Tami Hoag - Dark Paradise

Her victim was perhaps four hundred yards away, leaning against a tree, barely in the cover of the woods. She could have given the dogs the command to take her down as she crossed the clearing, but it wasn’t time yet. She wanted to chase, to hunt. She wanted the girl’s fear to be so thick, she could taste it on the air.

She would be no challenge to kill. The fun was in the game of cat and mouse, and in the knowledge that she had the power to strike terror like a lightning bolt into the soul of her prey. For too much of her life that power had belonged to others. Now it was hers, and she relished it more than money, more than sex, more than any drug. Power. Control. The power to play God. A dark god. A dark avenger, taking back what was hers and punishing those who dared get in her way.

This was her private game. No one would ever know. She had made a mistake in leaving Lucy’s body, assuming no one would come across it. She would not make that mistake with Samantha Rafferty. The girl would vanish from the face of the earth. She would be gone without a trace. Life would go on.

Sharon wondered how Bryce would react to the girl’s disappearance. Had he been in love with her long enough to grieve? Would he ever wonder, ever suspect?

Will he look into my eyes and know? And what if he does? What will he do?

I killed for you, you bastard. Twice.

She had saved him from his obsessions. She had preserved her own spot at his right hand. She knew too much, was too valuable to him to be pushed aside by an object of simple lust.

What would Bryce do if he knew she had killed for him? Would he recoil from her or would that knowledge be an aphrodisiac? Would he want to watch the next time she went on a hunt and make love with her afterward, when the blood was still fresh on her hands? The image sent heat sluicing through her.

The dogs howled, eager to be off. The bigger one started to bolt down the trail across the clearing. Sharon ordered him back, pointed a remote control in his direction, and hit the button that delivered a jolt of electricity to the animal through a device in its collar. The dog let out a yelp of pain and wheeled around as if he had been yanked back on a leash.

She raised the rifle once more and smiled as she looked through the scope. Bryce’s little Indian princess was moving again. Running toward safety she would never find.

Slinging the rifle across her back, she gathered her reins and spurred her horse into a tightly controlled canter moving to the south and west.

Clyde picked his way down the trail as if he had some knowledge of where he was going. Mari suspected he was faking it. She was pretty certain they had zigged when they should have zagged, but darkness was sweeping down the mountain beneath the trees, making it difficult for her to recognize the vague landmarks that had guided her up here. All in all, this did not strike her as the ideal time to get lost in the woods. There were dangers on this mountain that made bears look dull by comparison.

She had not been able to persuade Del to come down the mountain with her. The idea of actually going into New Eden to speak with the sheriff had upset him to the point of stuttering. Nor would he go with her to her place. Agitated by everything that had been going on and by simply telling her about what he had seen, he had insisted he stay put. He had to keep watch. He had to guard the ranch.

Mari hadn’t argued with him. He was in a fragile state of mind, a man teetering on an unstable ledge. She didn’t want to be responsible for pushing him off. J.D. would never forgive her.

“J.D. As if he’s still part of the big picture, Marilee,” she mumbled. “You just don’t know when to quit, do you?”

As big a jerk as he had been, he should have been the furthest man from her mind. But she couldn’t stop thinking about him with his back up against the wall, trying to protect what was his-his land, his uncle, his heart. She blamed him for her missing her turn on this damned trail.

God knew, she had more pressing matters to consider. She had to take the videotape and Lucy’s notes to Quinn and relate to him everything Del had told her. She worried a little about him believing Del, but then, Del was a Rafferty and that would weigh in his favor, and the tape corroborated his stories of the hunts.

It had been difficult to listen to him try to sort fact from fiction in his tale of the tigers and the dog-boys, but it had torn her heart out to hear him struggle through the recounting of Lucy’s demise. He told the story in fragments, with many pieces missing and some borrowed from other nightmares, but Mari was convinced he had seen Lucy running for her life, that he had heard the hounds that pursued her and seen the murderer take the killing shot.

The other blonde. The blonde that danced with the dog-boys.

Sharon Russell.

Mari could only guess at motive. Perhaps Lucy had tried to squeeze blood out of the wrong stone. Maybe she had had something on Sharon that would have threatened her position with Bryce. Or maybe Bryce and Sharon had decided jointly that they were tired of Lucy scavenging off their pigeons. Whatever the reason, Sharon Russell had hunted Lucy down like an animal in the dead of night, killed her, and left her body for the carrion feeders, then blithely went on with her life as if nothing had happened.

The thought made Mari’s stomach turn.

She pulled Clyde up and looked around for anything that was even vaguely familiar. Trees. One looked pretty much like the next. City girl . The mule shifted restlessly beneath her. Thunder grumbled in the sky like an empty belly. Swell. The storm would bring an early end to what daylight there had been. And she was lost on the side of a mountain where millionaires killed endangered species for sport.

“You’ll be the endangered species if they catch you up here, Marilee.”

She could just see the horrified look on her mother’s face when the cops came to tell her her rebel daughter had been gunned down while riding a mule in the wilds of Montana.

Somewhere far off to her right she thought she heard dogs barking and she tensed in the saddle. Clyde shook his head angrily in an attempt to snatch the reins from her control and danced from foot to foot. Lightning cracked like a whip above the canopy of trees, and the mule sat back on his haunches.

Mari’s heart sprinted into overdrive. Her hands tightened on the reins. Dogs. Scenes from the videotape flashed through her memory. The rough-looking guide with his shark eyes. The dirty dog-boys. The muscular hounds, straining at their leashes, with their teeth bared and lips curled in feral snarls.

Thunder boomed and the mule leapt forward, his muscles bunching and quivering with nervous energy. Defying the pressure exerted on the bars of his mouth, he leaned against the bit and lunged forward, skidding down the grade with his hind legs tucked beneath him. Gritting her teeth, bracing herself back in the saddle, Mari wrestled for control, trying to turn him to the right. His big ugly mule head came around until she could nearly look him in the eye and still he pushed his stout body forward and down the hill.

Lightning lashed across the sky, flashing surreal white light into the gloom of the woods. Thunder shook the air. The world was tilted at a crazy angle and Clyde was hell-bent on hurling them down it headlong. Then the thicket of growth to their right ripped open, and a woman burst through, naked and bleeding, her eyes huge and her mouth open in terror. Her scream was swallowed up by another crack of lightning. Hands outstretched in desperation, she flung herself at the mule.

As in a dream, everything seemed to go to slow motion. The woman lunging at them. Clyde bolting sideways with such power that Mari felt herself coming out of the saddle. She pulled back on the reins, realizing a split second too late that she had hold of only the right one and that in hauling it back she sealed her own fate.