Chapter Nine: Bait
They didn't sleep. There was no point in pretending they would.
Max laid it out on the kitchen table like a map — except there was no map, just his hands moving over the wood, drawing the road, the riverbank, the house. "He's got the dot," he said. "He's sitting in that hotel room right now looking at it. He'll come at first light. Men like him don't like the dark when they're the ones doing the hunting — too many places to hide. He'll wait for gray light and then he'll drive out here."
"To the house."
"To the dot." Max's finger stopped on the table. "Which is here. So we don't be here."
Nikki stared at his hand. "I'm the bait."
It wasn't a question, but he answered it anyway. "You're the reason he comes. That's different from bait — unless you say yes to the rest of it."
"What's the rest of it."
"You go down to the water before dawn. You soak your clothes through. Mud, leaves, the whole thing — you look like you've been out there since the bridge. Like I never found you. Like the house never happened." He looked at her steady. "My truck goes up the logging road where he won't see it. Lights off. House dark. I'm in the tree line with a clear view of the road. He drives past the house — because there's nothing here to stop for — and he finds you on the riverbank road, alone, looking like the river finally gave you up."
"And then."
"And then he's Derek." Max's voice didn't change, but something in his jaw did. "He'll stop. He'll get out. He'll grab your arm and tell you to get in the car. And when he leans in close — " He opened a drawer and set a small canister on the table between them. "You empty this in his face."
She stared at it. "Pepper spray."
"Stronger. One good burst at close range and he won't see straight for twenty minutes." He pushed it toward her. "That's your takedown, Nikki. Not mine. I'm the backup. You're the one who ends it."
Her hand closed around the canister. It was lighter than she expected. "I'm scared."
"I know."
"I'm tired of being scared."
"I know that too." He covered her hand with his — the canister between their palms, small and hard. "You don't have to do this. Say the word and we run instead. I'll have you three counties away by sunup."
She looked at him for a long time. Then: "No."
"No?"
"No." Her fingers tightened around the canister. "I'm done running from him. If this is how it ends, I want my hands on the ending." A breath. "Yes. I mean yes."
The night was the worst part. Worse than the river, she thought later. The river had been fast. The night was slow.
They sat in the dark kitchen with the lights off, listening to nothing. At three in the morning Max made tea neither of them drank. At four he checked the tree line with binoculars. At five he stepped onto the porch and made a phone call, low-voiced — the sheriff's office, staged two miles out, lights off, come on his text. Then the sky started going gray at the edges, and Nikki stood up.
"Time."
The water was so cold it stopped being cold. She walked in up to her knees and then sat down in it, all the way, and let the river take her clothes. It took about thirty seconds. When she stood up, the current had her jeans plastered to her legs and her shirt stuck to her back, and her teeth were going like a snare drum.
Mud next. She smeared it up her arms, across her cheek. Leaves — she pressed a handful into her hair, into the wet shirt at her shoulder. She looked down at herself and almost laughed, which scared her more than anything had yet, because it meant some part of her was still in there, watching.
Max was waiting at the top of the bank. He didn't say anything about how she looked. He just held out the canister, and she took it, and slipped it into her front pocket where her hand could find it without thinking.
"Trees," he said. "I'll be close enough to hear you breathe."
"Don't come out until — "
"Until it's done." He nodded. "Your show, Nikki."
She walked down to the road alone.
The truck came twenty minutes after full light.
She heard it before she saw it — gravel popping under tires, the engine working a little too hard, like the driver was in a hurry and trying not to look it. She kept walking. Slow. Limpy, even. A girl who'd been in the woods all night, who didn't know a truck was coming, who had nowhere to be.
The truck stopped ten yards past her. Door slammed.
"Nikki."
She turned. And there he was — Derek, in a jacket she didn't recognize, his face doing the thing it did when he was performing concern for an audience of one. Behind him, the empty road. Behind her, the river, going brown and fast.
"Jesus Christ." He came toward her fast. "Jesus, Nikki, look at you — "
"Don't." She backed up a step. Her voice came out thin and real. "Don't touch me."
"I'm not — baby, I'm not going to hurt you." He kept coming. Inventory eyes, just like Max had said — taking in the wet clothes, the mud, filing it. "I've been looking everywhere for you. Your phone — I tracked your phone — "
"I know."
That stopped him for half a second. Then his face changed — the concern peeling back like wet paper, showing what was under it. "Get in the car, Nikki."
"No."
"Get in the car." Louder now. He closed the distance and his hand clamped around her upper arm, hard, the old familiar hard, and yanked her toward the truck. "We're going home. This is done. You're done — "
He leaned in close to say it, his face inches from hers, spit at the corner of his mouth —
— and she emptied the canister into his face.
It wasn't brave. It wasn't clean. Her hand was shaking so bad she almost dropped it, and the burst caught his eyes and his mouth and her own knuckles. But it worked. Derek reeled back screaming, both hands clawing at his face, and the grip on her arm tore loose —
— and Max came out of the trees like the ground had thrown him.
It was over in seconds. Derek on his knees in the gravel, blind and gasping. Max's knee in his back, restraints around his wrists, tight. Max's voice, low and absolutely calm: "Derek. I'm Max. I've been looking for you for three weeks. You're caught."
Nikki stood there with the empty canister in her hand, water dripping off her sleeves onto the gravel, and watched the man who'd owned her fear for a year kneel in the dirt with his face streaming.
Then her knees went. She sat down hard on the road and cried — not the pretty kind, the ugly kind, shoulders shaking, mud on her face mixing with it. Max was there before she'd finished falling, his jacket around her shoulders, his arms around her but careful, always careful, giving her the choice of it even now.
"It's done," he said quietly. "You did it. It's done, Nikki."
Behind them, Derek was still coughing. Above them, the sky was going blue. Somewhere down the road, far off, a siren started — thin at first, then stronger. Max's five-a.m. call, rolling in on cue.
Nikki leaned into Max's shoulder and cried, and the river kept going past, brown and fast and not interested, the way rivers were.