The Black Coats(86)
Epilogue
Somewhere deep inside Sam Houston National Forest, Texas
At the exact moment that Thea crouched on the track to begin her race, Frank Betcher was sitting on his couch. He couldn’t believe his luck that this woman had come home with him. He had never seen such a beautiful woman, and here she was, in his cabin. Incredible!
Just hours earlier, at the bar Bitter Sand, she had touched his hand ever so slightly when he had handed her a drink. It was nothing big, but it was enough to get Frank excited thinking about all the possibilities. He flirted, and she flirted back. Together they had tumbled out of the bar and stumbled their way to his car and, finally, up to his cabin. Normally, he wouldn’t have taken anyone to that place given what he had hidden there, but when would he have a chance like this again? This gorgeous blond woman, wandering into his trap, ready and willing? It was like a miracle.
Back at the cabin, Frank Betcher grabbed a beer from the fridge, giving her time to change into whatever naughty thing she had in that purse of hers. That made it easy: less evidence to bury later. He flopped onto his plaid couch, an uncontrollable smile breaking across his face. This is going to be fun.
She leaned her head out the door, raising her eyebrows with a drunken laugh. “Are you ready?” Then she giggled and blushed, and Frank found himself gripping the drink tightly in his hand. Oh yes. I’m ready. Frank Betcher was always ready.
When the woman turned her head ever so slightly, he imagined his hands wrapped up in her long blond hair, his fingers running down her cheeks and then slowly tightening around her neck. Would she be a screamer or like so many others: a silent sufferer, trying to beg him with her eyes? Would she fight? Those were his favorites, the ones where he got to watch them realize that their lives were being slowly snuffed out, the ones who kicked and writhed. The fighters particularly excited him.
Frank took a long sip of his beer, repeating the dead girls’ names to himself in order, like a badge of honor. Hailey. Amy. Sophia. Jenn. Natalie. And soon there would be six names.
He couldn’t believe his good luck the past year. First that girl Natalie, running out of gas just a few miles from this cabin and finding the lights of his home in the dark. It had been so quick: before she had known what was happening he had been on her, his hands around her throat. From the time she had knocked on his door to his running his hands over her dead body had been less than ten minutes. Like pennies from heaven she had fallen right into his lap.
It had been so easy to put gas in her car and drive it far away from the cabin. Sheesh, Natalie had been almost too easy, and as if his karma was feeling generous, they had blamed the murder on that poor sap who lived about five miles from him. Now there was this woman at the bar, so eager to come home with him.
A lucky day for him, maybe. For her, not so much. He choked back a laugh and flexed his big hands.
The woman opened the door. “You ready for what’s coming to you?”
“Oh yeah, baby, come on out.”
She stepped out, and he sucked in his breath. “What the hell?” Instead of getting undressed, the woman had put on more clothes, covered up by a black coat buttoned to the collar. “What are you playing at, girl?”
She stepped forward, her eyes cold.
“Wait, stop . . .”
The woman wordlessly raised a gun with a silencer in her gloved hands, the muzzle pointed directly at his forehead. “For Natalie, and for the rest.” There was a gunshot, and then there was nothing. Frank Betcher’s head splattered on the wall behind him, the killer dead before his beer could even finish pouring out onto the cabin floor.
Very calmly, the woman picked up her purse and exited the cabin, but not before marking his basement door with a giant X of black spray paint, where she knew he hid the evidence of his murders. She proceeded to walk the three miles to her car through the mucky forest, dropping her blond wig into the river and covering her tracks as she went. Her car was parked in a shady grove, hidden from view.
Sahil looked up at her from the passenger seat, aviator glasses hiding his brown eyes. “Is it finished?” he asked. Nixon nodded and reapplied her lipstick.
Within minutes they were on the open highway, heading north. The papers stolen from Natalie’s file fluttered and leaped in the warm air of the back seat. Sahil picked up a phone and dialed the Austin police line. “Yes, I have an anonymous tip to report on the Natalie Fisher murder. Yes, I’ll hold.”
The road stretched out before them, the heat simmering across the wide expanse of granite. After a half hour or so, Nixon opened her window. A black coat fluttered out and came to rest on the highway, nothing more than a spot of black on the already desolate landscape.
Acknowledgments
First of all, thank you to my readers. I have the best job in the world, thanks to you. I wouldn’t be in this position and able to share this story without the help of some truly incredible people.
Thank you to my two editors for The Black Coats, Emilia Rhodes, who first saw the potential in Thea’s journey, and Alice Jerman, who saw the project through to the very end. You are both so wise, and I’m so lucky that I got to work with each of you. You deserve special editor coats, with hidden pen pockets and clandestine laptops. You are the type of editors who writers hope to work with.
Thank you to everyone at HarperCollins for your enthusiasm and hard work, for seeing this story of revenge and justice for what it was and believing in it. Thank you to Jon Howard and Clare Vaughn for the copy editing; to Jenna Stempel-Lobell, who has now designed four perfect covers for my books; and to the epic team at Epic Reads, who do the hard work for me.