The Hunt Read Online Free PDF Page A

to be okay, even if it wasn’t. Sometimes she needed to believe the lie.
    But Quinn had given up on her, and she’d let Nick walk away. She had no one.
    When they were gone, she noticed the other people in the room staring at her. She cleared her throat and spoke, her voice rough.
    “Sheriff Thomas discovered Rebecca’s body this morning about four miles west of
Cherry Creek Road
and ten miles south of Route 84. Deputies are searching the area for clues, but—”
    “It’s the Butcher?”
    Miranda turned to the person who’d interrupted her, then looked down. It was Greg Marsh, Rebecca’s biology teacher, a squat, round man with rimless glasses.
    “I—I can’t say. I—” she began.
    “Yes you can. You were there.” He pointed to her feet. She looked down and blinked. She hadn’t noticed the mud caked on her boots.
    “Greg, you know I can’t say anything.”
    “You don’t have to.” He turned and left the room.
    The others continued staring at Miranda. She needed to be alone, but she had a duty to everyone in this room. Though alive, they too were victims of the Butcher. Guilt crept down her throat as she fervently wished at times like these that she felt no responsibility to the victims, living or dead. What could she say to console Greg, Judy, the others?
    She knew what Rebecca had gone through. And thanks to the newspapers detailing the tragedies each and every time the Butcher killed, so did everyone else. There was no consolation. Everyone knew Rebecca had been tortured, raped, and hunted like an animal.
    Everyone knew the exact same thing had happened to Miranda.
    She swallowed the humiliation, the pain, the fear-tinged anger boiling within. Few people talked to her anymore about her own abduction and escape. She knew they whispered among themselves about her, but she ignored it. She had to. Thinking, knowing, what people thought about her made dealing with her nightmares more difficult.
    Miranda sighed in relief as tear-filled people gathered in the corner, murmuring among themselves. They didn’t expect her to talk, to placate them. To tell them everything was going to be all right when nothing would ever be all right until the Butcher was caught.
    She walked over to the map she’d created of the area they’d been searching. She’d divided
Gallatin
County
into four quadrants, uneven because of the mountainous terrain. Each quadrant was split into dozens of segments.
    They hadn’t covered even two quadrants since last Saturday.
    Six red dots, almost invisible to the naked eye, identified where the bodies of six college girls had been found. Hand shaking, she pulled a fine-tipped red pen from her pocket and placed a dot where Rebecca had died. The seventh victim. The seventh known victim, Miranda reminded herself.
    She didn’t need the red dots to tell her where the bodies were found; she didn’t need the blue dots to tell her where the women were last seen. She had the same map—with far more detail—on the wall of her home office. Too many nights, she sat on her bed staring at the topography, willing the dots and lines and grids she’d created to tell her something, anything, about this bastard who hunted women.
    A sob caught in her throat and she covered her mouth with her hands. She turned her attention to the dot southeast of Rebecca’s and touched it. Sharon’s spot.
    She had to get back up the mountain. Only, Quinn was there.
    Twelve years ago Quinn had been her rock, her support. He’d saved her in ways she remembered when she allowed herself to. Alone, in bed, with only her quiet tears for company.
    She’d never forget meeting him at the hospital the day after she took the sheriff’s search team to where Sharon had been killed.
    Though he’d carried her three miles the day before, she’d been too upset for a formal introduction. She hadn’t even known his name. And she was grateful he didn’t bring up her breakdown as he spoke to her while she lay in the hospital bed.
    He