Fear No Evil (27 page)

She pulled her tank top over her head—she had the black one over a white one—and tied it around her arm where Roger’s bullet had sliced cleanly through her skin. She leaned against a tree to catch her breath.

“Where’s the girl?” Roger called. Close. Too close.

Kate stood, got her bearings, exposed herself, and fired once, twice.

She missed, but Roger fell to the ground, giving her enough time to run.

Away from Dillon and Lucy. To give them time to get the hell off the island.

She could swim. She didn’t want to think what the salt water would do to the bullet wound in her arm, but maybe she’d be lucky. Maybe she’d get to kill the bastard who’d raped Paige and Lucy and a half-dozen other women.

She counted the shots she’d fired in her head.

Dammit, she only had one bullet. She’d better make it count.

She ran.

Trask watched on the webcam as the man jumped through the window and kicked Frank in the face.

When he received the message that the outer perimeter had been breached, he’d tried to reach Roger. Nothing. What good was he if Trask couldn’t count on him when it mattered? Roger had used his silence twenty years ago to demand trust. “I never said anything about Trevor, did I? I never said anything about Monique. You can trust me, you know that, right?”

Fucking idiot.

Now his prize had been stolen. Frank was dying. For all he knew Roger and Denise were dead, too.

And Dillon Kincaid—the last man Trask thought would come after Lucy—had shot Frank and destroyed his show. He took his girl. Monique.

No, no,
Lucy.
Monique was already dead.

Trask slammed his hand on the dashboard of the Hummer. He was at the docks at Anacortes, but he didn’t dare go out to the island now. Not with the feds this close.

That fucking Mick Mallory. He must have figured out where they were. Alerted someone.

Kate. She’d been in contact with the Kincaids. Her fingerprints were all over this travesty.

Damn, damn, damn! First his money gone. He’d lost more than half his wealth in minutes. Minutes! Then his people.

He should never have trusted anyone. Hadn’t he learned that before?

His father. The whores. His own mother turning her back on him after he was expelled. Roger and Paul, weak, needy fools.

No one had ever stood by him. He could only depend on himself. Everything he knew, everything he was, was due to
his
intelligence,
his
foresight,
his
vision. No one had seen the potential of the Internet until he had launched his online pornography company. No one saw the potential of fantasy role-playing until he did it first.

Because he understood the darkest fantasies of human nature. He harbored them. He’d harbored them his entire life.

Everything was crumbling, but Trask felt free for the first time in years. Everyone he had mistakenly trusted was dead. Now he could go after Kate Donovan on his own. No cameras, nothing but her and him and his hands on her neck.

He’d keep her alive for a long, long time. Long enough to crush her soul before he watched her blood flow.

But first he had a need. Lucy had been stolen from him. In nine hours she should have been dying underneath him.

Someone else would fill her role. An understudy.

He looked around the dock. The day was warm and bright, hundreds of people out in boats and walking along the dock, shopping, taking in the sun.

He spied a lone woman. A little old for him. But she had short blond hair like Kate. Tall and skinny. Walking toward her sporty little car.

He got behind the wheel of his Hummer and followed her. She would go home eventually, and he had backup recording equipment in his car. If she had a family, he’d kill them first. If she lived alone, all the better.

He hoped she lived in the country where her screams couldn’t be heard by neighbors.

TWENTY-FOUR

D
ILLON STEERED THE BOAT
toward the island in the distance where help waited. He swallowed anger and a deep, intense protective rage he’d never felt before. He gently touched Lucy’s hair as she huddled in the bottom of the boat, under a damp wool blanket Kate had taken from the helicopter and stuffed under the seat. Lucy shook uncontrollably, her face buried in her hands.

“Lucy, you’re safe. I promise.”

“You know.” She looked up at him, blinking in the harsh sunlight. Her voice trembled, the pain and anguish evident in those two words.

“Yes.” He couldn’t lie to her.

Tears streamed down her face and she closed her eyes, burying her face again.

He gently, cautiously, touched her cheek. She was bruised, but her external injuries would heal. He remembered what Kate had said in her note when she had planned to leave without him.

“Luce,” he said, trying to keep his voice calm, “you’re the strongest, bravest woman I know. We’re going to get through this, okay?”

She nodded but wouldn’t look at him.

She was scared and hurting. He was trained to help people deal with tragedies, their fear, their overwhelming sense of hopelessness. Intellectually he understood what Lucy was feeling: the humiliation, the fury, the helplessness, the terror, the injustice. Wanting to live and die at the same time.

But he didn’t know
how
she felt. He’d never been a victim. He’d never been physically and emotionally terrorized by a sadistic killer.

He wanted to take and internalize her pain. Yet for the first time he felt ill-equipped to offer the right words or guidance. She was alive, and that meant everything to Dillon and the Kincaid family. But what did it mean to Lucy?

As he neared the island where the copter waited, he saw three men standing on the shore. As he came closer, he recognized Jack. Quinn Peterson. The pilot, Hank.

How could they, four men, possibly know how to help Lucy?

He tossed the rope to Jack, who tied it off. That’s when he saw a tall, lean woman standing with Quinn Peterson. Her long black hair was pulled into a high ponytail and her face was ruddy from being outdoors.

She stepped forward. “Miranda Peterson. May I?” She nodded toward Lucy.

“Please be careful.”

Miranda looked him square in the eye. “I know exactly what she went through.” Then she stepped into the boat.

“My wife,” Peterson explained. “Lucy is in good hands.”

Dillon didn’t need to ask questions to connect the dots.

Jack said, “Trask shot and left for dead an undercover agent. I dropped him at the hospital before coming here. Where’s Kate?”

“Back there. Where’s Trask?”

Jack paused. “I had to let him go. I didn’t know where Lucy was, and I didn’t want to risk exposing myself and having him call for her execution. He’s driving a yellow Hummer and I already gave the plates to Peterson.”

“I ran them,” Peterson said. “Registered to Denise Arno.”

Dillon started for the boat. “I’m going back.”

“Not alone,” Jack said.

“I’m going, too,” Quinn said. “Miranda will take Lucy to the hospital.”

“You go with her,” Jack ordered Dillon. “Peterson and I will go back to the island.”

Dillon slowly burned. He’d been the one who’d left Kate behind; he wasn’t going to just walk away. If she died, how could he live with himself? He’d made a choice, the only choice he could make, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t finish the job.

Miranda led Lucy from the boat. She wrapped her in a second wool blanket. “We’ll be at Bellingham General,” she said. “But Lucy wants to go home.”

Dillon felt all eyes on him.

Lucy was safe. Alive.

Kate was in trouble.

“We’ll get Kate, then regroup at the hospital,” Dillon said.

No one argued.

Kate ran.

She’d hidden on the far side of the island, but Roger had closed in on her and she’d had to run again.

Roger Morton was chasing her through the dense growth on the island. Her arms were cut, and the gunshot wound throbbed. Her makeshift tourniquet had slowed but not stopped the flow of blood. It didn’t help that she was running, pumping blood faster and faster through her veins. Her chest burned, but she had to escape.

Everyone else was dead.

She was covered in blood, but she couldn’t think about it. The blood came from killers and rapists; she must not feel remorse. Not for Denise, the woman who set her and Paige up for Trask. Not for the young man she’d killed, who would have killed her without remorse. Not for the man whose neck she’d broken.

Roger was unharmed, and she had one bullet.

Stupid, stupid, stupid! But her emotions were raw, on the surface, and walking into that cabin was like walking into Paige’s graveyard. She’d fired over and over, not thinking, not being smart.

Maybe she deserved to die.

No.

Dammit, she’d finally saved one. She had destroyed Trask’s operation. She had hope that he would be found and Paige could rest in peace.

That she could live in peace.

“Kate, I’m going to fuck your dead body. You know that, don’t you?”

Roger’s vicious words cut through the air. Close, so close.

He would do it, too.

“The island’s not that big, babe. The water’s cold. You’re losing blood. Come to me. You won’t survive in the water. You know it.”

Psychological manipulation. She
would
survive. She wouldn’t let Trask win. Or Roger.

One bullet. She wiped sweat from her brow. Her short hair fell in her face; she’d lost the small band that had held it back. With one arm, she pushed it back.

One bullet. She listened. Heard a twig break.

Five feet. One bullet. She’d better not miss.

She jumped up.

They came at the island from the dock. The fastest way to get to the cabin and to Kate.

Dillon led the way, having visually mapped the island when he and Lucy escaped.

“Kate!”

He heard another man calling for her. On the far side of the island, away from the cliff. She’d led them away from the boat so Dillon and Lucy could escape.

Dillon swallowed heavily, glanced at Jack and Peterson. They had the training, but now they considered him part of the team.

He nodded, led the way toward the voice, Connor’s gun in his hand.

“I’m going to fuck your dead body, you know that, don’t you?”

The voice was closer. Roger Morton by the sound of it. The cabin loomed in front of them. Jack put his finger to his lips and quietly ran up the porch stairs as Peterson and Dillon ran past.

“…you’re losing blood. You won’t survive…”

Kate had been shot. Dillon ran faster, his body and mind focused on one thing. Saving Kate.

He saw Roger Morton facing away from him. His attention focused on a small grove of trees.

Kate jumped up, gun in hand, only feet from Morton.

Morton aimed.

Dillon fired.

Morton and Kate fell.

Had he shot Kate?
Please God, no.

Dillon ran to her.

Kate saw Dillon at the same time that Roger aimed his gun toward her. Instead of firing her own weapon, she collapsed, hugging the ground. She heard the shot at the same time, felt a thud as Roger Morton fell. She scurried to the other side of the tree, not knowing if Morton was faking it, dead, dying, or if it was just a flesh wound.

She peered around, saw Roger’s face.

“Fucking bitch!” he said.

Alive. Definitely alive.

“Kate!”

Dillon. Running toward her.

Roger still had his gun. He was so close she could almost touch him. Bleeding from the leg. He used the tree to brace his back, then stood.

Aimed his gun at Dillon.

Dillon dove and tackled Roger, whose gun fell into the dirt next to Kate. She grabbed it, aimed it toward the fighting men as they rolled in the dirt.

Almost immediately, Dillon had Roger beneath him and slammed his fist repeatedly into his face, his rage almost out of control.

“You. Hurt. My. Sister.” The words came out in grunts with each physical impact.

Quinn Peterson was only steps behind Dillon. He paused a moment, watching. No one wanted to deny Dillon his revenge.

Ten long seconds later Quinn stepped in and intervened. “I got it from here,” he said quietly to Dillon.

Dillon stared at Roger’s bloodied face and his own hands. He swallowed, his chest heaving with exertion and anger. He stood, turned to Kate.

She lowered her weapon. His face gradually changed as he walked over to her, knelt in front of her, pulled her into his arms, and held her tight.

“I thought I hit you.” His words were an agonized whisper. “Are you okay?”

She nodded into his bare chest. She put her hands on his flesh. His heart pounded into her palm. His breathing was labored from running and attacking. His arms squeezed her, holding her up. Protecting her. Keeping her safe and making her feel for the first time in her life that she was not alone.

Quinn Peterson handcuffed Roger and pulled him up. Roger swore and threatened them. “I’m going to call in the Coast Guard and have them pick us up at the dock. I’ll process Morton and call you later.”