The Hunt

him without stopping as she pulled a red down-filled vest over her black flannel shirt. In any other situation, Nick would have grinned at the way Booker backed off.

Then she focused her sharp blue eyes on him.

His heart quickened and his stomach lurched. If only he’d had more time to prepare for her inevitable arrival. If he’d been warned she was on her way, he could have steeled himself for the confrontation.

“Miranda,” he said as she approached, “I-”

“Damn you, Nick!” She poked a finger at his chest. “Damn you!” Nothing intimidated Miranda. Though she was tall for a woman-at least five-foot-nine-he had six inches and a hundred pounds on her. You’d think he’d intimidate her, that any man would frighten her after what she’d gone through, but he guessed he shouldn’t be surprised. She was a survivor. She didn’t expose her fear.

“Miranda, I was going to call you. I didn’t know for certain it was Rebecca. I didn’t want you to have to go through it again.”

Her darkening eyes told him she didn’t believe him. “Screw that. Screw you! You promised you’d call.” She brushed past him and strode over to the tarp, staring at the covered body. Her fists clenched, her shoulders reverberated in tension.

Nick wanted to stop her, to protect her from seeing another dead girl. Most of all, he wanted to protect her from herself.

And she’d always been perfectly clear that she didn’t want Nick’s protection.

Miranda worked to control her temper. She shouldn’t have yelled at Nick, but dammit! He’d promised. For seven days she’d been searching for Rebecca, the nightmares destroying the few hours of sleep she allowed herself. He’d promised she’d be the first to know when they found her.

Neither she nor Nick had expected to find Rebecca alive.

She stared at the sunny tarp in the middle of the quiet earth tones of the land and inhaled sharply, her throat raw with hot anger and unwanted ice-cold fear. Her fists squeezed into tight balls, her nails digging into her palms. She knew it was Rebecca Douglas. But she had to see for herself, force herself to look at the Butcher’s latest victim. For strength, for courage.

For vengeance.

She pulled latex gloves over her long fingers, knelt beside the still woman, and fingered the edge of the tarp. “Rebecca,” she said, her voice a whisper, “you’re not alone. I promise you I’ll find him. He’ll pay for what he did to you.”

She swallowed, hesitated, then drew back the tarp to reveal the girl she’d been searching for, twenty hours a day for the last week.

At first, Miranda didn’t see the swollen face, the slit throat, or the many cuts washed clean by the rain. The image of the twenty-year-old in Miranda’s mind was beautiful, as she had been when she was alive.

Rebecca had a contagious laugh, according to her best friend, Candi. Rebecca cared about those less fortunate and volunteered one night a week reading to the infirm at Deaconess, according to her career counselor, Ron Owens. A straight-A student, Rebecca had wanted to be a veterinarian, according to her biology teacher, Greg Marsh.

Rebecca hadn’t been perfect. But no one had shared the less attractive stories while she’d been missing.

No one would ever repeat them now that she was dead.

As Miranda watched, the image of Rebecca she’d held so close to her heart during the hours and hours of searching morphed into the broken body before her.

“You’re free,” she told her. “Free at last.”

Sharon. I’m so sorry.

“No one can hurt you anymore.”

She reached over and touched Rebecca’s hair, brushed a matted piece to the side, cupped her cheek.

Stay in control.

She repeated her mantra. How many times would she have to go through this? How many dead girls would they bury? She’d thought it would get easier. But if she didn’t keep her emotions tight and protected, she feared she’d collapse under the enormity of the Butcher’s continued success-and her own failure to stop him.

She eased the tarp over Rebecca’s face, hating to do it. The act of covering the body reminded Miranda of the other dead girls they’d found. Of Sharon.

The morning Miranda led them to Sharon’s body was so cold she shivered constantly under the half-dozen layers of clothing she wore. She’d wanted to return the day after she’d been rescued, but she hadn’t been allowed to leave the hospital. When she tried walking on her own, her damaged feet had failed her.

She’d been too numb to cry, too tired to argue. She mapped out the location as best she could remember, but the search team couldn’t find Sharon.

Miranda couldn’t bear the thought of her friend’s body exposed for yet another night. Leaving her to the grizzlies and cougars and vultures. So the following morning she withstood the pain in her legs and led the search team and law enforcement back to where Sharon lay. She had to see her one last time.

She might have been in shock; that’s what the doctors said. But she walked with help. She knew where Sharon had fallen, would never forget it. She brought them to the spot, and there Sharon lay. Exactly how she’d fallen when the killer shot her.

Silence filled the air, birds and animals mourning with the humans. Even the spring wind held its breath; not one leaf rustled as everyone finally grasped exactly what had happened to Miranda and Sharon.

The sudden cry of a hawk split the stillness, and the wind gently blew.

The medic covered Sharon’s body with a bright green plastic tarp while the sheriff’s team started searching for evidence. Miranda couldn’t stop staring at the tarp. Sharon was dead underneath it, reduced to a lump under a sheet of plastic. So wrong, so inhuman!

It was then that Miranda had first broken down and cried.

An FBI agent carried her the three miles back to the road. His name was Quincy Peterson.

CHAPTER 2

When he saw Miranda, Quinn stopped in his tracks. His breath hitched in his chest and he sidestepped behind a thicker shelter of trees so she wouldn’t spot him.

Ten years had passed since he’d last seen her, but the impact was the same. First, a mixture of awe and respect-he had yet to meet a person with greater resolve than Miranda. Next came love and pride, followed quickly by anger and frustration. So entwined. He couldn’t turn off his emotions like a faucet; how could she have shut him out so easily? How could she have walked away from their relationship without giving him a chance to explain?

He still had hope she would be able to put aside her blinding obsession with the Butcher and come back. But that hope had diminished with the passage of time. Now, he feared she would kill herself through neglect of her own needs.

Her back was to Nick; only Quinn could see the agony etched on her face.

As he watched, Miranda closed her eyes and shook her head, as if to rid herself of a nightmare. Or a memory. She pushed herself up from the ground, wiped her eyes with her forearm, and walked around to the dead woman’s feet. She stared at Rebecca’s covered body for a good minute before bending down and lifting the corner of the tarp.

Quinn didn’t have to be standing at her side to know what Miranda was staring at. Rebecca’s feet and legs, caked in mud from running. The broken leg. The evidence of her flight.

“How long?”

Even from his vantage point fifty feet away, Quinn heard the anger and pain in her voice. She whirled around and glared at Nick. Her jaw tightened as she struggled to control the pain.