And if Dexter was anywhere near, he’d heard it too.
Alena moved before she thought, stepping out into the moonlight with Cal at her shoulder. The night felt suddenly too bright, every sound too loud.
Melissa had already broken cover. She came out fast, gun up and aimed at Arneson. He froze, eyes wide, his hands lifting slowly into the air. For a second everything hung there, raw and terrible, like the world was holding its breath.
“Don’t,” Cal murmured to the woman. He kept his gun trained, but there was no cruelty in his voice. He was trying to hold the moment together before it snapped.
Arneson’s voice shook as he tried to reason with her. “Melissa, this has to end. I get it. I know what you’re thinking, but you can’t do this. You’ll end up in jail.”
Melissa’s face was wet with something that wasn’t quite a sob yet. She didn’t lower the gun. She lifted her chin and spat the words out like they were a dare. “I’ll gladly go to jail if Dexter’s punished every day for the rest of his life.”
Her voice cracked, and the confession collapsed into a raw, ragged edge. “You don’t get it, do you? He destroyed me. Youthink being rescued was the end of it? I wake up screaming. I walk through the day like there’s a hand around my throat. I can’t move on. I can’t sleep. He took everything.”
She swayed on her feet, fury bleeding into grief. “I’m done pretending this is about anything else. If I have to stand in front of a jury to say he’s the monster he is, I will. If I have to risk jail to make sure he never walks free again, I’ll do it.”
Alena watched Cal’s jaw tighten. He glanced at her as if he wanted a plan already, as if he wanted to fix this in a way that didn’t involve blood or prison for the woman who’d once been Dexter’s victim.
Arneson swallowed hard. “Melissa, you don’t understand what this does. If you do this, if you kill me, you ruin everything. You make everything messy. People die because of messy. You know that.”
Melissa’s hand trembled around the gun. Her eyes flashed, and for a heartbeat Alena saw again the frightened woman from the warehouse, the one who had been too small in the face of what happened to her. Then that image split with the person standing now, hard and furious, and Alena realized how tightly revenge had braided itself into Melissa’s grief.
Cal stepped one careful pace forward. “Melissa,” he said, voice steadier than she felt, “we’ll do this our way. We’ll get him. We’ll make sure he can’t hurt anyone again. But you don’t go out there and play executioner. Not tonight. Not ever. Let us handle the taking down. Let Raines handle the arrest.”
She laughed once, a sound like a broken thing. “Let the cops? They failed me. They let him slip. They’ll let him slip again.”
Alena felt the anger flare hot and ugly at the edge of everything. Part of her wanted to grab Melissa and shake sense into her. Part of her wanted to let Melissa have this moment offury and see where it led. But mostly she wanted to pull Melissa away from the emotional cliff edge she was standing on.
“Put the gun down,” Alena said, voice soft but iron. She kept her hands visible, palms out, never taking a step that could be read wrong. “You’re not alone in this. But you handing out punishment won’t fix what he did.”
Melissa’s shoulders shook. Tears streaked down her cheeks, but she didn’t lower the gun. “You don’t get it,” she whispered. “None of you do.”
Cal didn’t move to take the weapon. He didn’t shout. He just watched her, waiting, trying to buy a second, anything, for reason to slide back in. The woods seemed to close tighter around them. Alena could still hear the distant crunch of tires, the rustle of leaves, the creek’s steady voice.
In that small circle of light and shadow, with everyone watching and the night holding its breath, Melissa stood between justice and vengeance, and no one knew which way she’d tip.
The crunch of tires snapped through the night, and Alena’s stomach sank. Sheriff Raines’s cruiser rolled up, headlights cutting across the clearing before he swung the door open. He stepped out fast, his hand brushing the butt of his weapon, his gaze sweeping over everything in an instant.
“Melissa, put the gun down,” Cal demanded, his voice clipped and hard.
“No!” Melissa’s reply was ragged, furious. She kept the weapon aimed squarely at Arneson. Her hands shook, but her intent didn’t. “He has to pay, too. He helped Dexter. I know he did.”
Arneson’s face flushed red, his voice raw with desperation. “I didn’t help him. I swear. It was Kara. All Kara. I had nothing to do with it.”
Melissa’s mouth twisted into a bitter smile. “Kara has already paid.”
Alena’s breath caught. “Melissa,” she said carefully, “are you saying you had something to do with Kara’s death?”
For a heartbeat, the woman’s eyes met hers. She didn’t nod. She didn’t shake her head. She just stood there, silent, the gun trembling in her hands.
Cold slid down Alena’s spine. She flicked a glance at Cal, and the look in his eyes told her he was thinking the same thing. Melissa hadn’t denied it. Not for a second.
Which meant Kara’s death might not have been some twist of fate in the firefight. It could have been Melissa all along.
And if she’d orchestrated that…
Alena’s pulse hammered. Had Melissa also been the one behind the ambushes, the fire, all the chaos that had nearly gotten them killed?
The thought burned through her, sharp and brutal. They’d been so focused on Dexter. But maybe the real threat standing before them wasn’t just him. It was Melissa, too.
