Page 45 of In Her Grasp

As the silhouette of the willow tree materialized from the twilight, his pulse quickened—but not out of fear. There was a figure crouched at the base of the tree, but it wasn’t some stranger out here to tell tales.

Tommy stopped in his tracks and took a deep breath. This was a trap—one set for him. He allowed a soft scoff at how they had underestimated him.

The person he saw was Sheriff Jenna Graves. Alone. Vulnerable. She’d lied when she’d told him she wouldn’t come here. It was a possibility that he’d considered—that the whole thing was a ruse on her part. She appeared to be examining something on the ground, her concentration affording him the element of surprise. He could see no sign of anyone else nearby and realized that anyone else involved in the ruse would be watching the roads where they assumed he’d be driving in.

“Gotcha,” Tommy mouthed silently, a grim smile tugging at the edges of his lips.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

Still crouched low, her back pressed against the wrinkled bark of the willow tree, Jenna heard a slight sound as a stone skittered into the water. In one fluid motion, she was on her feet. She peered into the twilight, seeking the source of the disturbance.

She saw no sign of anyone nearby. She realized that, by standing on the point of land by the willow tree, she might be undermining her ruse. She looked too much like herself, not like an anonymous caller who was supposed to come here to tell his story. But how could anyone have gotten so near her without either Jake or Frank texting her a warning? She knew that no one had driven into the reservoir grounds because there had been no signal from her companions. But was someone standing back there among the trees?

Before she could either greet or challenge the presence, a blunt force crashed against her skull, the impact knocking her to her knees.

***

Tommy stepped out from his hidden vantage point, chuckling at how well his pitching arm still worked. Those years on the farm team still served his current needs.

He hurried to the willow tree and loomed over Jenna, his chest heaving with shallow, rapid breaths as he surveyed his work. His head turned sharply at every flicker and rustle, expecting at any moment to see someone else arrive. Yet the whispers of the forest remained just that—whispers. They must not know he was here.

Tommy crouched beside Jenna’s motionless body, his hands steady as he unzipped the backpack he brought with him. Inside,the rocks clinked together. Even with the one missing that he’d used as a weapon, they would do the necessary job.

With methodical precision, he positioned it against Jenna’s back, securing the straps around her torso.

“Sorry, Sheriff,” he murmured, not out of pity, but as if acknowledging a player in a game who had just lost their final move.

***

Awareness crept back to Jenna slowly as the water rose around her. She struggled to clear her head from the pain of the blow. She could feel that her head was bleeding, but that was the least of her worries. What frightened her more was a heaviness against her back—a dead weight that was dragging her down. Her mind sluggishly pieced together the situation: she was wearing a backpack filled with stones, just as she’d seen on the dead bodies.

And the hands that were pulling her into the deeper water were the same ones that had drowned those others they’d found there.

“Let go, Tommy," she rasped weakly.

Tommy’s grip on her was unyielding, his farmer’s hands calloused and strong from years of tending to unforgiving land. Her attempts to resist, to dig her heels into the muddy bottom, only resulted in a guttural grunt from Tommy as he adjusted his hold and continued dragging her deeper.

“You can’t get away with this,” Jenna managed, her voice gaining some strength, though it did little to halt their descent into insistent water.

“Just watch me,” Tommy replied.

Her thoughts raced, strategizing, searching for any edge or oversight in Tommy’s plan that she could exploit. But the rocksbound to her back were relentless, pulling her down just as surely as Tommy’s determined strides were taking her in deeper.

Jenna summoned all her remaining energy, twisting and kicking in a desperate bid for freedom. For a moment, she felt Tommy stumble, his footing uncertain on the slippery bottom as he approached the drop off to a deeper level—but it was not enough.

***

“Dammit,” Jake muttered under his breath as he fished his phone from his pocket with deliberate movements.

“Come on, Jenna,” he whispered to the deepening night

No response came on his phone.

Gripped by a sense of urgency, Jake’s thumb flew across the screen of his phone texting Frank, “No response from Jenna. Something’s wrong.” The message dispatched into the ether, he didn’t linger for a reply. Springing to his feet, Jake broke into a run towards Jenna’s position, his mind racing as fast as his legs.

As he rounded a bend in the path, a figure loomed suddenly, startlingly close. Jake skidded to a halt, his heartbeat thundering in his ears. “Don’t move!” His voice cut through the stillness like a blade.

The figure froze, hands raised in a gesture of surrender. It took a fraction of a second for Jake to recognize the face that was illuminated by the erratic beam of his flashlight.

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