Silent Fall

advantage of his mistake, someone who had been watching him -- the shooter, no doubt. He’d tracked them here. Dylan wasn’t surprised. Whoever was after them always seemed to know where they were going. He wanted to figure out how, but right now he had more pressing problems. He had to get to Catherine. She must be terrified.
    Why hadn’t she cried out to him? Why hadn’t she screamed, struggled, fought? The man must have come up behind her, caught her off guard. She’d probably been looking at him, worrying about him. Dammit !
    He’d been so caught up in the past he’d forgotten about the danger that lurked in the present.
    He had to think, focus. His hands gripped the steering wheel as he drove across the island, searching for some sign of the car. But the island was huge, with lakes, forests, hills, thousands of acres, and he had no idea where to go.
    Where would the killer go?
    He was the prime target. Someone wanted him dead. So why grab Catherine? Just to get her out of the way first? Or was there another reason? If his father was behind the plan, then what was his ultimate goal? Had his intention always been to bring Dylan to the island where he was conceived and have him die here? That made some sort of poetic sense.
    But where had he been conceived? In his mother’s house? Somewhere else? How the hell could he figure it out? He didn’t even know who his real father was. He’d been seven years old the last time he’d been here. He barely remembered anything.
    Or did he? Was the answer locked up in his brain somewhere?
    Maybe he should call Jake. Perhaps his brother knew more than he did about his mother and her past relationships on the island, but that would take time, and he didn’t have time. He had to get to Catherine. He had to save her. He knew she was counting on him. He could hear her voice in his head, confident that he would find her, that he would save her. They were connected. They were linked.
    Damn. That was it. He had to open himself up in a way he’d never done before, let all the emotions in so he could hear her. Catherine said she couldn’t get past his defenses. He had to take them down.
    Pulling over to the side of the road, he leaned his head against the steering wheel and closed his eyes, trying to be as quiet as possible. But his own inner voice was too loud, telling him he was an idiot to try to use mental telepathy to solve his problem. He needed to go to the island police, or back to his mother’s house or somewhere.
    Then he heard her voice again, telling him to listen for a change and stop talking.
    Drawing in a deep breath, he focused on Catherine’s face, her blue eyes that revealed so much, her sweet lips, the freckles that dotted the tip of her nose.
    Tell me where you are. Bring me to you. I know you can do it. Make me believe .
    * * *
    Catherine winced with pain as the car hit another bump in the road and her head struck the roof of the trunk. She didn’t know what had happened. She’d been watching Dylan at his mother’s grave, and now she was squished into the trunk of a car. Her hands were untied. She didn’t have a gag or a blindfold. But as she inhaled she smelled it again: that thick, sweet odor that had covered her nose and mouth so quickly that she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t scream.
    She was in big trouble. She searched in the darkness for some way to open the trunk from the inside, but she couldn’t find anything. She stuck her fingers into the thin line of light that streamed into the car, but she couldn’t pry open the heavy metal lid. She was trapped, and she was quite possibly going to die.
    The realization hit her hard. This wasn’t anyone else’s nightmare. It was hers. The man who had killed Erica, who had shot out the windows at the house -- the man whose evil she’d felt in her soul -- was taking her somewhere, and he was going to kill her. She wanted to scream, but she was afraid to draw any more attention to herself. In a moving car would anyone hear her -- except him? Did she want him to know she was already awake?
    She needed to buy some time, figure out a way to save herself, or at least give Dylan a chance to find her. But how was he going to do that? He wouldn’t know where to go, unless he’d seen her get snatched. Even if he had, he’d been on foot. It would have taken him precious minutes to get back to the car. She