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covered his eyes.
    Phil looked as though he knew what he was seeing, but couldn’t process it.
    “Vivian,” Jarod growled from the shadows. “You’ve been a bad girl.”



CHAPTER 9
    R un,” Vivian shouted at Phil. Clutching Cody, she bolted to the back of the warehouse and stopped. The stairs and catwalk dead-ended with only a second-story window for escape. Instead, she raced along the drill presses and welding machines that lined the back wall. There had to be another exit.
    “You’re going to die,” Phil yelled.
    She ducked against the skeleton of a stripped car and peeked out. Phil raised a crowbar and squared off with Jarod. God, he needed to run.
    “Did you hear that, Vivian?” Jarod’s voice sounded amplified. Though he stood in darkness next to a suspended engine block, those teeth were unmistakable in the trashcan’s firelight. “Your boyfriend here’s upset with me.”
    “Fuck you.” Phil charged him.
    She ducked back. Metal clanged on the concrete, followed by a scream so intense that it seemed to chill the darkness around her. She covered Cody’s ears too late. He whimpered.
    “It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay.” She blinked back her tears. “Mommy loves you.”
    Jarod would never let her out of here alive. Somehow, that bastard had to die tonight. The guns. They were still inside the cooler behind him. She had to lure him away.
    Lifting Cody into the front seat of the car chassis, she whispered, “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”
    “No.” He clutched her shirt.
    “I promise I’m coming back.”
    “You can’t breathe.”
    He was right. Her chest wheezed, and she’d left her inhalers back at the cabin. Saint Mary’s was two blocks away. They could still make it, but she had to hurry.
    “It’s going to be fine.” She gave her best smile and kissed his forehead. “Now don’t move, no matter what you hear.”
    “Butterfly,” Jarod called out. “I know you’re there.”
    “Don’t go.” Cody shook his head. “Don’t go.”
    “Shhh.” She pulled a tarp on the front seat over him. “I love you.”
    “Butterfly.” Jarod dragged out the word.
    On the ground, she found a lug nut and tossed it through an upstairs window. In two agile moves, he leapt impossibly far into the shadows. Seconds later, it sounded as though he was tearing the upstairs office apart.
    She raced for the cooler. Gurgled breaths. Jesus, Phil lay on the floor. His torso had been sheered vertically from the side of his neck to his stomach. Wide-eyed, he smeared a puddle of blood as he reached for her. She covered her mouth and looked away.
    Then she crept over to the chest, peeled back the lid, and grabbed one of the guns.
    “I wouldn’t,” Jarod said. She spun to find him towering over her. His sunken eyes looked starved, his cheeks torn like bloody rags. “I’ll have your spine before you clear the first chamber.”
    “Please don’t do this.” She didn’t know why she was trying to reason with him, except that somewhere inside this thing had to be Cody’s father.
    “Pleading,” he said. “I like that.”
    “He’s our son. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
    “You were the one who left me. Remember?”
    “You broke Cody’s ribs. You punctured his lung.”
    “Yes I did.” With one bone claw, he gouged the fender of the car next to him. His other amputated arm trembled in spasms as he sliced the metal. “You want to know how that feels?”
    “Daddy, stop it,” Cody yelled across the warehouse.
    Jarod’s neck snapped to the side, right to the car where Cody was hidden. It was now or never. That son of a bitch would never take her baby. She grabbed the gun, swung the barrel up, and pulled the trigger. Bullets punched his chest, again and again, dancing him backwards until the gun chamber clicked empty. He collapsed to the ground.
    Was he dead? Nothing could live through that. Yeah, nothing human. Where was that other gun? She grabbed it from the ice chest, stood