Page 99 of Threat of Danger
Vermont Preparatory Academy, a fancy prep school, as exclusive as you could get in the state.
Jess caught her breath. She’d gotten in on scholarship, her name and grades submitted by a supportive teacher, but she’d refused to go. If Derek wasn’t going, she wasn’t going, and that had been that. Crane would have known about it. Was that the connection? Was that why he’d picked her as his first victim?
“They thought I wasn’t smart enough?” He sneered. “I’m smarter than any of their stupid board members. I’m smart enough to get away with murder.”
He killed six women to prove himself?
They both stood about five feet from the cliff’s edge, thirty feet apart. But only one of them had a gun.
Jess’s heart raced as she ran through her options. She wasnottrapped on top of the cliff with an armed lunatic. She wasnotdefenseless.Restate and reframe.Not an easy task. This wasn’t a movie shoot. Nothing had been carefully choreographed, measured, and tested. No wires. No safety harness.
Past the edge, the abyss waited. At the bottom of the abyss, rocks at the foot of the cliff, then the river, a darkly glinting ribbon.
If Jess jumped and fell on the rocks, she would die.
If she arched out far enough to fall in the river, she would drown. The rocks narrowed the river here, so the current was strong—no chance of her swimming out with her hands tied.
Even if, somehow, miraculously, she floated downriver toward the bend where she might wash ashore, she still wouldn’t make it. With all the snowmelt coming down from the mountains, the water had to be freezing. Hypothermia was a quick and efficient killer, and she was so chilled through already that she couldn’t stop shaking.
Crane stood there watching her, unhurried. He knew he’d won. He pulled his gun from his waistband. “Now come back to me like a good girl.”
Restate and reframe.
Derek stood under the hundred-foot chimney, feeling like he was standing at the bottom of a well. The light from the flashlight barely reached to the iron grate on top, just enough to show that the grate was in place.
Jess had run to get out of the cave, but she hadn’t run this way. Jess and Crane had gone to the other chimney. Derek swore.
No time to go back.
He shoved his flashlight into his belt, next to his gun, and climbed. The chimney was four feet in diameter at its widest, about three feet in places where it narrowed. Any tighter and Derek’s shoulders wouldn’t fit through. As it was, the rocks scraped the shit out of him.
His left leg being stiff and weak didn’t help either. But he kept climbing, because not reaching Jess in time wasn’t an option.
When he reached the grate, he shook it. The metal bars held. So he moved back down the chimney a few feet and pulled out his gun, aimed at the lock.
Two shots and the grate crashed in. The weight of it broke the hinges. Damn thing had to be at least fifty pounds. The iron grate crashed on top of Derek sideways and knocked him down. He had to let go of the gun to grab for a handhold so he wouldn’t plummet.Shit.
He caught himself after a dozen feet or so of mad scrambling, dizzy from the hit on his head. His weapon was somewhere on the bottom of the hundred-foot shaft. He couldn’t climb back down for it, not when every second counted.
He climbed up instead. Then he climbed out, taking care not to slice himself on the sharp edge of metal at the opening. He saw them at once, on top of Short Stack—two dark shapes outlined in the moonlight. The two cliffs were an impossible thirty-foot jump away from each other.
Jess was nearly naked, utterly vulnerable. He couldn’t see if she was shivering, but she had to be close to hypothermic.
A murderous fury coursed through Derek. How long ago had Crane taken her clothes away?
Kaylee hadn’t said anything about that, so maybe after Jess had run? Or maybe Kaylee was too rattled to think of and report every detail.
Jess was covered in dust and blood. Her underwear ... His heart stopped. Her panties were torn and bloody.
How long had the bastard had her? Rage shook Derek from the inside out. He was going to kill Crane. No matter what happened next, no matter what Derek had to do, Crane was not going to see morning.
The piece of shit stood around twenty feet from Jess, his head swiveling back and forth between Jess and Derek. Shooting at the grate hadn’t been the height of stealth. Derek needed a weapon, and he didn’t have any. Crane did, and he began shooting.Pop. Pop. Pop.
Derek dropped flat on his stomach, slivers of rocks flying up around him where the bullets hit. The gut-tearing fear that he might not be able to save Jess slammed into him. How in hell had they ended up in this situation?
How in hell was he unable to protect her once again, dammit?
Run!he wanted to shout.Run while Crane isn’t looking.But if Derek called out, he’d draw Crane’s attention back to Jess. And, really, where was there to run on top of the cliff? She didn’t have her rappelling kit this time, didn’t have anything. She couldn’t even jump for the tall pines. The tall pines were next to Derek. She had nothing but sheer cliffs.
