Now she was going to die. Not in the same way Marissa had died, thank God. There was a gun to her back. At least it would be fast.

She should have let bad enough alone. She should have packed her things and left or at least kept her mouth shut or called the sheriff’s tip line. Twenty-five thousand was a lot of money.

She was crying. She didn’t want to die. Her feet felt like lead weights. She could hardly move them forward.

She begged. She promised. She pleaded.

She was told to shut up and cracked across the back of the head with the gun. Instantly dizzy, she stumbled and went down on her knees in the dirt.

She was told to get up. Hard to do with her hands taped behind her back. Why not just die here, on this spot? What was the difference? Dead was dead.

But her killer had other ideas.

She was yanked upward by one arm from behind. She got her feet under her and moved forward.

There was no light but moonlight and the headlights behind them. There was no road but the fire road. There would be no other traffic.

No one would save her, and no one would find her. Coyotes would eat her body.

She was turned roughly and marched off the path a few feet. The skeletons of a couple of long-abandoned buildings were like modern sculptures in the near distance. On the ground in front of her were what looked like old storm cellar doors.

She hadn’t thought of it in years, but now she had the clearest memory of the storm cellar doors at her grandmother’s house back East. She had been nine years old. She remembered her brother opening the doors and daring her to go down into the dark, dank cellar. She hadn’t wanted to, but he dared her, and she walked down the stone steps only to have him close the doors behind her.

Her killer stepped in front of her, still holding the gun on her, and reached down to open one side of the door, revealing a large hole in the ground.

There was no such thing as a storm cellar in California.

Her killer turned to open the other door.

Gina bolted, spinning and running back toward the fire road. She tripped and fell. Unable to break her fall with her hands, she hit face-first, crying out as small rocks tore the flesh of her cheek as she skidded.

A hand tangled in her hair and yanked hard, pulling her half up off the ground. She never regained her feet. She refused to. She wouldn’t make it easy. She had to be dragged and kicked and shoved back to the hole as she cried, “No, no, no, no!”

She tried to dodge sideways at the same time the gun went off and the bullet penetrated her body.