“He’s dying,” she said, and hoped to hell she was right, because she was certain she, too, was leaving this earth. With shouting and footsteps overhead and the rasping final gasps of the man next to her, she closed her eyes and let the calming blackness roll over her.

Bracing himself, his sidearm drawn, Bentz yelled into the dark cavity beneath the Tillman farm’s cabin floor. “Bridges!” he ordered for the third time in as many minutes. “Lay down your weapons! Put your hands over your head and come out!”

No response. Just darkness and the dank smell from a basement that should never have been carved out of lowland soil wafted upward.

Damn it.

A low moan issued from the basement.

“Let’s go!” Montoya, as usual, was pulling at the bit.

This time Bentz agreed and as his flashlight beam washed over the small room below, he saw the dark stain of blood running to a drain in the dark cement. The bruiser of a man who appeared identical, at least facially, to Jason Bridges lay on his side. His throat had been slashed and a dark gaping hole existed where once had been his Adam’s apple. As if his neck had been ripped apart by a hungry wolf. “Jesus.”

Nearby, lying on her back, blood smeared over her lips, her body naked and bound was Chloe Denning. Unmoving. Her skin so white as to be nearly blue, her eyes open.

His heart sank.

They were too late.

“Get the paramedics! Now!” Bentz yelled to Montoya as he swung into the opening and dropped onto the blood-soaked cement floor.

He reached Chloe, checked her pulse and fought the nausea that always found him at a homicide scene.

“Come on, come on,” he whispered to the still girl, willing her heart to beat. But his pleas were for nothing.

If Chloe Denning was alive, she was hanging on by the thinnest of threads.

“Hey! Can’t you read?” a policeman shouted as Jase, ignoring the barricade of police cars and stretched yellow tape, strode through a swarm of cops and EMTs. He was headed toward the small cabin where he now knew his twin brother was holed up.

If Jacob was alive, he was going to meet him. If the son of a bitch was already dead, then he wanted confirmation that his twin had actually existed. Damn. How had he not known? Where the hell was all that twin karma and connection he’d heard about, that Brianna spouted, when he’d needed it. Anger fueled his strides and clenched his fists as he made his way along a patchy, weed-strewn lane. Determination drew him toward the shabby structure that was little more than a shack while lights bars on the parked vehicles flashed wildly against the surrounding fields and forest.

“Didn’t you hear me? Stop. There! Right now!” A cop, identified as Deputy Bill Morrison, was yelling and approaching fast.