Anastasia reaches up and grips the cross she wears around her neck like a lifeline. “I wasn’t conscious but not quite unconscious either, and a pair of black boots came into view on the passenger side. The stranger reached down and cut her loose.” She closes her eyes again. “I still remember feeling hopeful that he was there to rescue us, but he didn’t come back for me. Then, I heard her scream.” Her voice breaks. I squeeze her hands gently, hoping to offer her something to ease her pain.
She pulls away and stands, then lifts up her shirt over her abdomen, revealing a pair of nasty, jagged scars along her belly. Anger, unlike anything I’ve ever felt, races through me at lightning speed.
“Baby.” I reach forward and trace the line of one down to her belly button.
“I didn’t see enough of him to give a description, but they kept it out of the official report, though, afraid that I’d be targeted next. The only people who knew I was in that car with her were Zane, my mom, Weston, his mom, Officer Leopold…and Violet’s killer.” She drops one side of her shirt and raises the other far enough on her rib cage that I can see a purple flower petal tattooed on her left side.
“A Violet.” I glance at the petal.
She nods and drops her shirt, then sits again. “And that fabric? That’s from her shirt. It had been cut when I found her, but I assumed it was from the accident.”
My blood runs cold. “You found her?” I try to picture seventeen-year-old Anastasia stumbling across her murdered friend, but the image is too horrifying.
She nods, the tears coming faster now. “It has to be him. He’s back, Sawyer. He’s back for me. Jack was wrong. It wasn’t him who brought the guy here—it was me.”
“Baby.” I pull her into my arms now, ignoring the ache that spreads through my injured shoulder when I wrap both arms around her. I cling to her as she cries, her shoulders shaking. “I won’t let him get you, okay? Ever.”
“They never found him, Sawyer.”
“We will this time.”
“How do you know? How do you know he won’t get me, too?”
I pull away enough to stare into her eyes. “Because he’ll have to go through me to get to you. Me and every single person out there. You have an entire team behind you, baby. None of us is going to give up until he’s in the ground or behind bars. Personally, I’m not feeling generous enough for the latter.”
Weston’s torso is slick with sweat, his hair dripping with it. He didn’t even bother to change out of his jeans, though he did remove his boots, so he’s bouncing on the balls of his bare feet. His fist hits the bag with a heavy thud, his bare knuckles bloodied.
I don’t say a word as I come into the gym and move behind the bag to hold it for him. His eyes are glistening with tears even as they’re full of fury, and his lips are drawn back in a snarl.
“We’re going to get him, Cowboy.”
He slams his fist into it again.
A right hook.
Then a left.
Pummeling the bag until I finally have to let it go.
“It’s been eighteen years,” he growls. Then spins and slams his foot into the bag. The seam splits, dumping filler all over the ground. Weston drops down and takes a ragged breath. I cross over to my friend now and place a hand on his trembling shoulder.
Never, in the entire time that I’ve known him, have I seen Weston Hayes break.
But I’m seeing it now.
And it’s a gut shot I wasn’t expecting.
“We’re going to find him, and we’re going to keep Anastasia safe.”
“I couldn’t protect Violet,” he says. “I couldn’t keep her safe when it mattered.”
“You weren’t there.”
“I should have been.” He shrugs my hand off his shoulder and stands, then turns to me. “Sawyer—” Weston starts, then trails off. He doesn’t have to say it, though. If this is the same guy Jack was hunting three years ago, and the same one who killed Violet, then he’s hunted in Stormwatch Landing before.
And this could just be the beginning.
“I know, Cowboy.”
