Allison Brennan - The Hunt

With increasing horror, Quinn flipped through the pages.

The Bitch let her go. I had no choice but to kill Penny. Didn’t Dee understand that Penny would have stayed if only I had more time with her? More time to convince her how much I loved her? That I could take care of her?

Dee? Delilah ?

Quinn skipped the account of Miranda and Sharon’s abduction and the documentation of the rapes. He couldn’t read it now. Quinn should have turned the case over to Colleen right then; he was far too personally involved.

But he didn’t. Larsen was dead.

Dee wouldn’t let me kill her.

She said the Moore bitch was too strong for me. That she’d won and I had to accept my losses.

I hate Dee. She pretends to love me but she hates me. Just like Mama. Always like Mama. Oozing kindness with their mouths while their hands and their breasts torment me.

The hairs on the back of Quinn’s neck rose when he saw an entry a few pages later.

I almost killed the Moore bitch. She was alone. Walking. In that field she always goes to near her house. I had her in my sights. I could have taken what was stolen from me.

But she won fair and square. Dee said I couldn’t have my trophy.

I hate them. I hate her. Hate her hate her hate her hate her!

But Dee’s right. I don’t deserve my prey this time. I wasn’t fast enough. I failed. I won’t fail the next time.

I already found the next one. She’s beautiful. She’ll lie, too. They all lie.

I hate her. Hate her hate her hate her…

The handwriting deteriorated over the rest of the page as his pen dug into the paper, tearing it in two places. Quinn didn’t know if Larsen hated Delilah or Miranda, or both. He turned the page and found a new entry dated a week later. Ironically, the same week Miranda had left for Quantico. The handwriting was again neat and orderly.

I have one in the old Carson shack. I didn’t think it would hold up, but Dee said it was fine for our game…

Quinn slammed the book shut, handing it to Colleen before he did something stupid like shred it.

“Put an APB out for Delilah Parker. She should be considered armed and dangerous.”

It was all Miranda Moore’s fault.

Delilah wept for Davy. Her little brother was dead. She’d cried out when she heard the news as she hid in the Vought family vacation house. They wouldn’t be arriving from their home in California until their kids were out of school next month.

She could stay here until Friday, when the caretaker came to air out the place and dust, but she feared the police would investigate all known vacation houses in the area.

Delilah assumed the police knew everything. She would not go to prison. Locked in a cage like an animal. No. She was not an animal. She had done the best she could. Didn’t anyone understand? She had done her best!

The news on television was vague, just that the Bozeman Butcher had been identified as David Larsen and that he was pronounced dead on arrival at Deaconess Hospital.

Her gut churned. She was supposed to protect Davy, make sure he was never hurt, never caught.

She hated him.

Pain pounded her head. She didn’t hate her brother. No, he needed her. She only hated the attention he’d had when they were growing up.

Growing up, Davy had been shy and quiet. Until they went to college, Davy wasn’t even taller than her, scrawny as a malnourished kid. But he seemed to blossom when their mother died in a car accident. He grew six inches and started working out and turning into a man.

Delilah didn’t like it. Not one bit. Davy was hers . Hers to control. Hers to manipulate. Hers to tell what to do and what not to do. He had always listened to her. Always. He had always done what she told him to. And she protected him as best she could. Well, maybe not the best . Like, how could she stop her mother from touching him?

Once, when she was fourteen, she hid in the closet. She watched through the slats as her mother touched Davy’s privates. Davy seemed to like it. His penis grew hard and he spurted sperm all over their mother’s breasts.

She knew it was wrong, what her mother had Davy do. But who would she tell? Who would believe her? And Delilah had her own problems, anyway. Like how to put a snake in Mary Sue Mitchell’s locker and not get caught.

A poisonous snake. After all, Mary Sue had held hands with Matt Drake in the all-school assembly last week. Did that bitch think she wouldn’t notice?

Davy had always had Mama’s special attention, anyway. Delilah had been the unwanted daughter. Sometimes she preferred the freedom that came with being unwanted; the rest of the time she alternated between hating Davy and their mother.

But she did step in front of their mother’s heavy hand many times, taking the brunt of the beating so Davy wouldn’t have to. If she didn’t love her brother, would she have taken the beatings for him?

But he wasn’t normal. She figured that out at an early age. How could he be normal when his own mother raped him?

You raped him, too.

No! I loved him. He loved me. He always came back, didn’t he? He always said he needed me.

You hurt him.

No! Nothing I did marked him. He understood-pain and pleasure. It was her. Miranda Moore. She killed him. She stabbed him. His blood is on her hands .

Kill her.

After sixteen years of marriage, Delilah was surprised she felt nothing but irritation for her husband. He hadn’t loved her. She had done everything for him, kept his house, raised his brat, cooked and cleaned and attended to his stupid functions. She had been the perfect wife.

And he looked at her as if she were a stranger.

The only other thing that bothered her, really bothered her, was Ryan. As if she would hurt her own child! She was not her mother. She painstakingly avoided ever touching Ryan so she wouldn’t be tempted. Not that she was tempted.

She was not her mother.

She hadn’t wanted a child-most definitely not a son. But when she learned she was pregnant-what good was birth control if it didn’t work?-she just knew the baby would be a girl.

A girl to raise the way a daughter should be raised. To be lavished with attention, dressed in beautiful clothes, taken to fancy restaurants, given a big debutante coming-out party.

She laughed bitterly.

What she had was a boy. Another Davy.

But she was a good mother, dammit! She did everything for him, too. Baked fucking cookies. Cleaned his fucking room. Went to every fucking teacher’s conference and play and soccer game.

What more did he want? Her blood? Would that satisfy him? Would it satisfy any of them?

She took a deep, calming breath. It wouldn’t do to lose control. Her control had kept her from doing stupid things.

Like the night she almost suffocated Ryan in his crib. At the last minute, she pulled back the pillow from his face. Richard would have known, have her thrown into prison.

Or the time she threatened to tell the police about the girl in Portland. She almost didn’t give Davy an alibi. The stupid, stupid idiot! He was throwing away everything for some rich-bitch slut from the Delta-something sorority.

But in the end she gave him the alibi and was very convincing. Because without Davy, her life would fall apart. She needed him just like he needed her.

Together they were stronger.

Now he was dead.

It was all Miranda Moore’s fault. The bitch would pay.

Miranda woke up late, the sun streaming through her picture windows. Below in the valley a gray fog had settled, but it would soon burn off.