Hunter/Prey

Chapter 10

“Go to hell,” she said when he pulled the duct tape off.

Beckard smirked. “That’s not very nice. I’m trying to have a conversation with you here.”

“Kiss my ass.”

“Do you kiss your mom with that mouth?” Before she could answer, he slapped the tape back into place. “Never mind. I think I know what you’re going to say.” He continued to linger on her face. “I know you, though. I don’t know where. Not yet. But I’ll figure it out. I always do.”

He left her lying on the floor on her side and stood up, then looked over at Wade and Rachel, leaning against each other nearby. Like Allie, their wrists and ankles were bound with duct tape. He had made sure to wrap an extra revolution around Wade just in case the kid proved stronger than he looked. He was tall and gangly and wasn’t anywhere close to Donnie’s hulking size, but there was no point in taking any chances now.

He lingered on Rachel. She must have sensed him staring, because she turned and pushed herself further against Wade in an attempt to hide herself from him.

Beckard smiled. “Relax; it’ll be over soon.”

He headed to the kitchen, stepping over Donnie’s body. The big kid had bled all over the floor, pieces (well, chunks, anyway) of him still clinging to the countertops, drawers, and cabinets. It was pretty messy, but then Beckard was used to working in and around ugly scenes. He would have liked it to be more orderly, but there was no denying that everything had worked out just great for him, even if he did have to get really creative to keep things going for a while there.

But that was over. Done. Two bodies in the cabin wasn’t a big deal. The kids had already told him they weren’t expected back at school until Monday. He was, for all intents and purposes, free and clear to do whatever he wanted for forty-eight hours.

Especially with the girl. She was so his type, too.

Beckard sat down on the stool and picked up the fork and knife and cut into the first steak. He was hungry. Starving. There was nothing like almost dying to ramp up the appetite. It was too bad Donnie had overcooked the meat.

Beggars can’t be choosers.

He ate by himself, humming quietly between bites.

The woman, Allie, was staring at him from across the room, but he chose to ignore her. Like Rachel, she was his type, too, though he usually preferred them a little more, well, less bloodthirsty.

Still, there was no denying it. The blonde hair, the long legs, the perfect cheekbones…

He made his decision while he was eating. He would take Rachel first, then break Allie later. He might even go against his own rules about spending more than twenty-four hours with each girl. He had a feeling he’d need more than that with Allie. She might be worth it, too. It had been a while since he’d had this kind of challenge.

That made him remember his aching side. Christ, it hurt. He really should go see a real doctor. He’d have to come up with a good excuse. A hunting accident, maybe. Some idiot in the woods shot him by mistake, then ran off.

Yeah, that might work…

Beckard sensed her still watching him. He looked up and met her eyes and smiled back at her. That made her look away, but he could see the cogs spinning inside her head in the way she glanced around the cabin while pretending she wasn’t.

The door, the windows, Wade and Rachel next to her…

Thinking. Evaluating. Adjusting…

He continued to eyeball her over the well-done rib eye.

That face. That side profile.

He knew her from somewhere. He was sure of it, even if he couldn’t place her. Not yet, anyway.

He shook his head.

It would come to him.

He couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten so well. God bless him, Donnie had also packed beer in the cooler. Beckard opened one and drained it in two gulps. It would have been a perfect meal if the meat hadn’t been so well done that it was practically burnt. Of course, Beckard had to take some blame, too. He had distracted Donnie while the kid was tending to the steaks.

He leaned against the counter, resting on his elbows, and looked across the cabin at the three of them. Wade and Rachel were practically keeping each other upright as they sat on the floor, backs against the wall, which was both romantic and sad. Romantic, in that they clearly had true feelings for one another; sad, in that it wasn’t going to do them a bit of good.

Allie had managed to pull herself into a sitting position. She was still looking around the room with calculating eyes, trying not to make it too obvious.

And her face. There was something about her face…

“I know you,” he said across the room to her.

She looked over at him, strands of blonde hair falling over her face.

“I know you,” he repeated. “I know your face. Allie?” he said, testing the sound of her name against his lips. He shook his head. “I don’t know the name, but I know your face. I never forget a face.” He let out a loud burp, then grinned. “Pardon me.”

He got up and walked around the counter, stepping over Donnie’s body a second time, careful to avoid the blood. He left the shotgun behind and crossed over to her with just the beer in one hand. Maybe the alcohol was making him a little cocky, but he’d never felt so in control in his life. He was like a phoenix risen from the ashes. Shotgun ashes. From almost dead to almost winning. Pretty much winning, actually.

He crouched in front of Allie and stared at her face again. Really, really stared this time, from only a few inches away.

He leaned to one side, then the other. Even stood back up to get another angle before crouching again.

She looked back at him the entire time, as if daring him to do something.

He finally pulled back a bit. “I’ve seen you before.”

He called up the memories, sifting through the faces of all the women from his past. They were like a Rolodex, forever ingrained on his brain. Their names, the various blonde shades, their noses, and the colors of their eyes. The sound of their voices and the way they talked, the way they cried, the way they screamed…

“Maybe not you,” he said. “But someone like you.” He looked back at the shotgun. “You came prepared.”

Nearby, Wade was listening, but Beckard ignored him.

“You wanted me to take you,” he continued, zeroing back in on Allie’s eyes. “You lured me in. Like a black widow. ‘Come into my web, said the spider to the fly.’ And I fell right into it, like a sucker.”

He chuckled and took another sip of beer.

“That means you have a grudge. You studied me, didn’t you? Not me, me. Oh, it’s obvious you had no idea who I was. Not my name or what I did for a living. I’m kind of proud of that, actually. It took a lot of effort, you know. A lot. But still, you knew the real me. My methods. My modus operandi. The man underneath the façade. You might have even known what I would do, how I would react, in certain situations. The PIT maneuver, for instance. No one’s ever managed to escape that. But you did. For two solid miles. You completely threw me off my game with that one. Congratulations.”

His legs were getting tired and his side was hurting a bit, so he sat down Indian style in front of her. He placed the beer between them before returning his attention to her.

She continued to watch him back, silently. Not that she had a choice with the duct tape over her mouth. He thought about removing it, but didn’t. She’d just lie or throw some obscenities at him.

“I killed someone close to you, didn’t I?” he asked. “Was it a friend? A sister? That’s what this is. Revenge.”

He saw it — movement in her eyes.

It was small. A tiny flicker, really.

He smiled.

“It was a sister.”

He leaned forward some more and once again ran through the Rolodex of all the faces in his head. This time, he used her face as a guide to look for someone else. There were the ones he took in the first three years, before he really knew what he was doing. The dozen or so since that the cops didn’t even know about because he had gotten smarter. So, so much smarter. He learned. He adapted. He grew as a killer.

All those women. All those blonde hairs, those blue and green eyes, those long slender legs and perfect cheekbones…

“Carmen,” he said.

Another flicker across her face.

Bingo.

“Her name was Carmen,” he smiled. “Twenty. She was coming from New York during the holidays. She was all alone out here. I couldn’t have asked for an easier target. Heaven sent.”

He expected to see her expression crumble with pain and misery now that he had discovered her secret. Instead, air expelled from her flaring nostrils and her entire body tightened up. He could see — even taste—her attempts to rein in her emotions, the runaway freight train of anger and fury that was flooding all of her senses right this very second.

He went in for the kill.

“I remember her. She was beautiful. One of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen. Just the loveliest thing on two feet. And my God, she was so much fun. We had a great day together, and she tasted so sweet before, during, and after. I didn’t want to let her go, but as they say, all good things must end.”

Her eyes burned, threatening to consume him.

He wallowed in her reaction, his grin growing wider.

“In the end I had to throw her back, like all the others. She was beautiful, but she was just another girl. Another victim. Oh, don’t get me wrong. She was something. The first time I had her, I practically died with ecstasy—”

She lunged at him, and before Beckard could pull back, his nose exploded and he was toppling backward.

Jesus Christ. It felt like someone had smashed his face in with a sledgehammer.

No, not a sledgehammer. Just her forehead. Her fucking forehead.

He didn’t know what was happening — the pain was blinding and he might have been screaming — but he wasn’t bound and gagged like her, and he managed to stumble up to his feet even as blood poured like a river from his shattered nose.

The cabin’s dirty floorboards were covered in blood—his blood — and he grabbed at his face with both hands and let out a wild howl that surprised even him.

She was rolling around, trying to get away, and it took him a full second to realize she was going for the shotgun in the kitchen. How the hell she expected to grab it and use it with both hands and ankles bound together with duct tape, and the inability to stand up, was beyond him.

And he didn’t care, either.

He stalked her. He thought about coming up with something clever to say. Something punchy (Ha!).

But he couldn’t think of anything, and instead he just started kicking her.

First, in the side. She doubled forward from the pain and must have screamed into the duct tape. He kicked her again and felt his boot’s steel toe connecting with a ribcage that time. Tears welled up in both her eyes, but he was beyond caring.

He kicked her again, and again, and again.

He didn’t stop until she ceased moving completely and his leg was too sore to keep going.

His entire face was burning. Burning.

Beckard staggered the short distance to the kitchen and went to the sink. He turned on the faucet and splashed cold water over his face and saw how red the water flowing off him and into the stainless steel bowl was.

Red. So red.

It took him a while to stop the bleeding. He needed a couple of rags for that. He walked around Donnie again, then around Allie on his way to the bathroom. Wade and Rachel, their faces frozen in horror, watched him pass, the girl doing her best not to stare.

He turned on the bathroom lights and ignored Sabrina’s body on the floor, where he had left her. Like her boyfriend, Sabrina had bled plenty afterward. He grabbed the first aid kit and opened it, then took a moment to look at his reflection in the mirror.

Well, he had certainly looked better, that was for sure.

That thought, for some reason, made him laugh out loud, even if every expelling of breath sent tremors across his face and added to the excruciating pain.