Page 50 of Treasured By Them
“Fuck, where’d that come from?” I keep my voice low, but I can’t hide my tense note of panic. What if someone shot Danica? Are they hurting her? If she’s okay, are they trying to scare her?
Troy’s expression is grim. “Around back, let’s go.”
I have a Glock. So does Troy. We don’t usually carry firearms, but tonight it’s necessary. No doubt.
Blood answers with blood.
We ease around the side of the house, our footsteps silent.
“Here!” Danica’s voice blazes with anger. “I’m fucking here, okay, you psychopath?”
What the fuck? She’s taunting the attacker? Why is she calling attention to herself? Troy and I peer around the corner and into the back yard. Now I see why—and whatever this is? It has nothing to do with the Vorsongs.
That’s her family friend. She showed me photos from a party at her parents’ house. Malcolm Something-or-other. He has his girlfriend in a chokehold, a gun held to her head. What the fuck is going on? I never would’ve thought this guy was a threat. He’s a friend of Danica’s father.
The gun to the girlfriend’s head explains why Danica is stepping forward. Her clothes are wet, plastered to her body. It’s hard to see in the near-darkness, with the only light coming from a half-moon, but she seems to be shivering, too.
She was hiding in the water, I realize. And Malcolm is using his girlfriend to get Danica.
My Danica. My angel. Who is shivering and scared.
My heart pounds in a dark, murderous rhythm. I will rip him apart and throw pieces of him in the lake. I will do it while he’s still alive, so he can watch the fish feast?—
“Calm down,” Troy whispers. “Go around to the other side of the house.”
“Got it.” No need to say anything else—I know exactly what he’s thinking.
I shake myself from my macabre fantasy. First, we have to save Danica. Then I can deal with Malcolm.
Hands steady on the Glock, I retrace our steps. I hurry across the front of the house, around the other side to the opposite back corner. Slowly, I peer around the edge. Across from me, Troy’s bulky form is barely visible among the shadow of some pines. At the back of the yard next to the lake’s edge, Danica faces Malcolm and his hostage.
“You want to kill us both?” Danica asks, sounding way too full of attitude for a woman facing down an armed antagonist. “What’s your plan after, huh? You’ll say Zora and I both got lost in the woods? Will someone find our bones in fifteen years like what happened to Britney?”
Fuck. Holy shit. Malcolm, her family friend, is the guy behind that other young girl’s murder? He recently came to San Esteban, too. When the serial killings began.
No more time to think, no time to figure this shit out. There’s a guy with a gun, and Danica’s in his sights.
I step around the house, holding up Troy’s handgun. “Drop your weapon. Right the fuck now.”
Malcolm turns to the side to take in the new threat—me.
He doesn’t hear the approaching threat behind him. Troy’s on him before Malcolm even realizes it. With a loud thud, Troy clocks Malcolm in the temple with a rock.
Malcolm folds. The struggling woman in his arms falls with him, but she immediately pulls free of his grasp and scrambles out of his reach.
“Edmund! Troy!” Danica rushes forward, but pauses, like she can’t decide who to reach for first.
Troy and I solve that problem by running to her and meeting her at the same time.
We throw our arms around her. She shakes against us—likely from cold and adrenaline. I rub my hands up and down her back, trying to warm her.
“Is he...is he dead?” she whispers.
He better be. I will feed him bullets if he isn’t.
The girlfriend, Zora, reaches over to press her fingertips against Malcolm’s neck. In a raspy voice, she says, “No, just out cold.”
Danica pulls away to crouch next to Zora. “Are you okay?”
