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As she’d inched along, she’d brushed against the back of someone’s leg. “Hey!” he’d yelled sharply, and she’d knocked over his drink, the cola running down the sloped floor, toward the screen where the film, a fairy-tale monster story, was playing, the noise of the donkey’s voice so loud. She’d peered around the aisle and seen both of her sisters hurrying to a side exit and a boy in a hoodie standing in the open doorway, the faint glow of a streetlamp at his back as he’d glanced over his shoulder, his youthful profile in relief.
She didn’t know him then, didn’t understand why they were leaving, but she recognized him now, in an instant.
Tyson Beaumont.
He’d been at the theater.
He’d lured her sisters away.
Her blood ran cold and bile rose up her throat.
Why had he done it? Even now when the repressed memory surfaced, she didn’t know. Bits and pieces of that night, memories long abandoned, were teasing at her, and she felt her blood pumping, her heart beating out of control. It was as if she were on a razor-sharp ledge, balancing against falling into the abyss of never knowing, or climbing a sheer mountain to reach a pinnacle of truth that might destroy everything she’d believed, her whole existence.
If she killed Tyson now, she might never know the truth, a truth she’d been chasing for as long as pieces of her fragmented memory had erupted. First, just a bit here and there, but as she’d grown, more and more, the pieces never meshing with the story she’d been told by her adoptive parents.
All because of Tyson Beaumont.
You murdering prick.
She aimed at his head, her finger steady on the trigger.
Go straight to hell.
* * *
Reed’s eyes blinked open and for a nanosecond, he was lost, aware that he was lying on the ground, gravel in his hair, his head thundering and his shoulder throbbing. He was staring up at the sky, a wide black expanse filled with thousands of stars winking far away.
Where was he?
What was he doing outside in the warm summer night . . . and then another thought: Nikki.
He was here for Nikki.
He heard voices and far away a siren and . . . in a heart-stopping moment it all came crashing back. His shoulder was burning because he’d been shot, his head aching as he’d slammed it against the side of a white SUV. He was at the long-forgotten Marianne Inn because his wife was here.
His heart dropped.
Where was she?
And then: Was she still alive?
As his mind cleared, the question burned through his brain, over and over.
His gun! He had a weapon. It was here somewhere. He recalled it flying from his hand when he’d been hit. It was so damned dark, but he thought the weapon had slid beneath the SUV—no, the truck. Pain wracking his body, he scooted under the large rig, his fingers outstretched in the dry weeds and a pool of his own blood. Tucked up against the inside of the front wheel, he found his gun. No doubt Tyson would eventually come to him, to double-check that he was down, to put a bullet through his brain. Well, not without a fight. And not before Reed found out what had happened to his wife. Dragging himself beneath the undercarriage to the side of the truck, Reed eyed the area, then rolled from beneath the rig and crouched beside the wheel, the truck being his cover. His bloody fingers held his pistol in a death grip as he tried to think. If Nikki was inside the house, he needed to free her, but if it was already too late, if that bastard Beaumont had harmed her? It was over.
Tyson Beaumont was a dead man.
* * *
Nikki let the river carry her. She held her breath for as long as she could, kept into the darkest of depths, clutching the damned gaff as if it were a lifeline, letting it drag her lower into the cool, calm depths.
Already panicked, she didn’t let her mind wander to the creatures that inhabited the river. At this point, no alligator or water moccasin was as deadly or determined as Tyson Beaumont. To think that he’d killed the girls and that Ashley had known it, never divulging the truth and then Tyson had gone on a new, murderous rampage once the bodies were discovered.
Nikki moved quickly downstream, feeling her lungs tighten, then burn before she surfaced, fifty yards from the old pier. Her car would be farther and she was about to sink into the depths again, but her gaze was drawn to the lights of the lodge, winking through the reeds. Her eyes narrowed as she searched the shoreline, heard the water lapping against the pebbles and dirt of the riverbank. Where was Delacroix? Had she survived? Nikki couldn’t just abandon her. Both vehicles—the Bentley and truck—were still parked as they had been, near the front doors, so that meant Tyson and Ashley were probably somewhere nearby.
And what about Reed?
You texted for him to come here?
