Page 73 of Silent Ridge

“You’re not very smart, but you’ve got nerve. I’m going to give you just a little of my special concoction. Enough so you can hear your boyfriend scream while I flay his skin off. If you’re a good girl, I’ll give him a little near the end, but I think he’ll pass out before he needs it.”

“You’re going to kill me,” I say. “Why not tell me your name?”

“I’m no one. I’m everything you hate. I’m the one who got away. Everyone I killed is down to you.”

She takes the plastic guard off the tip of one syringe and holds the other between her teeth. She lifts the front of my shirt and leans over to inject it into my stomach.

The drug has worn off enough that I knee her under the jaw as hard as I can. She stumbles back and falls hard on the ground. She looks at me and the hate in her eyes has turned to panic. I can see the dark serum run down her chin. I don’t know how much of the serum she got in her mouth but it wasn’t enough. She gets unsteadily to her feet and tries to spit the paralytic out. She pulls the long-bladed knife from her belt and moves toward me in jerking strides like she’s drunk.

She isn’t stopping and I know I’m as good as dead. She’ll stab me and might have enough strength to kill Dan. I feel tears of rage build up in my eyes. I turn my head toward Dan and he’s looking at me. There’s no fear or panic in his eyes.

“I’m sorry, Megan,” he says. “This isn’t your fault.”

I feel a lump in my throat and a tightness in my chest. I realize that I love him with all my heart. I’ve not felt this strong an emotion since I had to leave Hayden behind. I feel my heart breaking and wish I could say the words to him, but I can’t.

She intends to kill me first. It’s what I deserve, but I’m not giving up. If she gets close again I’m going to kick her in the groin. I’m going to get loose somehow and shove that knife down her throat and then slit her open to see if she has a heart. I’m going to—

She raises the knife over her head and runs toward me with the blade pointed at my chest. I hear a loud crack and then someone yells, “Drop the knife! Police!”

A hole appears in one side of her head and brains blow out the other side. She crumples like a marionette with its strings cut. My eyes won’t leave her, expecting her to get up.

Dan says, “My god, Megan.” His head has turned toward the sound.

Ronnie is standing twenty feet away, her gun thrust forward in both hands; her eyes are slits, as if she closed them. Sheriff Gray comes running up, out of breath.

“My god, Megan,” he says, repeating what Dan said.

Sixty

Dan is on a gurney in the back of an ambulance. I’m in another but refusing treatment until Sheriff Gray reminds me that I need evidence of my imminent demise to justify the shooting. For Ronnie’s sake, I allow them to check me over and draw blood. I’m bruised and scraped with some small cuts on the back of my head and shoulders from being dragged. My wrists are bruised but the paramedic doesn’t think I have nerve damage. He suggests I go to the hospital. I thank him for his concern and go over to see Dan.

Dan hasn’t fared as well. He’s been beaten severely. Some of the cuts will need stitches and he will be hospitalized to see if the poison he was injected with has caused permanent muscle and nerve damage. Where I only got a taste, Dan got a full dose when she surprised him in Snow Creek. I heard him telling the Clallam County Sheriff’s Detective that he answered the door to a woman saying her car broke down. Next thing he knew, he was trussed up next to me. He was still pretty out of it.

He opens his eyes when I pull myself into the back of the ambulance and sit on the bench beside him.

“I’m so sorry, Dan.”

He turns his head away. He won’t look at me. I’m humiliated. He heard every poisonous word spoken. He knows more about me than anyone now. Even some things I just learned from her. He pretty well knows the whole story except for what I’ve done since ending Alex and Marie Rader.

My first “almost boyfriend,” Caleb Hunter, couldn’t look at me either after he witnessed what I was capable of.

My hand is on Dan’s. “Can we talk?”

He doesn’t respond.

The paramedic says, “We’re taking him to the hospital. The other ambulance will take you.”

I want to ride in the back with Dan, but I’m sure Dan doesn’t want me there. Maybe when he feels better and has some time to digest all this, he will want to talk about it.

His creations are burnt to ashes. I lean over and kiss him on the temple. He doesn’t pull away, but he doesn’t turn toward me, either. I get out and walk over to Sheriff Gray and Ronnie.

The paramedics close the ambulance doors. The emergency lights come on and they pull away. I tell myself that I don’t really love him. I tell myself that I was in an emotional state and didn’t think I’d survive. I push everything in a box and push it in the back of my mind. I can feel it like a weight.

“This was reckless even for you, Megan,” Sheriff Gray says.

Ronnie’s expression is frozen. She’s just killed someone and I can imagine the images and self-repugnance she is feeling.

“How did you know where to find me?”

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