“I’m not going to hurt you,” she said. “I just want to talk. Please.”
“Is Emily all right?”
“Yes. She’s fine.”
His posture relaxed slightly. His hands dropped to his sides. “How did you find me?”
“You brought Holly here.”
“Yeah, so?”
“A dead body in front of a church? No one is coming out here for at least a couple of weeks.”
A hint of a smile crossed his face. “Hiding in plain sight.”
“Rory, I came to ask you to come with me.”
“Where?”
“To the police station.”
He motioned to the altar behind her. “Are there a bunch of police outside?”
Josie shook her head. She took a step closer to him even though doing so made her heart tick faster. He was only fifteen, but he was taller than her. Although he was thin and wiry, Josie remembered well how quickly and brutally he had overcome her before. “No,” she answered. “It’s just me, and I’m not here as a police officer. I don’t even have my gun. I’m not a threat to you—or to the creature.”
“Pax told you that, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“The creature didn’t kill my family. Neither did I.”
“I know that,” Josie said.
“How do you know?”
“I figured it out,” Josie said.
“No one is going to believe me,” he muttered, his voice growing small.
Josie took a step closer to him, arms still out, her shoulders aching. “I believe you.”
“I brought Holly here so he would see what he had done, and so he would know that I wasn’t going to let him get away with what he did, but I didn’t kill that other lady. The one you were with that night. I didn’t shoot at you.”
“I know.”
“I don’t even have a gun. I never had a gun. That was my mom’s. She kept it in the truck. It was for deer and bear and coyote. I was never allowed to touch it. Ever. I got real mad once and tried to get it out of the safe in the truck, but I couldn’t. I didn’t have the strength—even when I was most mad.”
“I know,” Josie said.
“But that doesn’t matter,” he insisted. “It doesn’t matter if you don’t believe me ’cause no one else will, and now I killed Pax’s dad. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t want to, but the creature… I got so mad. I don’t even remember…”
“I don’t want to talk about that,” Josie said. “No matter what happens right now, tonight you’re going to have to go to the police. Do you understand that?”
“I know. It’s exactly what my mom didn’t want.”
“I’m sorry, Rory. I truly am, but right now I need you to help me. We both know who killed your mom and sister, and the first step to getting him put away is for you to come with me and tell my team everything you know.”
“I don’t want to turn him in,” Rory said, an edge to his voice. “I want him to die. I want to kill him. I want to smash his face into a million pieces.”
Josie sensed an amorphous tension around him, and she didn’t want it to escalate. “I understand,” she said.
He stopped talking. His dark eyes flashed in the candlelight. “Do you?”
“He killed my grandmother,” Josie said. “The way you felt about your mom—that’s how I felt about my grandmother. She raised me, protected me, tried to keep me out of trouble, tried to do her best for me even when it wasn’t the best thing to do.”
“That sounds like my mom.”
Josie nodded. “I met your mom. You weren’t in the house that day. She helped me. Now let me help you.”
Before he could respond, there was a creaking noise. Then a gust of air blew through the small room. The candle was extinguished. Rory slammed into her, pushing her toward the altar. “We have to go,” he said. He practically lifted her off her feet and threw her out the back door. She spun, disoriented, but then felt his hand in hers, tugging.
“Run,” he said.
Forty-One
Rory pulled her along as her eyes tried once more to adjust to the moonlight. The sky had lightened somewhat but it was still very dark, especially in the woods. Pretty soon, tree branches whipped across her face, and she stumbled over a gnarled root and fell. Rory lifted her to her feet and kept pulling her. “Run!” he commanded. “He’ll kill us both.”
As Josie stumbled through the forest behind him, she felt the sweat forming on his palm. Every so often a shaft of moonlight sliced through the trees. As they passed through one, Rory looked over his shoulder, beyond her, and she saw the fear in his wide eyes. He looked like a little boy. Gone was the monster who had attacked her in the Mitchell house. Gone was the monster who had beaten Reed Bryan with a shovel. This was the boy Lorelei saw—always—when she had looked at her son.
They ran until a stitch developed in Josie’s side. Huffing, Rory stopped and leaned over, trying to catch his breath. Josie patted her pockets, looking for her night vision goggles, but they were gone. They must have fallen out. She still had her flashlight, though. When it appeared in her hand, Rory took it from her. “Don’t,” he said. “You’ll lead him right to us.”
“You already did, you little bastard.”
The sound of the unfamiliar voice in the dark made them both jump. Josie moved closer to Rory and they pressed their backs together, both searching the darkness for the man.
“You ran in a circle, you idiots.” The voice came again, this time from a different direction. Overhead, the trees kept much of the dusky light of the approaching dawn out, although Josie could still
