Keep Me Safe (Slow Burn 1)

She gently shook her head. “No. We need to catch him this time. I have to try to look deeper than the surface. I have to see beyond what he wants me to see and see the things he doesn’t. It’s our only chance of taking him down. He’s too smart to slip up and make a mistake.”

Before he could argue further, and because he would argue the point into the ground, she turned and hurried toward the dilapidated wooden steps that were built onto a small square front landing.

The bottom step cracked as soon as she put her weight on it and her hand flew up to grasp the railing to prevent her falling. Dane gripped her other arm.

“Are you all right?” Dane demanded.

A loud roar burst through her ears, as though a hundred freight trains collided at seventy miles per hour. She swayed precariously and then sagged to her knees, her arm stretched upward because she still had a death grip on the metal handrail and her knuckles were white and straining.

A barrage of images, messy and chaotic, flashed rapid-fire in her mind. They were jumbled and confusing, no apparent rhyme or reason.

Fear had a chokehold on her. Not her fear. The victim’s fear.

Pain. Also the victim’s.

Triumph. The killer’s.

Unfettered glee and satisfaction. Also the killer’s.

She honed in on the killer, regretfully shoving aside the tumultuous explosion of the victim’s cries for help and justice. She knew, as she’d known with the last one, that it was too late. There was no sense in focusing her energy there when she needed all she could get to unravel the layers surrounding a maniac. A very intelligent, cunning psychopath.

Each random flash was like having still photos cataloging the entire gruesome crime. She studied and quickly absorbed each, much like she was thumbing through a photo album containing memories. Only these were not meant to be saved, cherished or remembered.

Underneath the thin overlay of each chronicled step the killer had taken with his victim was a hazy image that Ramie couldn’t quite make out. She concentrated harder, trying to bring it into focus.

Every time it seemed she’d manage to go beyond the carefully orchestrated façade, pain seared through her head, choking her with nausea.

It was camouflage. Despite the intensity of the pain and overwhelming nausea, excitement lit a spark inside her. One that couldn’t be extinguished by the killer.

Where before she would have been deterred by the macabre sight of blood, suffering and death, she now braced herself and forced herself to push past it. He was hiding traces of . . . ?one of his thoughts? What was it he didn’t want her to see?

She sensed victory and it imbued her with strength she hadn’t imagined she had.

Her head ached so vilely that she was afraid one of the blood vessels would burst. She shoved her face into her hands, scrubbing, trying to refocus on the blurry memory strategically hidden behind the images of the victim, bloody, eyes glassy with the knowledge of her own demise.

Then she smelled blood. Felt it on her hands. She frowned because that wasn’t what she was seeing. It took a moment to realize that she was the one bleeding. From both nostrils.

The pressure in her head was mounting. The pain was becoming unbearable. And yet she refused to back down and retreat. Not when she was so close to . . . ?something. She just had no idea what.

In the silent battle of wills, Ramie was determined that this one time she wouldn’t lose. She wouldn’t fail.

Damn it, what did he not want her to see!

And then the images covering his secrets shattered, sending shards of agonizing pain blistering through her skull. Warm blood spilled from her nose, but she ignored it, knowing this was it.

She went utterly still, refusing to even breathe as she waited for the pieces of the puzzle to assemble. They coalesced and took shape right in front of her very eyes until the pieces were one solid image hanging in the air for her to see.

It was like pushing back a curtain and seeing the unthinkable.

Oh dear God!

“No!” she screamed. “Back! Get back! There’s a bomb!”

TWENTY-EIGHT

CALEB froze when Ramie’s scream rent the silence. There was a split second when everyone seemed frozen, looks of absolute what the f**k reflected in their expressions.

Then everyone dove in opposite directions, rolling and scrambling for cover. To Caleb’s horror, Ramie tripped in her haste to descend the fractured wooden steps of the trailer. Time slowed and he hoarsely yelled her name as he dove for her, trying desperately to get on top of her.

He grabbed her wrist, yanking her against his body before turning and propelling them both behind the Hummer they’d driven to the scene. And then an explosion rocked the earth beneath them.

An orange fireball erupted around them, heat scouring their skin. The very air seemed to be on fire and the smell of smoke choked Caleb, making it impossible to breathe.

Debris rained down on them from the sky, pelting the vehicles and their exposed bodies like a storm from the bowels of hell itself.

“Ramie!” he shouted.

They’d been separated in the blast. Smoke was so thick that he couldn’t see her. He felt frantically along the ground in front of him, to the side and then behind him. She’d gone down underneath him but the explosion had ripped him away from her and flung him several feet.

He heard coughing but couldn’t be sure who it was.

“Caleb!” Dane yelled.

“I’m here!” he yelled back. “I can’t find Ramie!”

“Here,” Ramie croaked.