Sadie Hart by Cry Sanctuary Read Free Book Online

shoe scuffed dirt, and she blew out
a long, slow breath. Almost hesitant, not like her boss at all, and
Ollie turned to look the red-haired Hound in the eye. “What are you
not telling me?”
    “He wanted you to find her alive. To be there
when she died. He made sure she’d die, a stomach wound like that—”
Lennox gave her head a small shake. A gut wound, with silver
already eating through her veins, yeah. Claire Rawson had never had
a chance. “I think it’s why he howled. To get you there in time. To
make sure you watched her die.”
    So Ollie would have one more nightmare to
haunt her. She wondered if he’d stuck around to see her hold Claire
Rawson’s hand as the girl had taken her last breath. Like a demon
in the bush, had he waited? Probably grinning the whole time.
Laughing over another victory. He always came back to the crime
scene. He’d have been there, watching. She knew it all the way down
to her soul. And once again he’d gotten away.
    Lennox laid a hand on her shoulder. “There’s
nothing more you could have done.”
    “Keep saying that.”
    Sawyer twisted to look at her, but Ollie
shook her head. “Go ahead, both of you. Just keep saying it, but it
feels like I should have done more. I know him, and he still got
the best of me. Still made me jump. If I hadn’t—”
    “Hell.” Lennox shoved a hand through her hair
and stepped away. “You are way too close to this case. I keep
telling myself to take you off it, but damn. You’re good at your
job, Ol. And you’re right. You know him, which is why he’s fucking
with you, because he knows you, too.”
    Lennox stepped closer, shoving into her
space, and Ollie automatically started to move away, yielding, when
her boss caught her by the arm. “You also beat him. It might not
feel like it to you, but to men like him, they take that shit
personally. You beat him. He wanted you dead the night that Rosalie
Myers died and you got away. That galls him.”
    She knew that. When Ollie was honest enough
with herself to admit it, she knew the knowledge that she’d gotten
away, that she escaped his hunt, drove him mad. It ate at him.
That’s why this was personal now. That was why he messed with her.
She’d beaten him, so now he was upping the ante. “But how many have
to die before we beat him for real? Why can’t he just come after
me?”
    “God. I hope no one else.” The words came raw
from Lennox even as Ollie saw the truth in the ridgeback’s eyes.
There’d be another body. More bodies than either of them really
wanted to imagine.
    The Hunter after all, was just getting warmed
up again.
    Lennox scrubbed a hand over her face. “And I
don’t want him coming after you, either, Ol. That’s too much like
tempting fate.”
    The thought of another moon, another
photograph of a girl who’d die on the next full moon was almost too
much. Ollie lifted a shaky hand to pinch the bridge of her nose.
She was tired of the smiles of women who’d die by the end of the
month, tired of making phone calls to people who’d lost loved ones.
Tired of it all.
    “Some days you wonder why you chose to be a
Hound,” Lennox said, voice soft. Out of the corner of her eye,
Ollie saw Sawyer flinch.
    “No.” Ollie shook her head. “Some days, I’m
exhausted, and I’m tired of losing, but I don’t rethink my job. I
don’t regret begging Brandt to send me to you.” She fixed her boss
a hard look. Determined. “He thinks he chose me, but I chose to
hunt him first. It’s just that right now he’s winning, and I hate
it.”
    What she really wanted was to shoot
something. To watch the bullets tear through paper and imagine it
was the Hunter. “I hate it. But he’d still be killing whether I was
doing my job or not. I don’t wonder why I’m a Hound. I know why.
It’s to catch assholes like him.”
    That made her boss smile. “Good. That’s what
I want you to remember. Because we are going to catch him.”
    A Hound whistled from further up the field,
and