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I closed my eyes for half a beat, feeling hopeful. Maybe we’d find him today.

The last guy we’d found on the trail had murdered three women and liked to carve prayers into his own skin. He’d been heavy to move around, thick-necked, with veins like blue rope. I’d kept him alive for four days.

I’d started with his eyes of course. I’d stitched them open with fishing line, so he couldn’t blink away from the mirror I’d bolted to the ceiling. Then I’d heated the brand white-hot and taken my time—one slow press for each girl he’d buried alive. The first eye collapsed like a grape under a boot, fluid hissing out in a scalding cloud. The second held longer… I counted heartbeats while the vitreous boiled and popped, until the broken-moon mark kissed bone and the socket went black and perfect.

He never screamed after that. Just stared up at his own ruined reflection until the light behind the brands finally went out.

I’d taken my time with the rest of him, peeling those prayers off his chest one ribbon at a time.

The needle on the monitor twitched again in a greedy, hungry little jump.

I smiled. “I’m on my way.”

The edge of the woods sat where my land quit pretending to be civilized and went back to what it had always been—pine and rock and old things sleeping under both.

Ryder’s sheriff’s cruiser was already parked crooked along the fence line when I pulled up, dust still hanging in the air around it. Jett’s truck sat beside it, its door hanging open, radio blaring some seventies rock ballad into the quiet like it could scare the trees into behaving.

Jett himself leaned against a fence post, boots crossed at the ankles, with something red and sticky on a stick hanging out of his mouth.

Ryder was crouched in the dirt near a trampled section of barbed wire, tracing something on the ground.

I killed the engine and stepped out, the cold biting at my face. Beneath it lingered a faint, metallic tang—exactly what I’d been expecting.

“Tell me that’s melted popsicle,” I said to Jett, nodding at the red trail running from the stick in his hand down his wrist. He’d replaced cigarettes with popsicles a few years ago and usually tore through a box a day. I still had to check, though.

“Could be,” he said with a grin. “Could be blood from my last victim. Who’s to say?”

Ryder didn’t bother looking up. “You get horny when it’s blood, so that’s an easy guess.”

“You assuming I’m not horny right now?” Jett grumbled, licking his wrist.

“I’m hoping not,” Ryder sighed. “You kept brushing your hard-on against my hip last time. I still have nightmares.”

“Nightmares because of how much bigger it is than yours?” Jett shot back, waving a popsicle stick at Ryder like a smug little baton. “That’d be understandable.”

I joined Ryder, my boots crunching on the frost-covered ground. The fence post beside him leaned at a bad angle, its wire busted and stretched. The ground told the rest of the story.

Boot prints were stamped deep into the dirt, the first few spaced in a steady, normal stride leading toward the trees. But then the pattern shifted. The steps bunched closer together, the toes dragging hard enough to carve lines through the soil. Long scuffs scraped through the heel marks, and a dark brown smear streaked alongside the prints—as if something heavy had been bleeding as he pulled it behind him.

“He hit three posts down the line,” Jett added, pointing with the popsicle stick toward where the fence sagged in a tired bow. “There’s hair stuck to the barbs farther down. I’m guessing one of his victims.”

I crouched, hands on my knees, and continued to study the ground without speaking.

“Trail cams caught him around midnight by cam four,” Jett went on. “By two a.m., he was closer to the old shaft road. Last shot was an hour ago by the creek, heading uphill.”

I rose, wiping the dirt from my palms like I was brushing off the last kill. Jett’s eyes were already on me, his pupils blown wide and shining, with that same feral glint we all got when the leash came off. Ryder stood loose at my shoulder, spinning his knife across his knuckles before it vanished into its sheath.

The silence between us was thick, tasting like blood we hadn’t spilled yet.

“Terms,” I said, low and tight, unable to hide the thrill humming under the words.

Jett’s tongue slid across his lower lip. “First one to drag him down owns the kill. The rest pin the bastard and keep him breathing till the winner’s ready. We’ve only got two hours, though. Rodeo’s tonight.”

Two hours. That was fine.

Although, if we didn’t find this bastard before the arena lights came on, I’d spend the whole night thinking about him in the stands. Or wandering the parking lot. Or slipping behind the chutes while folks cheered, hunting something that wasn’t livestock.

Better to end it now before he spoiled the rodeo for me.