Page 40 of Bird on a Blade

Off to the side of the altar is a small, simple door. I push it open, bracing myself for dead bodies and rotting blood. Instead, it opens into a small kitchen: a rickety card table, metal folding chairs, a couple of old coolers. Beer cans lined up neatly on the counter beside a few stacked plates and a pile of silverware.

It’s all so…normal.

Still, I’m afraid to look in the coolers. The kitchen opens into a narrow hallway, so I keep going on my little exploration. The rain sounds louder in the hallway, like the roof is thin, and I pass a bathroom and then come to a bedroom, as tidy as the kitchen.

The bed is made up with flannel sheets, and I suddenly want to crawl in and wrap myself in them. But I can’t bring myself to get in Sawyer Caldwell’s bed, even if I allowed myself in his home.

But I’m freezing, my body buzzing from the cold, so I peel off the top blanket and wrap it around my shoulders.

It smells like him.

I go back into the main part of the church and curl up on one of the clean pews and stare at the stained glass window beside me. It shows a brown-haired Jesus holding a white lamb, the colors muddy from the storm.

I pull out my phone. There are half a dozen text messages from Charlotte. I finally tap out a response, my hands shaking.

I’m in a safe place. I can’t talk just yet. I’ll explain later, but I’m safe.

I stare down at the message, reading it over and over. I can feel my pulse in my throat, and I honestly don’t know if what I wrote is true. Is the home of a serial killer ever a safe place?

It feels like it. At least right now, in this moment, with the storm raging outside.

I hit send.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

SAWYER

My prey is lean and athletic. He moves with an easy grace as he lopes through the rain, even though he has no idea how to do so quietly. I can sense the irritation radiating off him that he’s out here in the middle of nowhere, ruining his expensive suit. But there’s excitement there, too, that he found his own quarry.

“Edie!” he calls out. “This is getting absurd! It’s going to start storming any minute!”

My fingers curl around my knife.

He stops under a big tulip tree, cursing quietly beneath his breath. I move closer, never taking my eyes off him. Edie said this isn’t her ex-husband, but it is someone who could tell her ex-husband where she is, and we absolutely can’t have that.

Which is why, when the man pulls out his cell phone, I purposefully crack a nearby branch as I step out from behind the greenery.

The prey jerks his head up, my Edie’s name on his lips, but he freezes when he sees me standing there, my new Bowie knife clutched in one hand. Jaxon and Ambrose left yesterday, leaving me with the knife, a garish sigil painted on the back of mychurch, and a fair amount of warnings not to do what I’m about to do. But I asked Edie, and she didn’t say no, and my heart fluttered furiously in my chest that she would accept this gift from me.

“Who the hell are you?” The man’s fear makes the words dance.

I say nothing.

“Early Halloween costume, huh?” He looks down at his phone, trying to play it cool, and I step toward him, making the leaves rustle.

He looks up. There’s a soft pattering as the rain starts again.

“Shit,” he hisses. “Look, man, whatever you’re doing—” His eyes drop to my knife, back up to my mask. “I’m looking for someone. A woman in her thirties. Dark curly hair. She ran out here and…”

I take another step forward, and my prey’s voice trails off. The scent of his fear lifts off his skin, pungent against the steely scent of the rain.

“This isn’t fucking funny,” he says, and then he laughs, nervously, like it is. “She put you up to this, didn’t she?” He laughs again, a breathy, panicky sound. “You can come out now, Edie!” He shouts it out into the incoming storm. “Call off your fucking redneck!”

I’m tired of it, his bravado and the scent of his fear. I want to smell his blood.

So I launch at him, moving with a Hunter’s swiftness, and plunge the knife into his belly. He makes a sharp noise of surprise, lifting his eyes to my mask, and the usual expressions flicker across his face: shock, confusion, a burst of betrayal. As if I owe him anything.

I wrench the knife sideways so his blood spills out along with a mess of glistening organs. I don’t care about those as much as the blood, which is rich and salty. I’ve never been to the ocean, but I imagine it as smelling like blood.

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