This Fallen Prey (Rockton #3)(114)

Shared crimes. Shared blame. Equally shared? I don’t give a damn.

“I’ve taken Wallace into custody,” I say. “I’m doing the same with you. Eric will fly you both back down south and tie you up in a hotel room and place an anonymous call to the police.”

“Sure, do that,” Brady says. “And we’ll tell them all about you and your town. Do you think you haven’t given us enough information to pass on to the authorities? I know your name, Detective Casey Butler. I know his, Sheriff Eric Dalton. I know the names of a half dozen people in your town. I know I’m in Alaska—I’ve been here before, and I recognize the terrain. They will track you down and . . .”

He trails off, and I smile.

“Can’t even finish that threat, can you?” I say. “They’ll do what? We’ve given them two serial killers. You tell them that you were turned in by some secret prison camp in Alaska? Why would they care? And why would you presume they don’t already know about us?”

He blinks at me.

“Turn around,” I say. “And start walking—”

“Not so fast, Casey,” a voice says behind me.

It’s a familiar voice, but on hearing it, my heart skips.

Not possible. That is not . . .

I turn, and I see Dalton. But it wasn’t his voice I heard. It was a woman’s. Then I see Dalton’s hands on his head, as he’s prodded down the path by a woman.

“Hello, Casey,” Val says. “You look surprised to see me.”

“I—I saw your . . .” I don’t finish. I will sound like a fool if I do, and I already feel the sting of my mistake.

But how was it a mistake?

I saw the bloat of her corpse. I know she was not alive.

Sharon, Dalton mouths, and with that, I understand.

Sharon. One of our winter dead. The woman who’d died of a heart attack last week. Whom we’d been burying when Brady arrived.

Sharon was not a perfect doppelg?nger for Val. She was older. With longer hair. Heavier. Shorter. But none of that mattered for a water-bloated corpse floating facedown in the water. Cut the gray-streaked hair to Val’s length. Dress her in Val’s clothing. Put her corpse in the water and send it downstream, and even if we had managed to pull it out, between the rot and the bloat, it would have been hard to say it wasn’t Val.

Peter Sanders had pulled that same trick with Nicole—found a dead hostile or settler and put her in Nicole’s clothing and damaged the body enough that Dalton naturally concluded he’d found Nicole. Val knew we didn’t have the equipment to test DNA, and that told her the trick might work again.

“Eric stopped to help me,” Val says. “He couldn’t resist, even when he considers me dead weight on your precious town. All I had to do was lie in his path, and he holstered his gun and raced over to help.”

“And that’s weakness to you, isn’t it?” I say. “That he came to your aid, no questions asked, despite all the shit you’ve put him through.”

“Put him through? I’m the one who’s gone through hell in that godforsaken town. Condemned to coexist with people who lack the IQ to carry on a proper conversation with me. Yet they all tried. Even you, Casey. Especially you. You had to try to help a poor fellow female, trapped in her home, cowering like a mouse. I wasn’t cowering, you idiot. I was waiting. You said once that the council constructed a prison for me—made me too afraid to leave my house. No. I constructed it. It was my refuge, and you couldn’t leave me well enough alone.”

“Yeah,” Dalton says. “We’re all assholes for giving a shit.”

My look warns him not to antagonize her. I’m all too aware of that gun at his back.

“You should have left me alone, Casey,” she says. “But you couldn’t. You had to dig and poke and prod. Destroy what little sanctuary I had. Rob me of what few allies I had.”

“Allies?” I say. “You mean the council? Because I proved they set you up to be raped?”

“I was not raped.” Her voice shakes along with the gun, and I give myself the same warning I gave Dalton. Stop. Just stop.

She continues, “I escaped. If you don’t believe that’s possible, it’s because you didn’t escape your attackers, Casey. You let them beat you. Let them almost kill you. Almost certainly let them rape you. You could not get away, so you cannot conceive of the possibility that another, stronger, smarter woman might have.”

“Okay,” I say, and it’s a calm, even response, but she keeps shaking, wanting to fight, to defend herself, and I change the subject fast. “So you helped Oliver here. You ingratiated yourself with him, while pretending you were spying for us.”

“And you bought it.” She smiles. “You couldn’t help yourself. Your pet project was showing signs of improvement. Joining the community. Making herself useful. I manipulated you into giving me access to him and you jumped at the chance.”

“You brought supplies,” I say. “Food. Weapons. That’s why Oliver didn’t bother retrieving my gun after he shot Brent. And you sent him to Brent. You knew Brent could lead you both to Jacob.”

She says nothing. It doesn’t matter. Not now.

Focus on the facts. On how this fills in the holes.

Brady attacked Brent because Val said Brent could get them a better hostage: Jacob. Who could also guide them out of the wilderness. And the companion Jacob saw with Brady? Val. From a distance, Jacob mistook her for a man. She brought those protein bars they shared, old stock she had access to. Brady had been so confident, he’d outright lied about it. Didn’t even bother making up a story.