The Hunt (3 page)

She glared at him and he dropped his hand.

“You need sleep,” he continued, his voice softer. “You’ve been searching for Rebecca all week. How many hours have you taken for yourself? You’re living on coffee and junk food. Go home.”

“No. No!” She turned from him, fearing the tears she’d been fighting all morning would escape.

Not now. Not in front of Quinn.

“Miranda, I’m calling in a team,” Nick said. “We won’t be ready for at least two hours. Doc Abrams needs to claim the body. Come back later.”

“Nick, I don’t think—” Quinn began.

Miranda interrupted him.

“I’m going to tell the volunteers. Two hours, I’ll be here.” She couldn’t look at Quinn, not now when her feelings raw and exposed.

She walked past Nick, touched his arm. “I’m okay.” She didn’t know if she said it for his benefit, hers, or Quinn’s, but saying the words out loud helped her swallow the fear that had crept to the surface. Quinn’s presence had rattled her almost as much as the Butcher’s latest kill.

Quinn watched Miranda drive off in her Jeep. He’d handled her wrong. It didn’t used to be like that. Back before she decided becoming an FBI agent would somehow fix her problems, Quinn had known exactly what to say, when to touch her, when to give her space.

But once she landed at Quantico, her obsession with the Butcher took over her life. Or maybe it had been there from the beginning and Quinn just hadn’t seen it.

Why couldn’t
she
see it?

“Why’d you do that?” Quinn asked Nick. “She’s in no condition to search for evidence. Did you see her when she was looking at the body? She’s going to lose it.”

His gut had twisted at the pain he’d seen on Miranda’s beautiful, gaunt face. As if she were reliving Rebecca Douglas’s final minutes.

“That’s where you’re wrong, Quinn. Miranda’s stronger than you think.”

“She’s punishing herself for surviving.”

“I don’t know about that—” Nick began.

“I
do.
Miranda has a huge case of survivor’s guilt and it’s grown over time. Every time another girl is abducted, she takes on her death as if she were to blame.”

“I know she’s personally involved, but she’s an asset to the team.”

“Miranda doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘team.’ ”

“You haven’t worked with her for the past ten years. She won’t break, she’d solid.”

“You’re letting your personal relationship interfere with common sense.” Quinn cringed. He sounded jealous. Dammit, he
was
jealous. When he’d first learned of Miranda and Nick’s relationship, it hurt more than he wanted to admit. You’d think that after all the years they’d been apart Quinn would have gotten over her. Yet, since Miranda walked out of his life, the few relationships he’d developed had been superficial and short-term. In Quinn’s heart, Miranda would always be the only woman.

Nick shot him a look. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” The sheriff started walking toward his truck.

“Don’t play coy with me, Nick. You’ve been involved with Miranda too long not to know better. She’s playing you. She’s good at that.”

Nick turned back to Quinn. “Miranda and I broke up two years ago.”

Nick’s face told Quinn he wasn’t happy about the arrangement, and his voice sounded almost accusatory. Quinn was both surprised and pleased that Nick and Miranda were no longer a couple. Then he chastised himself for caring. After all, Miranda wouldn’t have anything to do with him.

“You never told me.”

“Why would I? I’d take her back in a heartbeat. Not that I have a chance now.” He looked down the path Miranda’s Jeep had taken. “Not with you in town.”

“She hates me.” Hate might be too nice a word. Loathe, despise, or abhor might be more fitting.

“She should,” Nick said glancing at him. “If you’d had me booted from the
FBI
Academy
the day before graduation, I’d hate you. But she doesn’t.”

Quinn didn’t know about that, but remained silent.

Nick added, “If she hated you, she’d already be my wife.”

CHAPTER

3

Miranda broke every traffic law on the books driving back to
Montana
State
University
in Bozeman. She dreaded telling the search volunteers that Rebecca was dead.

Nick was right: they needed the resources of the FBI if they were going to catch the Butcher. But out of all the agents in the country, why Quinn Peterson?

She thought she’d gotten over his betrayal years ago. She loved her job, had a good home, family who loved her, and loyal friends.

Then she saw
him;
now she realized deep down, in the farthest recesses of her heart, in the corner she’d thought long hardened against love, she still ached for him.

Why couldn’t she be as nonchalant and formal as he had been? Miranda very much wanted it to appear that she didn’t care in the least that Quinn had both ruined her career and broken her heart.

Miranda pulled into one of the many parking lots on campus, gripping the steering wheel so hard her knuckles were white with the strain. She slammed the gear shift into park and shut off the engine. She tried to shove Quinn back into the mental compartment in which he’d been stuffed for years, but he didn’t go willingly.

She took a deep breath and watched a group of girls walk toward search headquarters in the Student Union Building. Then a pair of girls. Then a group of professors.

No one walked alone. Not when they were reminded about the Butcher. But how long would it take before they grew complacent again? A month? Two? A year? Miranda never forgot. The Butcher lived with her every minute of every day, taunting and tormenting.

The dean of students had allowed search volunteers to take over one of the large rooms in the Student Union to coordinate activities. Although Miranda worked for the Sheriff’s Department in the small Search and Rescue division, they didn’t have the space to bring in people to phone, copy flyers, distribute maps. Like the other times girls disappeared, the University provided the space they needed—anything to help. In times of tragedy, students and teachers united.

Why did it take death for people to see the value of life?

It had been three years since the last murder. Last
known
murder.

Miranda couldn’t forget the other girls who’d disappeared. This time last year it was Corinne Atwell. No one had seen her since her car was found in a ditch on Route 191 outside Gallatin Gateway. Was she a victim of the Butcher? Of another killer? Or had she run away? The very real possibility that Corinne had been the Butcher’s victim, her body decomposing in the wilderness somewhere in the millions of acres between Bozeman and Yellowstone where the Butcher hunted, haunted Miranda.

Thoughts like these creeping across her brain gave her insomnia.

Whack! Whack!

The whip came down once, twice, stinging her raw flesh and she tried to scream, but her voice had long since deserted her. She was left to her silent tears, and the echo of Sharon’s pleas.

Their pleas meant nothing to the faceless monster who tortured them. Their relief when he left soon turned to horror. They’d become dependent on him. He fed them, gave them water. If he left forever, they’d die, naked and chained to the floor in the middle of nowhere.

But he did return. To release them. So they could play the part of prey in his sick game. The hunter and the hunted.

Finding the Butcher meant more than justice. Only he could tell them who he had killed. That he had so much control over the grief of the living ate at Miranda constantly.

Rebecca had survived eight days in the hands of that madman, that murdering bastard. She had almost escaped. Almost.

As with Sharon, “almost” meant shit when you were dead.

Sitting in her car in the parking lot, Miranda took a deep breath. Closing her eyes, she buried her head in her arms, using the steering wheel as an armrest.

The tears came fast, anger and frustration boiling over in hot, salty rivulets down her cheeks. Her body, already sore from days of backbreaking searches, ached from the tension of facing Quinn again. She sobbed and shook, no sound escaping except the harsh intake of ragged breaths. It took her several minutes to control her grief. Even once she’d composed herself, it was hard to stay calm: when she looked at her face in the rearview mirror she saw death.

Seven times she had seen the dead girls. But there were nine young women still missing, their remains nothing but bones scattered in the wilderness. Bears and mountain lions didn’t care much for human dignity, didn’t adhere to Judeo-Christian burial rites.

Why me?

Why had she survived when so many others hadn’t? Why had he picked her in the first place? Why Rebecca Douglas or the Croft sisters? It made no sense. It hadn’t then, and it still didn’t now that she’d had twelve years to examine and reexamine everything leading up to her kidnapping, everything she’d endured in that godforsaken one-room torture shack, everything that had happened since she escaped.

She owed her father, that much she knew. If her father hadn’t taken her on the hunting trips she loathed as a child, she would never have known how to cover her tracks, how to deceive the hunter. She was the prey, but unlike the deer or bear her father hunted, she was an intelligent human being. She could outthink her pursuer, hide and run, run and hide, until she dove into the river . . . even if she had died in the icy water, she still would have won.

He would not have killed her. She would have escaped, stealing from him his trophy, his prize.

She’d not only won, but lived.

If Rebecca hadn’t fallen and broken her leg, would she have survived? Would she have made it to the road? Though not from
Montana
, Rebecca had been born and raised in the small, mountain community of Quincy,
California
. Similar terrain and—Miranda’s thoughts detoured from Rebecca.

Quincy. Damn, she couldn’t escape him.

Wiping the tears from her face, she glanced once more in the rearview mirror. No wonder Quinn thought she couldn’t handle the search. She looked horrible. She’d lost weight she couldn’t afford to lose. She hadn’t bothered with makeup and her dark hair, though clean, was limp.

What was she thinking? Why should she care what Quinn Peterson thought? He’d destroyed their bond long ago when he made it clear he thought her sanity hung by a thread.

She’d told him he was wrong, but he hadn’t listened. Well, she’d proven him wrong, hadn’t she? She was a functioning human being, doing just fine without the likes of Quinn Peterson.

She had responsibilities, and right now her duty was to tell the volunteers to stop searching. She dreaded this particular task, but she needed to handle it herself.

With a deep breath, she left the security of her Jeep and entered the makeshift search headquarters. Several students were on the phones, taking information or imparting details to aid in the search. A team had walked in just ahead of Miranda to pick up another section of the grid she’d mapped.

None of it mattered.

The tears she thought she’d buried sprang back into her eyes and she pinched the bridge of her nose. She swallowed them back.
Not now.

The strangled cry of one of the girls snapped Miranda to attention.

“No. NO!”

Judy Payne, Rebecca’s roommate, was the one who’d called the police when Rebecca didn’t come home Friday night. She hadn’t left the headquarters since it had opened, answering phones, sending e-mails, printing thousands of flyers. Now, she stopped folding letters and stared at Miranda with wide eyes.

“Judy.” Miranda crossed the room to where the college girl sat, shaken.

“No, please.” Judy searched her eyes for something other than the truth, tears streaming down her face.

Miranda squatted next to the young, pretty blonde and took her hands. She had thought with each passing year it would be easier. The searches were well planned and executed, volunteers trained and competent, cops diligent and resolute. But it only got harder. Each time it was so much harder. Each missing girl took one more piece of Miranda’s soul with her to her grave.

“I’m sorry.” What else could she say? Sorry seemed so inadequate, so
empty.

Judy collapsed into Miranda’s arms. Miranda held her, rocked her, murmured sounds into her ear, words that didn’t mean anything but she hoped comforted.

There was no need to say anything to the other dozen people in the room. Judy’s reaction told them what they needed to know. Tears rolled down the faces of the men and women who had believed, for a time, that they would find Rebecca alive.

Karl Keene, a young teaching assistant, approached them. Looking up, Miranda saw his eyes were also damp. She wanted to reassure him, and Judy, and everyone else, but there were no words. The weight of Judy’s grief fell hard on Miranda’s shoulders. What in the world could she reassure them about? That
this
time the police would find him? That
this
time he’d made a mistake?