”
“What business is it of yours?” The man scowled at him. “This hasn’t got anything to do with you.”
“You girls okay?” the stranger asked.
Delilah started to answer, to scream that they weren’t anything like okay, but before she could, the man cut her off.
“I asked what you’re doing here.”
“Where else would you go?” the stranger asked. “As soon as I hung up the phone with you, I knew you were gonna run and head to the cave. We must’a talked a hundred times when we were kids about how it was the perfect hideout.”
The man tightened his eyes, angry. “But why did you come? I don’t need you here.”
The stranger’s face looked like he was chewing on something sour. “You haven’t got a choice. You’ve gotta come with me. We’re going to take those girls back. And you’re going to confess.”
“Why, I’m not gonna… Why would I do that?”
“Because that woman cop isn’t giving up,” the stranger said. “Because before long she’s gonna figure out that I knew you take girls, what you do to them. It’s over. I need you to come with me back to town. This is done.”
“Well, I—” the man tried to interrupt.
“They aren’t just going to go after you,” the stranger said. “They’re gonna prosecute me for murder just like you, as an accessory. I should have turned you in years back, the first time you took a girl, instead of covering up for you. You did all this, but it’s gonna fall on me, too. And I won’t have that.”
“I’m not—”
Delilah fixed her eyes on the barrel of the long, black handgun the stranger pulled out of his belt, silencing the man. He held it up and pointed it at him.
The man winced. “Take it easy there. Don’t do anything rash.”
“I’m sick of covering up for you,” the stranger said. “I’m not going to do it anymore.”
“Okay,” the man said. He set down his rifle and held his hands up high. “I’ll go with you. I understand.”
“I hope you do. Now get the key. Unlock those girls,” the stranger ordered.
“It’s in the saddlebag on the back of the horse.”
“Move slow,” the stranger warned. He lined up where he could get a better look at the man and the saddlebag. “I’m not taking my eyes off you.”
Jayme reached over and grabbed Delilah’s hand, the ends of her mouth tugging up into the slightest hint of a smile. The girls watched, excited at the prospect of freedom, as their captor turned toward the gray mare. He slipped his left hand into one of the brown leather saddlebags under the sheet that held supplies. He pulled out the ring with the keys on it. The stranger moved back and seemed to relax, just as the man slid his right hand under his shirt. When he pulled it out, he held a small black pistol.
The shot went off before Delilah could finish shouting the warning. Jayme screamed. One bullet hit the stranger in the chest. A second sliced directly through the center of his forehead. His legs collapsed under him, and he toppled over, dead.
Silence for a heartbeat, and then the girls’ screams and sobs filled the night air. Delilah’s chest heaved so hard she thought she might never be able to stop.
Jayme and Delilah huddled together, crying, while the man walked over and nudged the stranger. Nothing. No movement. The man did it again. The stranger didn’t respond.
The man hesitated, as if considering what to do.
“You’ve got no right to tell me what to do,” he whispered. “And you ain’t gonna need that horse. So it might as well be mine.”
The man untied the knotted sheet filled with supplies from his old mare and carried it over to the stranger’s mount. While Delilah and Jayme watched, he tied the sheet on the back of the stallion. He took the end of the chain and looped it around the saddle horn. Once he finished, the man pushed the body off the trail, a short distance into the woods.
Then the man went back to his own horse and took off the reins.
“Get the hell outta here, you flea-bitten hag!” he shouted, whipping the horse with the leather straps. The horse neighed and backed up, hemmed in by the forest. It clomped backward, then turned and ran down the trail.
“Okay,” the man said to the girls. “We need to get moving.”
Forty-Four
I stared up at the black sky and the thousands of stars overhead and wondered if my instincts misled me. I couldn’t forget Max saying that I pinned my hopes that Delilah might still be alive on no real evidence. Two girls found dead. The one in the field? Sadie. The one in the barn? Doc thought we’d found Eliza Heaton. On the right side of her face, just a touch above her upper lip, he saw a mole like the one in her picture.
“We’ll do DNA, of course,” Doc said. “But my guess is that someone’s going to be delivering very bad news to the Heatons.”
In the barn, I pitched in to help Doc remove the body. It’s not what I wanted to be doing. I
