He’s in.
I dive to my left and hit the dirt, tucking myself behind some brush like an animal. It might be appropriate actually. I feel like I’ve been run to ground.
“I know you’re close, Wick.” Ian walks a few feet ahead of me. “I can hear your breathing.”
No shit. I’m struggling not to hyperventilate. I mash my shirt against my mouth, trying to smother the sound, and my elbow rams into something hard.
A broken-off branch.
I run my fingers over it, feeling the sharpened edge. Not a Taser, but it’ll have to do.
Ian shuffles closer, kicking the smell of dead leaves into the air. “Come on out, Wick. You did this before with Jason, remember? He told me all about it.”
The close-pressed branches and the ringing in my ears play hell with Ian’s voice. I can’t tell where he is. To my left? I think? I ease myself into a sitting position, look around. Not good. I went too far. I’m pinned by brush on one side and Ian on the other. I need to stand. I can’t get a good swing if I’m lying down. But if I stand, he’ll see me.
If I stay, he’ll find me.
I push to my feet, staying close to a tree trunk, and pan the shadows, holding my breath until it’s a pinch in my chest.
“Come on, Wick.”
There. There he is. Ian’s a few feet away, bent in half as he looks for me under a log.
“I know what you are in the dark, Wick. That’s what made it so good. I saw you standing over Baines in the study. I saw your expression. You enjoy power. You’re like me.”
“Bullshit.”
Ian straightens, hunting for the direction of my voice. “Liar.”
I press to my right, deeper into the woods, but I need a better position, one where I won’t get slowed down by brush when I run.
“I saw you through the window,” Ian continues. He moves faster than I do, not worrying about the noise. He’s getting closer.
“We both play weak because it suits us,” he says. “It’s not because we are. Predators keep excellent cover. Too bad we recognize each other.”
“I’m not like you, Ian.”
“Shitty attitude coming from a girl who stinks of fear.” He inhales a long, deep breath. “You bitches all smell like it in the end.”
I push through the last bit of undergrowth. Ian’s maybe fifteen feet away. There’s no way I’ll outrun him.
“Don’t feel like talking anymore, Wick?”
I lift the branch to my shoulder. “Why’d you kill Lell?”
Ian’s head lifts, twisting back and forth as he hunts for me. “Lell was like me too—like us. She denied it until the end of course. I knew she wanted my brother for money. Baines knew Kyle wanted Lell for the moment. We were all friends and I . . . used that. I whispered to Baines all about how he should do something. And then he did—he killed both of them.”
Ian pauses, taking a deep breath of night air. “I’m good at that, getting people to do what I want. Chelsea was like that too. She wanted money, power, to get away from here, and once she found those pictures, she saw her ticket—at my expense. She was my first and, God, how I enjoyed the cutting. Almost as much as I enjoyed burying Kyle. You want to know the best part?”
No. I almost say yes though because he’s drawing closer and, one way or another, this is going to end.
“The best part was that our father believed it was Kyle. By that time, he hated him so much it was easy getting him to believe his son killed Lell and took off.”
I shift behind another tree and a branch pops under my foot. Ian tenses.
And comes closer.
“I talked him through it,” he continues. “Just like with Baines, I explained how it had to be, and do you know what my father did? Nothing. Instead of searching for his son, he helped cover it up. It all made too much sense after all of Kyle’s blackout rages and the doctor’s warnings. People see what they expect to see—of all people, you should get that.”
I do and I ease back another step, feeling with the toe of my sneaker now, easing it into the leaves to minimize the noise.
“And then I got to thinking,” Ian says, and I can hear the smile in his voice. “Because now that Kyle was out of the picture, I was set to inherit everything and what would happen if I were to . . . speed things up?”
He’d be free of Bay. I swallow and my throat catches. “And the ‘remember me’ thing?”
“I thought it was a nice touch. Remember the girl you buried. Remember what you did. Dad knew someone else knew. He started to melt down and I got to watch. I broke him like he kept trying to break me.”
Ian pauses, scanning the woods. He’s looking . . . looking. . . . He freezes. He sees me.