Then he tucked his pistol away in his shoulder holster, stepped over Kingston’s corpse, bent, and picked up his knife.

“Should’ve killed that little pissant long ago,” Haney said. “Just like I should have come after you fifteen years ago once I found out you were there in the Palmers’ house that night.” Then he lunged at Charlie with the knife.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Charlie shrieked and threw herself back against the wall.

“Son of a bitch,” Garland roared, flinging himself between her and Haney. She could feel him, she realized, feel his weight and the heat of his body and the solid steely strength of him just as if he were alive, and she guessed that the extremity of her need must have triggered him to materialize physically. His hands wrapped around the chain holding her, and he yanked the ring it was fastened to right out of the wall.

“Who the hell?” Haney yelled as Garland grabbed him and threw him down on the bed.

“Run,” Garland bellowed at Charlie, who did, leaping over the pair of them like a gazelle and darting for the door because she realized that she only had seconds before Garland was mist again and Haney was free to come after her. Leaving Hannah was wrenching, but her escape was the only hope either of them had. As she burst out into what she saw in that first instantaneous glance was a clearing in the midst of a piney woods, the image that was busy branding itself into her mind was what she had seen as she had jumped over Garland and Haney entwined: the handle of that wicked-looking knife sticking out of Garland’s broad back.

He’d taken the killing blow that had been meant for her.

You can’t kill a dead man, Charlie reminded herself savagely, and ran like her life depended on it, which it did. Hannah’s, too. Charlie had no doubt whatsoever that once he had finished with her, Haney would turn back and slaughter the girl.

A string of curses made Charlie glance behind her. Haney leaped from the van, looked around for her. He no longer had Kingston’s knife in his hand. He had his gun instead.

Charlie’s heart exploded with terror. Every tiny hair on her body catapulted upright. She wanted to scream her lungs out. But she swallowed the urge, knowing it would only serve to pinpoint her location for him, and instead ran like a rabbit with the hounds after it.

You really think you can outrun a gun?

Kingston had driven up a dirt track, which he’d clearly turned onto from the road. Keeping to the track would be suicide, no cover there. Charlie had realized that in an instant, as soon as she’d escaped the van, so she was already plunging through the woods. The scent of pine filled her nostrils as she barreled past low-hanging limbs. Even this early in the morning, the heat was intense. Luckily it was summer, though, and the mulch underfoot was green and didn’t crack and snap with her every desperate footfall. The sounds of birds and insects and rustling branches would mask the noise of her flight to some degree, she hoped. The pines were thick with needles, which might keep Haney from spotting her right away. But there was no point in trying to fool herself: it wouldn’t take him long.

Charlie fled, racing through the woods parallel to the track, knowing that her only hope was to get to the road, flag down a car, get to some other human being who could help her before Haney got a clear shot at her.

He means to make it look like Kingston killed Hannah and me.

That much was clear. Horror took over at the realization, clouding her thought processes, causing her to go all light-headed and fuzzy-brained. Haney was the man who’d slit Diane Palmer’s throat, the man who’d murdered Holly, the original Boardwalk Killer. It had been him whom she’d sensed at Jockey’s Ridge. She hadn’t recognized him—just like she’d been afraid all along she wouldn’t recognize him when he came.

And he had come. It was her worst nightmare: He’s come back for me.

Garland must have been kicked back into Spookville, or he would be with her now. It was doubly terrifying to know she was completely on her own.

Please, God, help.…

“There you are,” Haney called with satisfaction, and knowing that she was close enough that she could hear him sent a fresh jolt of terror through her. Glancing fearfully back as she ran, she saw that he’d plunged into the woods about a hundred yards behind her, and that he could indeed see her, just as she could see him.

It took maybe another split second for her to realize he wasn’t chasing her.

He was standing still and snapping up his gun.

To shoot her.

Terror sent goose bumps racing over her skin. Dread slid like ice down her spine.

With all need for subterfuge past, Charlie screamed like a siren and threw herself to the left and kept running. A bullet smacked into a tree trunk just a few feet in front of where she had been.

Please, God, please …

Now Haney was chasing her. She could hear him, cursing and crashing through the branches behind her. How long would it be before he had the chance at another clear shot?

Her skin tingled. She could almost feel a bullet burying itself in her back. Oh, God, would it hurt?

Please …

Then she saw it, through the trees. The black SUV. It was bumping up the dirt track, traveling fast.

Screaming, she bolted toward it. They must have spotted her, because it jerked to a halt.

Charlie burst through the trees just as all three of them leaped from the van, running toward her, guns out and aimed at something behind her.

“Haney, freeze!” Tony yelled. “Drop your weapon.”

Then Charlie reached them, or they reached her. Kaminsky and Crane ran on past, and a single glance over her shoulder told her that Haney was just yards behind her. He stood still, no longer holding his gun, and she guessed he must have dropped it on Tony’s command. His hands were in the air.

Her strength gave out, and she would have fallen to her knees if Tony hadn’t wrapped an arm around her and pulled her against his side.

“It’s okay,” he said. “You’re safe now.”

“Hannah Beckett’s up there in an RV. She’s alive,” Charlie gasped. Then, panting, resting against him, finally allowing herself to believe it was over, Charlie closed her eyes.

A little later, after Hannah was freed and whisked off to a hospital and Haney had been taken away and an obliging cop had removed the dangling handcuff from her wrist, Charlie sat on a fallen log not too far away from the van. Police and FBI were already swarming around, and the medical examiner was said to be on the way. She knew the media wouldn’t be far behind.

She had just watched the Meads come for Bayley. Julie, Tom, and Trevor had all appeared together, not too far from where she sat. Bayley had come running from the direction of the van, and gone right into Julie’s outstretched arms. Then the four of them had done the group-hug thing and gone walking off together, arm in arm, before disappearing.

Charlie liked to think they’d gone into the white light.

Tony had been in the van for a while. Now he came out to join her, sitting down on the log next to her, offering her a bottle of water.

Charlie accepted it with a nod of thanks, unscrewed the lid, and took a long drink. Until that moment, she hadn’t realized just how dry her throat was.

“I have a question for you,” he said. “Haney and Hannah both said something about an instant appearance and disappearance of a big blond guy.”

Charlie shrugged. She wasn’t about to try to explain Garland to him.

The merest suggestion of a smile touched Tony’s mouth. “I don’t want to know, huh?”

Charlie shook her head.

“Fair enough.”

“I have a question for you,” she said. “How did you find me?”

“We were looking for you everywhere when I got a call from the lab. It was the damned ChapStick. In that bundle of stuff you gave me, seems there were two of them. One was still in the pocket of your jeans. The other one had Haney’s DNA on it. Apparently it was his. All we can figure is that he dropped it the night he killed the Palmers, and it somehow got caught up in your clothes. Soon as I heard that, I had the Bureau put a trace on his cell phone. It didn’t take them long to find him, but it seemed like a lifetime to me.”