Page 68 of Bird on a Blade

“A pier?” I frown. There’s a swimming hole near Camp Head Start, a pinched-off alcove of cold water from some nameless creek. But it never had a pier.

“Yeah, it’s ancient. Nobody uses it anymore.” He glances down at me, his real face carved up like his killer’s mask by the light from the hurricane lamp. “Except me.”

He tugs me forward, out of the clearing and into the woods. I press up close to him, and he shifts his arm accordingly, wrapping it around my waist so he can guide me along the path with a firm, protective air. “City girl,” he mutters, his breath blowing across my hair.

“Never denied it.”

He laughs. “It’s what I like about you.” He pauses. “One of the things.”

I smile at that, small and happy in a way I know I shouldn’t feel. And yet I do. It’s becoming so much easier to just give myself over to it.

He ducks us through the tangle of tree branches, his movements quick and agile, like he can see in the dark. Maybe he can. Maybe the hurricane lamp is for my benefit. All I know is that I never once trip on a wayward branch or step into a puddle of mud. It’s too cold for snakes and insects. Maybe it’s too cold for wolves, too.

“We’re almost there,” he says softly. “Can you hear the water?”

I stop and listen. All I hear is wind and dead leaves. “No. Just the forest.”

“Well, it’s there. C’mon.”

He pushes aside a low-hanging tree branch and holds out the lamp. I duck through, stepping into darkness?—

And then take a deep gasping breath at what I see.

Stars. Thousands and thousands of stars, so many that they bleed together into a puddle of light. They hang above a vast spread of darkness that catches their glow in fits and starts. The New River, I realize.

“It’s beautiful,” I breathe.

“We’re near the top of the mountain.” Sawyer comes up behind me, his hand pressing into my upper back. I’m distantly aware that he’s extinguished the hurricane lamp so all we have is the light of the stars. “And tonight’s a dark moon, so we’d have a good view of the Milky Way.”

“The Milky Way?” I squeak, turning to look at him in the dark. He has his head tilted back, his eyes on the stars.

“Yeah, figured you hadn’t seen it, city girl.” He points at a bright band of light arching across the sky. “That’s it right there. Mama used to always point it out to me. She said we were safest in places where you can see it.”

Isolated places, he means. Places where no one lives, where two killers can go into hiding. I shiver a little. But I also draw closer to him. And he accepts, pulling his arm around my shoulders.

“The pier’s down there.” He gestures toward the water. I can’t really see anything in the dark. Only the light, and the absence of it. “I’ve got a boat tied up. You know.” His body shrugs against mine. “Just in case.”

I don’t say anything. It would ruin it, anything I could say right now. So I lean into him, breathing in the cedary forest scent of his skin. He nuzzles the top of my head, rubs his hand along my arm.

“I thought it might be easier,” he says in a low voice. “To be someplace beautiful when we talk about your ex-husband.”

I stiffen against him, even though I understand where he’s coming from. I do. “About killing him, you mean.”

Sawyer keeps running his hand over my arm, over and over. “Killing him before he kills you.”

I take a deep breath. Another. Another. Another. Sawyer doesn’t say anything about it, and I’m grateful for that.

“I’ve been thinking about it,” he says. “I got an idea. Thought I’d see what you think of it, though.”

He’s talking about premeditated murder. But I’m not sure what else I expected.

“An idea?” I say softly, letting my gaze fall on the stars’ reflection in the river.

“Yeah. You think you can get him out here?”

“To Virginia?” I realize I half-expected Sawyer to suggest some kind of murder road trip. I look up at him in the darkness. He’s watching me, his eyes guarded.

“Yeah,” he says. “To the camp.”

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