Chapter 26: Sebastian - Hunter or Hunted

On the ride home, Lizzie caught me up on her past few days. She’d attempted snowboarding on the ridge at the ranch but learned quickly that she preferred tubing.

Aubrey showed her how to apply lash clusters. They poked her in the eye every time she blinked though, so she’d have to get Simone’s advice before attempting them again.

She asked about the funeral. I gave no specifics. Just said it was fine.

But as we went through the motions with dinner, then the nightly routine of showers and pajamas, and watching bad TV on the sofa, my mind stayed in Missouri.

I told Gwen I had conditions, and the list rapidly compiled in my mind.

Once Lizzie fell asleep, I wrote it all down in a notepad. One I’d burn once I relayed it all to Gwen.

In the morning, Lizzie and I got dressed. I stuffed one of my conditions into a backpack and tossed it over my shoulder, then shot Gwen a text.

Hey, we’re heading to the ranch now. No rush or anything, we’ll just hang around ’til you’re ready to go.

She texted back just as the truck finished warming up.

Gwen

I’m ready now actually(: Question though, do you mind being Edwards’ date so I can be Simone’s?

He has to buy me dinner first, but sure. What’s going on?

lol I’ll explain when you get here.

So that’s what I was counting on, but when Lizzie and I arrived at Gwen’s door, Simone answered. Despite the makeup and her typical attire—black skinny jeans, a laced black top, and knee-high black boots—something seemed off in her expression. A tiredness I couldn’t quite put into words.

“I gotta finish getting Junie dressed,” she said, “but we’ll be ready soon. Gwen took Honey for a quick walk though. She just left a few minutes ago, you could probably catch up to her.”

“Oh, this is actually perfect. You’re just the lady I was looking for,” Lizzie said, brushing past me into Gwen’s cabin. She leaned close to Simone and peeled her eye wide open with her thumb and forefinger. “Can you help me with my lash clusters? They keep poking me.”

A little light came back in Simone’s eyes. She laughed and spared me a glance. “I’m a liar. We’re not gonna be ready soon.”

Which I didn’t mind, because I wanted to talk to my partner in crime privately. “I’ll go find Gwen then.”

She was about a mile down the trail through the woods behind her cabin, walking Honey on her long lead.

As soon as I called out, “Gwen!” Honey spun around. She ran as fast as she could, as hard as she could. The leash caught and wrenched her back. She flopped backward into the snow, making my heart stop.

But she was back on all fours in milliseconds, butt up in the air, front paws crouched forward.

I dodged snow-doused branches and moved as quickly as I could, but ice shone in the snow-packed ground underfoot. It took me far longer than it should have to catch up.

“Hey, you.” Gwen’s smiling red lips popped against the white snow that gathered on her black scarf. She’d wrapped it around her head to protect her cheeks from the cold wind, but the apples of them stayed bright pink. “We were circling back, you didn’t have to come all the way down here.”

“I wanted to.” I bent down to greet Honey. Tongue flapping from her jaws, she rolled onto her back and soaked up all the attention I gave.

As I straightened, Gwen came in for a quick kiss. I wanted to stay there a moment longer, but she tugged back. “Might be too cold for a quickie in the woods.”

I choked on a laugh. “My ego couldn’t handle the shrinkage.” She chuckled, and so did I. “No, I wanted to talk to you about some stuff. Is there a nice seat-shaped rock around here somewhere?”

“There’s a bench a little while down the path.” She took my hand and gestured ahead. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, everything’s fine.” Her gloved fingers warmed my icy palms. “How’s Honey adjusting to Samson?”

“Oh, Honey’s an angel. She loves cats. But cats hate Honey. Samson especially hates Honey.”

“Aww.” I laughed. “Is it that bad?”

“It’s pretty bad.” She rubbed her temples, watching Honey frolic in the snow a few yards ahead of us. “Maybe they’ll get used to each other?”

“Or maybe I could take him.”

She stopped and looked up at me. “What?”

“Well, if you’re okay with that.” I shrugged. “Lizzie’s been talking about wanting a cat. I’ve been trying to persuade her into a dog. But cats are easier anyway, and I get my puppy fix with Honey. Plus, the poor little guy’s been through enough. If he hates dogs, it’d suck for him to be stuck in a tiny cabin with one for the rest of his life.”

Eyes a little glassy, she blinked at me through snow dusted lashes. “You’re so sweet.”

I waved her off. “Just give me a definitive so I don’t get Lizzie’s hopes up.”

“I think it’s a great idea,” she said. “Then I still get to see him, and I know he’ll be in good hands.”

“It’s a plan then.” I lifted our held hands to my lips and pressed a kiss to the back of her gloved knuckles. “You’re gonna make Lizzie’s day.”

“Where is she anyway?” Gwen glanced over her shoulder. “She’s coming, right?”

“Up at your cabin. She kicked me out. Something about lashes poking her? She needed Simone’s help.”

“Ah.” Gwen gave an understanding nod. “She went to the right person.”

“What’s going on there? Why’s Edwards my date now?”

A long sigh followed by the explanation. By the end of it, we were sitting on the old wooden bench, surrounded by the silent forest, and I was sighing too. “If Rhiannon’s freaked out, we should be too.”

“I guess, yeah. But she has no evidence. And Simone didn’t do it anyway. They’re not gonna find the body.”

They could. If Angela could build enough suspicion, Rhiannon would let them search this land without a warrant. They wouldn’t find anything, but if they kept digging? If they connected Gwen to it, I wouldn’t be far behind. My land would be next.

“Soon, there won’t be a body to find.” I dropped the pack off my shoulder, unzipped the front pocket, and lifted out a sheet of folded paper. I passed it to her.

Gwen squinted for a second or two, reading the document, then side-eyed me. “A crematorium?”

“I’m signing the papers next Monday,” I said. “The sale’s gonna be quick because I’m paying cash. As long as Angela doesn’t find enough evidence to connect it to us in the next month, we’ll be fine.”

Blinking hard, she dropped the papers to her lap. “You bought a crematorium?”

“One of my conditions. We leave no trace. No body, no crime.”

“You know, this is gonna sound crazy.” Her eyes softened. “But this is the sweetest thing anyone’s ever done for me.”

“More depressing than crazy.” I tucked the papers into my jacket pocket.

“Touché.”

“And don’t get all hot and bothered. It’s just as much for me as it is for you.”

She laughed, though it lacked humor, and there was no real joy in my smile. Just an ironic, deadpan reaction to the venture we’d decided to walk.

“Also fair,” she said. “What else do you have in that bag?”

“Another condition.” I went back into the front pocket for the sheet of paper I planned to burn later. “We’ll get to that one last. There are a lot to get through first.”

“Alright.” She swiveled on the bench to face me head-on. “Throw them at me.”

“Well, both of our first times were a mess,” I said, looking at my notes. “We were angry and scared, so we let our emotions get the best of us. We lost control because we didn’t have someone else to lean on. We carried it all on our own. It can’t be like that. Before doing this, we have to figure it out together. All the decisions, the planning, we discuss it and confide in one another. We know how hard it is to do this alone, and I don’t think either of us could survive that loneliness for much longer.”

Something sparkled in her eye. Kinship? Appreciation? But she nodded. “Acting alone’s dangerous. We’re better together.”

My chest warmed. I cleared my throat. “Whatever we do, whoever we’re after, it can’t touch our lives. We have to take precautions to make sure that we protect our reputations, but also that we protect the ranch. We can’t use the incinerator at the meatpacking plant, even if we’re in a bind and something happens with the crematorium. Rhiannon has spent her entire life protecting the women here, and we can’t risk hurting them.”

“Or her.” Gwen lifted one leg onto the bench, tucking it under her thigh. “I agree. No one in town, nothing gets back to the ranch. That keeps us and our people safe.”

So far, this was going better than I expected.

I turned back to my notes, breath clouding before my face on this one. “We always have to weigh the risk versus the impact. There are more bad people out there than we have time or capacity to handle. We won’t be able to get them all. There might be someone who really deserves it who we just can’t get to because doing so would guarantee we wind up dead or in prison.”

“We can’t protect anyone if we’re dead or in prison.” At Gwen’s feet, Honey sat up with a stick between her teeth. She started a game of tug-of-war with her, sparing me a half smile. “I’m not arguing with you. That’s fair.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“But you came into this conversation half expecting an argument, didn’t you?” She arched a brow at me, still smiling, and still tugging on that stick for Honey. “You can let out that breath you’re holding.”

I chuckled, my shoulders falling.

Maybe she was right. Maybe I had expected an argument. And maybe that had nothing to do with Gwen and everything to do with the fact that conditions and boundaries were as foreign to me as they had been to Gwen when she’d first arrived at the ranch.

“Go ahead. Looks like you got a few more on there.” She gestured to my paper. “What’s the next one?”

Running a hand over my mouth, I skimmed down my page. “Four and five kind of go together. About the planning. We can’t do this all the time. Not just because neither of us have time in our schedules for it, but because we want to stay away from patterns. I’d say the most we can manage is two per year. Which also ties back into risk versus impact, but it’s just a matter of realism. We can’t handle more than that.”

“That’s probably all I have the emotional bandwidth for anyway.” Honey finally released the stick, and Gwen tossed it. Honey barreled to the end of her leash in search of it. “If that, even. It’s not like I meet people every day who deserve to die. But around here, around all these women…” She gestured vaguely around the ranch we sat within. “After Evan, there could be another. I don’t know when, and I’m not on a mission to find him. But the goal here is to be prepared when that time inevitably comes, right?”

“Right.” Hearing it spoken that way softened the remaining tension in my shoulders. “In that same vein, if we get interrupted for any reason, if there’s a witness, we walk away. Run, I guess I should say. It’s better that we get caught and put in prison for attempted kidnapping than murder, but my point is just⁠—”

“I would never kill a bystander just because of the risk they pose to our freedom.” Gwen’s lips tugged downward. “We’re on the same page, Sebastian.”

I’d suspected she would say that but hearing it from her own lips eased my skipping heart. “I figured. I just wanted to make sure I laid it out on the table.”

She gave another hint of a smile. “Is that all?”

“Three more,” I said. “Never anything in public. You were lucky with David. You could’ve been completely screwed though. So we have to have a second location. Somewhere else to bring them. I’m gonna get one of those big camper vans for transports too. Better to keep DNA and shit like that out of our daily drivers.”

“Might take some time to find something like that, but I’m alright with it. I never want to be in that position again.”

“Now, this is a big one,” I said. “And it’s not an accusation. I just want to say that first.”

She squinted at me. “Okay?”

“It’s just… I…” A sharp breath cut me off. “If we start enjoying it, we stop.”

“Alright, I get why you opened with the disclaimer,” she muttered. “But shouldn’t be an issue. The only thing I liked about it was knowing that David was gone.”

“I know. And I felt the same way about Jason.” My throat tightened, and I trailed my tongue along my suddenly dry lips. “But I don’t know, you know? If we do this more often, if we normalize it, I don’t know how my brain is gonna regulate. Hopefully it stays the same. How it was with Jason, how it was with David. Procedural. Technical. But my dad liked hurting us.” Gwen started to say something, but I continued before she could. “And I know I’m not him. But I also understand genetics. There is some genetic component to psychopathy, and I know that I’m not. I love, and I care, and I feel. I genuinely don’t know if my dad ever did. But I just… I can’t become him, Gwen. And that’s why I have to ask for you to be the one who does the killing. I’ll handle the bodies. I’ll help with the cleanup and the capture, but I can’t kill. I can’t do it again.”

Frowning, she reached out for my face. She trailed her thumb across it. “I won’t ask you to.”

That shouldn’t have made my cheeks as warm as they became. “Thank you.”

She took my hand and gave it a squeeze. “Is that all?”

“There’s one more,” I said. “Do you have any before we get to that one?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. There are a lot of things that I’ll probably have to decide as we go. But I am certain about one thing. I won’t kill a woman. Not unless she gives me no other choice.”

“Can’t say I’m surprised by that one.” I snorted a laugh.

Gwen glared. “Why is it funny?”

“It’s just very on point for you.”

“I know how it sounds. But this doesn’t come from a place of misandry. I know that there are really shady women out there, and the world might be better off without them, but I just don’t think I could do it.”

“I couldn’t either, so I’m not judging.” I raised my hands in surrender. “Does that make us sexist though?”

“Hell if I know.” Choking on a laugh of her own, she rubbed her temples. “Historically, almost every man and woman who has been hurt in some traumatic way was hurt by a man. The power dynamic is different. So maybe it’s just our twisted sense of equity?”

Maybe. I didn’t know. But Gwen just eliminated half the population from her kill list, and I wasn’t going to argue over that.

“Speaking of equity. That’s what my last condition is about.” I lifted the backpack onto her lap. “And this is the only one I’m calling more of an ultimatum than a rule. I don’t know if that makes me demanding or unfair, but if you don’t accept this condition, I’m out.”

Squinting, she cocked her head to the side. “And it’s in the bag?”

“It’s in the bag.” I gestured to it. “It’s like you said. About the power dynamic.”

Still squinting, she slowly slid one of the zippers open. With a glance at the wads of cash inside, she huffed and rolled her eyes. “I’m not taking your money, Sebastian.”

“You have to,” I said. “You have to take it, and you have to bury it. Not here, not at the ranch. Somewhere else. Somewhere I don’t know about, somewhere no one knows about. If you don’t, I’m out, Gwen.”

“You’re insane.” She laughed and started to push the bag back into my lap. “What is that, fifty grand? I don’t need⁠—”

“You might.” More like two hundred and fifty, actually. “If we ever get caught, if we ever need to run, if you ever need to run before I can because I get caught or something, or my accounts are frozen, you need insurance.” I placed the bag back in her lap and put my hand over top of it so she couldn’t shove it back at me again. “I’ve got a bag buried too. It’s not fair that I have a way out and you don’t.”

Her eyes softened, but a frown tugged at the edges of her lips.

“There’s a burner and a charger in there,” I said. “Also a few numbers on a note card. If you ever need to run, call them in numerical order. They’ll arrange a private flight to get you out. The worst case scenario we hopefully never come to, but I’ve got a way out. You deserve one too.”

“I get what you’re saying,” she said. “And I appreciate the thought. But I can’t take handouts like this⁠—”

“Because you think I might hold this over your head one day, and I won’t.” I grabbed her hand from her side, set it on top of the bag, then wrapped my fingers around hers. “I promise you, I won’t. That’s why I want you to take it far from here. Somewhere I don’t know about, so you have some sense of security.” I continued before she could argue again. “It’s not fair, the way things are right now. If I wanted to leave, if I wanted to turn you in, I could pack and be gone by the morning. And you can’t. Not without this. If shit ever hits the fan, you’re screwed. And that’s not how relationships are supposed to work. I’m able to offer you some insurance, and if I’m going to call myself anything close to a decent partner, it’s not just about ability. I’m obligated to do that for you. Just like I know you would do for me if the roles were reversed.”

That often cold, blue-eyed gaze grew lighter and warmer with each passing second. But she still hadn’t spoken.

A different route then. “It’s actually as much for my benefit as it is yours. If you have a way out, I know you’re doing this because it’s what you want. Not because it’s your only choice, not because I have dirt on you and you’re afraid of leaving me. I know you’ve been there before, and I don’t ever want you to feel like that again. I don’t want you to be afraid of me. I want you to be with me because you want me, because you love me, and nothing else. I want you to have security, Gwen.”

Her frown deepened. “You know I want you. I loved you before I knew you were rich.” I laughed, and she smiled. “And before I knew you had dirt on me.”

Touché. “Still. It’s just a formality, Gwen.”

Sighing, she fastened the zipper. “I won’t need it. We’re going to get away with everything we’ve done.”

“That’s the plan,” I said. “But you don’t carry car insurance because you’re sure you’ll crash. You get it in case you do.”

“Fair enough.”

“So you’ll take it?”

“Since you’re putting me in a position I can’t refuse,” she said. “Now come on. We have a party to get to. Let’s go back to pretending like we’re normal.”