Page 106 of Burn Like An Angel

Lightning cracks through the night, causing us all to startle. Only it isn’t an electric crackle but a gunshot. The boom disturbs sleeping birds and livestock, echoing endlessly in the nothingness all around us.

“Next shot won’t be a miss,” the man yells. “Do it!”

The sobbing intensifies.

“Ripley! Rip!”

Realisation comes in an awful trickle, burying its pincers deep in my chest. I know that voice. Xander pulls off his backpack to search inside. He then tosses something shiny and metallic to Lennox.

“Here,” he mouths.

Lennox catches the folded switchblade. It has a stainless-steel grip, the slightly curved blade flicking out with a deadly snick. Xander locates his own pocketknife. A surviving relic from our Harrowdean days.

“We’re not here to mess around!” the deep voice rattles through the air. “Let’s make this quick and easy, shall we? It’s been a long few weeks for us all.”

Xander tsks. “Is this joker for real?”

“Come on, stooge. Show yourself. I don’t think you want Red here to take a bullet.”

Red?

“No,” I whisper in horror, my suspicions confirmed. “Please, no.”

“It’s the one who tortured us, isn’t it?” Lennox stares at me imploringly. “Harrison?”

“He’s… He’s got her.”

“Who?” Xander demands.

“Ripley!” a petrified wail answers his question.

Tossing my head back, I clench my eyes shut. “It’s Rae. He has Rae.”

“Show yourself, Ripley!”

That evil bastard can’t be here. It isn’t possible. Excruciating memories rush to the surface before I can staunch the traumatic flow.

Harrison’s fists and feet delivering each punishing blow, beating my organs into a paste in an attempt to find the truth. Him tossing me around like a bag of bones. Being cruelly stripped and hammered with freezing water.

It is Harrison.

He’s here.

The sadistic motherfucker is supposed to be dead. Rick told me himself—he left him floating in an ice-water tub. Stupid me dared to believe Harrison was dead. He must’ve been down there for the whole riot.

Who survives that?

“Next bullet’s going in her stomach!” Harrison shouts gleefully. “There’s no one around to hear your pretty friend’s wails as she bleeds out.”

Dropping my backpack, I snatch the flashlight from Xander’s hand. “I’m getting Rae.”

“Ripley, stop!” Lennox bellows. “He’ll kill you.”

“She doesn’t deserve this! I’m not letting anyone else get hurt because of me!”

Silent and deadly, Xander pounces on me. The flashlight is knocked aside as he weighs me down in the damp field, the pocketknife an inch from my eyeball. I recoil from the cold determination on his face.

“I’ll knock you out and throw you over my shoulder if that’s what it takes,” he warns starkly. “Don’t test me.”

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