Chapter 31
Jacob stood beside his Jeep and called out a greeting, trying to hide the pain in his voice. The stranger answered immediately:
“I need help.”
Cold sweat prickled on Jacob’s back.
“I’m looking for some people.” The figure crossed the creek, his hiking boots splashing through shallow water. He was young,
dark-haired. Glasses. Hispanic-looking. “My . . . my girlfriend, Allie, and her friend Tess.”
It’s you, Jacob realized with a shiver. He’d seen the guy only in photos.
Ethan.
What the hell was he doing here? He’d been assured that Ethan would be at home, many miles away. Why was he here, and why
now?
Jacob stood still. “I haven’t seen anyone.”
Shit, shit, shit.
And this oblivious boyfriend kept advancing up the rocky slope, just twenty paces away now. Jacob’s stomach coiled, and he
concealed his splinted hand behind his waist. If this guy came any closer, he’d see something impossible to explain—
“Wait. Stop.”
Ethan slowed but didn’t halt.
“The entire cave system is closed. There’s . . .” Jacob grasped for his rehearsed story, prepared for a situation like this one. It felt like years ago. “We’re quarantining an outbreak of white-nose syndrome.”
This stopped him.
“I’m with Green Ridge.” Jacob smiled effortfully. “They sent me here to put up signs.”
Not his best performance, but Ethan seemed to accept it. He’d halted ten paces away, just under the crest of the hill. One
step closer and he would’ve seen the rubber hose affixed to the Jeep’s undercarriage and leading into the cave. The only thing
blocking his view was a rise of land.
With his heart in his throat, Jacob glanced back to wide-eyed Babygirl, crouched behind the Jeep’s tailgate, holding her breath.
If Ethan saw her, he’d recognize her immediately.
Instinctively Jacob touched his carry holster, but of course, no gun. He still had his knife, though. If he moved fast he
could close the distance and plunge the steel blade into the boyfriend’s chest. But he’d get only one chance. Ethan seemed
soft—he’d likely never been in a fight before—but he was also lean and fit. Jacob remembered being told once that the guy
ran half-marathons. If Ethan sensed an attack coming, if he escaped the area, it would all be over. Worse, he surely had a
phone. He could call 911 at any second.
“The people I’m looking for would’ve come here sometime this morning,” Ethan said. “I’m worried something happened to them.”
Jacob nodded, pretending to listen. Ethan Ramirez was a doctor, right? Something specialized. Assuming he lived in the city,
this meant the poor guy had driven an hour into the mountains, then hiked another hour on foot—just to check on helpless little
Allie. That was marriage material, all right. Too bad for him.
You poor, clueless bastard.
You have no idea.
“I’ve been out here all day.” Jacob palmed sweat from his forehead, careful to keep his splinted right hand behind his hip. “Maybe your friends changed their plans and—”
“No.” Ethan shook his head. “They’re here.”
“How are you sure?”
“I found her car.”
Jacob’s heart sank. He knew they should’ve moved the damn car. He’d even suggested twice to Babygirl that she hike down there
and hide it. This time the silence was longer.
Five seconds.
Ten.
Somewhere in the world, he knew, twenty people just died.
A tumor of dread was slowly expanding inside his chest. The situation was one mistake away from exploding into violence. Out
of the guy’s view, Jacob slid his unhurt hand behind his waist to lift the leather flap, resting his thumb on his Marine Corps
knife.
Ethan subtly tensed. He’d sensed the hidden motion. He definitely suspected something now.
Jacob had a question of his own: “Have you reported them missing?”
“I called it in. But they’re not overdue yet.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“It’s complicated.” Ethan stood still on the uneven ground, his eyes difficult to read, his hands at his sides. “Allie texted
me a few hours ago. She told me everything was fine, that she and Tess were going to camp down at Blue Lake for the next two
nights.”
Jacob nodded, trying to hide his impatience.
He knew this already. He’d watched Babygirl send that very text hours ago, before they’d smashed both phones with a rock.
To his eye, her message had looked like a faithful girlfriend assuring her boyfriend of a perfectly plausible change of plans.
What mistake could she have possibly made?
He took a step forward—and Ethan took a matching step back. Loose rocks skittered underfoot. The sloped ground was unsteady.
Ethan’s eyes stayed locked on Jacob, as if staring down a rabid animal. “Allie made an . . . appointment on Monday.”
“An appointment?”
“It was important. It’s strange that she’d forget it.”
Goddamn it, Babygirl.
Of course she’d forget some small detail on the calendar. Of course she’d be too clever for her own good. Throughout their
relationship she’d loved to flesh out her lies with details. Pointless details, sometimes. It was irresistible to her, maybe
even pathological. But every detail is a bear trap planted somewhere in the future.
Ethan took another step back, keeping his balance. Trying to politely disengage now. “Sorry to bother you. I’ll keep looking
on the trail.”
“Maybe she rescheduled.”
He nodded once. “Maybe.”
Yes, the boyfriend was definitely suspicious. He’d sensed the strain in Jacob’s posture, the tension in his voice. He’d already
guessed that Jacob was guarding something out here, that he knew exactly what happened to Allie and Tess. Ethan was only playing
along, and as soon as he reached a safe distance, he’d call 911. That was the smartest way to play the volatile situation
he’d stumbled into.
Ethan kept backing away. He knew better than to turn his back.
Eye to eye on the unstable footing.
Jacob matched his steps, turning his boots sideways on the crumbling earth. But the boyfriend was too careful to allow him within reach. He couldn’t quite close the distance. Predator and prey danced a halting, uncertain dance.
If he bolts, it’s over. The guy was a runner.
I’ll never, ever catch him—
Then Jacob heard a rustle of motion behind him. He looked uphill to see Babygirl—the quiet, clear-eyed woman Ethan only thought he knew, the root of today’s mess—step out from behind the Jeep and into view.
“Ethan,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
The boyfriend froze.
Distracted for just a half second.
It was all Jacob needed. He bolted forward, closed the distance, and plunged his steel KA-BAR into Ethan’s stomach.
Jacob twisted the knife—he felt the guy’s slippery guts squirm around inside—and then Ethan fell free with a choked gasp and
toppled down the hill, rolling, landing in the creek with a splash. This was now a double homicide.
The blood was oily red on Jacob’s knife, like new transmission fluid. Maybe it was the dreamlike cocktail of adrenaline, but
he realized a part of himself was disappointed. He’d actually been rooting for the boyfriend, somehow, secretly hoping the poor, decent guy would escape anyway—just like he’d always still felt bad
for his father’s hooked fish—and Ethan had gotten so heartbreakingly close.
Two people die every second, he reminded himself. Will the world bat an eye, then, if for just this one second he bumped it
up to three?
Ethan splashed and writhed in the creek as Jacob approached, clutching his newly opened stomach with both hands as if trying to hold his organs in.
The shallow water clouded red around him, long tendrils following the current.
A knife in the gut was a nasty way to go.
At least Jacob could grant him the mercy of a quick death.
“Wait.” Babygirl slid down the hill after him. “Give me the zip ties.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
He passed the bundle to her. She pushed past him and pinned the boyfriend with a knee into his back. Ethan turned his head
sideways to breathe, coughing on dirty creek water as she clasped his wrists together. His glasses fell off.
She pulled the bindings tight around his wrists with a plastic snarl.
“It doesn’t matter,” Jacob said as he watched. “Whatever we do here, we’re both going to prison anyway. Your friend down there
has already won, because she’ll never give us the camera—”
“You’re wrong.”
“How do you figure?”
Her lip twitched; she was trying to smile. Her muscle movements were jerky, unnatural, like a corpse jolted with voltage.
He knew it was all posturing and she was scared shitless just like he was. She knew damn well what was at stake. But her voice
was disturbingly confident: “She’ll give us the camera.”
“How?”
“We’ll make her.”
She rolled the boyfriend over with her hiking boot. He sprawled painfully onto his back, his chest heaving with wheezing breaths,
his jacket soaked with blood where Jacob’s knife had opened his guts up. His eyes focused on her. Disbelief, then sadness.
His lips moved: “You—”
She looked away, suddenly nauseated.
She belonged to Jacob, of course, but part of her still cared for Ethan, and this gave Jacob a morbid satisfaction.
All her life she’d skirted accountability, micromanaged how people saw her, kept her little hands clean—but today that was no longer possible.
Separate halves of her life, matter and antimatter, had just made violent contact. There would be no more secrets.
She picked up Ethan’s glasses and steadied herself.
Inhaled.
Exhaled.
“Now,” she told Jacob, pressing the glasses into his hand, “we have a hostage.”