Page 47 of Drowning Her

“He saw something, I’m sure of it,” Wilder said.

The radio scratched to life in the room. The two of them faced the back wall, talking into the radio, and Bambi and I scrambled through the door. As soon as we were out, I whispered, “Follow me! Run!”

We raced to the cars. Gunshots sounded in the distance, followed by hollering. I got into my car, thanking our luck that the rancher from before wasn’t guarding the cars. Maybe that was Kyle. Maybe that was why Wilder had toldSawyer to call him. To give us a chance to get away. And if they were tracking the cars, only Wilder knew that Bambi was with me. I trusted Wilder.

I drove as fast as I could. Bambi flailed her arms, fanning her face.

“What just happened?” she asked. “They killed him. Like that. Like he wasnothing.”

I shook my head, trying to reason through it myself. Wilder had killed Green,mutilatedhis corpse. And he had not only let me go, but he had let Bambi go too. He had saved us both. Saved us from his brother. And from himself.

He cared about me.

“We have to get out of here,” I said. I flicked on the radio, punching the buttons until some generic song filled the speakers. I needed to calm down. To stop talking. To relax until the adrenaline stopped spiking through my system. We had almost died, but we were alive. More importantly, Bambi was okay. I hadn’t screwed it up any more than it already was.

And now, Green was gone. Bambi had another chance.

“Who the hell did you marry?” Bambi hissed. “You told me to steal from some Ted-Bundy-mother-fucker?”

I rolled my eyes, gripping the steering wheel. It was easy to dismiss him as a serial killer, but that wasn’t the whole story. Bambi wouldn’t understand.

I didn’t quite understand either. No matter how hard I tried, I might never truly know Wilder, and that scared me.

Who had I married?

“I don’t know,” I said. I increased the volume on the radio.

Chapter 17

Wilder

A few nights later,a low pulse thumped through my body, making every hair stand on end. Energy swirled inside of me. I waited inside of my car, staring into the house of my next kill, the second out of three on the Feldman Trial’s list before the farm was mine. Once it was under my control, I could decide what happened to Maisie. I broadened my shoulders, then I relaxed. Jim Lander drank from a glass, his lips pressed to the rim, his shadow illuminated in the window, listening to his wife. One of the most guarded places in our area, a man my father had rivaled for a long time. The creator of Hatchcom Focus. He had sold it a few years back. Two guards outside of the gate, four that I could see within.

With my new goal in mind, I was determined. This was nothing I couldn’t handle.

I set up my sniper rifle with a silencer on the roof of a neighboring house, keeping my footsteps light. I aimed at the first guard’s head, the bullet as soft as a bubbling brook. The other guard started to turn, but Ishot him too.

At the gate, I switched to my machine gun and used a hacking device to open the gate. As soon as the lock clicked open, the four guards fired at me. I shot them all, then threw a smoke bomb, fogging the target’s vision. He wouldn’t be able to see outside.

A woman screamed.

“Get to the safe house!” Lander called. He armed himself. They scrambled down the stairs to their basement, searching for safety. If they got inside, there was a chance I wouldn’t be able to complete my mission. But all I saw was Maisie. More guards attacked me, but my automatic bullets shot across the room, ripping into the remaining guards, the wife howling, hiding behind her husband. I shot the gun out of his hands, then immediately grabbed my knife, stabbing him in the thigh. He fell to his knees. I swung my gun into his forehead, rendering him unconscious.

His wife screamed. I hit the back of my gun into her mouth. She shut up, whimpering to the side. I dragged her unconscious husband by his neck through the house.

The wife howled. “You can’t do this!” she screamed. “The cops are coming. You can’t. You can’t?—”

I shot an array of bullets into her forehead. She fell to the ground.

I threw Jim Lander into my car, then called Kyle to assemble our cleanup crew. Lander stirred to the side of me, moaning in pain. I sped back to the farm, driving through the grass until I pulled up in front of the main house. I yanked Lander through the grass, up to the front door, into my father’s office. I dropped Lander at Forrest’s feet.

I slit the man’s throat, letting the blood pool on my father’s floor. Forrest peered down at his rival. A grin spread across Forrest’s lips.

He had made it clear where I had stood as a child, butnow I was showing him how far I had come. I was better than him.

Forrest opened his mouth to speak, but before he could say another word, I exited the room, driving the SUV through the property, finding the main road. Though I had never formally agreed to it, I planned on keeping Maisie’s request.

The lights were on in the motel room, the curtain shades glowing. I knocked. Footsteps tapped behind the door, but nothing opened.

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