Page 34 of Disappearance at Angel's Landing
Branch’s heart stopped cold for the briefest of moments. He searched every team member’s face, desperate to recognize the blue eyes he’d woken to this morning in the tent. “What do you mean? I told her to wait here to meet up with you.”
“Haven’t seen her.” Risner angled his arms out, palms up in a shrug. “Damn woman can never do anything right. I warned you not to bring her in on this investigation, but I guess you just couldn’t keep it in your pants, Thompson. Don’t blame you. Jordan’s got that look in her eye that says she’ll do anything for attention.” The district ranger lowered his voice, barely audible over the pounding rain on the tarp the others had raised. “I expect details when we get back to headquarters.” Risner winked. Stepping back, he widened his stance, thumbs hooked into his belt. “We’re moving out as soon as this storm passes. We can’t wait for her to catch up.”
“You can’t just leave her out here on her own.” His nervous system shot into overdrive as he closed the distance between him and Risner.
The slight widening of the district ranger’s eyes told him every preconception he’d had of Branch had been wrong, that he didn’t know who the hell he was dealing with. And Branch couldn’t argue. He was an entirely different person from twodays ago, changed in more ways than one because of a woman who enjoyed threatening to make his life hell.
“And if I ever hear you talk about an employee, especially a female employee, like that again, I’ll have the superintendent ship you to Gateway Arch for the rest of your pathetic career. As for Lila never doing anything right, have you bothered to ask yourself if you’re the kind of leader employees respect enough to follow orders? Because from where I’m standing, there’s a lot to be desired.”
Risner’s jaw snapped shut as he puffed out his chest, just begging for someone to knock him down a peg. “Whether my employees respect me or not doesn’t matter. I’m her superior.”
“You’re an idiot, and if you aren’t going to make the right call to recover one of your rangers, I am.” Branch hauled his pack higher on his shoulder. “I’m going after her.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Lila couldn’t keep her blood where it should be. In her body. The blade hadn’t hit anything major, but it was only a matter of time before she bled out if she didn’t get any kind of medical help. Except she wasn’t sure how to do that. Her legs weren’t working. The killer had confiscated her radio. And no one—not even Branch—knew she was here.
“What do you think of my kidnapping skills now, Ranger Jordan?” That voice, tinted with a slight accent she still couldn’t place, filtered in through the darkness.
Thunder rumbled up through the ground. Or had it come from above? She couldn’t tell. Something sharp set up residence in her chest, shortening her inhales. Wave after wave of dizziness had tossed her brain in a blender and refused to relent. “You’ve got the incapacitating your victim part down. Kudos. The cave is also a great touch. Spooky.”
Her throat ached with every attempt to speak, draining what energy she had left faster. Another bubble of blood burst from the wound in her stomach. Sarah Lantos had been stabbed just like this, but she imagined it would’ve been too much work for the killer to get Lila to the top of Angel’s Landing with an injury like the one in his thigh. Which seemed to have been patched up as he approached her, discarding the shadows of whatever cave he’d dragged her into.
His laugh rolled with another explosion of thunder. Ugh. She hated that laugh. Bet it’d become the star of her nightmares after this. The storm was still going strong, but it did nothing to drown out the killer’s intentions. “Thank you. I’ve learned a lot since the last time you and I were alone together.”
“Is this the part where you open up your case of torture devices and detail your master plan while explaining how I don’t fit into it?” Pain spiked through her middle as she tried to push herself upright. “Or am I part of the plan? I can’t tell.”
“I don’t need an entire case of torture devices when I have you right where I want you.” Crouching beside her, the killer withdrew that very same knife he’d introduced to her soft tissues, setting it against her cheek, and she froze. The metal was warm despite the drop in her body temperature and the imposing elements. She could still feel flecks of her blood crusted to the blade. “You know, through all your noise and jokes and distractions, you’re really just a scared little girl with no one around to protect her.”
Scared? Yes. Little girl? No. Though compared to his size, she didn’t blame him for making that assumption. Lila reverted into the overly upbeat persona that’d kept her from breaking apart so many times before. Her cheek pressed into the blade as she smiled. “Haven’t you heard? Women are allowed to vote now. We have jobs, can choose not to have kids and fight our own battles.”
His responding smile set in place as he framed her chin in his free hand. Right before the tip of the blade cut into her skin. Stinging pain ticked her heart rate higher. In a single move, he’d nearly sliced that fake smile off her face. Blood dripped down her chin and hit the cave floor. “How are you going to fight me when you’re bleeding out all over the ground?”
That was a good question. One she’d have to come back to as he released her and took position standing over her. Her weightdragged her back to the hardened, rocky floor. At least this cave didn’t smell like decomposition. “Just get it over with.”
“Get it over with?” He cleaned the blade with his jacket. Much thicker than the long-sleeved shirt he’d worn before. Which meant he’d prepared for all kinds of weather before shoving Sarah Lantos off that cliff. “Are you really that eager to die?”
She had been once. And while that cavern of loneliness and Branch’s rejection had spread to the smallest crevices of her body—clawed her into a thousand little pieces—she didn’t want to die. For the first time in years, the numbness had receded, leaving her raw and exposed to the slightest stimuli. The feel of the rain on her skin, the sound of the wind roaring through the cave opening, the scent of something akin to burnt wood.
“The big villain speech. Obviously, you’re not going to kill me until you’ve made me suffer like Sarah Lantos.” Lila tested her brain’s command of her fingers and toes. The blade hadn’t caused enough damage to sever her connection to her limbs, but she’d sustained multiple injuries being tossed down that hill. Coupled with the bruises on her ribs, she was pretty sure she’d broken something. “That’s a good place to start.”
“It doesn’t matter what I say. What matters is my plan for people like you. People like my sister.” The killer looked down on her as though she was nothing more than a patch of mud under his shoe. “She tortured me for years, you know. In little ways at first. Pinching me under the table at dinner, adding hot sauce to my food when I wasn’t looking. Her face would light up every time she got a reaction out of me, but when I told my parents, no one believed me. She had this uncanny ability to cover her tracks. She moved onto testing her skills with knives while I slept, slicing between my toes and the bottoms of my feet. Still, my parents wouldn’t believe their daughter could inflict such harm. After a while she found threatening me to stay quiet by hurting my dog worked just as well as physical torture. I lovedthat dog more than anything, and she took it from me for fun. All while pasting a smile on her face to deflect suspicion. Much like you do.”
The comparison was delusional. There was no other way to describe it. She’d never hurt an animal, let alone another person. She’d never gone out of her way to inflict pain and suffering, but to the man standing above her, she might as well have been the one to commit those unforgivable sins he’d survived.
“Sarah Lantos was…your sister.” The pain in her torso intensified with every word. She wasn’t sure how much blood she had lost, but she didn’t have an endless supply. The longer she laid here, the sooner she’d lose her fight to escape. Lila leveraged her weight into her elbow, cataloguing her injuries from head to toe. Too many. She wanted nothing more than to sink back to the floor and lose herself in unconsciousness, but that would mean giving up. She wasn’t ready to die. She’d just started to live despite the heartache that came with Branch’s accusations.
“It wasn’t until we were in our teens the psychologists recognized her antisocial personality disorder, but by then, the damage had already been done to me. My parents, they realized their mistake when they found me bleeding out all over the kitchen floor after I took the remote from my sister to watch my show after school one day.”
Retracting one arm from his coat, the killer exposed his forearm. A thick, jagged scar trailed from his inner elbow to his wrist. The tissue hadn’t healed well, much like the scar across her throat. Or maybe the damage had been beyond the physicians’ capabilities. Her scar almost seemed to burn in response.
“They finally faced the monster they’d created. The way she hurt others without any kind of remorse, how she went out of her way to push their boundaries, the manipulation tactics she usedto get away with her behavior. Years too late. Still, they went out of their way to get her help instead of locking her up where she belonged.”
Acid churned in Lila’s gut at the realization she and this killer had more in common than most. How the people who were supposed to love and care for them had betrayed them, refused to believe them, ignored their pleas for help.
But trauma didn’t erase the violence he’d inflicted on his sister or her, and it sure as hell didn’t justify it.
“She kept torturing me.” The killer’s voice lowered an octave, freezing her in place. “Drove away any woman who might show interest in me with lies of abuse and infidelity. Got me fired from multiple jobs by sleeping with my superiors. Even after my little stint in a psychiatric ward based off a false police report she filed, she set out to destroy me for no other reason than I was something in the way of her having my parents’ full attention.”
