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Damien watched where he stepped, trying to avoid snapping twigs or crackling leaves. He held his pistol in both hands in front of him, aiming down, his finger off the trigger, keeping his nerves from twitching his muscles and accidentally firing off a shot. He made a direct line to the back of the cabin. In open spaces, speed was better than stealth.
In the field, Damien’s academy training started to become a blur of theory with little practice, test scenarios that suddenly felt inadequate.
He’d have to trust his instincts.
He slowed as he approached the back window, crouching below it, and leaned against the outer wall, its wood dry and rough. The window was single pane and the surrounding wooden frame, warped, leaving a gap open near the bottom.
Inside Damien could hear a male voice. It was quiet, almost whispering, making it nearly impossible to know if his voice was deep or high, strong or weak. He could hear a female’s muffled moans, as if she were trying to speak through a gag, but her words were unintelligible.
Damien lifted his head up, peering through the gap into the dark room, the back of the man a few feet from the window. He was wearing a black shirt, but Damien couldn’t see anything else.
If he wanted, Damien could put his pistol into the crevasse and fire, just as Sanders suggested. He could kill him right now, but he wasn’t sure if the man was working alone, nor if the female voice was actually Darlene.
He was working off assumptions instead of facts. He didn’t have a clear line of sight. He had one figure and two quiet voices. He needed a better view.
He had to be sure.
A dead witness would never confess and, if this were some sort of homage to Mark’s crimes where others may be involved, a few more prudent seconds could be the difference between stopping one killer or all of them.
He crouched and snuck around the corner of the cabin, staying close to the uneven building, moving up to the next window. This one was open and the faded curtain with red and blue flowers swayed in and out of the cabin with the breeze.
Damien slid up to the bottom left corner of the window and, through the shifting curtain, spotted a cell phone laying on a coffee table against the far wall.
Darlene’s.
He tilted his head to the right and looked to the center of the room.
He spotted a young woman in a cheerleading outfit sitting on a chair, a gag tied over the back of her hair, her left knee wrapped in elastic cloth bandage, her body sitting between Damien and the assailant. There was no one else in the room.
One killer. One victim.
Their conversation inside continued in hushed tones, but Damien had all the proof he needed. He raised his pistol when distant sirens pierced the night.
Damien clenched his jaw.
Idiots, Damien thought.
Sanders was right to delay calling it in. They were letting the entire grove know they were coming.
Blue and white lights began to strobe through the trees and Damien looked back toward the highway to see the cars split, some of the lights headed down the same truck path Damien drove, while the others continued on the main road, to cover the other routes of escape.
The element of surprise was lost. Minutes had turned to seconds.
The acrid smell of gas fumes began to flow out from cabin.
Damien looked back to the window to find the assailant looking down at him. The man, wearing a black ski mask that covered all but his eyes, lifted up a plastic bottle and sprayed fluid in Damien’s face.
Damien fell back into the bushes, his eyes burning, firing blindly as he fell.
The smell was familiar.
Gasoline.
Damien rolled to his right, over branches and small bushes, still blinded, waiting for the heat of fire to envelope him, but, instead, the coolness of evaporating fumes chilled his skin.
He lifted his sleeve and rubbed the fuel from his face. As he opened his eyes, still stinging and blurry, he noticed a dancing yellow light coming through the cabin window.
As his vision began to clear, he saw Darlene stumbling inside, her body engulfed in flames.