He runs forward and kicks me hard again, this time thrusting his foot forward and smashing into the side of my head. My neck snaps to the side and back again, and I fight the darkness creeping in around my vision. If I go out, I am done. His voice is echoing in my ears, and my brain seems to have trouble focusing on any one thing. The sound of his feet crunching the snow and the fallen leaves underneath almost drown out his words.
“You almost ruined everything, Emma. I loved watching how people reacted to murder. I loved creating puzzles for them to figure out. It was research. It was academics, don’t you understand? A study project into the human psyche. The human mind.”
I cough and blood drizzles down my chin. I have to get away from him. Or at least lure him into a trap. I wonder if I have enough strength to lock him in a hold.
Or will I have to get extreme?
Suddenly, his presence is on me, and I realize I am not experiencing time correctly. He’s moving too fast. I must be nearly unconscious. I try to breathe, but his knee comes down on my back and his hand fills with my hair. He yanks my head back until his cheek is touching mine.
“We can be a family, Emma. We always have been, but now we can actually be one. You. Me. Julia. We can be happy together, just the way I always planned to be.” I struggle under his knee, crushing into my back and pressing the hurt ribs into the ground. “You are not going to stand in the way of our family.”
He pauses and spits again. This time the blood splatters the snow beside my head. “I will really enjoy watching how people react to how you died.”
Chapter Fifty-Seven
I have no choice. My vision is darkening, and I know I only have so much strength left. I just hope it’s enough.
His knee shifts ever so slightly as he tries to gain better control, and I use the opportunity. I throw everything I have into a pushup and roll to one side. He falls off of me with a cry of surprise, and despite the searing pain in my knee, I roll again, this time away from him, and curl my good knee under me. I come to a stop in the perfect position, facing him, my hand already sliding to the secret compartment in my jacket.
The gun is out, aimed, safety clicked off and fired in one fluid motion. He didn’t have time to even see the gun, I don’t think, before the muzzle flashes and the bullet rips into his skin. I aim for center mass, not wanting to take a chance, but at the last second, I shift one way and he another. Just in time, he falls forward. Instead of his chest or his hip, where I was aiming, I see his body jerk as the bullet rips into the shoulder of his left arm, almost at his neck. It goes in at the top and probably exits through the armpit, and he screams in pain and flails.
I lose my balance, pain coursing through my knee, and I adjust. As I do, Les scrambles to his feet and I fire off another shot at his legs. It misses, ricocheting off a tree. Les runs, and disappears into the woods, and I force myself to my feet. I start to go after him, limping, and reach the tree line. Then I stop. I shake my head.
Not this time.
This time I wait for backup.
I can see the trail of blood from his wound, slithering its way through the patches of snow and leaves where the trees were too dense to let snow in, even in December. Everything in me is screaming to chase him. To hunt him. To take vengeance.
But I hear the sirens in the distance, and it takes the zip right out of me. I don’t know if they are local or Sam, but either way, I wait. I reach for my phone and realize it must have fallen out somewhere in the struggle. I can’t call them and tell them where I am, but it can’t be far. If they ping it, they can find it and I will be close by.
It takes some time, several agonizing minutes of excruciating time, and I sit, leg stretched out and gun in hand, watching the woods where he went in, my back braced against a tree. If he comes out before the cops get here, I’m prepared to end him. As it is, I am still prepared to end him when they do arrive.
Finally, I hear them shouting behind me, and I wave them over. They stomp through the snow, and I hear one of them note the blood. Another set of footsteps is behind the two men who show up in front of me, scanning the area around me. I know those footsteps. I turn my head and see Sam, scrambling to me.
“Thank God,” Sam says as he pulls me into him. “Where is he?”
“I shot him, Sam,” I say. “In his shoulder. I think he’s going to live through the wound, but it should take us to him if we follow his trail. We have to hurry. I don’t know what he will do to Julia.”
Sam nods and the motions for the cops to find the trail and begin to slowly follow it. They do so, and Sam is left with me.
“Why the shoulder?” he asks under his breath when they are a few steps away. “You could have taken him out.”
I nod. He knows probably better than anyone what a good shot I am. We practice on the range rather often, and it’s no secret I am a much better shot, with a variety of guns, than he is. Faster on the draw, too.
“I didn’t want to kill him,” I say. “I don’t want
