Right Behind Her (Bree Taggert #4)(2)

Am I?

He herds me inside, closes the door behind us, and turns on the light. The barn is mostly used for storage. I see a tractor in one corner, a pile of junk in another. A few animals occupy a pen on the far side of the space. They don’t like the intrusion into their quiet night. Straw rustles with their nervous movements. A goat bleats. An old pony pokes its nose through the slats and eyeballs me. Ridiculously, I hope the gunshot doesn’t scare them.

He shoves me. I trip over something and stumble. I can’t catch myself with my hands behind my back, and I go down. My knees hit the ground, and my teeth snap together. Kneeling, I smell manure and realize I tripped over a pile of animal shit.

The woman is already there. Is she dead?

He walks in front of me, lifts the gun, and checks for a round in the chamber. Ready. “All I wanted was loyalty. Was that too much to ask?”

“Apparently, yes.” I don’t even understand why I decided to draw my moral line tonight, after having very few ethics my entire life. I wasn’t even going to die on a stupid virtuous hill, but down in the filth where I’ve spent most of my days.

Maybe this is what I deserve. I want to go out bravely, but I just don’t have it in me. I used up my single drop of courage making the decision that led me here.

“You tried to betray me,” he says.

“I tried to do the right thing.” What the fuck? I’m dying anyway. I might as well go for it.

Our eyes meet. His are as cold and dark as always. I don’t bother asking for forgiveness. He doesn’t have an ounce of mercy in his soul.

“Go ahead. Kill me. We both know you’re going to.” I try to summon some courage, but it feels more like defeat.

He pulls a pair of bolt cutters from his pocket. “Oh, I’m going to kill you, but first, you have to pay for your betrayal.”

He cranks my arm behind my back and lifts my hand. I struggle, panic scrambling in my throat like an animal trying to claw its way out of a trap. I hear the snip of bone. Pain explodes in my finger and travels up my arm at light speed. My own scream sounds far away. Tiny lights swirl in front of my face.

Snip.

I scream again. The agony reaches a level my brain can’t comprehend. My heart beats so fast, it feels like it could explode. The sheer terror of suffering more pain fills my chest to bursting. My body shakes uncontrollably, as if it’s no longer connected to my will. Fear becomes a separate entity.

Snip.

I’m beyond words now, whimpering and grunting like a prey animal as he moves in front of me again. He lifts the gun and points it directly at my head. I snivel. I have only one thought. Do it. Please, just do it. Tears and snot run down my face. I have no control over the reactions of my own body. There’s no dignity now. He’s won.

And he knows it.

He looks down the barrel. Just above the sight, I see the corner of his mouth curve up in a cruel almost-smile. He’s in no rush. He’s enjoying this, dragging it out, savoring every second.

I have nothing left. I just want it to be over. I want to stare him down. I want to be brave. I want to be the person I’ve always imagined I could become. But that’s just not me. One attempt at virtue can’t undo all the bad things I’ve done. I’m a coward and a failure. In the end, I close my eyes.

No good deed goes unpunished.





CHAPTER TWO

Sheriff Bree Taggert stood in the road at the end of the driveway. Her stomach turned, a faint queasiness rising in the back of her throat as she stared at the house. Upstate New York was in the middle of a heat wave. At noon, the air was oppressive and humid. A sense of claustrophobia closed over her, which made no sense. She was outside. But the trapped feeling wasn’t due to physical constraints. It was the memories that came with this house. The only place she feared being trapped in was her past.

The roof sagged, and years of wind, rain, and neglect had peeled the paint from the wooden clapboards, turning the exterior to a weathered gray. Untrimmed trees and overgrown foliage blocked the sun and left the house cast in deep shadows, even on a sunny afternoon in mid-July.

Bree inhaled. The scent of decay and dampness lingered in her nostrils. Twenty-seven years before, this had been her childhood home, but she had no warm or fuzzy memories attached to it. Inside those rotting walls, her father had shot her mother and then killed himself while Bree and her siblings had hidden in terror. She shuddered, the memories she’d banished to the dark corners stepping into the light to show themselves.

She glanced at her younger brother, standing on the other side of her. At twenty-eight, Adam was tall and lanky, with unruly brown hair that curled over his ears.

“Sorry I’m late.” She did not tell him why. He didn’t need to hear about the college kid who’d OD’d early that morning. Bree wished she could forget his face, already blue by the time her department had responded. But his image, and that of his sobbing parents, would haunt Bree for some time.

“It’s OK,” Adam said.

Sweat dripped down Bree’s back. “I’m almost surprised the house is still standing.”

It should have been razed to the ground.

“Old houses are solid.” Adam didn’t take his eyes off the house. “They don’t build them like this anymore.”

The three-bedroom, one-story bungalow squatted on a large chunk of mostly wooded land. A thick canopy of fat branches crisscrossed over the house, casting shadows between the tree trunks, the eerie landscape worthy of the nightmare that had occurred here.