I held her words close while the woman put in one final effort. My fingers started getting clammy inside my gloves from pinching so hard, and I didn’t know how much longer I could last without them becoming slippery enough to lose my grip.

Finally, the pressure stopped, and the woman let out a low sigh from the other side of the door before removing the key and following after the man I assumed was her husband. I stood there, stunned for a few seconds, my pulse thundering in my ears. Holy shit, it had worked.

Snapping out of it, I retreated to the computer, where the progress bar on my program had finally reached a hundred percent. I tugged the thumb drives out and erased all traces that I’d hacked my way in. By the time footsteps reapproached the room, I’d killed the computer’s power and was just swinging the office window open.

A rattle told me my time was up.

The moon had risen over the tree line, giving me enough light to make out a drop of ten feet to the pergola below. It was better than nothing. With a silent prayer to any entity who might be listening, I swung out of the window and lowered myself as far as I could, clinging to the window ledge with my fingertips. I took a deep breath and glanced down one last time, trying to aim for the nearest crossbeam as I let go.

The drop was only a few feet, thanks to my dangling act, and I hit the beam just how I intended, feeling a momentary burst of triumph before my boots went skidding off it because of the snow. It was a goddamn miracle that I didn’t let out a shout of panic or a roar of pain as I fell like a human-sized checker in Connect Four. My shins slammed into the beam first, jerking my body forward so my ribs hit it next. That strike bounced me backward far enough that I banged my right shoulder into the opposite beam before finally slipping between them and dropping like a sack of potatoes to the patio beneath.

I sat there dazed for several seconds, trying to figure out which part of me hurt most. Thank fuck I hadn’t hit my head and knocked myself out. Aly was strong, but she wasn’t drag-an-unconscious-two-hundred-and-twenty-five-pound-man-a-mile-through-snow-covered-woods strong.

A tug on my arm had me glancing up to see her panic-stricken face.

“We have to go,” she whispered.

Between her pulling and my piss-poor efforts to stand, we got me mostly upright. Aly immediately threw my arm over her shoulder and tried to drag me toward the woods bordering Brad’s backyard, but I fought her.

“Call Junior,” I wheezed. “Tell his guy to turn the alarm back on.”

“We don’t have time for this,” she insisted.

I grabbed her chin with my free hand and looked at her imploringly. “Please trust me.”

Her expression turned mulish, but she whipped her burner from her pocket and called. “Hi. No, we’re not fine. Someone’s here. We need you to turn the alarm on.” Junior tried to get more information, but she shook her head. “I don’t know. Just fucking do it.”

A second later, she hung up. “It’s done.”

I grabbed a nearby deck chair and slammed it against the French doors leading to the patio.

“What are you doing?” Aly hiss-whispered.

I slammed the chair into them again, hard enough to break them open, hard enough to set the alarm off.

I tossed the chair aside and turned toward Aly. “We have to run.”

She didn’t need to hear anything more, slipping beneath my arm and taking off so fast that I struggled to keep upright as she hauled me toward the tree line.

“Hey!” a man’s voice called out behind us. “Get back here!”

We made it into the woods, where we had to slow down because the shadows were deeper beneath the snow-covered boughs.

Aly glanced behind us. “You want to tell me what that stunt was about?”

“I think it was Brad’s parents in the house,” I said. “They bee-lined right toward his computer. I’d bet you anything they were going to cover up for him somehow.”

“And?” she pressed.

“And in this state, when a home alarm goes off, all the cops have to do is say they believe a crime is being committed to legally enter the house without a search warrant.”

Aly’s eyes flashed wide as she caught on. “You just gave them the excuse to enter the premises they’ve been looking for.”

I nodded. “Once they get inside and smell the bodies, it’ll be all over for the Bluhms.”

She turned toward me and hauled me down to kiss me hard on the lips. The grin that lit her face as she pulled away was bright enough that it felt like the sun had split the darkness. “You’re a goddamn genius.”

I leaned down and gave her a proper kiss, one with tongue and a decent amount of groping.

She looked breathless as I pulled away, and I dropped my hand and twined my fingers through hers. “I’m only a genius if we don’t get caught.”

The lust cleared from her face in a split second. “Oh, fuck. Right. The cops are probably already on their way, and we just left footprints in the snow for them to follow.”

Together, we took off into the night like the criminals we’d become.

OceanofPDF.com

Chapter 23Aly

Inow had the answer to the question, “How fun is it to run through the woods at night during winter?”

About as much fun as having Hannibal Lecter for a gynecologist.

My feet were soaked through because of the snow, I had so many scratches on my face from low-hanging branches that it was going to look like I’d picked a fight with a shredder, and even though it was sub-zero, I was sweating from exertion. I was both hot and freezing at the same time, and between my litany of physical discomforts and the fear and adrenaline pumping through my veins, I was so uncomfortable and wound up that I was ready to burst into tears. I wanted a hot shower, homemade chicken soup, and all the blankets in my house wrapped around me while I made a nest on my couch.

Josh looked even more miserable than I was. I couldn’t stop glancing at him in the moonlight, worried he might suddenly collapse. I’d rounded the corner of the house just in time to watch him ping-pong through the pergola, and though he swore he hadn’t hit his head, I was still wary. I knew from treating people that sometimes, in a fall like that, it all happened so fast you couldn’t be sure of everything that got hit until the bruises showed up.

Thank fuck he’d made it out of the house before getting caught. I’d tried to play it cool while he was in there, but internally, I’d been freaking out. The thought of Josh trapped inside Brad’s mansion while two of Brad’s victims lay somewhere far below made me sick to my stomach.

I didn’t know the full horror of what Josh had been through with his father, but between Tyler’s revelations and Josh’s cryptic comments, it was safe to say that having a serial killer for a parent was the stuff of nightmares. Knowing there were bodies nearby might have retraumatized Josh, and the surreptitious glances I kept sneaking at him were as much about his mental health as they were about his physical well-being.

How he’d had the wherewithal to think of setting off the alarm after everything he’d just been through was beyond me, and it made me look at him with a whole new level of admiration. Not only was my boyfriend funny and kind and hot, but he was also smart as hell. I’d never been so attracted to anyone in my life, and if not for the genuine fear of cops barreling through the woods after us, I would have dragged him to a stop, dropped to my knees in front of him, and showed him just how much I appreciated him.

He looked over at me, his face shaded because of his hat, hiding his expression from view. “The meeting point should be just beyond the next rise,” he said, keeping his voice low.

I followed suit. “Do you think they’re still waiting for us?”

Junior’s voice crackled through our earbuds, making us both jump. “We…here…are you…at?”