She stepped toward him, anxious to take advantage of his diminished state but still wary that he might have a hidden weapon somewhere. To Xander Thurman, being without a knife was like most people being without clothes. She found it hard to believe he didn’t have one.

“Wait. Please,” he groaned as she approached. “I only want to talk. That’s all I ever wanted.”

She hesitated for only a half a second, processing the comment and almost immediately dismissing it. After all, that exploding mannequin he’d shot up moments earlier could have been her. But Thurman took advantage of that half second, swinging at her with the leg of a mannequin she hadn’t realized he’d been gripping.

It collided with her left knee and her leg gave out. She dropped to the floor right in front of him as he swung the leg the other way, slamming the heel into her temple. She sprawled onto her side, briefly stunned by the impact.

She heard him clambering to his feet and tried to do the same. But as she stood, her leg wobbled and gave out again, She dropped to her knees and felt a rush of pain as her kneecaps slammed onto the concrete floor. She looked up and saw that Xander was on his feet now, still holding the mannequin leg. He pulled it back behind his head like a baseball bat and took a step toward her.

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

Jessie Hunt, injured and disoriented, stared at her father as he moved toward her.

Her mind flashed back to another time, many years ago, when she thought she had escaped her father. She was called Jessica Thurman back then. Six years old, she’d been tied to a wooden chair with her eyelids taped open in an isolated, snowbound Ozarks cabin. Her mother stood in front of her, her arms strapped to an overhead wooden beam.

While he made Jessica watch, her father used his hunting knife to gut her mom. Then he left the room, making his daughter sit there, unblinking, as the life slowly drained from her mother’s body and she went limp, her arms dangling uselessly above her head.

At some point Jessica had escaped, running out barefoot into the snowy woods. She ran for a long time. Eventually her feet grew numb. But still she ran, trying to stay ahead of the heavy, booted footsteps not far behind.

Finally she came to a cliff’s edge and looked over to see a raging river fifty feet below. She knew, even then, that jumping off that cliff would be suicide. But it felt preferable to the alternative.

And yet, when the moment came, when her father’s arm reached out to pull her back, she found that she couldn’t take the leap, couldn’t move at all. So he dragged her back through the snow, re-strapped her to the chair, and left her in that cabin with the body of her mother. Only a couple of hunters passing by three days later saved her from certain death.