Page 8 of Rusty's Command

The tarp moved.

She slapped a hand over her mouth, staring wide-eyed as the bundle shifted again. Then it sat up, a muffled cry emerging from within the plastic wrapping.

Oh God. Oh God, oh God, oh God.

The larger man with the dragon tattoo, swung his shovel in a vicious arc, connecting with the wrapped figure.

The sound of impact turned her stomach. A squeal escaped her throat. Pickle barked.

Both men whirled toward her. Their faces twisted with rage. The smaller of the men lunged for something on the ground.

Shit! A gun!

Sienna spun and ran, clutching Pickle to her chest. His barks echoed off the walls until she clamped her hand over his muzzle. Behind her, boots scraped on rock. Shouts reverberated through the tunnel.

The gun released a deafening boom in the enclosed space, and rock exploded somewhere to her left.

She ran, lungs burning, feet slipping on the volcanic glass. Pickle’s weight threw her off balance with each desperate stride. The next shot boomed through the tunnel way too close, and their footfalls echoed behind her like war drums.

Shit, they’re catching me.

“You and your dog are dead, bitch!”

The words frosted her blood.

Her phone beam created a strobe effect of horror: black walls lunging at her, shadows morphing into grasping hands, the ground appearing and disappearing beneath her feet.

Her ankle caught on a hidden rock and rolled. She stumbled, and a sharp cry snagged in her throat, but as adrenaline kept herupright, her phone slipped from her grip and went flying into the darkness.

A shot cracked like thunder. Rock fragments exploded against her back, stinging like hail.

Shit! She abandoned her phone, and as Pickle’s heart hammered against her hands, he pressed his trembling body tight to hers.

I’m going to die. Right here in this godforsaken lava tube, and no one will ever find us.

She clutched Pickle under her arm like a football and bolted. Blind in the absolute darkness, she let raw survival instinct guide her feet over the jagged, treacherous ground.

The darkness pressed against her like a living thing, suffocating her vision, but her other senses surged into overdrive. The desperate rasp of her breath. The scrape of her shoes on ancient lava. The metallic tang of terror coating her tongue.

Behind her, the footsteps grew louder. Closer.

Her heart stopped.Oh fuck.Aunty Dee had made her write down her address and contact details, and then Sienna had tucked the note into her phone case.“The locals here are good people,”her aunt had said with a smile.“They’ll always return a lost phone.”

Good people. The bastards trying to kill her were not good people!

Her stomach twisted. If they found her phone, they’d know where she was staying.

Oh God. They’d come for her.

And now Aunty Dee was in danger too.

CHAPTER 3

Rusty

Through the chief’soffice window, Rusty watched uniformed officers pass in the bullpen beyond. Behind him, Sarah Williams’ muffled sobs leaked through the walls from the adjacent interview room. It had taken forty minutes just to get his dad to see him, forty minutes Grace Williams might not have. The woman he’d found in the den with the gold cross was in an induced coma, so unfortunately, if she did know where Grace Williams was, he couldn’t ask her.

The harsh fluorescent lights bounced off the polished koa wood desk between them, turning his father’s face gray and deepening every line in his scowl. A framed map of the Big Island hung behind the chief’s chair along with a wall of commendations . . . a testament to twenty years of service to Hawaii County Police.

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