First Night of Summer (29 page)

The stacked log walls came into view, and Ricky eased his pace. He kept his eyes on the path. In minutes, he would be back at the ghost town with the journal, Josie before him. Then a shotgun blast shattered the silence.

He stood tall, alert, frozen on the trail. Few things had ever shaken him so suddenly. Fear surged through his body and prompted action. He leapt from the footpath and into the woods. A granite outcropping shadowed by trees offered concealment and an ideal perspective of the cabin. He scrambled the few yards, low to the ground and catlike.

Nestled within the stony fortress, Ricky reviewed how he’d rigged the shotgun inside.
The front door must be opened for the weapon to fire
. Ashley was tied to a chair and unable to move. That he was certain of. He had nailed the chair legs into the wooden floor so she couldn’t topple over by swaying her body. The concept of her escaping was also implausible. The ropes binding her to the chair were wound in a cruel, uncompromising way. She would die of dehydration long before she could wriggle free.

He was dumbfounded to think that the police or a search party could have sniffed him out so quickly. Besides, if the person responsible were a vigilante, Ricky would have heard him coming.

Curiosity drove him mad. He considered other options as he sat in wait.
Maybe a gust of wind pushed the front door open
. He looked at the surrounding trees. Even their tops were perfectly still.
No
. He pictured the latch in his head.
It has to be lifted too far to open by accident
.

The more he thought, the more it became clear. Ashley and Josie aside, he was no longer alone. Whether they’d found him or an unlucky soul had happened along, someone was there.

The location was one grain of sand to an entire beach.
What are the odds?

Ricky took his rifle and rested it across a flat spot on the granite rock. He adjusted himself until the rear entry of the cabin was directly in his crosshairs. Whoever was inside posed a direct threat and had to be eliminated for good.

He kept the shaky scope trained down the hill, ready to blow a hole through anyone who stepped outside.

Chapter Sixty-Seven

N
o sensation came, just empty silence. Isaac blinked repeatedly, expecting death, or certainly pain, to take over at any moment, but there was nothing. Physically, all seemed well. Yet he knew the gun was intended for something … someone.

Ashley had been part of the living only seconds before. She had moved her head from side to side, searching the room for anything that might help her escape. Now, chin hanging to her chest, Ashley’s brains and blood were splattered all over the wall, and all over Isaac.

The shot had come from somewhere in the room, but he saw no one hidden within the small space. A mechanism was the only thing that could have taken the place of a human finger. His eyes darted around. Judging by the direction of the blood spatter, it had come from almost straight in front of him. It only took a second to surmise what had happened.

The scatter gun was tied to a bed frame and pointed directly at the girl in the chair. A strand of clear fishing line was attached to the trigger. The opposite end ran across the room and connected to a bent nail hammered into the front door. The concept was basic. When the door opened, the string tightened and pulled the trigger.

A void the size of a man’s fist had blown through Ashley’s skull and removed her face. Blood poured in a massive wave through her blonde hair, down her naked chest and arms. The gruesome sight sickened Isaac. The scene before him was of a young, dead girl. He realized the contraption had not been set to kill him, but instead, the person he thought was Josie.

I killed her
. Isaac’s knees hit the floor. His spear and knife dropped to the old, wooden planks, and the dull thump brought about a sense of déjà vu. The last time he had heard that sound was just before Caroline died. It was once again a reminder of death and loss of a daughter. He couldn’t understand why—perhaps exhaustion—no tears came to his eyes. Failure was the only thing he felt, failure to protect what he loved most, failure to be a man, a father, a husband.

On hands and knees, he crawled to the side of the chair and dared not look at her face. He had a flawless mental picture of Josie’s bright eyes and didn’t wish to erase it with what he knew would be a grizzly sight. Instead, he took the survival knife and cut her ropes loose. Even in death, it didn’t seem right for his beloved girl to wear restraints. As he freed her, her bare body slumped and fell from the seat.

Isaac pulled her limp hand to his face. Blood smeared on his cheek. He didn’t want to let go or say good-bye. He just wanted to sit there with her broken shell for the rest of eternity. Caroline was once again with her sister, and it gave him a small measure of comfort.

Kissing the hand, he tried to keep his heart from bursting. He forced his unfocused eyes to open and look at her. Josie deserved that much. If her spirit were still there in the room, watching as her father held her earthly body, he didn’t want her to think that he was ashamed to see her. It was himself with whom he was ashamed.

Isaac no longer cared for the chase. The goal was always to rescue Josie first, then exact retribution on the killer. But retribution without gain had lost its appeal.

As his vision trained on the bloody hand, he tried to notice every last detail. He wanted to remember Josie, just as she was. Her soft skin. Each individual finger. Even her chipped, hot pink nail polish seemed preciously important.

Pink nail polish?
A tiny ray of hope pierced his gloom. Josie had not been wearing pink nail polish. In fact, as of that morning, she hadn’t been wearing
any
nail polish. The neon paint on this hand was flaking from days of wear. The sudden observation spurred closer scrutiny and another vague feeling of familiarity.

The hand was not that of a child, but of a young teenager, probably fifteen or sixteen. The size, texture, and shape were all wrong for Josie. Relief washed over him. This meant she might still be alive, but the new hope was mixed with reverence. The girl in front of him, violated and dead, was someone’s daughter.

Isaac studied her with more intensity. As he took in the fullness of her corpse, it became infinitely clear that it was indeed not Josie. The mangled girl was too tall, closer to womanhood than childhood.

He checked her face and got exactly what he expected. An empty cavity stared back at him, and he could see the floor on the other side of the scarlet flesh. The remnants of her eyes, mouth, nose, and upper lip were scattered into a million pieces. Whoever she was, even her own mother would not have recognized her.

Nausea churned in his stomach. Polaroids of brutalized victims were once the extreme. As Isaac held the abused teen in his arms, the reality was far worse in person than in pictures. He cradled her like she was his own, wishing he could have arrived early enough to help. Instead, he’d become the linchpin to her demise.

He laid the girl down and draped a blanket over her nude body. She had suffered enough indignation. Josie was out there somewhere on a path toward a similar fate. He didn’t know where, but she had to be close.

Once again, with spear and knife in hand, he moved toward the rear door. He checked for additional stratagems and found none. Cautiously, he raised the handle and stepped onto the back porch, looking for sign. All was calm.

One more tentative stride forward and a bullet struck him. It collided with his chest at over three thousand feet per second, and he stumbled backward in pained disbelief. He collapsed, coming to rest beside the girl under the blanket.

Chapter Sixty-Eight

W
atching Isaac perish from the direct hit was one of the most riveting experiences of Ricky’s life. He had never shot a man before. It was new, utterly unexpected, and he immediately liked it. But questions rolled through his brain like a cigarette factory, and he squelched a rising panic.

What the hell? How did he know where to find me? Is he alone? This should be impossible
. The list had begun the instant Isaac’s battered, shirtless body came into the crosshairs. The fact that Isaac was even there encroached on the realm of inhuman.
Did I leave a trail?

A quick mental recap confirmed that all the precautions Ricky had taken were completed without failure. At the feint on the highway, he had taken Isaac and Helen’s keys and cell phones and left them with a serious case of fried circuits. That should have held them at bay, but here Isaac was, and the timeline numbers didn’t crunch.
What am I missing?

The 30-06 round pierced Isaac through the ribcage, surely ending his life. Ricky had no qualms. The rifle scope was sighted perfectly. The shot had been less than one hundred yards, easy for a novice shooter, and he’d watched Isaac topple like a stone statue.
He may be a supernatural badass, but he’s not bulletproof
.

Ricky emerged from his hiding place and snuck down to the cabin, cautiously bobbing from tree to tree for cover. Retrieving the journal was still priority, but for practical purposes, he had to make certain his nemesis was defeated once and for all.

Ricky wondered what Isaac’s secret means of transportation was. If he’d driven, dust from the road or the sound of an engine would have easily given him away. A helicopter came to mind, but that didn’t add up either. The noise alone—steady, unmistakable thumps from the long blades—would have carried for miles. There was nowhere to land an airplane. Besides, Ricky had destroyed that option. The only other explanation was for Isaac to have arrived on foot, but the distance from the highway to the cabin was far too great for such a hasty appearance. Ricky put the riddle aside.

He leaned against the passenger fender of his white pickup and used it as a safety barrier. The back porch was on the opposite side of the hood, its wooden door ajar. Everything past the threshold was cast in dark shadow. Rifle at the ready, he stood with an alert posture. There was no detectable movement from within, just as he expected.

Chapter Sixty-Nine

S
earing, hot pain rippled from the wound. Severed nerves worked in overdrive, sending arduous messages to the brain. Isaac felt like he was being branded with a fiery poker with no relief in store.

The copper-coated lead had passed between his torso and left bicep. A mass of muscle on his outer ribcage, the latissimus dorsi, had an aperture through it, just below the armpit. Agonizing as it was, he much preferred it to the alternative. Two inches in either direction, he would have suffered a punctured lung or a missing appendage. Death might be something he sought before the end, but he wasn’t there yet.
Josie. I have to find Josie
.

He shuffled across the floor toward the front entry of the cabin, keeping low in fear that another bullet might come whizzing by. Thus far, Derek, the alleged grocery store clerk, had proven rather shrewd.

Isaac inspected his weapons.
Shit. A knife and stick against a psycho with a rifle
. He squeezed them tightly. They felt so inadequate.
C’mon. I need a plan
. He turned and faced the old bed.
The shotgun!

After a couple quick slices from the knife, it fell off the frame and into his hands.
Please have extra shells
. The shotgun was an auto-loader, Remington 11-87, and the breech was closed. It was the best news he’d had all morning. A closed chamber meant the weapon had automatically ejected the spent round and pulled a live one from the magazine. It was cocked and locked.

Quickly, he slid back the breech to confirm. It was loaded. He glanced underneath and checked the magazine. Brass and the unstamped primer of another round shined back at him.
Two shots
. He urgently searched for a box of ammunition. No extra shells were in sight. He would just have to take what was given and get the hell out.

Before escaping the same way he had come in, Isaac briefly took one last assessment of the room to make sure there was nothing of further use. A leather-bound book atop a plywood table caught his eye. He probably never would have noticed, but the space was so vacant of décor, the object demanded his attention. He hurriedly secured it in his grip, not bothering to look inside.

The sanctuary of the forest was only yards from the porch. Refuge was in its shadows, and he concealed himself within.
Where are you, Josie?

“Where has he taken you?” he quietly whispered and searched the surroundings.

Keeping his senses alert, curiosity told him he should open the journal. Pictures and rows of detailed notes filled the inside of the book. The contents were meticulously organized, and nothing short of eye-popping.

Polaroid pictures of little girls, vile words of intent, and abduction jottings were all neatly laid out, page by page, each labeled with a name. The chronicle was laden with more victims than Isaac imagined possible. This was not the work of an opportunistic pedophile. This was the doings of a cold, calculated sadist with a very long track record.

He quickly flipped through, bile rising in his throat, until two familiar faces stared up at him. Next to Josie and Caroline’s picture was an article from the
Ruidoso News
editorial. It pertained to their brilliant rescue of Jason Smith. Following the publication were detailed descriptions of their daily routines and schedules, each listed by date. The printed composition was carefully glued to the page, and the notes were written in clean penmanship. He immediately recognized the handwriting. It matched all three of the letters they had received over the summer. It proved what he already knew. This was the property of the man who had killed Caroline and promised to return for Josie almost three months ago.

The smell of fresh-cut grass, the sound of children’s laughter, and scents of a home-cooked meal drifted through Isaac’s memory. A photograph of Josie and Caroline running in their Ruidoso backyard was clipped to the page. Josie had a Frisbee in her hand, and Caroline gave chase. The side deck off the kitchen could be seen in the background. Two people were on it. He squinted closely and saw himself. The other person was garbed in tan clothing.