Page 124 of Indigo Ridge (The Edens 1)

The stench of whiskey on his breath was overpowering as he lost it, breaking down into a fit of sobs. When I dropped him, he collapsed to his knees.

“Where’s Rain?” Covie asked him.

Frank didn’t answer. He buried his face in his hands and cried.

Covie bolted for the door that led to the house, whipping it open. “Rain!”

There was no answer.

He came back and scanned the empty space. “Her Jeep is gone. Maybe she’s shopping. Let’s call her. See if she knows where he might have taken Winnie.”

The sound of the river grew louder as Covie went for his phone.

The river. The mental image of Frank holding Winn’s head beneath the water exploded in my head. Her lungs filling with water. Her lifeless body floating downstream. I squeezed my eyes shut, willing the picture away.

When I opened them, they landed on the safe in the corner. Maybe Frank had taken out a pistol. Maybe he’d pressed the barrel to her head. My stomach roiled.

“I told her not to do it this time.” Frank’s babble tore through my brain.

“What?”

“I told her not this time. That it was different. But Winnie knew. She’s too smart. She’s always been too smart.”

“Wait.” I held up a hand. “You told who not to do what?”

His whisper was barely audible. “Rain.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Winslow

The blood trail coating half of my face made opening both eyes almost impossible. With my hands bound behind my back, there was no way to wipe my eyelid clean. Every blink was sticky. Every breath strained. Every step excruciating.

“Rain—”

“Shh.” She poked her knife at the gash in my head. The metal tip barely made contact with my flesh, but even the graze was enough to send me to the dirt.

The crack of my knees against the rocks rang through my bones like the vibration of a bell, but instead of a beautiful chime, it was agony. Sheer agony.

My head spun in a dizzy circle, like a spinning top the moment before it collapsed. Blackness tickled at the edges of my consciousness but I shoved it away, forcing a breath into my lungs. Breathe.

I’d had the wind knocked out of me countless times in physical training or karate. I’d strained muscles and earned thousands of bruises. But this was my first concussion. Each move was sluggish, and all I wanted was to sleep. Just for a minute.

I leaned forward, the ground beckoning, and twisted enough so that when I dropped, I hit my shoulder and not my face. Wrong move. The second I crashed, pain ripped through my arm. Either my shoulder was dislocated or I had a fractured bone.

When I’d been unconscious, Rain had done something to my arm. Maybe, when she and Frank had been loading me in the Jeep, she’d dropped me. Maybe she’d stomped on me or used the meat mallet again. Something was definitely wrong because my muscles didn’t want to work right and any strength in my left hand was gone, stolen by the ache.

But before I could close my eyes and succumb to the dark, Rain’s knife was back, the tip digging into the smooth skin at my neck.

Pain had a way of cutting through the haze.

“Up.” She gripped my elbow and forced me to my feet.

I swallowed the urge to puke as I stood. “Please.”

“Shh.” She shoved me up the trail. “Walk.”

One foot in front of the other, I rushed nothing. For every step, I took two breaths.