Sound of Darkness

And a gun was indeed being held to the side of her head.

Colleen ignored Carver for a minute, frowning and shaking her head at the man holding Megan hostage.

“Seriously stupid,” she said.

He frowned at her fiercely.

“Your own daughter! You buried your own daughter alive!”

“Not my daughter!” he snapped back. “My bitch of a wife was pregnant with some dick’s kid when I married her.”

“But you raised her!” Colleen exclaimed.

“A little Goody Two-shoes like her mother,” Rory Ayers said.

“So, why did you marry her mother?” Colleen asked.

He laughed and shrugged, digging the nose of the gun he held too close to Megan’s head, just above her ear.

“She was the one with the money!”

“But still, you had to know it would come back on you.”

“No, it will not come back on me. You’re looking at Gary—and other men my daughter dated. Like that pathetic musician. You would have never—”

“Oh, but we did. They know you’re the second Embracer—”

“I am not the second Embracer!” he shouted. “I am the first!”

“But I’m the best,” Carver said.

“And they don’t know anything!” Ayers cried. “You’re lying.”

“I’m not lying,” Colleen said, waving the Glock in a small semicircle that still kept it trained on Carver. “You see, we have people in our technical departments who can trace people’s movements through their credit card purchases and pictures from toll roads. Oh, and Special Agent Hawkins looked into the date of your marriage and the date of your daughter’s birth. Now, we all know many babies are conceived before marriage, but it was enough to get her thinking. And now we know. Of course, we believe Carver killed the women when the notes went into the media. The Embracer notes were what he sees as perfecting your crimes. But you are the one who has been killing women for years. We found another one yesterday, by the way. So. Which one of you geniuses found all the cabins?”

“None of this matters,” Carver said. “Give me the gun. Give me the gun, or he shoots Megan.”

“No. Megan walks out the door, and I give you my gun.”

“That’s crazy. I won’t do it. Shoot me. Rory will shoot Megan.”

She smiled and turned the gun on Rory.

Carver instantly drew a weapon himself.

She’d expected it.

“I shoot Rory; Rory can’t shoot Megan. And I’m good. Maybe I can shoot you and Rory. Or you can let Megan just walk out of here and run into the woods. Maybe you’d find her afterward anyway. But Megan walks out of here.”

They were standing when Colleen heard a faint rustling in the woods outside. She knew no one else could hear it yet.

Nor could they hear the soft little whine from Red.

Colleen stood pat.

They’d come. Mark and Ragnar were just outside the cabin. They were finding their positions.

That didn’t take the danger away from Megan.

But Colleen believed she still had the upper hand.

“How did you get Megan?” she asked.

“They had a puppy, and the puppy was loose, running into the parking lot, and I was helping chase it and then...”

“I left you at the train station to get on the train!” Colleen told her sister.

“I know! And I was being wary of people. I didn’t think to be afraid of puppies!”

Megan knew Colleen was trying to keep them talking.

“I told you to get on the train.”

“Hey! I’m older than you by two minutes!” Megan returned. “You can’t tell me what to do! And I didn’t know to be afraid of an old man.”

“Old man!” Rory Ayers protested. “Oh, girlie—”

“Wrong girlie!” Carver growled. “If you’d gotten the right damned girl—”

“From a distance they look alike,” Ayers said. “And that kind of watching has to be done from a distance.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“Reddish hair—”