Kate crawled across the front seat and propelled herself through the open driver’s door. She dropped onto the ground and landed on unsteady legs in the knee-deep snow, where she struggled for balance and surveyed the scene. They had plunged thirty feet down the side of the mountain before slamming into the tree. Steam wafted from the mangled Jeep; the impact had ripped the metal apart like gossamer. One of the rear doors was torn off its hinges and the hubcaps were missing. Gasoline leaked from the undercarriage, and the smell filled the air. The trunk had sprung open, leaving a debris field in the snow—suitcases, jumper cables, an ice scraper, bags of road salt, a spare tire, a snow shovel.
Kate heard a low groan and turned. Palmer was lying face down in the snow about fifteen feet away. He wasn’t moving. Clots of blood had frozen on his skin and in his hair. One of his arms was twisted behind him, perhaps broken. She tensed, ready to run. She would have to climb back up the mountainside at a fairly steep angle, unless she could find a switchback trail through the dense cedars and firs.
“Kate.” Palmer raised his head, blood trickling down his face. “Help me.” There was blood on his teeth.
She felt a surge of disgust. She picked up the heavy snow shovel and stood her ground, watching for any sudden movements.
“My arm… I think it’s broken,” he muttered.
Kate adjusted her grip on the shovel and wondered if she could outrun him. Even with a broken arm he might be too fast. He’d caught her before. She glanced up the mountainside. Should she risk it?
He used his good arm to wipe the blood off his face, then drew a painful breath. “I was never going to hurt you.”
She shook her head, nausea building. “Just… don’t move.”
“I was never going to hurt you, Kate. That wasn’t part of the plan. We had something, didn’t we? Didn’t you feel it?”
“Fuck you. I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she hissed. Her temples throbbed. All she could hear was the pounding of her own heart. “You killed my family. And for what? For jealousy and revenge. You’re a pathetic little man.”
He had a dead stare, like a shark. She could read her immediate future in that cold, calculating gaze. “I swear to God, I was never going to hurt you.”
She stared at him with revulsion. She didn’t care. She had watched her entire world melt to zero before her eyes. “Do you really think you can manipulate me? Look at you.” She took a step backward. “I’m leaving. I don’t know if I’ll make it, but the odds are looking better for me than for you right now.”
“You can’t just walk away. That isn’t who you are.”
She glanced up the mountainside and spotted a cairn, a pile of stones hikers used for marking trails. There were drainage channels trailing down the mountainside—maybe the trek back up wouldn’t be as daunting as it had first appeared.
“Kate?”
She looked down at him.
“Don’t kid yourself,” he said. “You’re never going to forget you left me here to freeze to death.”
Syrupy waves of nausea rolled over Kate as she turned her back on him and headed for the tree line. It took all of her strength to stagger through the snow. She plowed forward, leg muscles cramping as she dug in with pounding strides.
She had only gone ten yards when she tripped over something half-buried in the snow. The shovel flew out of her hands. An old leather briefcase, thrown from the Jeep, was sticking out of the snow. Kate pulled it free.
The interior was like a salesman’s display case, with blue velvet compartments lined with small glass vials, each one tucked into its own velvet pocket. Some of the vials had scattered across the snow. She picked them up. Inside each vial was a hair sample, twined at one end—blond, brunette, redhead, raven. Each vial was carefully labeled with a name and date. She sank to her knees and gathered them all in her lap—Susie Gafford, Emera Mason, Vicky Koffman, Lizbeth Howell, Hannah Lloyd, Maggie Witt, Tabitha Davidowitz, Makayla Brayden. There were other names she didn’t recognize.
Kate searched the snow for Savannah’s vial. Where was her sister? She tore through the briefcase—there were so many vials! She poked her fingers into velvet pockets, pulling out the remnants of other girls… until she found it. Savannah Wolfe.
She collapsed in the snow, limp as a ragdoll, dazed, staring at her sister’s golden hair inside the glass vial. Her breath plumed before her.
“Kate?”
She looked up.
Palmer Dyson was towering over her.
She tried to scramble away, too late. She had no strength left. Her feet were blocks of ice. She sobbed as she groped for the shovel, an inch or two beyond her grasp.
“Do you really want to know what my plan is for you, Kate?”
60
PALMER GRABBED KATE BY the hair and lifted her up off the ground with both hands. His arm isn’t broken after all—it was just another game.
She clawed at him blindly, and he punched her in the face. Her jaw cracked as her head jerked backwards, a squib of crimson jetting across the snow. The pain was so intense, she couldn’t catch her breath.
He cupped her face and showed her the blood on his fingers. “Stop fighting me. I don’t want to kill you.” He slammed her up against a tree, and she felt herself lose consciousness for a second. He shook her until she revived, then pinned her against the tree one-armed. She practically choked on the warm blood pooling in her mouth.
He observed her carefully. “Sooner or later, we’ll all be dead. It’s so boring. Death is pedestrian.”
She spat blood, seeing light trails, and kicked out at him, but it was hopeless.
“I’ve killed more people than you know.” His tone was confiding. “Okay… so maybe I can’t be cured. Maybe I can’t change, Kate. Maybe it’s time for you to change.” He grabbed her by the throat and squeezed, applying expert pressure with his thumbs until her windpipe closed and she couldn’t breathe. He drew so close, she could feel his heartbeat right next to hers—the banging muscle tissue, heart valves squeezing open and shut, lungs expanding and collapsing. She experienced a pure shining hatred as she struggled in his arms, but he only squeezed her tighter.
“You can’t win. You know that.”
He released her, and she collapsed to her knees. He grabbed her by the hair and dragged her toward the wreckage of the Jeep, smoke wafting up from the mangled mess. She twisted around, scratching and clawing at his hands, but Palmer seemed oblivious as he pulled her over to where a coil of rope lay in the snow and picked it up. Kate spotted a tire-pressure gauge a few feet away, a pencil-thin metal rod. She grabbed for it, but he hauled her upright and started looping the rope around her wrists. She screamed and tried to fight him off, struggling fiercely, but he was too strong. “It’ll be much easier if you don’t fight,” he said angrily.
“No!” She punched him in the face, and James’s ring sliced into his cheek.
He touched his cheek and felt the gash. Before he could grab her again she tackled him, and the two of them went rolling down the snowy incline. Kate scooped the tire gauge out of the snow and plunged the metal rod into Palmer’s neck, but it only penetrated about half an inch, not deep enough to do much damage. It just made him angry. He yanked it out and flung it away, then pinned her to the ground.
“Don’t move,” he said, softly. “I’m going to see you through this, kid. That’s a promise.”
“See me through what?” she asked in the smallest of voices.
“Every. Last. Thing.”
She felt a kind of transcendent numbness. “What are you going to do to me?”
“You’ll see. It won’t make any sense to you now. But the bigger picture will become clear later on.”
“What bigger picture?”
“You’re going to be all right,” he promised, wiping the blood off his face. “I’m going to take you someplace safe.”
She struggled to keep breathing through her terror. “And do what?”
“Shh.” He smoothed the hair off her face. “Don’t worry. You’ll be well fed and taken care of. You’re my Julia now.”
A welcome rush of adrenaline flooded her veins. She screamed, her voice echoing off the mountainside. Maybe somebody out there would hear her?