“You knew.” Betrayal scorched up her throat and triggered a wave of nausea. How many times had she trusted Danny to have her back? How many nights had she cried in Danny’s arms when Murray had failed to live up to her expectations? Two years. They’d been roommates. They’d been friends. And it’d all been a lie. “You knew what he was doing, that he was killing people—that he tried to kill me—and you never said anything. How is that trying to keep me out of it?”
A line of silver glistened in Danny’s eyes as she maneuvered herself back onto the park bench. “I didn’t know. Not at first. Please, you have to believe me. I didn’t know he’d set the first two fires. I didn’t even know he was in Zion until I was assigned to respond to the campground explosion.”
Stinging pain bit into her palms as she tried to break the leverage of the zip ties, but even if she managed to free herself, it was two against one, and Aslen wasn’t sure she could hurt her friend. Or that she’d survive the encounter with the arsonist. The weight of his attention pressed on her chest as Aslen cut her gaze to Jaylan Kennex. “Who were they? The people you killed.”
“Our parents.” Two words had never held so much weight to them. The arsonist—the murderer—slid both hands into his front jeans pockets, legs spread as though he expected her to tackle him at a moment’s notice. Which she hadn’t decided against. She owed him for throwing her overboard into the reservoir. A red gas can at his feet claimed her focus.
“You killed your parents.” Bile slithered up her esophagus, and Aslen tried to pull one boot from the zip tie at her ankles. “Why?”
Danny leaned forward on the bench, her elbows against her knees. She picked at the calluses she and Aslen had both developed over the years of wrangling hoses, hauling equipmentand having to get their hands dirty in every fire they’d been dispatched. Sisters. She’d thought they were sisters, but now? Aslen didn’t know the woman sitting in front of her. “I told you my mom and dad were angry when I left their church, which was an understatement, but that’s not the whole reason.”
It took a few breaths and a glance toward her brother for Danny to corral an explanation. “Growing up, our family would come here to Zion, specifically to Lava Point. There weren’t as many rangers patrolling this area as the more popular areas of the park. My parents knew that, and they took advantage of that to…educate me and my brother”
“I don’t understand.” And why on earth did she want to? Why was she looking for ways to be less angry at Danny than she was? Her best friend had let this happen. She and her brother had abducted her. Again. They’d bound her wrists and ankles and intended to ensure she couldn’t tell Murray and his rangers the identity of the arsonist.
“Our parents believed the entire world was about to collapse to make way for their God’s second coming.” Jaylan Kennex moved in, his boots scuffing on the packed dirt of the overlook where thousands of visitors had come before him. The events of the past few days—a wildfire, the explosion, news of an arsonist on the loose—had kept hikers clear of the area. No one was coming to save her.
Least of all the man who’d outright rejected the love she had to offer since she’d been thirteen years old.
“My entire life, Jaylan’s too, we prepared for that day. As a family. We were told it would be us against the whole world, and we needed to know how to survive the evil coming for us. We moved to a compound in the middle of nowhere with people who thought just like my parents. Cut off from everything we knew, everyone we loved.” Danny wiped her palms down her uniform slacks. “We grew our own food, stocking up on guns andammunition. We had Bible study morning, noon and night then survival training.”
Danny looked to her brother then, her face losing color.
“They left us in the middle of these woods for days to see if we would survive. Same with the other children from our compound.” Jaylan’s attention locked on his sister, and Aslen could see the hurt there. The difference in their ages was obvious as they stood together, Danny a few years younger. “No tents, no food, no water. No supplies. We were instructed to meet at a location within three days, and if we didn’t make it, we weren’t coming home. Our parents couldn’t afford weak children in times of chaos. I had a few more years of experience. I spent a good amount of time learning the skills I needed, but Danny… Our parents dropped us off, blindfolded, at two separate starting points. She was only four the first time.”
Aslen’s heart hurt. For the treatment they’d suffered, for the pain of being hardened so early in life, for the understanding the siblings shared in this moment. The same look she and Murray had shared so many times. But none of it justified the murder of two innocent people and the attempted murder of a ranger.
“It took me two days to find her. I didn’t even care about meeting our parents’ timeline. I couldn’t leave her out there to die.” Jaylan slid his hand over Danny’s shoulder, and his sister covered his hand with hers. “She was soaking wet, suffering from hypothermia after falling in one of the streams. She was so blue, I didn’t think I’d ever be able to get her warm. I swore then I would never let anything happen to her again, that I would protect her. It wasn’t our family against the world. It was me and Danny against our parents. So I taught her what she needed to know every time we were dumped in these damn woods, just enough to keep her alive until I could get to her. And I took the lashings our parents doled out when they found out I was helping her survive.”
Aslen’s heart shot into her throat. That same promise Murray had made to her all those years ago. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. That promise was responsible for transforming Murray from the popular, fun, outgoing boy who’d brought her into his home into an arrogant guardian, and she’d hated it. Murray’s commitment to her protection had made her feel as nothing more than an obligation he couldn’t rid himself of, but seeing how far Jaylan Kennex had gone to ensure his sister’s survival ripped the world right out from under Aslen.
Murray had told her he couldn’t love her. But the truth was, he already did. In the way he’d followed her to Zion, in riding her to study harder than anyone else through high school and college, to have her reassigned to the visitor’s center after the explosion, confronting her foster mother every night, vetting those boyfriends before allowing her on a date, keeping her from drinking at restaurants, training her to defend herself from some invisible threat she never understood. She’d hated it all, but now she understood. It’d been his way of not just keeping that promise but showing her how much he cared. That he loved her.
And, damn it, she would go to war for him. For them.
“So you killed them.” Aslen swallowed against the rush of relief as the zip tie at her back broke. Using the lessons Murray had taught her to escape, she’d angled her wrists against a rock, and the pressure had snapped the plastic, but she kept her hands hidden. She couldn’t go anywhere with the ties still secure around her ankles.
“They were a threat to my sister.” A hardness Aslen had glimpsed in the second leading up to her going over that boat railing filtered into Jaylan Kennex’s expression. “And so are you. You’ve seen our faces. You know our names. I can’t let you turn us in. Danny deserves better.”
“So do I.” Aslen snapped her knees apart. The tension severed the zip tie around her ankles, and she pushed to stand.
Jaylan didn’t have the chance to defend himself as she rammed her shoulder into his soft organs and shoved him off balance. He tripped over the gas can at his feet and hit the ground.
And she ran.
Chapter Twenty-Six
His headlights cut across the landscape, but he was losing daylight every mile he raced to get to Lava Point. He’d cut the drive that normally took two hours down by pushing his pickup as fast as it could take the dirt road leading him north.
Murray couldn’t neutralize the terrifying need to get to Aslen as soon as possible. Sweat built between his bandages and his burned palms, aggravating the healing skin, but he didn’t care. He’d face a thousand more fires and third-degree burns if it gave him the chance to find her.
Because he loved her. He was in love with her.
And he’d already wasted too much time trying to convince himself otherwise. She’d withstood years of his rejection, fighting for them over and over, supporting him the best way she knew how, while he’d practically paraded an endless line of women in front of her. She’d campaigned for him to hold on to his family with memorials and celebrations while he’d tried to brush the people he’d lost from his mind. Aslen had given him purpose through the promise he’d made her all those years ago, but she’d stopped him from losing his humanity. And he’d let her walk away.
Murray would never forgive himself for that. He’d spend the rest of his life making it up to her if that was what she needed from him, but he had to find her first.
His tires skidded across packed dirt as he cut onto West Rim Road. The one-lane road took him past the West Rim Trailhead toward the campground. Chief Higgins had said that was where he’d find Danny Kennex, but Murray’s rangers finished at sunset. While Springdale PD and other departments were equipped to continue investigations late into the night with manpower and spotlights, Zion law enforcement had limited resources they didn’t dare waste. Which meant Danny had most likely ended her shift, maybe even had gone to meet Aslen, considering neither of them had a home to go back to at this point. He hadn’t spotted any other vehicles heading back to headquarters on his way north, and right then, he wished he hadn’t destroyed his phone.
