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Hale was walking into a trap. She had to draw Charlie away. If he caught her, he would kill her. He would find her and drag her back to the house and rape her and shove a knife into her chest.
And he would watch her soul depart. He would feed off it.
She heard him stumbling after her. It was dark. Neither one of them could see.
Faintly, her ears picked up the sound of an approaching engine. Oh, no! Hale.
She slowed down, listening for her pursuer, but he was turning back. Hea
ding to meet Hale!
She waited, breathing hard, shaking all over.
And suddenly he was right in front of her, reaching for her.
Automatically, she stepped backward, into air.
He grabbed for her arm, and she slipped down, her body scraping against the edge of the headland, loose sand and dirt spinning downward toward the sea.
“Shit,” Charlie gritted, looking behind himself.
There was a light from a car. Hale’s car.
Savvy yanked her arm free and clung to a twisting root sticking out the side of the headland. Cold, naked, and scared, she was too vulnerable to fight. All she could do was scream. “Hale! Look out! Hale!”
And then Charlie was gone, and she was hanging on the root, her arms weakening, her lower limbs feeling like lead.
He heard Savannah scream his name.
Immediately he ran in that direction, then saw the dark figure streak into the Donatella house through the open front door. Was that where she was? He ran after the figure, the wrench tight in his right hand.
Inside the house, he heard the strike of a match, and he raised the wrench, intent on crushing in Charlie’s skull. But the man who’d tossed the match onto the newspapers and wood and debris in the hearth looked wrong somehow, and he hesitated.
“Jesus loves me, this I know,” he sang in a trembling voice.
“Where’s Savannah?” Hale demanded.
The man cocked his head, concentrating. Then his attention went to the licking flames, and he warmed his palms. “My house is all boarded up,” he said. “The Donatellas won’t mind.”
“What?” Hale had been looking around the room, searching for a sign of Savannah, but his attention snapped back.
“We need a fire.”
The sound of a cry. Over the crackling and spitting flames. Hale turned back toward the door. “Savvy?” he called.
Something to his right. A flicker in the corner of his eye. Hale ducked automatically and felt a knife slice through the sleeve of his jacket and pierce his skin. He whipped around with the wrench, connecting with flesh. His attacker yowled and stabbed at him again. Hale caught a glimpse of the blade in the moonlight and grabbed for the man’s arm.
He was shocked to see the man had a gun in his other hand and he was raising it to Hale’s face.
Bang!
Savannah heard the shot and cried out in fear. She scrabbled for a hold in the dirt. Failed. Her fingers frantically pawed at the headland until she connected with something hard in the sandy muck. A boulder. Buried far enough back to offer some stability. A handhold. Another one.
Carefully, she dragged her body up over the boulder to the headland, her limbs violently shaking. She got a knee atop the ground and cried out in relief. Then she was staggering forward. Safe from falling.
There were three figures inside the house; she could see them through a window. Hale was alive! Thank God!
But three . . . ? Had Clausen somehow survived?
