The Butcher and the Wren(25)

“We can’t stay here long.” Emily pants, placing her hands on her hips and squinting into the darkness around them. “We are sitting ducks if we don’t keep moving.”

Katie shakes her head.

“Where the fuck are we going to go?” She throws her hands up before slapping them back down into the mud. “It’s us against a psycho with a gun. We’re going to run around like idiots until he shoots us from a fucking tree or something. We should stay here and hide until morning.”

“That’s your plan? You really think he will just leave when the sun comes up?” Emily squeezes her eyes shut and bends forward.

“He said we just had to evade him. That’s all we have to do.”

Emily isn’t the type to leave someone behind, even if they irritate her to no end. She’s a hero in her own mind, Jeremy knows.

“You honestly trust this guy’s word? You think someone with the patience to hide you away for days and befriend me for months will just give up because we hid from him for a few hours?”

Katie shrugs, and Emily brushes a spider off her shoulder with a sigh.

“So, you don’t want to find your friend out here? You want to leave Matt to die alone?”

Jeremy is fascinated. Her survival instinct is so strong, yet she’s willing to ignore it to help this delusional stranger.

“He’s probably already dead.”

“Well, we are not going to die out—” Emily stops.

Branches snap. And they both hear a shuffle of feet. Katie looks up at Emily with wide, terrified eyes. Gripping the tree trunk behind her, Emily holds her breath, desperately trying to see her surroundings.

Not me this time, friends.

Jeremy smirks to himself, waiting for the next arrival.

“Katie!” a hushed male voice sounds out from the darkness.

Katie gets to her feet and reaches for her flashlight.

“Oh my god, Matt?!” she whispers back in what sounds like pure disbelief.

The flashlight clicks on, and a stream of light casts out across the trees. A disheveled man in dirty clothes stands twenty feet away. A smile spreads across his face, and Katie bursts into relieved laughter. Emily lets out her breath and steps out from her hiding spot. They begin walking toward one another, letting their guards down. Jeremy shakes his head at their insipidity and raises his Glock, aiming it toward their gathering spot.

“I can’t believe we found you!” Katie runs forward to jump into a hug with Matt, who grimaces in pain.

“Yeah, I was sure I wouldn’t be able to walk on this knee, but I guess adrenaline took over.”

Emily looks down at Matt’s right knee, crusted in old blood and fresh mud. Her eyes betray her terror, suddenly compounded by a loud pop that seems to come out of nowhere. A bullet from Jeremy’s handgun rips into Matt’s temple, spraying drops of blood onto Katie’s face. He drops to the ground like a bird that’s been shot mid-flight, and Katie screams. But before Katie can process the grisly scene, Emily grabs her arm and starts running.

“Best of luck, ladies and … well, actually, just ladies now.” Jeremy grins, tucking the handgun back into its holster.





CHAPTER 16





ALL AT ONCE, LIKE AN unpredictable hemorrhage, Wren can smell it.

It’s subtle. So subtle that she wonders if it is just an olfactory hallucination, a result of too many morgue hours. To an untrained nose, it could smell like a foul plate of festival food or a street meat experiment gone awry. But Wren knows it is the unmistakable stench of early decomposition in stiflingly hot weather.

The smell always starts like a rotting onion. But as soon as you think you can handle it, it changes. It morphs like a crowded apartment building in which everyone is cooking something different, the smells tangling together to form something foul. Then it becomes heavy and smothering. The layers of rancid aromas explode like baby spiders from an egg sac, and they attack. A physical assault on the senses. The smell of death is unrelenting when unleashed.

One of her technicians is standing beside her, nervous and overly chatty.

“I know there are police everywhere, but I am still a little nervous. I have to be honest with you. This seems insane now that we are here. The bomb-sniffing dogs were dispatched, right?” she asks, speaking more loudly than she should.

“You have got to stop mentioning the police,” Wren warns, keeping her voice at a low volume. “The whole point of this is to avoid pandemonium, not to incite it.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“You have to keep it together. Things may get intense, and I can’t have you falling apart on me.”

“Of course. No, I’m ready.”

For a moment, Wren feels like maybe she has been too harsh.

“It’s normal to feel nervous. I’m nervous too. But our job is to ignore that and get to the task at hand. Now, what do you smell?” Wren asks.

The young woman’s nostrils flare, and her eyes widen.

“Is that?”

“Bingo,” Wren replies.

“Shit.”

“Don’t panic. We have to be smart about this,” Wren instructs. She locks eyes with Leroux across the thick sea of people. He is trying to appear casual but sticks out like a sore thumb in his neatly pressed suit. “Stay calm and follow me.”