Cadence wheezed for breath as Anniston’s hands closed around her throat. He’d pinned her against the rocks with his body, and his hands were slowly choking the life from her.
He brought his mouth close to her ear. “Those were Fiona’s screams. Before she learned how much I value the quiet, she used to scream. I kept the screams, the pleas—little mementos I liked to listen to.”
She kneed him in the groin.
He just laughed, but at least he moved his head away from hers. She tried to shove her hands between them. Tried to go for his eyes.
But he just deflected her attacks.
“I’m glad that I get to kill you. That I get to touch you while you die.”
Sick freak.
“You’ll have the full experience this way, and isn’t that what you wanted?” He pressed a kiss to her cheek. “To know the victim, you have to be the victim.”
Her left hand managed to wedge between them. Her nails scraped over his chest.
Red dots were dancing before her eyes, and the throbbing of her blood in her veins was like a desperate drumbeat.
Her light had fallen and the flashes of red—not enough oxygen, not enough—were all she could see.
“McKenzie can’t save you. He couldn’t save her either. I hope he knows. I hope he knows before he dies that he let you down, too.”
Kyle needed her. She had to find a way to get help to him. He was bleeding.
A light hit her. Hit Anniston. He froze for a second. A second she needed. Her fingers clenched, grabbing at the sharp object she felt just beneath his shirt.
A half-moon necklace.
Maria’s half-moon.
“Let her go!” Kyle’s booming voice. Not sounding weak at all. Furious. Enraged.
“Shouldn’t you be dead?” Anniston snarled.
Anniston’s hold lightened, but he didn’t free her. Cadence sucked in desperate gulps of air as dizziness and nausea rose within her.
“I remember the first time I saw Maria,” Anniston shouted to him.
Don’t listen to him. He’s trying to get to you. To screw with your head. But she couldn’t say the words. Her throat was swollen, her breath heaving.
“She stopped for directions. I liked her smile, so I convinced her to have coffee with me. She was so pretty. So sweet. How was I supposed to let her go?”
“Get your hands off Cadence!”
But he didn’t.
“After talking with her for just a little while, I knew how special she was. How good. I kept her with me. She was my first.”
“Let. Her. Go!”
Cadence wasn’t sure if Kyle was talking about his sister or her.
She yanked on the necklace. The clasp broke, but Anniston didn’t even seem aware. He thought she was too weak to attack him.
The half-moon spilled into her hand. The jerk should have buttoned up his shirt more.
“Why?” Cadence managed to wheeze out the question, but it wasn’t because she wanted to know what made this man tick. It was because she was trying to focus his attention back on her. She’d dropped her gun when he hit her. If she kept him distracted, maybe Kyle would find the gun, or maybe he already had his gun.
A partner’s job was to protect, to help.
So was a lover’s.
Anniston yanked her in front of him, using her as a shield, even as one arm stayed locked tight around her throat.
“I will snap her neck.”
She knew the guy would get off on making Kyle watch her die.
How was Kyle even there? With his injury, Kyle shouldn’t be on his feet.
Then she saw Kyle’s light weaving.
Cadence realized then…Anniston will also get off on making me watch Kyle die.
That wasn’t something she would allow. Kyle would not die.
They were both getting out of this giant freaking grave.
“I wasn’t pinned.” The words blew lightly over her ear.
Cadence wished she could see Kyle.
She only saw his light.
It was steady now.
“When I was in that car accident, I wasn’t pinned. I got out of my car that night. I went to the other driver. She was trapped. Bleeding and desperate. It was just the two of us on the dark road.”
A monster had been born then. No, a monster had always lived in him. The beast had just finally come out to play.
“I could have gotten her help. Tried to, anyway. But she was delirious. She begged me to stay with her. Begged me to hold her hand.”
Cadence had the half-moon in her hand. She was just waiting for the right moment to attack.
“I stayed with her. I watched her blood soak the seat. I watched her skin become even paler in the moonlight. I watched every moment. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. At the end, do you know what I enjoyed the most?” He paused for the briefest moment and whispered, “The silence. That’s what death is, you know, sweet, perfect silence.”
His arm tightened around her neck.
“When she died, I went back to my car. It was so dark and quiet, and I could smell her blood in the air. I loved that darkness. Right then, surrounded by it, I was death. It was all me.”
No, it wasn’t.
“The cops found us about an hour later. I tried to forget her, the beautiful girl in her blood-soaked car. The beautiful girl who begged me in the dark, but I couldn’t, and I wanted to see her again. I wanted that power again.”
The power of life.
Of death.
“Then little Maria came into town. Smiling. Smelling so sweet. Shy and all alone. She was my chance to have death again.”
“Fucking…bastard,” Kyle’s voice rasped out.
The light still wasn’t weaving. It didn’t seem to be moving at all.
How had he stopped the shaking? The light was a perfect beam. Angled up, hitting their faces.
He’s not holding it. The knowledge sank in. Kyle must have found a little ledge or outcropping of rock. The light wasn’t giving away Kyle’s position. She needed to act, now, before Anniston realized what was happening.
Kyle was looking for his moment to attack.
She’d give him that moment.
No matter how much it hurt her.
And it was going to hurt—a lot.
She wished she could see Kyle once more. Just once more.
In case…
“Do you know why I called you?” Anniston asked, the words a hard curl of sound in the dark. “Why I even brought you in on Lily’s case? I didn’t have to call. You never would have known.”
“You wanted me to know,” Kyle growled at him. The caves distorted his voice, made it sound both close and far away. “’Cause you’re…fucking…twisted…”
“The world needed to know!” Anniston yelled. “I have the power, the control! Years—years—I did this, and no one knew.”
That was what had finally gotten to him. The need to show off his work. The need to show just how smart he was.
Only things hadn’t gone according to his master plan. He’d lost his girls.
That’s not all you’ll lose.
She just had to find the right moment. Just had to distract him long enough…
So Kyle could go in for the kill.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Cadence was afraid. Her face didn’t show her fear. Her face was an expressionless mask, bathed in the harsh glow of his flashlight.
It was her eyes that gave her away. The eyes that searched the darkness frantically for him. Even as her gaze told Kyle that Cadence wasn’t going to be a victim much longer.
He had his gun. The blood on his hands made it hard for him to hold a tight grip, and his fingers growing numb made aiming a bitch.
He’d still make the shot.
He just had to get Cadence out of the way first.
The bastard held her too tightly. Her breath had wheezed out before. She’d trembled.
You won’t kill her.
Cadence was the o
nly thing that made life worth living for him.
“I kept her,” Anniston said, the words a sly purr. Taunting. Bastard, you will die. “She cried and screamed at first, for so long, until her voice broke. You heard her cries, though, didn’t you? I kept them because I liked to remember her.”
“Let Cadence go.” He felt cold. His knees had already buckled and he was only standing up because his left hand was braced against the rocks near him.
“You were here, when she was so desperate to get away. When she would beg to go home, you were in this town.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
He felt his mind begin to splinter. He wanted to kill the SOB more than he wanted his next breath.
But Cadence was there. Staring back at him with her beautiful face and her frightened eyes.
She knows what I want. Cadence always knew.
Her head inclined in the faintest of moves, as if she were giving him permission.
Permission to shoot her? No!
He’d sworn never to hurt Cadence. Cadence mattered. Cadence was life.
Cadence was love.
It was getting harder to hold the gun. If he didn’t take out James, what would happen to Cadence? “Let her…go…”
“One day she stopped her cries. She gave me that perfect silence. She started doing everything I wanted. She needed me. She liked the darkness, just as much as I did.”
Once upon a time, Maria had enjoyed the dark. She’d loved to sit outside and stare up at the stars. To watch the moon. It was why he’d given her that necklace on her eighteenth birthday.
Maria and her moon.
Why hadn’t he gone with her on that trip? Why?
I don’t need you to babysit me, Kyle. She’d tossed him the smile that always helped her get her way. I’m all grown up now, remember.
“I remember,” he rasped.
“I trusted Maria, I thought she was coming to understand what she meant to me.” James pulled his arm back even tighter around Cadence’s throat. Her hands flew up, her nails clawing into him. He didn’t let her go.
“I trusted her, but she ran.”
“You’re killing…her!”
Cadence had squeezed her eyes shut.
“I didn’t kill Maria!” James bellowed. There was truth in that bellow. Desperation. Insanity. Truth.
“She ran.” His voice was softer. “Fall…”
Cadence’s hands were trying to reach Anniston’s face. She was going for his eyes.
He saw the glint of gold in the light.
“Let her go!” Kyle yelled with all the strength he had.
“She chose—chose—but it should have been my decision! I’m the one in control!” James bellowed back. “I’m the one who decides life or death. Just like on that road. I decided. I took the glass. I cut her deeper. I made her bleed more. She begged. In the dark, she bled and begged, and I was in control.”
Cadence had his sister’s necklace. The half-moon. He could see it now. She shoved the sharp edge of the moon into James’s left eye.
He screamed and shoved her away.
Cadence fell.
It was the moment Kyle needed.
He didn’t feel the pain in his body any longer. Didn’t feel the cold. Didn’t feel anything but—
Rage.
He fired the gun. Once. Twice. Three times.
James’s body jerked like a puppet, and he kept screaming, screaming even as he fell.
Kyle rushed toward him, stumbling. His damn legs didn’t want to work right, but then he was over James. He sank to his knees before the man.
“Kyle?” Cadence’s voice. She was there, and he just wanted to wrap his arms around her and make sure she was alive and safe.
But first he needed to send Anniston to hell.
The bastard was still alive. Gasping for breath.
Cadence had gotten the light. She lifted it, making the beam fall on Anniston’s face.
He was smiling. Even with one eye a bloody mess and three bullets in his chest, he was smiling. “She’s a doctor. She has to help me.”
“Don’t even fucking look her way.” He grabbed the man’s chin. “You look at me.” This was the man who’d ripped his world apart. Who’d destroyed the lives of so many. “I’m going to be the last thing you see in this world.”
“C-can’t kill me…I know…way out…only…me…y-you kill me…you…kill her.”
Kyle had his gun to James’s head.
The captain was still smiling.
Get Cadence out. It was the one thought consuming his mind. Cadence had to get to safety. Cadence had to live.
He began to pull the gun away.
“Kyle, I can hear the falls from here.”
He realized the mad pounding in his ears wasn’t just his heartbeat. It was the thunder of the falls. Death Falls.
James wasn’t smiling anymore.
“We don’t…need you,” Kyle said.
James roared and jerked up. His hand flew out, grabbing for the gun even as his head slammed into Kyle’s.
His nose crunched as the bones broke, but Kyle almost welcomed the new surge of pain.
He squeezed the trigger, but no bullets came out.
James laughed. “Which…of us…is…stronger?”
Kyle yanked the knife from his waistband. He’d picked it up before leaving the dark chamber, too. Always have a backup weapon. “I am.” He shoved the knife into the bastard’s throat. Shoved it. Jerked it. Cut his throat wide open.
A gurgle was the last sound James made.
“Why don’t you try screaming, asshole?”
James’s body jerked.
The blood flowed.
With his eyes open, staring at Kyle, James died.
Welcome to hell.
Cadence’s arms wrapped around him. “Kyle…”
He left his knife in James’s throat. The half-moon was embedded in the SOB’s eye, and the necklace’s golden chain gleamed in the dark.
Cadence pulled him to his feet. “Come on. We need to get you help.”
He wanted to go with her. He even tried to take a step.
But he couldn’t.
He fell right back to the ground, landing hard on his left wrist. It cracked. Broke.
“Kyle?”
The light wasn’t on her face, and he wished he could see her clearly. One more time.
He managed to lift his right hand. Managed to touch her cheek. “I…love you…”
Her hand curled over his. “I love you, too.”
They could’ve had a life together. The two of them. Maybe even a kid. He would have liked a girl.
A girl with her smile. Her golden eyes.
Maybe they could have named her Maria.
Yes, he would have liked that.
Kyle knew how bad his wound was. Only rage and fear had given him the strength to get down the tunnel. Rage, blinding fury, and fear. Fear that Cadence wouldn’t survive.
But James was dead now, and Kyle’s strength was gone.
He didn’t want Cadence to watch him die.
“Go to the falls…” She could follow the sound. Find her freedom. “Get…help…”
Cadence shook her head. “I left before because you didn’t want Anniston to escape. He’s dead, and I’m not leaving you.”
But he was leaving her. His heartbeat was struggling in his chest. A stutter, a beat, a stutter.
He fell back, his head hitting a stone. Can’t feel it. At this point, there was only numbness.
He’d miss Cadence. Miss so damn much. Happiness had finally been in his grasp.
“Don’t do this to me!” Cadence yelled at him. Her hands were on his chest. He knew where they were, not because he saw them or felt them, but because he heard the sound of fabric ripping as she tore his shirt. “Don’t you do this! You fight, Kyle! You fight to live!”
He had. He’d managed to get down the tunnel. Managed to get to her.
“Love…” Had he told her that he loved her? It was so importan
t she knew, and he wasn’t sure.
“I love you!” Her words were a scream. “I’m not letting you do this to me! You aren’t leaving me! Kyle, you can’t! You don’t want to leave me in the dark. You don’t want to leave me alone!”
No, Cadence couldn’t stay in that dark grave with him.
“Falls…” She had to get to the falls. To the light.
“I won’t go without you. If you want me to make it, then you have to make it, too.”
There was pressure on his chest. So much pressure. He felt it past the numbness.
“If I have to make your heart keep beating, I will!” Was she yelling or whispering? He couldn’t tell for sure. “Don’t leave me!”
“Always…be with…Cadence…” She was his constant.
“Kyle!”
He fucking hated the darkness.
And loved her.
Ben and Dani were soaked. They’d run through the falls, headed back into the deep caverns, then heard the gunshots.
Ben rushed after the gunshots, chasing the thunder even as he knew he should be more cautious. The gunshots themselves could send more of the tunnels caving in.
But I’ve got two people missing.
His flashlight beam bounced as he ran.
“There!” Dani’s cry.
He froze. Tracked his beam to the left. Saw the hunched figure of Cadence on the ground. She was crouched over—Kyle.
Kyle wasn’t moving.
Another body was there, too.
Dani’s light hit him—Anniston. A knife handle protruded from the man’s throat.
Ben rushed forward.
“Kyle, don’t do this,” Cadence was saying, begging, her voice was so low and desperate. “Stay with me. Don’t leave me in the dark, stay.”
“Cadence?” Dani called.
Cadence’s head whipped around. The lights caught the tear tracks on her face. “Help him!” Her hands were still on Kyle’s chest. “He can make it! The knife sank too deep. But there’s no sucking chest wound. His lungs are clear, we just have to stop the blood!”
Oh, Christ. He could see all the blood.
“Go back out,” he told Dani. There was no phone signal down there, he’d already tried to get one too many times. “Get the medical airlift out here! Tell them we have an officer down!”
Dani ran back through the darkness, not even hesitating.
He realized Cadence’s hand was in Kyle’s wound.