“Wait! Just wait! I didn’t kill her.”
“You’re standing over her body.”
“It looks bad. I get it, but it wasn’t me.”
Luke lowered his shoulder and charged at the other man. He drove the full weight of his body directly into Derek’s solar plexus. Derek’s cheeks puffed as his wind rushed out of him. Both men collapsed into the snow. Luke landed on top.
A guttural, animalistic growl erupted from Luke’s mouth. If he hadn’t been so hell-bent on tearing Derek limb from limb, he might have been frightened to hear himself make such a bestial roar. He grappled with the younger man and managed to grab hold of one of his wrists. Luke shoved Derek’s forearm against his sternum and unleashed a vicious downward punch. Derek put up his free hand and partially deflected the impact, but Luke knew that it still hurt. So did the next blow and the next.
Another howl of rage and fury ripped from Luke’s throat as he struggled with the man who’d killed his child. Derek recovered his senses somewhat and grapevined his right leg on top of Luke’s left leg. With a sudden, powerful surge, he managed to roll over and get on top of Luke, though his wrist was still trapped in an iron grip.
“Luke, you have to listen to me.” Derek’s speech was slightly slurred because of the bloody lip Luke had given him. “I didn’t—”
Luke bit Derek’s hand. The younger man howled in pain and struggled ferociously. They tumbled through the snow, leaving bloody impressions in their wake. While the men battled for supremacy, Luke’s rifle was dislodged in the struggle and ended up a dozen feet away.
Luke wound up back on top. He hollered in triumph as he once again blasted Derek in the face with a vicious punch, but the younger man grabbed Luke’s arm. Derek constricted his abs and threw both of his legs up to grab Luke’s head. Luke’s vision grew dark as Derek applied a triangle chokehold.
As his consciousness began to fade, Luke knew he only had one shot. He gathered his legs beneath him in a squat and surged upward to drag Derek along with him. With both arms and legs engaged, Derek had no way to mitigate the impact when Luke fell forward and drove his head and shoulders into the snowy, rocky ground.
Derek’s limbs went limp as he released their grip. As he caught his breath, Luke disentangled himself from the barely conscious man’s body and staggered over to his rifle. He stood over Derek, pointing the barrel at his head.
“You killed my daughter, you son of a bitch.”
“No, it wasn’t me. I swear.” Derek held his hands up in supplication. One eye was partially swollen shut. Blood trailed down his chin. “It was one of the cult guys.”
“Bullshit.” Luke peered down the scope and prepared to pull the trigger.
“No, it’s not! I swear to you; it was someone from the cult.” Derek gestured toward a copse of oaks. “His body’s over there. I killed the bastard. I killed him, man. I killed him for Sierra.”
The sound of his daughter’s name jarred Luke out of his blind rage. He lowered the rifle a fraction of an inch and glared down at Derek.
“Where?”
“Over there.” Derek pointed. “I swear I didn’t kill her.”
Luke kept the rifle trained on Derek.
“Get up. Show me.” Luke didn’t offer any assistance to Derek as he struggled to his feet. “If I find out that you’re lying, you’re dead.”
“I’m not lying. Sierra followed me. I didn’t tell her to come along. We found something. Something big. If it helps convince you, I’ll show you.”
“I just want to see the body.” Luke kept his gaze on Derek. He couldn’t look at his little girl lying dead in the snow, not without losing it.
“Okay. Come on. I’ll show you.” Derek started up the mountain.
Luke followed, keeping the other man close enough to shoot, but not so close that he could turn on Luke and get the upper hand.
As Luke’s boots crunched through the snow, Derek dabbed at his split lip.
“What happened?” Luke asked.
“The guy got the drop on us. I don’t know where he came from. He shot at us and hit Sierra. He almost got me too.”
Once Luke spotted the body, he quickened his pace and shoved Derek forward with the end of the rifle. Derek stepped over the face-down body and stood a couple of feet back from it. Luke poked at the body with his rifle, just to make sure the cultist was dead. He flipped the body over. A bullet hole formed a meaty hole between the cultist’s sightless eyes.
“I didn’t notice him stalking us.” Derek trudged over to stand next to Luke. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”
Luke grunted. He picked up the cultist’s fallen rifle, a cheap but effective bolt action.
“It’s consistent with her wound.” Luke turned his ice-cold gaze on Derek. “But then again, you could have planted it on his corpse after you shot Sierra.”
“Oh, for the love of—please, think for a minute, man.” Derek took a half step back in case Luke got violent again. “I didn’t even know you were out here. You approached from upwind. I didn’t hear you until you were right on top of me. How would I have set all of this up? How could I anticipate which direction you’d come from?”
Derek’s words hung in the frosty air for a long, tense moment. Then Luke relaxed ever so slightly and crouched over the corpse. He needed time to think, so he began to strip the cultist.
Luke found an energy bar, which he ripped into and devoured in seconds. As he continued to loot the corpse, Derek helped by getting the man’s jacket and boots off. The cultist’s outfit wasn’t of much use, but the camouflage jacket he wore was in good condition. Likewise, his boots seemed fairly new.
They also found
