Murdered In Conard County. Rachel Lee

her best to turn it into a nest.

      Then she pulled out a shiny survival blanket and Jimmy’s world seemed to settle once again. “Space blanket!” The excitement was clear in his voice.

      “You bet,” she said, summoning a smile. “Now just stay here while we try to get your mommy. If you do that for me, you can keep the space blanket.”

      That seemed to make him utterly happy. He snuggled into the gray wool blanket and hugged the silvery Mylar to his chin. “I’ll sleep,” he announced.

      “Great idea,” she said. She couldn’t resist brushing his hair gently back from his forehead. “Pleasant dreams, Jimmy.”

      He was already falling asleep, though. Exhausted from his fear and his crying, the tyke was nodding off. “Mommy says that, too,” he murmured. And then his thumb found its way into his mouth and his eyes stayed closed.

      Blaire waited for a minute, hoping the child could sleep for a while but imagining the sheriff’s arrival with all the people and the work they needed to do would probably wake him. She could hope not.

      * * *

      HE HADN’T KNOWN the kid was there. God in heaven, he hadn’t known. Jeff scrambled as quietly as he could over rough ground, putting as much distance between him and the vic as he could.

      He’d been shocked by the sight of the kid. He almost couldn’t bring himself to do it. If he hadn’t, though, he’d be the next one The Hunt Club would take out. They’d warned him.

      His damn fault for getting too curious. Now he was on the hook with them for a murder he didn’t want to commit, and he was never going to forget that little boy. Those eyes, those cries, would haunt him forever.

      Cussing viciously under his breath, he grabbed rocks and slipped on scree. He couldn’t even turn on his flashlight yet, he was still too close. But the moon had nose-dived behind the mountain and he didn’t even have its thin, watery light to help him in his escape.

      His heart was hammering and not just because of his efforts at climbing. He’d just killed a man and probably traumatized a kid for life. That kid wasn’t supposed to be there. He’d been watching the guy for the last two weeks and he’d been camping solo. What had he done? Brought his son up for the weekend? Must have.

      Giving Jeff the shock of his life. He should have backed off, should have told the others he couldn’t do it because the target wasn’t alone. Off-season. No tag. Whatever. Surely he could have come up with an excuse so they’d have given him another chance.

      Maybe. Now that he knew what the others had been up to, he couldn’t even rely on their friendship anymore. Look what they’d put him up to, even when he’d sworn he’d never rat them out.

      And he wouldn’t have. Man alive, he was in it up to his neck even if he hadn’t known they were acting out some of the plans they’d made. An accomplice. He’d aided them. The noose would have tightened around his throat, too.

      God, why hadn’t he been able to make them see that? He wasn’t an innocent who could just walk into a police station and say, “You know what my friends have been doing the last few years?”

      Yeah. Right.

      He swore again as a sharp rock bit right through his jeans and made him want to cry out from the unexpected pain. He shouldn’t be struggling up the side of a mountain in the dark. He shouldn’t be doing this at all.

      He had believed it was all a game. A fun thing to talk about when they gathered at the lodge in the fall for their usual hunting trip. Planning early summer get-togethers to eyeball various campgrounds, looking for the places a shooter could escape without being seen.

      The victim didn’t much matter. Whoever was convenient and easy. The important thing was not to leave anything behind. To know the habits of the prey the same way they would know the habits of a deer.

      Did the vic go hiking? If so, along what trails and how often and for how long? Was he or she alone very often or at all? Then Will had gotten the idea that they should get them in their tents. When there were other people in the campground, making it so much more challenging. Yeah.

      He had believed it was just talk. He’d accompanied the others on the scouting expeditions, enjoying being in the woods while there were still patches of snow under the trees. He liked scoping out the campgrounds as the first hardy outdoorsy types began to arrive. And that, he had believed, was where it ended.

      Planning. Scouting. A game.

      But he’d been so wrong he could hardly believe his own delusion. He’d known these guys all his life. How was it possible he’d never noticed the psychopathy in either of them? Because that’s what he now believed it was. They didn’t give a damn about anyone or anything except their own pleasure.

      He paused to catch his breath and looked back over his shoulder. Far away, glimpsed through the thick forest, he caught sight of flashing red, blue and white lights. The police were there.

      He’d known it wouldn’t be long. That was part of the plan. Once he fired his gun, he had to clear out before the other campers emerged, and not long after them the cops.

      Well, he’d accomplished that part of his task. He was well away by the time the campers dared to start coming out. But the little kid’s wails had followed him into the night.

      Damn it!

      So he’d managed to back out of the place without scuffing up the ground in a way that would mark his trail. No one would be able to follow him. But now he was mostly on rocky terrain and that gave him added invisibility.

      The damn duff down there had been hard to clear without leaving a visible trail. It had helped that so many campers had been messing it around this summer, but still, if he’d dragged his foot or... Well, it didn’t matter. He hadn’t.

      But then there had been the farther distances. Like where he had kept watch. His movements. Too far out for anyone to notice, of course. He’d made sure of that.

      So he’d done everything right. They’d never catch him and the guys would leave him alone. That’s all he wanted.

      But he hated himself, too, and wished he’d been made of sterner stuff, the kind that would have gone to the cops rather than knuckle under to threats and the fear that he would be counted an accomplice to acts he hadn’t committed.

      Now there was no hope of escape for him or his soul. He’d done it. He’d killed a man. He was one of them, owned by them completely. Sold to the devil because of a threat to his life.

      He feared, too, that if they were identified they would succeed in convincing the police that he was the killer in the other cases, that they were just his friends and he was pointing the finger at them to save his own hide.

      Yeah, he had no trouble imagining them doing that, and doing it successfully. They’d plotted and planned so well that there was nothing to link them to the murders except him.

      At last he made it over the ridge that would hide him from anyone below, not that the campground wasn’t now concealed from view by thick woods.

      But even if they decided to look around, they’d never find him now. All he had to do was crawl into the small cave below and await daylight. Then he would have a clear run to his car to get out of the forest.

      All carefully planned. He’d be gone before any searcher could get up here.

      Damn, he wanted a cigarette. But that had been part of their planning, too. No smoking. The tobacco smell would be distinctive, so they avoided it unless campfires were burning.

      Who had come up with that idea?

      He couldn’t remember. He was past caring. He slid into the dark embrace of the cave at last, with only a short time before dawn.

      Past caring. That was a good place to be. He envied the others. Instead he kept company with the remembered cries of a young boy.

      *