“Well, I thought I could try it today,” the man stated, taking a couple more hobnob steps, favoring his knee. It may have been sore, but it sure as hell wasn’t as bad as he was making it out to be. “But,nah, I can’t run anymore,” he said.
“Sorry, I was thinking that mine was better too.” Simon bent down, putting his hands on his knee, and gently massagedit. But he kept his eye on the gun and a wary eye on the man. Straightening up, Simon continued. “Look. I gather you’re having a shitty day. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you or anything.” He motioned at the gun. “I think, right now, I’m about done with running.” Simon hobbled a couple steps toward the parking lot, trying to look as unthreatening as possible. “Are you okay if I just, like, go to my car?”
The guy looked around, then at the gun, and finally nodded. “Yeah, beat it.”
And, with that, Simon took several more hobbled steps. As he turned to check out the guy once more, he saw him studying the area—looking for Kate. Simon heard a slight rustle off to the side, and the gunman had a big grin on his face, as he jumped across. “I found you.”
A startled noise came, and Simon knew it was Kate.
Suddenly she bounced up, and, with a free leg, she kicked the gun out of his hand. It went flying harmlessly off into the bush, actually closer to Simon than he’d expected. He dove into the bush after it, wanting to make sure that the asshole didn’t get his hands on it again. As he rose to the surface, he saw the two of them facing off against each other.
“Charlie, really?” she said. “Why the hell did you have to kill those two women?”
“You know why,” he snapped. “Both of them deserved it.”
“You destroyed two families.”
“No, they were destroying their families, just like they destroyed their husbands. You know the guys both used to run, right?”
She shook her head. “I knew Agnew did, but I didn’t hear that much about the other one being a runner.”
“They were both runners, and they were both my friends. All of us used to go out running in the mornings,” he said. “But those bitches slowly picked them off, one at a time, and ruinedtheir lives. They turned them from these big robust, healthy men into the fucking mice they are now,” he declared, with a sneer. “Women like that shouldn’t be allowed to live.”
“It’s not your call to make,” she said. “And why this elaborate set up?” she asked.
“I put a line up, and, hell, they’d run right into the branch. I’ve actually seen that happen here on the pathway,” he noted. “A couple people have completely beaned themselves on branches.”
“And you thought it would be a good way for them to die?”
Simon wondered the same thing because he sure as hell wouldn’t count that as a normal methodology for killing somebody. But then he just about missed the next part of this discussion, and he had to refocus. What he heard made his blood run cold.
“And you’re next.”
Chapter 17
Kate stared atCharlie, the president of the running club, who she had spoken to several times. “I don’t understand,” she murmured, trying to get him to talk a little more. At least he didn’t have the gun on him now. But that didn’t mean there weren’t weapons around this place or that he didn’t have something booby-trapped.
He shook his head. “Some of the guys in the club used to think it was funny. They actually did that to a couple of young women, who were getting all the attention from some of the guys in our club. They took those women out immediately. One branch hit one of them and broke her nose. She went home, bawling her eyes out.”
“And the second woman?”
“She tried valiantly to continue running, but then she got hit by a branch too.” Charlie shook his head. “I’m the one who caught on to the rope on the other end of it and saw what they had done. They just sneered at me and said that, when life was a competition, you had to do everything you could to win. Then they laughed and took off. I didn’t tell the cops or anybody because, really? What the hell would I say? So what? They smacked a couple of women with some branches. Later, as I watched how Robin and Jenna treated everybody in the club—and how it was getting worse and worse—I knew I couldn’t let it go on anymore. There was just no way. They had to be stopped.”
“Okay,” Kate noted calmly, balancing on the balls of her feet, ready to lunge at any moment. “What about the other couple?” she asked. “What the hell did they do that they had to die for?Your hatred was for the two women. What about that innocent couple you killed?”
“It was twofold in that case,” he replied. “One was to cover up the first two deaths. Obviously I had to do that.” He gave a one-arm shrug, pointing at her, as if to say she should have figured that out. “But the other thing is that the woman was starting to talk to her husband exactly the same way that these two bitches had talked to their husbands. She started to put him down, anything to make him feel like an idiot. She even put out a leg and kicked him when he was on a path because he hadn’t gone around a branch that she had wanted him to go around.”
Kate stared. “Seriously?”
He nodded. “Yeah, you could tell she was just a younger version of Jenna and Robin. Like, holy shit, what’s wrong with the women in this world?” he asked. “It used to be that, you know, women were all sugar and spice and everything nice.”
“Well, I don’t think that was ever the case,” Kate said quietly. “Unfortunately for you, you seem to have come across some of the more unpleasant ones.”
“You think?” he quipped. “Just like my own fucking wife.”
And, for Kate, that was the core of it. “Did she treat you badly too?”
“Of course she did,” he snapped, “because that’s what women do. It’s not a case ofpeopleare like that. It’s thatwomenare like that. Everything is all nice and beautiful, and then, the minute something bad happens, they blame you for everything. They turn into these absolutely miserable people. Someone you would never ever think could ever do something like that, but suddenly they turn against you, like vipers.”