Emily Kenyon 01 - A Cold Dark Place

coming from his windpipe. Blood trickled from his mouth slowly, like red candle wax. “Three times! You shot me. You didn’t even tell me to drop my weapon!”
    Emily took one step over and kicked the gun away from Walker. Then turned back to Jenna and Olga.
    “Yeah,” she said. “One time for Kristi and”-looking at Olga-“one each for Lorrie and Shelley. I hope you feel each one, you piece of garbage”
    “Call an ambulance!” Dylan coughed out. “Please!”
    Emily lifted Jenna to her feet, and then when she was steady, she turned to Olga. It was as if Dylan Walker was already gone.
    “Thank God you got here,” Emily said. “How did you? How did you know where we were?”
    Olga smiled. “A smart guy who thinks the world of you told me”
    Emily smiled back. She knew it had been Chris. He’d always promised to look out for her.
    “Mom, I love you” Jenna wrapped her arms around her mother. “I knew you would come for me. I’m so sorry. I was so stupid. I shouldn’t have gone off with Nick.”
    None of that mattered. “Honey, we’re all okay. You’re okay.”
    “What about me?” It was Dylan Walker again, weak and pathetic on the cold, hard floor. “I need you to get me help!”
    Olga shrugged. She no longer had a smile on her face. “We’ll call all right,” she said. “After you’ve died.” Olga looked over at Nick Martin, now unconscious. “What about him?”
    Emily shook her head. “He’s a basket case. He’s pretty badly beat up, too. But he’ll live and he’ll go to trial.” She looked at Dylan Walker as he slowly writhed. Life seeped from him. She stared at him. Kristi. Lorrie. Shelley. Jenna. All victims past and yet to be flashed through her mind.
    “Emily?” Olga asked. “You all right?”
    Snapped back into the moment, Emily put her arm around her daughter and pulled her tighter.
    “Yes,” she said. “Let the monster die.”

EPILOGUE
    Six months later, Cherrystone, Washington
    It had been months since The “sexiest killer alive” had been dispatched for eternity in the dark confines of the bunker. Media attention had died down. “He died instantly and thank God for retired Detective Cerrino. Without her intervention we’d have all been on his gristly tote board,” Emily said when she talked to People magazine about her daughter’s kidnapping and the connection between Dylan Walker and the murders in Utah, Washington, and Iowa.
    “Nick Martin told his lawyers that you and the detective purposely let Dylan die. You didn’t get him help because you wanted revenge,” the magazine reporter said.
    Emily sighed. “Poor Nick, he’s such a mixed-up kid.”
    Olga had been over to Cherrystone twice; her friendship with both Emily and Jenna was built on a terrifying night in utter darkness that the three of them shared.
    “No one will miss him,” she said to Emily over coffee at the kitchen table one afternoon during a visit to the old house on Orchard Avenue.
    “Except his Internet fan club,” Emily said. “I feel sorry for those people.”
    Olga’s flinty eyes sparkled. She suppressed the urge to smile.
    “Dylan got what he deserved”
    Emily nodded. “Guess so”
    Olga sipped her coffee. “My girls, Lorrie and Shelley, can rest easy now. So can Kristi.”
    Emily looked over at Jenna who was watching TV in the living room. She swirled some artificial sweetener in her coffee. “We all can”
    In many ways, they could.
    Nick Martin was in county jail awaiting trial for his role in kidnapping Jenna Kenyon, but mental health advisors said he wasn’t sane enough to stand trial, and figured he’d be a shoo-in for an insanity defense. The kid was screwed up. If he was aware of what he was doing-which they implicitly denied-the defense was sure it was the result of a mental breakdown brought on by the murders of his family. He had no hand in the events that brought him to the bunker. He wasn’t a murderer. Bonnie and Dylan had cooked it all up.
    The rental car from the Spokane Airport tied Bonnie to the locale, though the tornado had swept away any real trace that she’d done it or if Dylan had been with her. The same had been true with the Utah and Iowa murders-a paper trail indicated Bonnie, not Dylan Walker.
    Yet Emily knew that Dylan Walker never worked alone. Olga was able to pry some information out of Nick Martin that suggested supposed suicide victim Tyler Ticen had, in fact, been involved in the double homicide of the two college girls from her