Kendra and Newell were already out of the car and running toward the burning shack.
Joe turned the car and headed toward the stand of trees.
Drogan.
The headlights picked up Drogan in the beam. His eyes were wide, his expression vicious, and he was raising his gun.
Joe ducked as a bullet shattered the windshield. He jammed on the brakes, opened the driver’s door, and rolled out of the car. Drogan was coming toward him, firing.
“Welcome, Quinn,” Drogan said. “My plans were all disrupted, but here you are anyway. It must be fate.”
“Where’s Eve?” From his vantage point all he could see were Drogan’s legs on the other side of the car. “I may let you live if you tell me—”
A bullet hit the hubcap of the car next to Joe’s head.
“No, you wouldn’t let me live if I told you where she is,” Drogan said. “You’d be very angry with me. People seem to have a particular horror of the death I’ve planned for your Eve … and you. I hope I can keep you alive long enough to have you join her in her coffin.”
Coffin. It was what Joe had feared most. “Where did you bury her?”
Drogan laughed. “Guess. Either she’ll suffocate, or the snake I gave her for company will get her. I’ll leave it to your imagination.”
And Joe’s imagination was scaring him to death. If Eve was already in a coffin, he might have only minutes, seconds. He had to put an end to this. He took careful aim under the car. “I’d rather imagine you writhing in hell, Drogan.” He shot out both of Drogan’s kneecaps.
Drogan screamed, and his legs gave away.
Joe was on him before he touched the ground. His hands clutched Drogan’s neck. “You like the idea of suffocating? Let’s try it on you, Drogan.” His thumbs cut off Drogan’s air. “Where is she?”
Drogan gasped, his eyes bulging as he struggled to breathe.
“Talk.”
“Dead.” His eyes burned with malice. “I haven’t heard anything from her for almost ten minutes. She’s dead. Mama … Zela took … her.” He suddenly rolled to the side, breaking Joe’s hold. He grabbed a knife from the holster on his leg and lunged toward him.
The knife nicked Joe’s upper arm before he twisted Drogan’s arm and managed to jerk the knife away from his body. “Where is Eve?”
“I told you. I’m not saying anything more.”
“No?” Joe’s hands closed on his throat again. “You say you killed her. Then you’re of no use to me, and you’re wasting my time. One last chance?”
“You’re a cop. You won’t do anything to me.”
“You’re wrong, you know,” Joe said softly. “Good-bye, Drogan.”
His hands tightened, jerked, and he broke Drogan’s neck.
He jumped to his feet and didn’t look back as he moved toward the trees.
Newell was running toward him. “Quinn, did you find Eve?”
“No. She wasn’t in the shack, was she?”
“No.”
That would have been too much for which to hope. Drogan had been far too sure, too malicious.
“But Beth was in the shack, still alive,” Newell said. “She was crawling out the door when we got there. She’s hurt, but Kendra’s with her. Did Drogan tell you where—”
“No. She may be somewhere in this stand of trees. You go to the left. I’ll go to the right.”
Drogan had said he hadn’t heard anything from Eve for ten minutes. That meant she must be close.
Find her.
And pray Drogan had been lying or wrong.
* * *
“EVE!”
Footsteps.
Frantic cursing.
Joe’s voice.
Eve’s heart leaped into her throat, but she couldn’t even scream to him because it would have caused vocal-cord vibration.
“Eve.” The lid was torn off the coffin and thrown aside.
Joe. The bright beam of a flashlight. “Oh, my God.” He drew a long, ragged breath. “Stay perfectly still. I can’t shoot it. I have to grab the snake quick and throw it out of the coffin and away from you.”
He bent closer and moved with painstaking slowness. “He’s lifting his head out of your hair. I think he senses me.”
And would strike at him … or her, as soon as he was sure there was a threat, Eve thought.
Be careful, Joe.
Of course he would be careful. Joe would be careful, and sure and fast.
But things could go wrong, Bonnie had said.
Joe pounced, grabbing the snake behind the head. The next moment he had flung it far away from the coffin and across the yard. He grabbed Eve out of the coffin and up into his arms. “Shoot it, Newell.”
“No, let it go. Bonnie wouldn’t—” She was clinging desperately to him. He felt so good. Safety. Strength. Joe. “She said the snake was only scared, like me.”
“Bonnie,” he repeated. He was cupping the back of her head and rocking her back and forth in an agony of relief. “Hallucinations, Eve?”
“Maybe. I was scared enough. I desperately wanted her there. No, I don’t think so.” She looked beyond his shoulder to see the flames devouring the shack. “Beth! We have to get her out.”
“She’s out. She was crawling out the door when we got here. Kendra dragged her away from the house and is checking her over. Newell said she was hurt.”
“Drogan hit her with the butt of his gun.” She looked at Drogan’s body a few yards away. “He would probably have let Beth burn to death. It must have been the oil lamp. I didn’t think the fire was that bad.”
“Bad enough.” He held her closer. “Or good enough. The fire led us to the shack. It might have taken us a good deal longer if we hadn’t seen it blazing in the distance.”
“Drogan killed Rick Avery. I guess you know that.”
“Yes.” His hand was probing her side. “Are you bleeding?”
“I don’t think that—” She had a sudden memory of the instant when Drogan had thrown the snake down into the coffin. The faintest sting … “It may be a snakebite from the first couple minutes. It’s probably nothing. I didn’t even notice that it had gotten me.”
“It got you all right.” He was examining the two tears in her shirt. “Looks like a superficial bite, but we’ll take you to the hospital to have it treated.” He lifted her to her feet and shouted to Newell. “We’re heading for the nearest hospital. Tell Kendra to bring Beth.”
“I’ll tell her. I need to see her.” Eve was running toward the shack. “Drogan hit her twice, and it was—” She stopped beside Beth and Kendra, who were a few yards from the burning house. “How is she, Kendra?”
“Not great.” Kendra was bathing the deep cut on Beth’s temple. “But she comes in and out of consciousness. She asked about you a minute ago.” Kendra’s gaze raked Eve’s face. “And how are you?”
“Okay.” She fell to her knees beside Beth. “I have to go to the hospital to have a bite checked out. Beth’s in much worse shape than I am. When she threw that glass into Drogan’s eye, I thought he’d kill her. We have to get a doctor to look at—”
“No … hospital.” Beth had opened her eyes and was staring up at Eve. “Not again.”
Eve’s hand closed tightly on Beth’s. “This time it will be different. I’ll be there with you, and I won’t leave until you go with me.”
“Promise?”
“Yes, believe me, Beth. I’ll never let anything happen to you again.”
Her eyes closed. “I do believe you. Is the little girl … safe?”
Eve stiffened. “Little girl?”
“The little girl in the shack. When she came, the fire kept growing and leaping and she was right in the middle of it. It was swirling around her … She kept telling me to crawl, to get out the door. Is she safe?”
Eve looked back at the blazing shack.
I may be able to do something inside the shack.
Evidently, Bonnie had found a good deal she could do in the shack.
“You’re not answering me.” Beth’s eyes were open again. “She’s just a little girl. If she’s not safe, we have to help her.”
Eve smiled as she brushed the hair back from Beth’s forehead. “It’s okay, don’t worry,” she said softly. “She’s not in danger any longer. The little girl couldn’t be more safe now.”