Paranoid(129)

For a second she didn’t move, and then she heard a strangled cry, a tortured sound, and she couldn’t wait. Nephew or not, she wouldn’t let him hurt her daughter. Slithering forward like a snake, she eased toward him.

“Auntie,” he called as the sound of boots echoed through the building. The old barn door creaked open.

Rachel kept moving, easing forward, dragging the bolt cutters, feeling the grit of dirt and oil and grime of dozens of years against her skin and clothing, the smell of grease and mildew and rot heavy in her nostrils.

Again the soft, agonized groan and she thought of the blood, imagined her daughter bleeding out somewhere in this malevolent structure. She heard the sound of the river flowing below her, through the opening; smelled the wet, brackish odor as she inched by the chute.

She was close now.

“Lucas Ryder!” a woman’s voice yelled. Kayleigh. “Police! Drop your weapon! Come out with your hands over your head!”

“Fuck you!” Lucas yelled, turning his back to Rachel. In the darkness he seemed to drag a body in front of him, using it as a human shield. An anguished groan came from the body.

Harper! Oh, God, no!

She could be killed in any gunfire.

Rachel had to stop this. Do anything. She reached into her back pocket, withdrew her phone, and out of desperation hurled it at him. It hit with a soft thud against his shoulder and he jumped back, startled, and for a second stared at the phone glowing in front of him.

“What the—”

Rachel launched herself, sprang from all fours, aiming the blade of the bolt cutters at his back, to that spot between his shoulder blades. She hit hard, driving deep. With a roar he dropped the body in front of him and tried to turn. She used her weight to jam the handles together, praying that she could snap enough muscle, tissue, and bone to incapacitate him, to make him lose his grip on the gun, to take him down! The short jaw-like blades snapped together, crunching bone, tearing through muscle as he screamed in agony.

This is Lucas. He’s your nephew!

Still she squeezed, hanging on to the handles as he tried to shake her off. His screams ripped through the building and he staggered, firing wildly. Her hands, oily with sweat and slick with blood, slid on the grips.

“Don’t shoot!” Rachel cried, bracing herself against an onslaught of bullets from the police. “Don’t shoot!”

With a final thrust of his body, he wrenched the cutters from her grip and she fell backward, tripping and falling, slipping on the blood that seemed to be everywhere. She went down hard and found the floor uneven and sloped. Feet first she slithered down the hole and into the chute leading to the river below.

No, no, no! Scrambling, she caught one hand on the metal edge where the chute had been attached to the floor, but her weight dragged her down, the skin on her palm and fingers ripping as she slid down the chute and dropped into the icy river below. She nearly gasped but managed to hold her breath, dark waters of the river enveloping her. She tried to touch bottom, but the Columbia was too deep.

Swim.

Fighting the current, she pushed herself upward, her hand throbbing as it brushed against something soft and slimy. She recoiled just as a light from above, a bright beam from a high-powered flashlight, was shined through the hole in the cannery floor to illuminate the murky water of the river. She kicked again and her foot hit that same soft object. Turning, able to see through the air bubbles escaping from her lungs, she found herself staring into the bloated, tattered face of a man. His eyes were gone, gaping holes left, his mouth open, but even with the distortion and disfigurement she recognized Nate Moretti.

Oh, God. Her stomach started to wretch and she had to fight to keep her mouth closed. The corpse, tangled in vegetation and old fishing line, bobbed in the water, one hand slapping against her.

She swam away, wanting to scream, the world spinning. All the horror in her life converged in her brain as she felt the air leave her lungs.

Harper, she thought wildly, trying to concentrate. She’d left her daughter with that monster. Her heart cracked as she let out her final breath and thought, Oh, baby, I’ve failed you.

*

Using her flashlight, Kayleigh took one look at Lucas Ryder, Cade’s nephew, a damned bolt cutter lodged in his back, his throat showing a gaping hole where blood still ran from being attacked by God knew what. He was still alive, but just barely.

She recognized the second man as Xander Vale, the person he’d used as a human shield. Vale, too, was in rough shape, suffering from a wound in his leg, possibly a gunshot. How the hell had that happened?

“Where’s Rachel Ryder?” she asked just as a deputy yelled, “She went through the floor! Holy crap, did you see that?”

Kayleigh strode to the opening in the floorboards and spied a metal slide of sorts.

“Down there?”

“Yeah.”

“Crap.”

She pointed to the two injured men. “Take care of them. Get ambulances out here and keep each suspect under guard. Call for River Rescue. I want a boat out here ASAP. Then, for God’s sake, back me up and keep that light shining down there!” Then, cursing the fates, she lowered herself into the rusting slide, let go, and slid down the damned chute after Cade Ryder’s wife.

If she was lucky, she could save Rachel.

If not, they both could drown.

She dropped into the Columbia, felt its frigid pull as the current drew her westward, toward the Pacific.