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“She had my baby,” Derrick said, the calm exterior falling to reveal something more sinister. Anger boiled deep in his soul, radiating out of his dark eyes. “Behind our backs. They cheated, and they paid the ultimate price, and so did we. We had to suffer—we’ve been suffering. It’s excruciating. The pain is almost too much. The only release we get is when we take someone else’s life.”
“But don’t worry,” Byron said, waving the knife in the air like a wand. “We only take the ones who deserve it. The ones who are hurting their partners. We made a little exception for Harry, since we wanted to send a message… but now we can modify that message a bit. Add three signatures to it.”
So that was what they planned. They would plunge Blue Creek into a constant state of terror. Three people murdered, two of them detectives working on the case.
We couldn’t let that happen. I had to ask questions, keep them talking. If we did that, then maybe an opening would present itself. I just needed a tiny thread, something to grab on to. “How did you know we were coming?” I quickly glanced around the cabin, the entire thing empty of furniture and decorations. Nothing I could use in self-defense.
Our guns were still at our feet, but I’d have to be fast…
“My mom called to tell me you were looking for us. Sounded worried.” Byron’s crazed expression cracked. Something peeked through the bloodshot eyes and unhinged grin: fear. Disappointment. Regret?
He still cared about his mother.
“She is worried, Byron.” This could have been it, the opening I needed. “Your whole family is. They can help. They can help deal with the grief and with all the pain. You just need to trust them. Trust me. Let us go, let us help yo—”
An ear-splitting BOOM shook the cabin. Matt and I both ducked, and Harry came to, spitting out blood and immediately beginning to yell. I tried calming him, but I wasn’t sure what I was even saying, my words drowned out by the ringing in my ears. Wood splinters still rained down from the spot Derrick had shot into the ceiling.
“No one is helping us,” he said, loud enough to be heard past the ringing. “We help ourselves. We always have, even as kids. With our biological father, the shit he’d do to us—we protect ourselves.” He lowered the shotgun.
My gun. It was only a couple of inches from my hand. If I could just… so close… I inched a finger closer and closer and— “Stop right fucking there.” Byron came up to me like a jackal, holding the knife up to my throat and grabbing the gun away from my hand.
Harry started to cry. Matt growled a “Back the fuck off”. I just looked at him, not moving a muscle. Any move would likely spread my aorta in half.
“You two really thought you did something, huh? It’s not easy, what we do. And I didn’t even like it at first. It was only Derrick in the beginning. He was obsessed with the Unicorn case, and then he started his hunts for targets. It was on a night that I was so close to calling it quits that Derrick told me everything. He promised me it would be a way to feel again, and he was right.”
He pressed the knife harder against me, and I could feel the sting of skin slicing apart.
“I can feel again.”
The next events happened both shockingly fast and desperately slow.
Matt lunged for his gun. He raised it, aimed it directly at Derrick. Derrick reacted fast; he didn’t need as much focus to aim the shotgun. The spread would kill us both. His finger moved to the trigger, Matt’s finger flying to the same. I jerked an arm up and hit Byron’s wrist with the ball of my palm, wrapping my fingers tight around his wrist and twisting so that the knife no longer pressed against me but pointed at his chest instead.
Derrick still had an advantage. He was going to shoot. It was all going to be over.
A loud and sickening crunch sounded in the surprisingly quiet cabin. Derrick’s eyes opened wide before rolling back, the shotgun still in his hand as his knees gave out and his legs crumpled underneath him. Byron shouted and let go of the knife, tears instantly streaming down his face. Matt got up and collected the abandoned shotgun.
Emma Rosewell stood where her son had been, a bat dropping from her shaking hand. She brought the hand up to her mouth and stifled her scream. She was our savior but at a steep, steep cost. She stumbled backward, grabbing onto the wall. Derrick was still breathing, and Byron cried even louder.
But we were safe. The threat was gone. It was over. The nightmare was over.
