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“Move.” Isaac shoved her forward with the dead weight of Sam slung over his shoulder. As one, every head in the circle turned towards them. Vera latched onto the most unexpected face. Elaine Malis. Her usually well-kept hair danced wildly around her face, the burn of her gaze brighter than the fires.
“Good, you found her.” A strike to the back of her knees buckled her to the hard ground as Elaine exited the ring. There was a litheness to her walk that reminded Vera of a jungle cat eyeing its dinner.
“I hope you know kidnapping is a punishable crime,” Vera spat out as the woman drew near. The material of her dress was too thin to keep warm in the growing storm. She looked like a ghost in a shift. It was her bare feet that made Vera’s brows raise. Brown mud and broken grass were matted to her skin and between her toes.
“Adrenaline can be good for lots of things,” she said, pinching Vera’s chin as she forced her head up. “Warmth. Energy. Strength.”
“You mean giving you the strength to kill.” She didn’t know how she pulled it off, but as she looked at the pride in Elaine’s cool gaze she wondered how she missed it before. Every interaction was too polite. Every word out of her mouth measured and weighed. It was perfect. She’d been perfect, and Vera had been so busy looking for someone capable of such atrocities that she missed the perfect disguise.
“While I appreciate your belief in my abilities, I do nothing alone and I really wouldn’t want to.” She pulled her closer, their noses nearly touching as her voice became biting. “You have no idea what you’ve disturbed, Vera. You have no fucking clue what you’ve stepped into. But you're going to learn.” With a jerk she released her, knocking her on her ass.
She watched as Elaine—the quintessential Sheriff’s wife, the doting neighbor, and caring friend—walked between the torches and stood upon a small shape in the grass, mirroring the other women. They were the seven stones they found on their first trip to the crime scene. Not randomly placed rocks but platforms. Ceremonial placements for their killings. A shudder rattled her body.
Isaac took the opportunity to tie her ankles with a few inches of rope between them before standing behind her. Unable to identify any of the other women through the hazy heat, Vera looked Sam over where he’d dropped her unconscious body beside her. Hands and feet bound the same way, Vera’s shoulders eased slightly with the sight of her ribs lifting evenly.
Alive. A win she would take given the circumstances.
With the members of the circle engaged in a conversation and Isaac disappearing behind her, Vera took stock. Teddi was gone. At least she didn’t have to worry about her safety. Mackey would probably pick her up from the motel where they left all their belongings. She might already be there. The realization slowed her thundering heartbeat marginally.
With a hiss she looked at her wrists, realizing she was rubbing them against the rope so hard she broke the skin. “Shit,” she murmured, the wounds burning. Refocusing, she tried to put her mind elsewhere.
Her only saving grace was hope. Untethered and unfounded hope that Mackey was a person of her word and would call in law enforcement the second her thirty-six hours were up. It could only be a few hours off. Isaac had left her phone and weapon on the lawn of the abandoned house. People would be looking for her now that she was alone.
Alone.
She slumped. Fucking alone, as usual. She pushed Teddi away, she hid from her sister and she never told Rodrigo what was happening beyond slim details. She was fucking alone just as she wanted and the realization made her sick. And if the vicious look in Elaine’s eye was anything to go by, she wouldn’t get out unscathed.
She might survive. She didn’t fit the victimology. She wasn’t even male. Maybe there was a chance, she told herself. She was alive, she wasn’t dead, there was a chance. There was a chance she could figure out how to get her and Sam out. If Mackey reported what they found and they were taken seriously, there was a chance. They just had to hold on and hold out. It was a snowball in the center of hell kind of chance, but she was grabbing it with both hands.
“Bring her in.” Elaine’s voice cut through her thoughts. With a yank, Isaac pulled her up by her hands and forced her closer to the circle. Her struggles and denials were useless as he continued, pistol in hand.
Pulling hard, she looked back to Sam once more.“Isaac, come on. You’re a deputy, you know this is wrong. Don’t let them do this. You have the chance to stop them.”
His voice was soft like he was talking to a child. “They're going to help you understand.”
With a final jerk, she was thrust between the torches and engulfed in heat.
As if placed inside an oven, she blinked against the thick torrid air as her eyes watered. Forced to her knees with a thud, she tried to glare up at him but froze when she finally saw the faces of the women circling the killing rock.
Danielle Maller’s ochre skin glowed in the burning light, the hollow of her cheeks carved out in its flickers. Chin lifted high, she looked down at Vera with quiet disdain.
Lily’s mother, Nora stood to her left. Gone was the friendly smile she used at her job at the diner. It was replaced with the pinched lips of someone who didn’t appreciate being interrupted. The red of her nails looked like fresh blood, laced together in front of her gown.
Alice Grennan’s neighbor stood tall and proud. Her silver braid looped over her shoulder, her wrinkled skin glistening in the glow. Her face was blank with no hint of malice or anger, just acceptance.
Elaine, like an anchor point for the circle, stood near the narrowest end of the rock. Three women took up the final small platforms, their ages varying from thirties to mid-fifties. Their harsh faces seemed vaguely familiar but Vera couldn’t pull names out of her head when the scorching heat made sweat dribble into her eyes. Her tongue went thick and heavy.
“All of you…” she whispered, turning to look at each of the women. “All of you are part of this.”
Nora leaned forward. “No, Vera. We made this.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means we’ve dealt out the justice that’s generations past due to the men of Sylen.” One of the women she didn’t recognize replied.
“You’re killing men. Mutilating them. Torturing them. What about that is justice?” She yanked at her bindings. It hadn’t been two assailants who assaulted her and Teddi in the woods behind Deputy Gunson’s house. It’d been the coordinated attack of the women before her. The realization was a deadly weight that touched her bones. They could have killed Teddi outright. Slaughtered them both and left them for the land to swallow whole.
“I told you about our history so that you’d come to understand,” said Alice Grennan’s neighbor. “We weren’t properly introduced last time, I’m Lizbeth Wildes.”
