Page 78 of Chilled

“Oh, yes. I have bigger plans for you.” His teeth and the whites of his eyes shone in the shadows, an evil combination considering the source.

Like a spider crawling across her skin, a shiver of fear fed its way through her system. She tested her legs, stretching first one then the other over the edge of the case.

“Hurry up. I’m not going to stand here all day.” He waved his hand, the gun in it catching a glint of sunlight.

Rocking herself to the side, she pushed up on her elbow and tumbled over the side of the case into the back of the Jeep. “Thanks for the help,” she muttered.

“You’re tough; you’ll manage. Besides, my hands are otherwise occupied.”

She snorted and calculated the distance between her feet and his face.

As if he read her mind, Stan stepped away from the back of the vehicle. “Don’t try anything or I’ll shoot.”

“What and spoil all your fun?” Squelching her disappointment, Brenna rolled to the edge of the vehicle and let her feet slide to the ground into six inches of muddy, freezing water. “What’s this?”

“The levy burst. We’re in the middle of a flood.” He nudged her with the tip of the nine-millimeter. “Move.”

When she rounded the corner of the Jeep, she recognized the old farmhouse standing inches above the swirling water. This was the house Stan had lived in with his mother. “Now, Stan, what would your mother say if she knew you were killing women?”

“Ask her when you see her in hell. I killed her, too.”

Brenna gasped. “Your own mother?”

“She never loved me. Every chance she got she called me stupid. But I showed her.” He chuckled. “A little rat poison did the trick. Looked like she died of a heart attack.”

The grin he threw her way made her belly roil.

“I guess you could say it all started here.” He motioned for her to lead the way.

Brenna slogged through the water and up onto the front porch. “What do you mean?”

Stan paused in front of the door. “Do you know how my father died?” he said, his tone conversational.

“I heard he died in a freak farm accident.” Brenna wiggled her numb toes inside her shoes while she scanned the horizon, hoping for sight of Nick and the cavalry.

“When I was ten, I was helping him on the tractor, only he wouldn’t let me drive it. When he got down to check on a tire, I shifted the tractor into gear. The wheel rolled over my father’s head. Do you know what a man’s head sounds like when it pops?”

“No.” Nor did she want to. Brenna swallowed back the bile rising in her throat.

“Like dropping a watermelon.” He stared at the key in his hand for a long time as if lost in his past. “My mother never forgave me. She couldn’t even stand to look at me.” He barked a mirthless laugh and waved the pistol. “You can’t imagine what it feels like to know you’re the one responsible for your own father’s death.”

At once appalled by his revelation, Brenna couldn’t help feeling sorry for a little boy who’d grown up with that kind of guilt. “I’m sorry, Stan. I’m sorry for what happened to your father and the way your mother treated you. But you can’t keep killing innocent women.”

Stan shifted the pistol from one hand to the other, his brows rising with his smile. “I can do anything I want. I’ve proven I can.”

“But why?” Brenna lifted her bound hands toward him. “What did those women do to you?”

His smile disappeared, his mouth thinning into a straight line. “I’ll tell you what they did. When Alice saw those articles in the newspaper, she started talking about going back to college. She would’ve left me, damn it!”

“Alice loves you. She wouldn’t have left you.” Based on the talk she’d had with her sister, Brenna didn’t know whether or not that was true anymore.

He snorted. “What do you know about love?”

Nick’s face wavered in Brenna’s mind. “More than I thought,” she whispered, and she wanted a chance to learn more.

“It’s all a lie,” Stan said, a sneer lifting the side of his lip. “It’s an act people do to make you trust them. Then they stab you in the back.”

“Alice would never have betrayed you.”

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