Just like her sister who had died doing the same.
Horror filled him.
“Youreallydon’t want to do that.”
“Screw you!”
Adrenaline hit his veins like a drug. He ran harder, pushing through his limits. Lashing out in a violent gesture, he managed to catch one of her flailing wrists. With a hard pull, he sent her stumbling to a halt like a broken toy.
“Nadine. I mean it. You do not want to go into that building. Whatever you think you know, you don’t. Come back to the house with me, and I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
She was just a sparrow, fluttering at the bars of the cage that would squeeze her to nothing but blood and pulp and feathers. She needed gentle coaxing before she dashed herself to pieces on the very truths she thought would set her free. Noelle hadn’t waited and she was with the others now.
“Think of your sister,” he urged, a catch in his breathing.“Remember.”
Nadine blinked, and he dared to hope that she would come. That he could take her in hand and fix this before it all went to rot.
Then she shoved at him with a ferocity he hadn’t expected, letting out a harsh cry. Cal grabbed at her again, his fingers grazing fabric as she spun herself out of reach and hurtled towards the sheriff’s office—and her doom—despite his roared command for her to stop.
Fuck. He ran faster.
The old sheriff’s station had been built back in the 1880s and its splintered old door cracked like thunder as he slammed it open, sending up a cloud of wood fibers where it met the wall.
They painted a dramatic picture, the two of them. Nadine, huddled beside Rael like she thought he might offer his protection, and Gideon seated laconically at his desk like a sated bear. Rael looked at him long and hard, his eyes flicking to his father.
“Whose murder?” Gideon asked her, as if there had been no interruption. He toyed with the brass handles of his desk, looking far too casual for the situation at hand.
Nadine swallowed hard. “I—I don’t know. Several.”
“Goddamn it, Nadine.” He moved towards her and paused, a sense of déjà vu threatening to overtake him entirely when the sheriff lifted up a warning hand. “Don’t.”
“It was his family,” Nadine blurted. “His whole fucking family. They’re all crazy and I have proof.”
Gideon looked at him. His father often wore that look, too; it was like looking at a cliffside that had been weathered by cruel and inclement weather: a jaded indifference to all but the inevitability of life’s red and bloodied jaws.
“She says she has proof, Caledon.”
“She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.” The words were glass shards in his mouth. Nadine bristled visibly.
“Yes, Ido. My sister left notes—I found them all over—in the cave, in curtains. She was trying to warn me. She sent me a postcard that told me that she was in trouble and that she needed help. I d-don’t know what they did to her, but I found a journal under the floorboards. I think—” she drew in a sobbing breath “—I think they’re hunting women. I think they huntedNoelle.”
Tears were pouring down her face now. She couldn’t see Gideon reach into his drawer.
But Cal did.
“I see. Well now. That’s a lot to take in.”
“I need to get out of here,” she cried. “I c-can’t go back to them.”
“You won’t.” The words were like the blade of an axe falling, coming from his father’s oldest and most loyal friend. “Don’t worry. You won’t be going anywhere.”
Nadine lifted her head. “W-wait what? What does that mean?”
Rael grabbed her before she could run, murmuring something in an undertone. Cal saw the instinct rise in her eyesalong with the fear and she gave a single, futile jerk as Rael’s father approached from the side.
“What?” she said again, staring at Rael with a look of horror he’d already glimpsed far too many times.
Then his father drove the syringe into her throat.
