Raylan and I head back to the ranch house.
We linger outside the kitchen door, both of us feeling there was more to say to one another. When Bo interrupted us, I think Raylan was about to tell me something else. After he’d already told me his family’s story.
I don’t take that lightly. That’s a secret they’ve kept for thirty years.
He told me because he trusts me. I wish there were a way to show him that I trust him, too.
But all I can say is, “Good luck with the horses.”
Raylan grins. “Thank you. When I get back, let’s have a drink together. It’s a full moon tonight. We can sit out on the deck.”
“That sounds beautiful,” I say.
I was intending to go inside and do a little more work. But I feel strangely flat, after what I discovered about Josh. It makes me feel as if the project is tainted in some way. I know that’s stupid, but it bothers me how the truth was hiding right under the data, without me seeing it. It’s like realizing there’s a crocodile floating right under the water. Even if you manage to pull it out, you don’t look at the lake in quite the same way.
I guess I’m embarrassed I didn’t see it sooner. I didn’t think much of Josh. I’m surprised he was able to fool us so long.
I expect Cal and Dante have found him by now. They’ll probably call me any minute.
Idly, I turn Raylan’s phone over in my hands, waiting for the screen to light up with the call. When it doesn’t, I set the phone down on the kitchen table and open up the laptop instead.
I’m still distracted. My brain keeps floating back to my walk with Raylan down the birch avenue.
I miss him.
That sounds so ridiculous, but it’s true. I’ve gotten so used to him being by my side almost constantly. When he goes anywhere else, I feel his absence.
Raylan has become like sunshine on my skin. Warm, comforting, enlivening. When he goes someplace else, I feel chilled and dull. Like a flower, just waiting for the sun to return.
That’s ludicrous, I know. I tell myself to shake it off and get back to work. To lose myself in charts and documents and purchase agreements, to find my pleasure in a labor like I always used to.
I can hear the house creaking and groaning as the sun sinks lower and the warmth of the day fades away. The temperature change makes the old wood contract. It almost sounds like someone walking around upstairs, though I know Raylan and I are the only ones on the property at the moment.
I hadn’t bothered to switch on the lights. Now that the sun is going down, the kitchen is becoming dim and shadowy. The laptop screen is illuminated, so I don’t really need the light to work. But I still feel an impulse to get up and flip the switch. I feel uneasy, the tiny hairs rising up on my bare arms.
Raylan’s phone buzzes on the table, startling me. I pick it up, seeing Cal’s number.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey. I wanted to update you—we don’t have Josh.”
My stomach sinks down like an elevator. “What happened?” I ask.
“We called Uncle Oran and he said Josh hadn’t come into work today—he called in sick. So we went to Josh’s house instead. But there was nobody there. The place was a fucking mess. It was hard to tell if he’d packed up and cleared out, or if he’s just a slob.”
“His office is like that, too,” I tell Cal.
“We searched the streets to see if his car was anywhere around. Bribed his neighbor, but he said Josh left that morning at the normal time, and he hadn’t seen him come back. We’ve got eyes out anywhere we can think of . . . ”
“Did you check his girlfriend’s apartment?”
“Yeah, Uncle Oran told us about her. She was at work—said she hadn’t talked to him that day. We took her phone, tried texting and calling him. No answer. We made her give us her key and searched her flat. Fucking nothing.”
I don’t like the sound of that at all.
We end the call.
My stomach is clenching and twisting. I feel prickled with anxiety.
Why did Josh take off all of a sudden?
He must know that we found out what he’d done. But how could he know that?
Is it a coincidence? Was he always planning to take the money and run, once he’d amassed enough?
I don’t believe in coincidences that big. He disappears the very day we come looking for him? That seems off.
Maybe he found out that Lucy sent me those files. I never told her to keep it a secret.
I remember how Raylan reacted when I told him about the emails back and forth. He seemed uncomfortable with it, like I’d made a mistake. Is it possible to trace an IP address? If I emailed Lucy from this laptop, could someone locate where my email came from? Could they have found out where I’m hiding?
I tell myself I’m just being paranoid. I’m safe here—that’s why Raylan brought me all the way to the ranch.
It was just an email.
Still, I wish Raylan were here beside me, and not all the way out in the fields, rounding up the horses.
Quietly, I slip out of my chair and walk over to the counter, where Celia’s knives are all fitted neatly into their slots in a carved wooden block. I pull out one of the knives—not the cleaver, which is too large and unwieldy. I take a fish knife instead—long and slim and deadly sharp. Then I go back to the table again.
The kitchen is getting quite dark. I could turn on the light, but something tells me not to. Instead, very quietly, I close the laptop screen, snuffing out the last bit of illumination.
Then I sit in the dark, listening.
I hear a tiny creak from overhead. I know the ranch house pretty well by now. I think that noise came from the guest bedroom. My bedroom.
I remember how the Djinn lay in wait for me in the swimming pool. How he waited almost an hour, quiet and still, on the bottom of the pool. He must have seen me slip into the water. He watched me stroke back and forth across the pool, over his head. Watching me from below like a shark. No . . . like an eel in a cave.
The Djinn is an ambush predator.
He likes to hide himself, waiting and watching. Taking pleasure in his victim’s obliviousness. Letting them wander closer and closer.
Then, when the moment is right . . . he pounces.
My heart is thudding against my ribs. This could all be complete fantasy. There’s no reason to think the Djinn found me here. No reason to think he’s hiding upstairs in my room, just because I heard a couple of creaks.
But I can’t get that picture out of my mind—a dark figure lying in wait under my bed. Waiting for me to lay down and sleep, so he can rise up from below and wrap his arm around my throat again.
I’m frozen in place, wanting to go out to Raylan, but afraid to cross the dark fields alone. I’m gripping the handle of the fish knife in my fist, rigid and motionless in the kitchen chair. My ears straining for any other sounds that might tell me if what I’m imagining is real, or only just a paranoid fantasy, like a child who runs up from the basement, thinking there’s a monster at their heels.
Silence. Total silence.
I’m an idiot. I’m just making myself scared, sitting alone in a dark kitchen.
Still, I want Raylan more than I’ve ever yearned to see anybody. If he were sitting next to me on the deck, with a drink in each of our hands, I wouldn’t be scared of anything.
He’s got to be almost finished with the horses by now. I’m going to go out to meet him.
Still holding the knife, almost forgetting that I have it, I walk swiftly toward the kitchen door. It’s so dim that I reach out half-blindly, fumbling for the knob.
Right as my fingers close around it, an arm locks around my neck.
I hadn’t heard anything. Not a creak. Not a breath.
The Djinn grabs me from behind and jerks me back off my feet.
His arm is a steel bar around my throat, closing off my air in an instant. He lifts me up off my feet, inhumanly strong. And he squeezes harder.
It’s all too familiar—we’re in air instead of water, but I’m plunged back exactly where we were. I’m drowning again, choking to death in the arms of the Djinn.
His other hand is clamped over my mouth. It doesn’t matter—without air, I can’t scream. And even if I could, Raylan is too far away to hear me.
The Djinn watched and waited. He knew I was alone in the house.
The loss of air is so sudden that my limbs go weak. My fingers loosen. I almost drop the knife.
Almost . . . but not quite.
With every last shred of control, I grip it tight. I blindly swing backward, aiming for his body.
The fish knife plunges into his side. I hear a grunt of pain and fury in my ear. The first sound I’ve heard him make. But he doesn’t let go.
I keep hold of the handle and wrench the knife out again, then swing it back toward him. He jerks away with his body, avoiding the blade. But he has to loosen his hold on my throat.
As soon as I feel his forearm loosen, I turn my chin to the side and drop down with all my weight, slipping out of his grasp. I swing the knife wildly, and this time it sticks into his thigh. I lose my grip on the handle. The Djinn gives a strangled yell and backhands me in the side of the face, knocking me backward.
I slide back across the kitchen tiles. For the first time, I get a good look at the Djinn, in the flesh. Or at least, as good a look as I can get in the dark. He’s dressed in a skin-tight black suit, not so different from the one he wore into the swimming pool. His head is covered by a tight hood, and his eyes look monstrously enlarged like a house-fly, because he’s wearing night-vision goggles. The fish knife protrudes from his thigh.
That’s all I see, before I scramble to my feet again and run for the door. I wrench it open and sprint out of the house, into the backyard. I’m running barefoot across the path between the vegetable and flower gardens. I scream as loud as I can, “RAYLAN!!!” I have no idea how far away he is, or if there’s any chance he can hear me.
We’re so far away from anything. If I try to run to the main road, I’ll have to go over a mile down the driveway. It’s pitch black out, the only lights located directly around the barns and stables. I can’t stomach the idea of running alone through the dark. Especially when I know the Djinn can see much better than I can.
So I run toward the stables instead. I slip inside, smelling the warm scent of the horses, clean hay, and scattered oats. I can hear the horses shifting around in their stalls, their feet thudding gently on the wood floor.
I find Penny’s stall, and I go inside with her. She recognizes me, giving a soft little whicker. She rubs the side of her head against my body.
I say, “Shh,” very quietly.
I stand next to her, heart racing.
I’m regretting not looking around for some kind of weapon—even a shovel or crop. I wanted to get in here as quickly as possible, afraid the Djinn would pull the knife out of his thigh and come out of the house, so he could see where I’d run.
I listen closely, without hearing anything. That doesn’t mean much—I’ve already learned how quietly he can move.
Where did he go?
I can’t hear anything but horses.
Now I’m afraid for a completely different reason. What if Raylan comes back? The Djinn will ambush him. Raylan has no idea what’s going on—as far as he knows, Cal and Dante grabbed Josh and canceled the hit. He has no idea that anyone could come here looking for us.
I shift on my feet, wondering if I should try to cross the fields to find him. I can’t just stay here hiding while Raylan’s in danger too.
Right as I’m about to move, I see Penny’s ears stand up stiffly, and she takes a quick step to the side. I hear Brutus’s angry snort in the next stall over. The horses smell somebody else. Someone they don’t recognize.
The Djinn is inside the stable.
I stay perfectly still. Barely breathing. Time seems atrociously slow.
I don’t know if he saw me come in here, or if he’s just searching the most obvious places. I don’t know how carefully he’ll look, or if he’s just glancing around before leaving. I don’t know if he has a gun, or the fish knife.
I wait, my pupils so dilated that I can see every hair on Penny’s bright, coppery coat. She seems as tense as I am. She can probably smell my fear.
I don’t hear footsteps. I’m hoping, praying the Djinn has left.
Then Penny’s stall door creaks open.
I see the Djinn’s booted feet, standing just past her back hooves.
Without thinking, I slap Penny hard on the flank. She kicks backward with both feet, hitting the Djinn square in the chest. He goes flying backward, crashing through the door of the stall opposite Penny’s.
I’m running again, out of the stable, across the open yard.
I don’t scream for Raylan this time. The Djinn is too close. I don’t want him to hear me.
No . . . he’s not close . . .
He’s right behind me.
I can hear his boots on the gravel—it’s impossible to be quiet here. I hear his ragged breathing. He’s gasping for air, groaning with each breath. He’s obviously injured—possibly Penny broke a few of his ribs. But still that motherfucker is gaining on me. He’s fast and relentless. He’s never going to stop. I have no more weapons. If he gets his arm around my throat again, I’m dead.
He’s closing in. So close that I can feel his hot breath on my neck.
Then, out of nowhere, Raylan hits him from the side. He barrels toward us from the direction of the house, tackling the Djinn sideways, taking him out at the knees so they roll over and over on the crushed stone.
“Run, Riona!” Raylan shouts.
He’s wrestling with the Djinn. He’s got no weapon either, and I see a flash of silver as the Djinn swings the fish knife toward Raylan’s eye. Raylan grabs his wrist, barely twisting the blade in time. It cuts his cheek instead.
Raylan is actually the bigger of the two men, but I’ve never seen someone as fast as the Djinn. He sends slash after slash at Raylan, some blocked and some cutting Raylan on the forearm and the shoulder. Raylan has one hand on the Djinn’s throat and he’s squeezing, while trying to block the knife with the other hand. All this happens in the space of two seconds while I’m rooted in place, staring at them in horror.
I don’t know what to do.
We’re right next to the barn where Grady makes the saddles. Where Raylan and I had our encounter.
I run into it and grab two items off the bench: the lantern and an awl. I sprint back to Raylan, who’s locked in a trembling, static position with the Djinn: the blade of the fish knife pointed at Raylan’s throat, the Djinn bearing down on the handle with both hands while Raylan tries to push his arms back.
The Djinn looks inhuman, those bug-eyed lenses fixed on Raylan, and his face a rictus of fury. I turn the lantern directly at his face and switch it on.
The light flashes right into the night-vision goggles. The Djinn howls and staggers back, tearing the goggles off his face. He’s stumbling and blinded.
“Raylan!” I cry.
I toss him the awl.
He catches it in his right hand and plunges it into the Djinn’s chest. The Djinn shrieks, unable to even see what’s hit him. He feels for it blindly. But unlike the fish knife, he can’t pull the awl out. It’s too deeply embedded, in too vital a place.
Instead, he sinks to his knees with a long gurgling moan. He falls over on his side, the gravel biting into his face.
Raylan kicks the Djinn over with the toe of his boot. The Djinn rolls onto his back, his mouth still working soundlessly.
I step closer, looking down at him. I hold up the lantern so I can see his face.
Without his goggles, he looks . . . utterly average. He has a soft, plain, almost gentle-looking face. Brown eyes, wide and bloodshot now, but almost pretty with their dark lashes under his straight brows. Thin lips and weak chin. A man you would never look at twice, passing on the street.
I suppose that was helpful in his profession.
I look up at Raylan instead.
He’s panting heavily, his shirt slashed open on his shoulder, his right cheek bleeding.
His blue eyes find mine, and I see infinite relief in them as he looks me over, as he sees that I’m safe.
He pulls me into his arms, holding me tight against his warm chest.
“You’re okay. You’re okay,” he tells me.
I think he’s reassuring himself.
