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What he didn’t expect to find was blood. When he saw the first puddle, his breath caught in his throat. Who? Was all he could think. He approached the bedroom cautiously. The blood went from the hall to the bedroom. Maybe someone had been dragged or crawled, judging by the smeared trail.
He held his breath and stepped into the room. Two bodies lie on the bed, facing each other. They must not have been killed in this position. It looked more like a final embrace.
Hunter inspected the scene for several seconds, his thoughts and emotions running wild. Mari’s parents had allowed Opal to come here, to hide. They’d promised to protect her and it looked to him like they’d done so with their lives.
There was no reason to kill them. They were innocent in all this. They didn’t really play a part besides this one small piece of trying to keep Opal safe. And now they were dead. His best guess was that they’d been shot. Perhaps one of them in the bed. The other had been shot and crawled here so they could be together to die.
He covered his mouth and blinked through the tears.
He couldn’t help feeling relieved. It wasn’t Vanessa. It wasn’t Opal. Even Mari’s death would have hit him harder. And he felt terrible that he was relieved. These sweet people didn’t deserve this, and there he was, witnessing their heart-wrenching final scene, and all he could think was, thank God.
He turned from the room. If the cops weren’t here yet, they might be soon and the last thing he needed was to leave behind any sort of evidence. He walked out of the house and made a sweep around the perimeter.
In the back of the house, several hundred feet away, sat a large barn. And in front of the barn, two men in black were walking toward him.
Fresh, raw rage exploded in his chest. The death of Mari’s parents, Vanessa missing, Opal gone, Nicholas’s inability to do anything—it all crashed over him in an instant and set him into action.
He took off running as he pulled his gun from its holster. He fired and the first guy dropped. The sound alerted the second one, and he turned, coming face to face with Hunter’s gun. He shot again. This one hit the guy in the shoulder. Hunter paused his running, took better aim, and hit him in the head. He fell beside his friend, two black-clad thugs dead together.
He resumed his running toward the barn. They had to be in there. If Jeremy’s thugs were walking around outside and they were lurking around the barn, they had to be in there. His heart raced, thinking about what he might find. Would Opal be in there? If they’d killed two innocents already, would they hurt her? And the biggest questions were—was Vanessa inside, and was she still alive?
The adrenaline pumped through him, making him run faster and grip his gun tighter. He reached the door and pounded it open. It slammed against the wall. He stopped and looked around. The barn was dim. No electric lights on and only the sunlight shining through the open door illuminated the building, but it was enough. There were scuffles in the dirt on the floor. Someone had been here. But right now, it was empty.
