Dark Paradise (72 page)

She ran through the woods, pain shooting through her with each jarring

step. Her ribs and back ached from the beating she had taken the night

before. Cramps knotted her shoulder muscles from the unnatural position

she had been tied in, and her hands throbbed mercilessly now that the

circulation had been restored. They were swollen and discolored, and

fears of amputation flashed through her mind when she looked at them,

but then, that was stupid, because she was probably going to die.

None of it would matter - her hands, her ragged hair, the cut that

extended in a bloody throbbing red line from her right cheekbone

diagonally across her face to her jaw.

It wouldn't matter what she looked like when she was dead. It wouldn't

matter if the dogs fell on her and tore her to shreds. She would have

ceased to exist.

She wondered who would mourn her passing.

The notion was stunning, impossible to grasp. She had too much life

ahead of her to die now. That thought compelled her to keep her feet

moving and her heart pumping and her lungs working. Instinct and

adrenaline spurred her to run, and she ran with no thought to pacing

herself as she hurled her body between trees and through brush. Thorny

brambles ripped the bare skin of her legs, lashed them with a hundred

tiny cuts, and snagged the remnant of the white silk T-shirt that hung

in tatters around her neck. With no shoes, her toes caught on exposed

roots, and thistles and twigs bit into the soles of her feet, but she

kept running. Her head felt as if it would explode, and her lungs burned

until they felt like sacks of blood in her chest, but she kept running.

South. She didn't know where she was, but she assumed they were still on

Bryce's property. If she ran east, she would only take herself deeper

into the Absaroka wilderness. North would take her back to Sharon.

South. Toward Rafferty land. She had no idea how far that might be. She

had no idea how far Sharon would allow her to run. She didn't let

herself think about it. She made her mind go blank and focused only on

putting one foot ahead of the other. She broke into a wide clearing and

sprinted across it, thinking too late that she should stick to the cover

of the trees. But what would it really matter?

The dogs had her scent. Better to take the quickest route than one that

afforded cover. Wasn't it?

She could hear the hounds baying, their voices carrying on thin,

wavering currents through the trees. The air was heavy and still, dense

with anticipation of the storm.

Sound bounced through it, traveling and echoing until she couldn't tell

where it originated. Were they behind her still?
 
Or had Sharon taken

another approach, circling around to cut off her escape?
 
She pulled up

to listen and get her bearings, falling heavily against the rough trunk

of a lodgepole pine.

Darkness was creeping up from the forest floor and pressing down from

above, creating a nightmarish twilight. Samantha looked around her,

trying to establish a heading. She was weak with exhaustion and fear and

hunger; dizziness swirled around and around her making it difficult to

determine direction or decipher the simplest of thoughts. The sweat

chilled on her skin and it caused her to shiver. She shuddered and

strained against being sick, against panic that was like a ball in her

throat. Tears blurred her vision and rained down her cheeks, through the

dirt and the blood. She tried to wipe them away with the back of her

hand and cried out at the pain in her fingers and in her cut cheek.

You'll die out here, Samantha. Naked, beaten, shot in the head by a

madwoman. Stupid kid. Stupid dreamer.

The dream is over now.

Stupid girl. Stupid, silly virgin.

Sharon watched her quarry through a night vision scope attached to a

Browning rifle. I could kill you now, little slut. But she wasn't ready

to end the hunt just yet.

She had given the little bitch a fifteen-minute head start before riding

out after her. The hounds had caught her scent immediately. The scent of

blood and fear. A perfume of which Sharon found herself growing fond.

Lucy MacAdam had been her first human kill. She thought the rush might

be addictive. The idea excited her.

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 off 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. Marilee 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.

Marilee 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 Marilee 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.

Marilee 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 Marilee'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.

Marilee'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, Marilee 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