Page 28 of Danger In The Backcountry
“Oh, my gosh, Shawn. Here. Sit down.” Lettie tried to keep up.
“I didn’t know where else to go.” Shawn’s face crumpled close to a sobbing fit as he swung himself onto the edge of the bed. She’d never seen him like this, even those first few days they’d worked together, and he hadn’t known what she expected of him in the lab. His clothes, normally pressed and spotless, were cut through with wrinkles and a stain that looked like dried blood at the collar. The bruising at one side of his face—from a right handed assailant, she would guess—was as dark as the coloring around her ankle. Maybe slightly lighter, but still ghastly. He’d obviously been through so much. All because of her. “He said I was in his way from having you. He’s like obsessed with you. I thought he was going to kill me. I tried to tell him we just worktogether, but he wouldn’t listen. He just kept hitting me and hitting me.”
“Okay. Slow down.” Her nerves couldn’t take this very real manifestation of the chaos exploding inside from Rome’s previous admission. Lettie put herself in Shawn’s path to keep him from carving a hole in the carpet. “It’s okay. He can’t get to you here. All right? The door is locked, and there are law enforcement rangers and police downstairs. All we have to do is call them up—”
“No!” Her intern shot to his feet, nearly knocking her over as he started pacing again. “Nobody can know I’m here. I can’t go back to my apartment. He knows where I live. They can’t protect me.”
Lettie threw her hands out in surrender. She couldn’t get her head around what was happening. Shawn had somehow managed to escape his attacker, a man overly capable of disemboweling his victims and hanging them from trees as bear fodder, but her twenty-five-year-old intern had survived. “Okay. No police. No rangers. It’s just you and me. All right? But I need you to slow down and tell me what happened.”
He sucked in a series of deep breaths, seemingly trying to calm himself down and failing. He was going to pass out if he kept breathing like that, but she didn’t think it would be the worst thing in the world to snap him out of his panic. “I… I was sleeping. It was the middle of the night. I remember hearing something, but I live in an apartment, you know. There are all kinds of noises from next door, so when I didn’t hear it again, I didn’t think much of it. But then something grabbed my leg and dragged me out of bed.”
She recalled the sheets and pillows scattered through the open door leading to the bedroom in his apartment upon hers and Rome’s visit to the scene.
“I tried to scream, but he hit me in the face. I… I didn’t know what was happening. I think I might have blacked out.” Shawn sank back onto the edge of the bed closest to the door. “When I came around, he was standing over me. Telling me I didn’t deserve your attention, that I was just in the way. I kicked him. He must’ve hit the table, and I tried running for the door, but I wasn’t fast enough. He grabbed me. The only thing I had to fight back with was a sculpture I kept on my side table. I hit him. And then I ran. I didn’t stop until I got back to the lab. I thought you might be there. I wanted to warn you.”
The same terror she’d tried to bury since coming out of those woods played across his face and sent a shudder straight through her. “You should’ve gone to the police.”
“I left my phone charged in my bedroom. I wasn’t thinking.” Shawn ran both hands down his face as if he hadn’t rested until he’d found her. “I just knew I didn’t want him getting anywhere near you. You’re like the only person I can stand in the lab.”
“I’m not sure that’s a compliment. I spend most of my time talking to a bear who only likes me for my strawberries.” Lettie let herself slide onto the bed next to him, trying not to think too hard about what might happen to Sam after this was all over. “I’m glad you’re okay, but the police need to hear your statement. They have a BOLO out for you.”
“I don’t want to talk to them.” He closed his eyes, tipping his head back toward the ceiling. The edges of his jaw seemed sharper than she remembered, the coarse hair of a five-o’clock shadow peppered with prickles of gray shadowing the angles of his cheekbones. Not many twenty-five-year-olds had gray like that. It wasn’t impossible, but…a sick feeling swirled through Lettie’s gut. “It was hard enough getting in here without running into them. I can’t have them take me to the station for hours of questioning.”
“Why wouldn’t you want to talk to them?” Lettie moved to stand, halted by the strong hand on her forearm holding her in place. Not enough to hurt but to assert control. He hadn’t dared touch her before now, even went so far as to apologize when their gloved hands brushed in the lab, but this… This was different.
“I’m just so tired. I don’t remember the last time I slept or ate.” Her intern met her gaze, the frantic energy in his eyes cooling to a predatorial gleam. “Can I please just stay here with you for a bit?”
She tried to pull her arm back. And his grip only tightened. “Shawn, how did you know I was here?”
Shawn stood then, so much taller than her, towering over her with wide shoulders she hadn’t noted before now. Strength capable of overwhelming her in an instant. No longer her intern, but something else. Something terrifying and dark as he looked down at her. “Did you really think I was going to let you get away from me, Arlette?”
Chapter Twenty-Four
The campsite was abandoned.
At least two days ago if Rome guessed.
The tracks had lightened from the presence of melted frost, but they matched perfectly with the set he’d tracked through these woods the night of the attack. The killer had been here. Made himself quite comfortable based off the imprint of a tramped down section of land and the small fire spewing ash with the consistent breeze coming through the trees. Whoever had shot Rome with that crossbow had chosen his campsite well. Deep enough into the Zion wilderness and off the beaten path to avoid ranger patrols while also close enough to running water of the creek to the north and the protection of the cliffs to the east to cut down on the wind.
It’d taken more than four hours since leaving Lettie back at the hotel to pick up the killer’s trail, and now that he was here, he had nothing. No signs of where the hunter had gone or whether he’d taken to higher ground.
Shouldering his rifle over his good arm, Rome crouched in front of the dead fire, poking through the ash with the end of a stick. People liked to use their campfires as garbage bins, but this camp goer had cleared his out. Packed out any wrappers, water bottles and personal belongings. As though he’d never existed.
There was nothing here, throwing him right back into square one with no clue as to who wanted him dead to get to Lettie. Police had done their due diligence in running backgroundchecks on all the men in her life, but there hadn’t been any red flags. Still, he couldn’t detach from the idea Lettie knew their attacker. Whether it was from her life up north and before the divorce or from this new life in Zion, he had no idea where to start.
And he might never find out.
She’d thrown him out of the hotel room. Told him she was done with the park and the investigation and their marriage. And, hell, he didn’t blame her. It wasn’t every day you learned your spouse of a decade was a cold-blooded killer, but the chances of trying to make it right between them got smaller every hour he let slide. He’d accused her of not fighting the divorce. Now he understood why she hadn’t even tried. Of knowing, deep down, that every effort would only end in heartache.
But he wouldn’t leave her to look over her shoulder for the rest of her life, and he sure as hell doubted the killer would give up until he got what he wanted. Four men. Four strangers. Possibly a fifth if he included her missing intern. Hunters—killers—like that didn’t balk at a change of plans. They adapted. Just like a predator.
Rome increased his search around the perimeter of the campsite. It was impossible for the killer to not have left something of himself behind. That was the way of nature. A constant exchange between humans and the wild, each leaving their imprint on the other.
There.
Catching sight of a pine branch unnaturally angled away from all the others around it, he skimmed his thumb along the delicate needles. Pulling thin threads from the end. Most likely from the killer’s clothing. He surveyed the trees ahead. Waiting for signs of an ambush or movement, but only the tart, invading scent of pine and cold air filtered into his senses. The killer hadcome this way, but the ground refused to give up which direction he’d been heading. Coming or going. Rome would have to take a gamble and follow his instincts. And right now, they were telling him something was very wrong in these woods. “Where did you go?”
Absolute silence descended around him.
