Page 131 of One Last Chance

And then Flynn’s knees did buckle.

“Flynn!”

Kennedy was off the porch, running down the path, even as Axel caught her.

“She’s okay. Just shocked,” he said.

Yeah, what he said. But she found herself just as Kennedy reached her. Pulled Flynn into her arms.

Oh, she even smelled the same—piney, with lavender and a little cedar and lots of crazy sunshine that seemed to emanate out of her. Flynn closed her eyes, felt her heart sink into rhythm with her sister’s, and tears ran down her face. Flynn put her hand over her eyes, trying to hold herself together.

Kennedy,alive.

No, she didn’t have a hope of tucking herself back in. She held on to Kennedy and full-out sobbed.

Axel came around her then, his arm warm on her back. Kennedy must have looked up, because she heard, “It’s been a long week.”

And then she started to laugh. It came out unhinged, a little crazy, but it made Kennedy laugh, and then Axel and not a few of the people who had come out to see the spectacle in the street.

She finally let her sister go and wiped her face. Axel put his hands on her shoulders as she met Kennedy’s smile. “So, that guy there told us that you weren’t here.”

“That’s Donald. He’s a little protective.” She winked at him.

Donald winked back.

“There’s a story?—”

Kennedy’s smile fell then, and her breath jerked as she looked past Donald, past Flynn, and then opened her mouth and screamed.

* * *

“Stay behind me.”

It was all Axel could think as he turned.

Because the truth simply blindsided him.

It seemed incredible that the Midnight Sun Killer might be someone he knew. Someone he’d not necessarily grown up with but who had known his family and maybe some of the others that he had killed.

“Dillon. What . . . what are you doing here?”

Dillon Bowie—how had he missed him during the rescue? But it all snapped into place now as the man walked down the street, holding a .270 Winchester, dressed in forest camo, a hunting pack over his shoulders, his face grimy, his hair under a wool cap, a smidgen of blood on his face.

“I think I nicked him,” Flynn said behind him.

Or the forest had slowed him down. Whatever—it hadn’t been enough to stop him.

And now he stood in the middle of the path into Woodcrest, his gun aimed at, well, Axel. Because he had stepped in front of Kennedy and Flynn.

And wasn’t moving.

Axel raised his hands. “I don’t know what you’re thinking here, Dillon, but this isn’t going to go down well.”

“Get out of my way, Axel. I’ve been hunting this girl for three years?—”

“It’s not going to work!” This from Kennedy, and Flynn was right—theywerea pair of troublemakers. “I’m not going with you.”

“You are. You both are.” Dillon fanned the gun around the crowd, and a few of them gasped and stepped back.

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